Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We go directly from Gordon’s Cha Cha to the nearest pub, where we sit outside at a table under a red umbrella and have a lunch in which the only vegetables are the red onion on my hamburger and the crushed garden peas that come with Amity’s cottage pie and Wyatt’s steak sandwich.
I ask Amity if she ever writes about married people, and she says never, that she only writes about what she calls “the three p ’s—prelude, plummet, and perfection,” otherwise known as flirting, falling in love, and living happily ever after.
“No one wants to read about how people gain weight once they marry, or spend evenings doing crosswords separately, each on their own phone, or how divine it is when your husband goes away on a business trip and you can eat scrambled eggs for dinner and wake up in the morning with the sheets barely rumpled. Just flip back one corner, and the bed is made. It’s practically orgasmic. ”
“Sounds… exciting?” Wyatt says.
Amity laughs.
“It’s not, but that’s okay. Married love ebbs and flows.
Soon enough, your husband makes you snort with laughter, or says something so perceptive you’re blown away by how well he knows you, or you’re watching a Seinfeld rerun together and find yourself holding hands.
If you didn’t drift apart now and then, you wouldn’t get to rediscover each other.
” She pokes at her cottage pie with her fork.
“That’s how I saw it anyway.” Amity pushes back her plate.
“But we didn’t come here to talk about my marriage. What’s next?”
I’m weighted by jet lag and a food hangover, and I need a nap.
Wyatt feels jet-lagged too, and says he’ll walk back to the cottage with me so he can change and go for a run, which he thinks will revive him.
Amity, despite being the oldest of our trio, says she’s filled with energy and is going to take a bus to visit a nearby village called Bakewell where Jane Austen is said to have stayed.
As Wyatt and I cross the village green, I’m thinking about our conversation at lunch. I ask Wyatt what he thought of Amity’s “three p ’s.”
“She writes fiction, enough said.”
We cross the street. Edwina stands at attention at her window, lifting and dropping her lace curtain. I wave, and Wyatt gives her a little salute.
“I don’t really buy that ‘plummet’ thing either,” I say.
“Speak for yourself, pumpkin. I plummeted hard.”
“Seriously? How’d you guys get together?”
“It was at an Audubon Society fundraiser. I’d recently quit law school, an absurd idea from the get-go to everyone but my lawyer parents, and I was working for my sister.
She was catering the gala. Bernard and I chatted during the cocktail hour.
He liked my barbecued pulled pork on wonton crisps with jicama slaw and I liked his jawline. ”
“Excellent prelude.”
“When Bernard told me he owned a birding store, it made me laugh. It was so tweedy and grown up, yet weirdly sexy. He was older than me, by a decade. I mean, he knew things—about wingspan and migration patterns and our fine feathered friends. What did I know about anything? Bernard was so earnest, and it didn’t hurt that he seemed to be hiding the body of a triathlete beneath his blazer and corduroys.
It was so unexpected, you know? Bernard asked for my number and called the next day.
By which I mean, he didn’t text. He made a phone call. ”
“How sweet.”
“Bernard took me to an early dinner at a tavern a few towns over. He said he wanted to show me ‘the swallows’ before dark, which I figured was some exclusive gay bar. But after dinner, he drove us to the river and led me to the water’s edge.
We just stood there. I had no idea why. I mean it was pretty, but nothing dramatic.
He said to wait. We waited. I fidgeted. And then I saw them, tiny dots in the distance.
A blur at first, and then more dots, until there was a swarm of vibrating black spots filling the sky. ”
“What was it?”
“Swallows. Hundreds of them, swooping and turning like they’d been choreographed.
They twisted up in the air like smoke signals or ribbon dances or, I don’t know, waterspouts.
Dissolving into shapes and new shapes like images on an Etch A Sketch.
Bernard called it a ‘murmuration.’ I didn’t even know that was a word.
It’s how swallows protect themselves. Strength in numbers.
Anyway, it was beautiful. Like something I hadn’t known I was looking for, delivered to me in a magnificent swoop.
I watched the birds spin themselves into a tornado, which narrowed at the bottom like the birds were being funneled into the ground.
And then the sky was clear. Bernard said, ‘That’s where the birds will settle for the night.
