The Brevity of Roses (23 page)

Renee drew back.

“Sorry,” he said. “I did not mean it to sound like that. I just … what are you doing out here in the dark? Where is your car?”

“It’s parked at the top of the road, outside the gate.”

“Oh, right. The security code.”

“I guess you’re just back from a run,” she said.

“I am. Why?”

“I was hoping we could take a walk. I want to talk to you.”

“We can do that.” He passed her and opened the gate. “Let me grab a jacket and some water.”

When he returned, he held out one of his thick hooded sweatshirts. “It’s too cold out here at night for those little hoodies you wear.” Renee took it from him and put it on as they started down the road. He handed her a bottle of water and waited for her to speak. After a couple of minutes, he took the initiative. “Something on your mind?”

They walked for another minute before she answered. “You know the saying about ignoring the elephant? Well, that’s what we do.”

Yes. They did. He did. He could do it now, turn around, stop this conversation, pretend she never dared. He could avoid this dialogue, avoid Renee all together, avoid living. Or he could
—

“She died,” said Renee.

He screwed the cap off his bottle and forced the water down his constricted throat. “Yes.”

“When?”

“Two years, five months ago.” He stopped and turned away, toward the ocean.

“How?”

They had stopped near a bench along the pathway. He went to it now and sat down. Renee followed. For a minute or two, he looked out at the ocean and watched the surf glowing white in the moonlight. Then he exhaled and leaned forward. He rested his forearms on his knees and rubbed his thumb in a circle, crinkling the label on the bottle in his hands. “I was at home. Writing. A poem not even worth finishing. Meredith had gone out to shop. For nothing important. For
nothing
.” He shook his head at the enormity of the waste, the irony. His mind tread the familiar ground of what if. What if he had gone with her? What if she had decided not to go?

Renee touched his shoulder lightly, pulling him back to the present. “It started to rain right after she left. A real downpour. I thought she might turn around, come home.”
If only
. “I kept expecting her to walk in the door any minute.” He looked out at the sea. “But she went ahead with her shopping. Then, when she was … she was almost home.
Almost
. Some man ran a red light. They said she tried to stop … she braked …” He took a slow deep breath, it sounded like wind skittering dry leaves. A vision of Meredith, dead, threatened to come into focus and he shoved it away. He forced his thumb under the label, separating it from the bottle, ripping it off. He rushed the next words, to get them out. To get it over with. “She had too little time to stop. Her car slid off the road and overturned.”

For a moment, silence hung between them like a spell, and then Renee broke it with a whisper. “I’m sorry, Jalal.”

The denuded bottle dangled from his fingertips. “Seven years,” he said. “We had seven years together. Everyone told me, be thankful for that. God!” He rocked backward against the bench and looked up at the stars, swallowing hard. “All I wanted was seven more years … and seven more after that … and seven more still.” They sat, not speaking, and after a minute, Jalal looked back at the water. With only the rush of the waves filtering through their silence, they sat together for a long while.

Twelve

THE NIGHT BEFORE, AFTER he realized Renee sat shivering beside him, Jalal walked her to her car and came home to collapse into sleep—another rare, solid six hours. He woke to the realization that, since Renee had googled him, she must have already known when and how Meredith died. She had forced him to talk about it, but he was not angry because now, as she surely had intended, he felt less burdened. Stronger. As evidence, today had been unusually productive. He had weeded the garden and cleared out some dead plants, re-stocked his pantry, and had his hair trimmed. Even his attempt at writing succeeded—only revision of old work, but the two resulting poems were acceptable.

Now, he sat on his porch steps with his journal and pen in hand, even though clouds would hide the sunset this evening. His finger marked his spot, but he had written nothing in it yet today. His thoughts, at the moment, were not of Meredith.

Renee rose into his field of vision as though he had summoned her from the sea. She saw him watching her and waved. As she came through the gate, she eyed the sky and held her palm out. “I think I felt a raindrop.”

