He looked down at her, one of his eyebrows rising. “I can’t imagine how you got a permit for a gathering like this.”
She tried not to do anything lying-related. “You’re awfully into permits,” she said.
“So is the city of Chicago.”
She straightened things on her welcome table that did not need straightening. Chances were low that a poetry reading full of people mostly over sixty would get too loud, she figured. What was most important was that Will thought all this was business as usual.
“Well, like I said. This one happens every month, so.”
“This one?”
She nodded. “This one’s the biggest one. But there’s other things we do here and there.”
“Is that right?”
Nora looked up and narrowed her eyes at him. This was probably the tone of voice he used on kids in the emergency room who said they had no idea how that raisin or penny or LEGO piece got stuck up their nose. Fine, if he wanted a whole accounting, she’d give it to him. He could make that doubtful doctor face at her all he wanted.
“Well, every other Sunday there’s—”
“Dr. Sterling!” Mrs. Salas called across the yard, hoisting the basket she was holding in a sort of party-prop wave. She adjusted and shuffled over with it hooked over her forearm, a cup of Benny’s beer in her other hand. Mrs. Salas knew how to party, even if it only took one cup of not-strong beer to make it happen.
“I saved you a crown!” she said to Will, once she got close.
“Let me tell you about the discount Nora and I got on these. They were actually from a—”
“A store that we order from every month!” Nora interjected quickly. She gave Mrs. Salas a warning, reminding look before glancing up at Will. “Sort of a thanks for your business discount. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” he said, but Nora could tell he meant that he definitely didn’t know how it was. He looked away from Nora, smiled down at Mrs. Salas, who now stared at Will like she was drunk-watching General Hospital. “That’s all right, Mrs. Salas. I probably don’t need a crown.”
She laughed and patted his arm, the basket hooked over her wrist swinging between them.
“Now, don’t worry! The one I put aside for you is very masculine! If you’re worried about that sort of thing! Most men are. Nora, hold my beer.”
Nora followed the order, bit her lip to hide her smile. If Will thought the poetry reading was intense, she couldn’t wait until Will got a load of Mr. Salas’s robotics club meeting. Unfortunately that was only every three months, though Nora would definitely be making a request for him to schedule something sooner.
“I’m not so worried about it,” Will said, still smiling his obnoxious, not-bothered-about-gender-norms smile down at her.
“Mrs. Salas,” Nora prompted, to get her out of her apparent trance.
She blinked. “Sure, yes! Here it is. More of a laurel wreath, this one.” Will gave a sidelong glance to Nora, then dutifully bent his knees and tipped his head down toward Mrs. Salas so she could settle the crown on his head. Nora very much objected to how his thick mass of hair gently curled around the edges of the leaves. Honestly she also objected to Mrs. Salas getting to touch it, but she shoved that thought away as quickly as she could.
When he stood again, Mrs. Salas set a hand against her chest. “You look like an Olympian! Nora, doesn’t he look like an Olympian?”
“Corrine!” Mr. Salas called, from over by the grill, and Mrs. Salas rolled her eyes. “He never knows how to put things on a plate, I swear. Anyway, I’ll see you soon, Dr. Sterling!”
She swanned off, and Will reached up to straighten his laurel wreath.
“I don’t look like an Olympian,” he muttered.
Nora snorted. “You look like you won the gold medal in being uncomfortable.”
“I don’t really have the time for this.”
“Suit yourself, though good luck getting past Marian.” She directed her gaze over to where Marian stood near the microphone, then tapped a finger on her chin, trying to look thoughtful. “I guess maybe you could open your back door, listen from your balcony. That’s what Donny always did.”
Will turned his head toward her, his crown going crooked, his jaw setting firmly.
Got him, she thought.
“I can stay out here for a while,” he ground out.
“Oh, great! Now, since you’ve got your crown and everything, you’ll need one of these.” She picked up one of the rolled pieces of paper from the table and held it out to him, and for a too-long second, he stared down at it. Nora felt it—a little pulse of energy in her hand, like it was anticipating getting close to his.
