The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (39 page)

Howie's knock sounds at 7:00
P.M.
exactly, coinciding with the flare of the patio light and the TV announcer bellowing:
“This! Is! Jeopardy!” Reluctantly, Charlotte turns her show off. She tugs at her sweater, touches her scarf, refrains from sneaking a peek at her date out the kitchen window for fear he might catch her. She unlocks the door more slowly than usual, not wanting to appear eager, wondering if the sound of multiple rattling locks betrays how paranoid she is.

“Charlotte?”

And there he is: a strange man standing on her front porch. He is wearing a red turtleneck, tan pants, a puffy green L. L. Bean jacket. His head is bald in the middle, pink, gleaming, with a moat of fluffy white hair around the sides. Eyeglasses hang from a plaid cord around his neck. Rain droplets sprinkle the toes of his brown shoes, the shoulders of his jacket, the crown of his hair. He is smiling thinly, arms arrow-straight at his sides. He looks, Charlotte thinks, as nervous as she's feeling.

“Yes?” she says, which sounds absurd, as if he's a traveling salesman she wasn't expecting.

“I'm Howie.” He extends one stiff arm. “Nice to meet you.”

As they shake, Charlotte realizes his other hand is gripping a bunch of flowers, held slightly behind him and pointed toward the ground. When he lifts the bouquet of daisies, they are embarrassingly large.

“These are for you.”

“Oh.” Charlotte senses she should do something feminine here: bury her face in the petals to inhale them, gush that they are “beautiful” or “lovely.” But for some reason, she can't bring herself to say the words. “Excuse me,” she says instead. “I'll go put them in some water.”

Leaving Howie in the foyer, Charlotte hurries into the kitchen and confronts the flowers' complicated wrapping: crunchy plastic, reams of tissue paper, thick wet rubber bands.
The stems are gathered at the bottom in a chubby green plastic syringe that squeaks as she pops it off. She isn't used to such floral extravagance. But daisies: she does like daisies. She chops the ends off the stems, fingers slippery, a few pulpy chunks falling to the floor. As she scoops them up, she catches sight of her reflection in the oven door: nervous, but not her usual late-night nervous. This nervous is disarrayed, expectant, the flush on her cheeks visible even in the dark glass. She leans in closer and straightens the scarf, replaces an errant strand of hair. Then, realizing all her vases are still in the basement storage area, she pours out the last of a carton of orange juice and pops in the bouquet, where it sprawls wildly, effusively, defiant.

When she reemerges empty-handed, Charlotte detects a flicker of disappointment on Howie's face. “They look nice,” she assures him.

“Oh, good.”

“I put them on the kitchen table.”

“That's good.” There is an awkward pause. He looks toward the closed door, as if gazing out a window. “I think it's stopped raining.”

“Oh.” She follows his gaze. “Good.”

Howie helps Charlotte into her coat (her left elbow wedging, briefly, in one of the armholes), then holds the door for her as they step outside. She opts to wrestle with just one lock, in the interest of diverting attention from her shaky hands and cramming them inside a pair of gloves as quickly as possible.

“All set?”

She nods. The rain has stopped, but the sky is an uninviting steel gray, the walkway dotted with puddles.

“After you,” Howie says. Charlotte feels uncomfortable being the object of such chivalry, but remembers the approving smile
that spread across Bea's face as she pronounced her new favorite word:
gallant.

As they head toward the parking lot, Charlotte keeps her hands in her pockets lest Howie try to take her arm. At least now that the rain's stopped, there's no chance of them sharing an umbrella.

“So,” he says, “you and Bea. You're neighbors?”

“She lives above me,” Charlotte replies. “Right upstairs.” She stops and points, and Howie stops too, both of them gazing up at Bea's kitchen windowsill. Unlike Charlotte's, it is crammed with candles, flowers, picture frames, a cookie jar in the shape of a potbellied pig. Had she not been working, Charlotte is sure Bea herself would have been up there waving. As she was leaving, she stopped by Charlotte's to wish her luck, which involved whipping a bottle of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds from her money belt, instructing Charlotte to flip her hair forward, then liberally spritzing the base of her neck.

“She's a wonderful neighbor,” Charlotte says, taking comfort in the thought of her. “She takes in my mail when I'm out of town,” she adds, though Bea has done this exactly once.

