Chapter 14
Dirk
Does Lucy mean her party will allow us to get to know the neighbors, or does she mean we’ll get to know each other better?
Already she’s bossing me around. I like my solitude.
I’m content in my silent apartment. I shrug.
According to Jill, Lucy’s a vulture and I’m carrion.
Jill reads trash fiction. It’s how she sees the world.
According to Jill, since Lucy’s a single woman, she must be a gold digger, and since I am single, I am the gold, or something silver. Silver wolf or something.
I haven’t pointed out the hypocrisy. Jill’s been single for a decade and I don’t see her out chasing men.
Well, if Lucy and I are a literary cliche about to happen, there’s only one answer to her invitation.
“Yes. Thank you,” I say. “That would be lovely.”
I think about Lucy’s party for the rest of the week. What do I wear? And what do I bring? Millie would have baked something, like cheese sticks, but that’s not happening.
I would bring a bottle of wine, but I know for sure that Lucy hardly needs more alcohol. I’ve carried up all those clinking bottles.
I decide to bring her a small bunch of flowers, nothing meaningful, nothing “language of flowers” – just something cheerful. She seems to like color.
I catch her on Thursday morning, slipping something under my door, and I swing it open. There’s her fragrance again, fresh and fruity and floral.
On the carpet between us is the invitation to her drinks party, beautifully written on a creamy, textured card. Lucy is class.
We bend together to pick it up and she laughs as we bump awkwardly. She snatches it up ahead of me, straightens and hands it across.
“You’re sure you want to invite an old widower,” I say. “We’re not much fun, but according to Jill, we’re very interesting to single women.”
“What. You think I’m going to woo you with cocktails and caviar, Doc O’Connell? You should be so lucky.”
There’s silence as we size each other up.
“You are a proud man, Dirk,” she says. “It’s no weakness to enjoy a little company now and then.”
Her eyes dance. She is laughing at me.
“My son says it’s good for me to mingle. My daughter says exercise is better.”
“We could exercise together; make them both happy,” says Lucy.
“Walking works for me. I’m in excellent health.
” She spins on the spot on my doorstep like a ballerina, and laughs.
Joy sparkles off her like dew in the sunshine.
Lucy has star quality. Why isn’t this woman on the silver screen?
Maybe she was once. I’m about to ask, when Lucy fires her own question.
“So how did you end up east in Franklin for most of your life, when the rest of your family lives here in the west?”
I stare at her, tongue tied. My patients never asked me about myself, and Millie already knew everything. I’m in no hurry to open up to her. If I share the bedrock of it, she might turn it around and use it against me. Kids did that in school. I smile. Let her wonder.
“See you on Saturday, Lucy,” I say, enigmatic.
“You’re not afraid of me are you, Dirk? You could let someone in, you know.”
“Let you in, you mean.”
“Would that be so bad?”
If that isn’t mischief in her eyes, then I have no experience with human beings, and that certainly isn’t true.
“Well, see you at my party,” she says, and she’s back off down the stairs with her handful of cream envelopes.
She hums as she stops and posts another under a door and another.
Quietly, I close my own door and lift the envelope to my nose.
Yes. Smells like Lucy, like juicy fruit, like a summer night, like fun.