This is the most you story, she heard Deepa saying.
But when he finally reached out, he did so carefully. He made sure he didn’t touch her at all.
“What’s this?” he asked, and she tried to ignore the pang of disappointment she felt.
“That’s your poem. I’ll try to get Marian to call you up early, so you can get back to—”
“My poem?”
“Yeah. Everyone reads a poem, unless they’ve written their own. I’m guessing you didn’t write your own! Though a few people here will improvise, probably.”
“Everyone. Reads. A Poem.”
She beamed out at the crowd. This was going to take forever.
“Yep.”
“Is this . . . always how many people come?”
She didn’t look over at him to answer. She kept her eyes focused on her neighbors, on the five to ten extra guests each she’d asked them to call.
“In the spring and summer months, yeah. Now in the colder months, it’s in Marian and Emily’s apartment, so it’s smaller, but not that much smaller.” She looked back toward him. “Sometimes it kind of—you know. Spills out into the hallway. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you.” She paused meaningfully, adding a smile. “Or your tenants.”
For a second, she felt fully like she’d already won the evening—her smile, her snark, her surprise poetry reading. No fish-hiding necessary. He’d been caught completely off guard, and Deepa had been exactly right—she hadn’t needed to tell him what this building was all about in the day-to-day. She’d needed to show him. This wasn’t the kind of place some weekender could find peace in. This wasn’t the kind of place where people came and went.
But then he lifted the scroll of paper he held in one hand and slowly—meaningfully, teasingly, she thought—tapped the edge of it against the palm of his other hand. His dark gaze locked on to her, the corner of his mouth crooking up to match the tilt of his laurel wreath.
She wanted to snatch the poem back. She wanted to cut her own hand off, for all she could feel it vibrating with the memory of touching his.
He took a step back, the curve of his smile widening. Like he knew exactly what she’d been thinking—about his poem, about his palm and hers.
“I’d better get over there and see it for myself, then,” he said.
And when he turned to walk away, to weave his way into the crowd, she had the strangest feeling.
She had the feeling that Nonna’s plans for this night weren’t so simple after all.
Chapter 6
Maybe she thought he wouldn’t be good in a crowd.
But he was great in a crowd.
Under the lights of colorful paper lanterns he kept having to duck beneath, Will stood with his poem tucked into his back pocket and a beer in his hand, nodding along to a story one of Marian Goodnight’s former students (he knew she was a teacher; no one could fake a voice like that) was telling him about the time he’d gotten caught sticking gum underneath his desk in her classroom. Will laughed at all the funny parts, asked all the right follow-up questions, same as he had through what by now felt like dozens of similar stories—not only about Marian, but about everyone at this party. Who they knew, where they worked, what neighborhood they grew up in, why they were at a backyard poetry reading on a Saturday night.
&nb
sp; This was how Will worked a crowd—be pleasant, interested, self-effacing. Shake hands, laugh easily, stay curious. In life, this kept him where he was comfortable: a place where he was unlikely to have to answer questions about himself, a place where he could keep people at a safe distance. And in his profession, in the hospitals and clinics where he’d trained and worked, it had always served him well as a bedside style, too. As best as he could, he tried to help people feel better about being in a place that had the word emergency in the title, even when he was talking to them about their chest pains or the bone sticking out of their shin. Tonight, he put his mind in the manner of work. This building was the bay, and to Nora and her neighbors, his plan for Donny’s apartment might as well be a heart attack or a compound fracture.
But out here at this backyard party, with his calm, ready smile and his willingness to listen—nobody, for the moment, seemed to feel all that bad about it.
Not even Nora.