Shall we settle in too?’?” Wyatt smiles, like he’s savoring the moment all over again.
“Within a month, I’d moved in with Bernard and was working at Hi, Hi Birdie. ”
I stop him, my hand on his arm.
“You just jumped into his life, leaving everything behind? That’s very impulsive.” What had Wyatt been thinking? No wonder he’s having troubles now; he rushed in way too fast.
“I was all in,” Wyatt says. “It was thrilling. He’s still everything to me, but he seems frustrated by having me around. He keeps suggesting I find more fulfilling work, as if he could imagine anything more fulfilling than birds.”
We pass the cheese shop and the stationer’s shop, and we hear music.
It’s jazz piano, and it’s coming from the place on the corner, a narrow space with rustic wooden floors, a few tables with mismatched antique chairs.
Inside, a man is sweeping. Just as I realize that it’s Dev, he steps close to the door and pushes a pile of dust outside. Wyatt and I both cough.
“Terribly sorry. I didn’t see—Oh, Cath, hello.” Dev has his sleeves rolled up. His brow glistens with sweat.
“No worries,” I say. I introduce Wyatt.
The two men shake hands.
The sign above the bar reads simply, MOSS .
“Interesting name,” Wyatt says. “Is it after a person? Moss Hart?”
“Who?” Dev says. He looks a little embarrassed. “It’s just for, you know, moss. The green stuff? I’ve loved it since I was a kid. I used to lie down on it. It feels amazing.” He laughs, looks at his feet.
“That’s a sweet image.” And then my mind travels from sweet to something entirely unexpected.
While I’m standing there like nothing odd is happening, I’m imagining being stretched out beside Dev on a velvety bed of moss, his fingers between mine, his gaze intensely loving.
I don’t even know if he’s for real, but Dev’s presence is stirring something inside of me, like he’s giving off some kind of force field that I can’t resist. But that’s ridiculous.
Maybe one of Amity’s heroines would think she’d found her soulmate, but that’s not me. I don’t “plummet.”
Wyatt peers inside the bar. “Looks like a cozy spot.”
“It’s a start.” Dev rocks the broom handle back and forth in a way that makes me think he’s about to waltz with it. He says, “We open at eight in case you want to come by.”
Is he looking only at me?
“Good to know,” I say.
When we resume walking, Wyatt asks if there’s anything I want to share.
“No.” The tips of my fingers are tingling. I’m probably dehydrated.
“Do we add the handsome barkeep to our list of suspects?” Wyatt says.
“I think he’s only helping out.” And then I realize that I don’t know for sure, that I never got a read on when he was kidding and when he was not. Maybe that’s why he’s having such a strong effect on me; it’s not attraction, it’s confusion.
Back at the cottage, jet lag finally catches up to me.
I crawl under the comforter and fall into a deep sleep.
When I wake up, I’m surprised to see I’ve been out for nearly three hours.
I fill the tub and take a long, hot bubble bath.
The citrus scent tickles my nose and is at once relaxing and invigorating.
I sink down into the water, let my hair swirl around me.
I stretch my legs, wiggle my toes. I am on vacation, free of responsibilities.
I imagine myself on a map, across the ocean, up from London, in the heart of the Peak District, in a village, in a cottage, in the bath.
I stretch out and give silent thanks for this extra-long tub.
By the time I get dressed, I’m famished. Wyatt’s back, and I ask if he wants to join me to get something to eat.
“You’re not going straight to cocktails? At a nice little place that opens at eight?”
I can’t pretend I haven’t thought about it. But what would be the point?
“Food first,” I say.
Wyatt declines my offer. I walk back down to the village center and buy some sausage rolls, which I’ve heard are popular in England.
With the first bite, I have to laugh. Of course they’re popular.
They’re pigs in a blanket. Why in God’s name have we not made them into fast food too?
They’re delicious, greasy, and salty, and they leave me with an undeniable thirst. I come upon a pub and look through the window.
Inside, there are two tables filled with people I recognize from the parish hall.
Naomi and Deborah and some other wannabe detectives.
I’m not in the mood for more mystery talk.
I walk slowly to the place on the corner, which is still playing jazz.
There aren’t many people inside. Maybe I’ll have one drink.