“Probably just a shower,” he said, “it will not last long.”

“How are you today?” she asked.

“Good. I am doing well.”

She pointed to his journal. “Did I interrupt you?”

“No.” She sat down on the step beside him, as she had that first night, but this time, he did not move away. “I had not started to wr—” He frowned. “The tide is in.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “And you said that, why?”

He gestured toward the pathway across the road. “You came up from the beach, but you could not have walked all the way from town along it.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “My car’s parked up by the gate.”

“Oh, right, the code.” He flipped to the back of his journal, tore off a piece of the page, and wrote down the numbers. As he handed Renee the paper, the first raindrops dotted the flagstones leading into the yard. “So, how long were you down on the beach?”

“A while.” She waved her hand as though both his question and her answer were unimportant. “What were you going to write about?”

“I had not decided yet. Why were you down on—”

“I lost my nerve, okay? I came to see you, but then I wasn’t sure you would want to see me, so I ducked down the stairs.”

“And then, with the tide in, you had no other way to climb back up.” He grinned.

“Stupid, huh?”

“Not at all. I’m glad I was out here when you came up.”

She looked at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

A breeze spattered rain across the steps below their feet.

“Does the collection you’re working on have a theme?” she asked. “I mean,
The Brevity of Roses
was about her, right?”

“You can use her name. Meredith. And the nature of love was the theme.”

Renee nodded. “So, what’s the theme for your next book?”

“We shall see.” They sat in silence for a minute or two. The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Jalal now became uncomfortably aware of the mere inches of space between them. He sat transfixed as two raindrops merged on the smooth bare skin of her knee and edged over the slope to trickle down into the soft hollow beneath. Alarmed at the sudden mental image of his hand rising and letting a finger follow that trail, he shook his head and cleared his throat. “Sorry. Did you say something?”

“No.” She stood up. “But I think this ‘shower’ is about to turn into something more. I’d better get back to my car.”

Jalal jumped to his feet. “Would you like to step inside until the storm blows over?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door and stood aside, motioning for her to enter. He held his breath as she passed him. Renee stopped just inside the door, and he had to ease around her. He was careful not to touch.
What am I doing?

“Geez, you have a lot of books,” she said and then dropped down on the near end of the sofa. “Do you give out library cards?”

Jalal turned on a lamp, driving out the gloom. He perched on the sofa arm at the opposite end. “You are welcome to borrow any book you like,” he said and smiled at her.

“That’s killer, you know.”

He frowned and shook his head. “You have lost me.”

“Your smile,” she said. “It’s killer.”

He stood up. “I am sorry. I should have offered you something—a Coke?”

“A beer would be nice, if you have any,” she said and followed him into the kitchen.

He took two bottles out of the refrigerator and grabbed a bag of chips. When they had settled at the table, he resumed the conversation. “Why are you here? In the village, I mean. Why did you move here?”

Renee shrugged. “Change of scenery. You know, the first time I saw you wasn’t that afternoon I walked by here.”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh?”

“Now, don’t freak out on me again. I didn’t know
who
you were. Honest. The first day I got here, I saw you coming out of the post office. And then the next night you came into Jennie’s just as I was leaving.”

He took a long drink. “I have no memory of that.”

“Thanks a lot!”

He grimaced. “Sorry. I was not paying attention, I guess. But those were only passing encounters. Why would you remember seeing me?”

Renee paused with her bottle halfway to her lips. With a quizzical look, she searched his face, then shook her head and smiled. “I guess that would be because you’re gorgeous.”

Embarrassed into silence, Jalal watched as Renee drank, then wiped her upper lip dry with a fingertip. It occurred to him he should have offered her a glass and he was about to correct his error, when she spoke.

“I figured you might be gay,” she said.

His brows rose equal to the distance his jaw dropped. “Why would you think that?”

“Well … you’d be surprised how many of the best-looking guys are.”

“I see. So, you saw me as a gay Muslim. At least you are creative in your stereotyping.”