Even from all the way across the yard, it was like he could feel her—like his body knew where hers was at all times. When gum-beneath-the-desk guy stopped talking, shaking Will’s hand a final time and telling him he was going to take a seat, Will only had to raise his eyes to find her, his gaze tracking automatically to where she stood. Up near the microphone, she and Marian and a smaller woman Will was almost certain was Emily Goodnight bent their heads together over a sheet of paper Marian held, Nora pointing down at it and nodding. When Emily leaned in and pointed at something else, Nora stood straighter and tipped her head back to laugh, one hand coming up to hold on to the flowers in her hair, and suddenly, Will remembered his own sporadic, Nora-specific chest pains. In that dress, with the smooth, somewhat-freckled skin of her shoulders showing, her ponytail foregone in favor of a thick, loosely woven braid . . .
Don’t, he told himself, remembering the smug way she’d greeted him, her smiling show about this big crowd and these ridiculous flower crowns. Maybe these people did hold a monthly poetry reading, but if it was this involved every time he’d eat this laurel wreath that kept tugging irritatingly on his hair. If Nora thought he was spooked, scared off his plans—well, she had another think coming. They were out here tonight in an I’m Enjoying Myself smile-off, and he was determined to win.
Right then, she looked his way. There was no point in pretending he hadn’t been watching her, so he simply raised his cup toward her, tipping it in what he thought was a toast to this not-so-friendly competition. She didn’t have a drink, so she couldn’t return the gesture, but he thought she might’ve raised her chin in acknowledgment.
Everyone was going the way of gum-guy, finding seats in the rows of folding chairs lined up in front of the microphone or standing around the perimeter, so Will did the same, taking a spot behind the back line of chairs near a group of younger guests he figured had been Marian Goodnight’s students in more recent years. Up toward the front, Nora and her neighbors sat together, all except for Marian herself, who stood behind the microphone in a bright yellow dress, a matching patterned scarf woven high on her head.
“Welcome,” she said, her voice oddly less teacher-y when projected through a microphone. She spoke without notes, a brief introduction to the night’s schedule: first up, readings—chosen randomly—from anyone who picked a poem from the box (“Picked”? he thought, remembering the way Nora had handed one to him like it was a ticket for admission), followed by anyone who wanted to read an original composition. Marian had rules, too—you could get more food or drink, but not in the middle of anyone’s reading. You could clap, but she preferred snaps. You could use the restroom, but only the one in Marian and Emily’s apartment, and only if you had the good sense to wash your hands after.
When Marian finished speaking, Nora joined her at the mic, holding another basket. Will could tell by the anticipatory energy in the crowd that whatever was coming next was something familiar to most everyone here, or at least they’d been given a better primer upon arrival. He saw people taking out their small scrolls of paper, so he did the same.
“Now remember,” Marian said, “you’ll find your number right at the top edge of your paper. You can say pass, but I sure don’t know why you’d want to.”
Will looked down, then held up his scroll to get it closer to one of the lantern lights. Number sixteen, fine. He tucked it back into his pocket and took a sip of his beer, hoping they’d decide to move on to the original compositions before his number got called. But when he looked up back toward the mic, his gaze tangled with Nora’s again, right as Marian reached into the basket, and he could tell by the look on her face; he knew she must’ve checked his—
“Number sixteen!” Marian called, and Nora Clarke’s face fairly broke open with the force of her smile.
Fuck, Will thought, but he didn’t show it, because he wasn’t going to let poetry sabotage him, for Christ’s sake. He raised a hand, though he didn’t so much know why it was even necessary, since he had a feeling every single piece of paper in that basket had been, since shortly after his arrival, marked with the number sixteen.
“Well!” said Marian, as Will made his way up. “Wouldn’t you know, it’s a brand-new guest who’ll be starting us off?” There was a ripple of snapping, a smattering of applause, and he waved a hand in casual, embarrassed greeting.
“This here is Dr. Sterling,” said Marian, who obviously had compiled a file on the way he would least like to be introduced, though it was frankly nothing compared to what she said next, right as he pulled up even with her and Nora. “He’s recently moved in to our beautiful building, after we said farewell to our beloved Donny, who was Dr. Sterling’s uncle. We welcome him.”