“Oh? Do you travel often?”

“Well, no, not really.”

Both pause for a moment, then turn and keep on walking. “So, Charlotte, how long have you lived here?”

“Only since August.”

“It's very nice,” Howie says. “A nice—complex.” His lips part as if to say more, then close. “I really don't care for that word, complex, but that's what my children call the building I live in. I prefer community. Complex just sounds, I don't know, industrial. It reminds me of an office complex. Do you mind it? Complex?”

She glances at him sideways. He is talking quickly. His face is rather red. She wonders if she should ask for specifics about his children, then guesses that might be getting too personal too soon. “I don't mind it that much,” she says.

Silence widens around them, drawing them in like quicksand, spared only by the sounds of their shoes navigating the puddles: her low square heels, his soft brown loafers. Click, squelch. Click, squelch. As if from a great distance, Charlotte hears the tinkle of Ruth O'Keefe's seashell wind chimes.

“I moved a few years ago too,” Howie continues, “into a smaller place. I assume this place is smaller. Than your last place, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. It was a house. It wasn't in a—complex.”

“Did you live there a long time?”

“Twenty-four years.”

Howie lets out a low whistle, then stops walking. For a moment she thinks the statistic froze him in his tracks, then she realizes they are standing next to what must be his nondescript, mustard-brown car. She checks the bumper: Ford Taurus. She couldn't know less about cars, nor care, but imagines Bea or Emily might want this detail later.

“Not much to look at,” he apologizes. “But she runs well.”

Charlotte manages a faint smile, heart banging against her breastbone. Howie unlocks the passenger door. As she slides inside, she is wishing he hadn't whistled, wishing he hadn't referred to his car as “she,” wishing his face weren't so red. And, now, wishing he weren't hustling quite so quickly to the driver's side. She is having trouble swallowing. It occurs to her she's about to be alone in a car with a man who could be anyone. What does she-or even Bea-really know about Howard Jan-son? That he's worked the same job for twenty-five years? That
he goes to Friendly's every Friday? Who works the same job for twenty-five years? And who goes to Friendly's every Friday? She remembers Bea's assessment:
Friendly's is for men with mother issues.
Why did neither of them do the math? If Howie is a weekly customer, his mother issues must be through the roof!

She hears him fumbling with the lock and wonders if she should unlock it for him (Emily would, she thinks; Bea wouldn't), but he's in the car before she can decide. They buckle their seat belts, elbows banging. Charlotte clutches her purse to her lap, unnerved by the proximity of Howie's hands, the sudden size of his knees.

“I was thinking,” he says, fumbling with something in his lap. Charlotte feels a moment's alarm, then realizes that his car key has gotten somehow stuck in his key chain, a blue lanyard that looks like it was made at a summer camp. “We could go to McFadden's Shoreside. Have you ever been there?”

“No,” Charlotte says, politely trying to ignore the key-chain struggle. She takes advantage of his distractedness to canvas the front seat for suspicious details. Tire gauge. Orange Tic Tacs. Change compartment that is, she must admit, impressively organized. “I don't think I have.”

“There's a huge tank of lobsters swimming by the entrance. It's all lit up like a lobster village. You would remember it, I guarantee.” She wonders if Howie takes all his first dates to McFadden's Shoreside, using the huge lobster tank to lure them in. Then he says, “I've only been there once myself,” making her feel a pinch of guilt. “With my daughter,” he adds. Another pinch. “She said the seafood was very good. Are you a seafood eater?”

“No. Not really.” She resorts to her new standby line: “I just don't have much seafood experience, I guess.”

“I'm not either.” He is still wrestling with the key chain, face turning redder. Are his breaths sounding shallow? Charlotte thinks nervously of his high cholesterol. “But I'm trying to be,” he says, managing a glance in her direction. “I'll probably order seafood tonight. There are other options, though. Chicken. Steak. Or pork, if you don't eat red meat. I know a lot of people don't these days. Pasta, for vegetarians. Are you a vegetarian?”

“No,” Charlotte says. Then she offers, “But my daughter is.”

“Is she?” At last, the key comes free. Howie turns to her with his face a wash of relief: that he can finally start the car and, presumably, that Charlotte has finally volunteered personal information. “My daughter tried to be once,” he says. “But it only lasted about two months. How long has your—”

“Seventeen years,” she blurts, feeling suddenly proud of Emily's tenaciousness. “Ever since she was five years old.”