She laughed. “You want to know what I really thought the first time I saw you?”

“I fear to imagine.”

“I thought you were probably a model. Or maybe an actor.”

“I assure you I have never acted.”
Shit!
Wrong answer.

“Then you
were
a model?”

He shrugged.

“Wow. Show me some photos.”

Suddenly, the beer label fascinated him. He could not tear his eyes away. “I burned them long ago.”

“Why would you burn— Oh. My. God.”

He waited, but she said no more. Finally, he dared to look at her. She sat wide-eyed and grinning.

“You posed
nude
,” she said.

Jalal closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Only once. But not for the reason you are thinking—they were artistic shots for my portfolio.”

“
Riiight
.”

He opened his eyes. “Okay … so I was young, rebellious, and heavily under the influence at the time.”

“I bet.”

He winced, shaking his head. “I cannot believe I told you. That has been my dirty little secret for sixteen years.”

“You never told …”

“No. Not even her.”

“Well, then,” she said, “I never heard it.”

He blew out a breath. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Jalal drained his beer and pushed his chair away from the table. “Would you like another?”

A snatch of music from Renee’s cell phone interrupted her before she could reply. She stood up and glanced at the screen, but did not answer it. “Oh crap. I have to go.” As she passed him, she gave a soft wolf whistle. “See you later … Hunk of the Month.”

When the screen door slammed behind her, Jalal shook his head. But he smiled.

Jalal had lain awake until just before dawn, so now he was back on his night owl schedule. Under the late-afternoon sun, he paced the beach, cooling down. He had sailed through his run, his mind clear, and then at the end of it—no idea why—he thought of Disneyland. Now, as he eased his muscles, he drifted off to the memory of Meredith’s first visit there. Shocked, when he learned she had never gone, he immediately scheduled their trip. They stayed for five days, seeing everything, doing it all at least twice. She loved it, and he had loved sharing the experience with her.

When Renee walked up beside him and spoke, it took a moment to peel his mind loose from the past. “Sorry?”

“I said, you ran late today.”

“I … yes.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” she asked.

“No!” Renee’s surprised expression jerked him fully into the moment. His vehemence had taken her question and his reply to a deeper level than either of them intended. He scrambled to backtrack. “Forgive me. I was … deep in thought.” He motioned for her to follow and started across the beach toward the steps. “Come up to the house.”

“You still owe me tea,” she told him.

“Indeed.” As they walked onto his porch, he said, “If you could entertain yourself for a few minutes, I would like to shower.”

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll just browse the library.”

Jalal laughed. “Be my guest.”

The ten-minute shower had washed away more than his sweat and Meredith was not on his mind until he walked back into the living room. Renee sat on the floor, illuminated by sunlight, with a book open on her lap. The sight wrenched something loose in him.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, looking up. “I’ve never read your first—” She snapped it closed and scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I can see you do mind.” She turned to put the book on the shelf. “It was rude of me to—”

“You were not rude.” He averted his gaze. “You … you just reminded me of something.”

“Oh. Um … then, is it all right to borrow the book? I promise I’ll bring it right back.”

“Please, consider it a gift. Now, on to the tea.”

Book in hand, she followed him into the kitchen. “You mean
tea
tea, like in England? Crumpets and all that.”

“This tea is better. And I will serve you cookies. I did not bake them myself, but they are authentic. Very sweet. Persians are not averse to sugar. Sometime, I will show you the custom of sipping tea through a sugar cube.”

“There you go again, trying to impress me by stringing dozens of words together.”

“Impudent child,” he muttered.

Renee read while he brewed, putting aside the book only after he had set a filled cup before her. She sipped. “Hmmm, cinnamon, cloves and … what?”

“Cardamom.”

“I like it. Do you make it this sweet when you do the sugar cube thing?”

“No.”

She took a cookie. “Do you do this every afternoon? Have tea, I mean.”

“Usually.”