Will gritted his teeth, tipped his chin in a nod, a feigned gesture of gratitude to the murmur of sympathy that went through the crowd. He almost said “Pass,” or at least “I didn’t move in!” but when Marian moved past him toward her front-row seat, Nora waited half a beat, leaning in close enough that he could smell the crisp scent of flowers in her hair. The very edge of her braid touched lightly, briefly, against his forearm.
“I didn’t tell her to say that,” she whispered quickly.
He tipped his head down, putting his mouth closer to her ear, and he thought he could win the smile-off right then, if he let himself have his honest reaction to the way she shuddered, ever so slightly, at his proximity.
“But did you tell her to call my number first?” he whispered back before pulling away, turning toward the crowd like being at a poetry reading was the most natural thing in the world to him.
He waited until Nora was in her seat to take out his scroll again, could feel her eyes on him, but he wasn’t going to look back. He was going to work this crowd; he was going to do the best goddamn poetry reading they had ever seen.
He gently tugged at the ribbon keeping the scroll closed, said a silent prayer that Nora’s scheming hadn’t also involved making sure he got something extra-long or ultra-weird. It’d be trickier for him to sell that, though he’d do it if he had to.
Unrolling the scroll, he tried to temper his first genuine smile of the night as he read a name he recognized at the top. He let his eyes scan over the not-too-many lines, let the audience wait it out for a second or two longer than was comfortable. He hoped he had Nora on the edge of her seat.
Then he stepped up to the microphone and cleared his throat.
“I’m Will,” he said, and maybe then he did smile. “And funnily enough, I got Shakespeare.”
“Nice going, Beanpole,” said Jonah, coming to stand beside Will in the back-row spot he’d returned to after his reading. Side by side like this, it was a bit like standing somewhere with Dr. Abraham, and for a second Will wasn’t sure where to look.
“You got a good voice for poetry.”
Okay, he’d look. Only to see if Jonah was making fun of him.
But the man seemed serious, and Will decided to take the compliment, since it tracked with what he’d heard from most of the guests since he’d finished. He got
a loud round of snaps, a few backslaps from the standing gallery, and in between the various other readings he’d even had the chance to chat up a few of the guests, dropping in a couple of mentions of his short-term rental plans, in case any of them had Marian’s ear and could put in a good word for him. Nora had been steering well clear of him, but he was counting that a victory. He knew she’d thought he would bolt during this, thought it would scare him off his plans.
“Thanks,” Will said. “You did pretty good up there, too.”
“I’m an old pro at these things. Pretty sad one you got stuck with.”
Will blinked, confused. “What’s sad about it?”
The truth was, he didn’t really give much thought to what he’d been reading—he’d focused on getting through it, sounding calm and unbothered. He remembered stuff about spring and summer and the names of a whole bunch of flowers. Poetry shit: the usual.
Jonah made a noise of disapproval. “Doctors. Something wrong with the lot of you.”
Will shifted on his feet. What was that poem about? Oh well; it didn’t matter. He was pretty sure he’d put in enough of an appearance at this thing. Maybe he’d duck away soon, get back to work on Donny’s unit, definitely with the back door closed. He’d lost time, getting called in to the very short-staffed clinic today, but he planned on working at the apartment overnight tonight.
“Easy for you to say,” he countered to Jonah. “You got to read a poem about baseball.”
Jonah looked up at him. “You a fan?”
“Used to be.” Used to play, he thought, for the first time in ages. He hadn’t thought about baseball all that much since . . . well. Probably since the last time he stood for any length of time in this backyard.
It was really time to go inside.
“What’s that mean, ‘used to be’?”
“Don’t have much time to watch these days.”
“We put games on out here sometimes. Nora hangs a sheet over there between Donny’s balcony and Marian and Emily’s. She gets her computer and some projector thing out.”
Love at First Page 9