“Really?” Howie marvels, sliding the key in the ignition. “Five years old?” He starts the car, and they're off.

The menu at McFadden's Shoreside Restaurant isn't as intimidating as Charlotte had feared. In retrospect, it couldn't have been too exotic, coming from a regular at Friendly's. She orders the chicken piccata, though just the thought of food makes her queasy. Howie orders salmon. When he asks if she'd like to get a bottle of wine, she agrees, but defers to him for the choosing. Now the bottle stands awkwardly between them, like an odd lamp that doesn't go with the rest of the decor.

As Howie fills their glasses, Charlotte takes in the dining room. As far as she can tell, there's no actual “shoreside” at McFadden's Shoreside. But it's New Jersey; maybe the entire state is considered fair game. The decor does, however, have a pronounced seashore theme: seashell ashtrays at the bar, thick
nautical ropes wound around ceiling beams, candles flickering in mini-lighthouses on each table. When they arrived, a four-foot fisherman statue stood snarling by the entrance, right beside the famous lobster tank. (It
was
impressive—an intricate village with signs like
LOBSTER CROSSING
and
PARK YOUR CLAWS HERE
—though from a business perspective, Charlotte didn't see how imagining the lobsters as villagers would be any enticement to eat one.)

“So,” Howie says. She watches a pearl of merlot slide down the side of her glass. He flashes her a nervous smile.

Despite the playful details, there's a formality about the restaurant that feels much more awkward than the car ride. They'd managed to talk the entire way, about innocuous things: vegetarians (Howie likes meat too much to give it up), the rain stopping (how lucky for them), the forecast for tomorrow (cold but sunny), and any establishment they could latch onto as they drove past it (Charlotte offered that she likes Bed, Bath and Beyond; Howie finds Chiles too brusque and too spicy). At one point he offered her an orange Tic Tac, and twice, fiddling with the dashboard, he asked if she was too warm or too cold.

But now Charlotte is starting to wish they'd gone to Friendly's after all. There they would be surrounded by bright lights, screaming children, gummy bears on sundaes. Bea would be checking in on them every once in a while to jump-start the conversation and put them at ease.
What do you have to lose?
she can hear Bea saying.
Worse comes to worst, you have a nice conversation with a nice man.
But they hadn't speculated what would happen if there
was
no conversation. She sips her wine, feels her non-control-top pantyhose beginning to unravel.

“How is it?”

She looks up.

“The wine.”

“Oh, very good.”

“That's good,” Howie says, and tugs at his turtleneck. “I didn't really know what kind to order. But as long as you like it.”

Charlotte feels the silence stretch again, forming a moat around them. She longs for her living room. Alex Trebek must have read the answer to Final Jeopardy by now. She wonders if yesterday's winner—Jean, a four-day champion who breeds Alaskan huskies—became a rare five-day champ.

“I've heard white wine is good with chicken.” Howie is still staring at the label on the bottle, as if second-guessing himself. “Seafood, too.”

“Yes.” Charlotte takes another sip, trying to help reinforce his selection.

“I've never been much of a fish eater, but seafood is supposed to be good for reducing cholesterol. I'm working on getting mine down.”

She nods with extra interest, to suggest this is new information.

“I just had it tested in September, and it was up to two-seventy. Two-fifty is the upper limit of what's considered high. They say it's possible the results can be affected by what you ate the night before—for instance, if you have Chinese food, your test could be unnaturally high the next day—so they retested me a week later, but it still came back two-seventy. Must be right, I guess.” He swallows. “Ever since my kids found out about it they've been after me to eat more healthy.”

Again she thinks she should ask about these children, but the prospect makes her feel paralyzed. It's the same feeling that stopped her from gushing over the flowers.
These flowers are just beautiful, Howie. So tell me about your children, Howie.
The
words seem harmless, she knows she should say them, it's rude
not
to say them, but just the shape of them in her mouth makes her feel vulnerable. Unsafe. Those are the words of a woman willing to forge intimacies, to take risks, inch toward a commitment. To say them would be saying that, after fifteen years of being on her own, Charlotte is ready to be that woman. And she's not sure she is. She's already been left once.