Marshall emerged from a backroom, now wearing a black-belted gi instead of his street clothes. So she stepped inside, ringing the bell attached to the door, drawing Marshall’s attention as he looked out over the practicing students. He walked to her, bare feet slapping over exercise mats. “Kay, right?”
“Sarah,” she half corrected, half confirmed. “How’s it going?”
“I have class, so—busy.” And he started turning away.
“Nina and I were talking about you the other day!” Sarah bluffed quickly. “She said you were a really good teacher.”
“Did she now?” Marshall asked, crossing his arms.
“Yeah. She doesn’t want to presume too much, but she thinks she’s making really good progress with your lessons.”
“Well, she’s a hard worker,” Marshall said, and Sarah felt a goddamn hot-air balloon in her guts as the realization hit her. He was her fucking guru. “And I’m a pretty good teacher. Would you like to sit in on a class? You’d be surprised how much you can pick up in just forty-five minutes.”
“No, no,” Sarah demurred, trying hard to hide her smile. “I’ve gotta get gone. But good talking to you!”
“Yeah, you too. Tell Ms. Rose I said hi.”
Sarah nodded agreeably and headed out, feeling a bizarre urge to dance.
Beck pulled up next to her, riding Sarah’s bicycle, all wobbly. “God, this thing is so wack. Do all these fuckers have seats like this? …What are you so happy about?”
Sarah tossed her skateboard back. “To him, she’s ‘Ms. Rose’.”
Chapter 4
Mercifully, Nina didn’t mention the natural disaster of Sarah’s crash through the hedges the next time they saw each other. But it was hard not to notice that she never again tanned when Sarah was over. Sarah had mixed feelings about that. In the coming weeks, she pruned the hedges, revved up Nina’s riding lawnmower, and trimmed back the roses.
Cultivated to Nina’s exacting specifications, the estate became more imposing. And yet, the more Sarah was there, the more familiar it was. Maybe she was becoming a vampire herself. Coming to call the twilight at Castle Nina home.
Today, the weather was all fog and drizzle, not at all like the sunshine she’d gotten used to working in. Before she even got to the house, the tank top Sarah usually worked in was damp enough to have her shivering, and she was already griping in her head about spending an afternoon rooting around in the mud. But splashing closer to the front door, she saw that Nina had left it open. A much-abused welcome mat had been added to the austere porch. Sarah wiped her shoes off, as an army might’ve done before her.
Nina appeared as if a switch had been flipped, carrying a towel that she threw around Sarah without a syllable of greeting. “We’re having such awful weather. I would’ve understood if you hadn’t come by.”
Nina looked as she always did, so tasteful and buttoned-down, and all the more tempting for how she wasn’t trying to be. In her own body-rocking outfit—tight jeans and abbreviated shirt—Sarah felt crass. She wished she could pull off the suits Nina wore. Not butch, not effeminate, but somehow perfectly poised. A total knowledge of her place in the world and how she should look to fill it.
“Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow,” Sarah quoted. “It’s fine. I’ve had worse jobs. At least it’s not retail.” She shut up as Nina wiped off her wet face and bundled her up in the cloth.
“I admire your work ethic, Sarah. But I have something altogether different in mind for today.”
The memory of Nina, next to nude and glistening with tanning lotion, blew into Sarah’s mind like a summer storm. My usual masseuse is out sick. You don’t mind, do you? Stupid. And Nina was a woman. God!
“Marshall said he saw you the other day.”
“Oh, yeah, I ran into him.”
“He made it sound as if you were trying to be run into. Interested in learning self-defense?”
“Who would I have to defend myself against?”
“Quite.” Nina pulled the towel away so fast, Sarah wondered for a split-second if she’d be naked underneath, like a magic trick. She wasn’t. “Come with me.”
Sarah’s tennis shoes squeaked on the floor as they walked, leaving wet marks. She felt like a little girl tracking in mud. She would’ve given anything to make Nina see her as a woman.
They passed many windows, and the sound of the rain striking them lulled Sarah out of her doubts. She slung the towel over her shoulder and found her eyes pulled to the muscles of Nina’s back, working under the tight cloth of her Oxford shirt. It was a more casual ensemble than Sarah had ever seen her in.
Sarah was thrown out of her musings by the creak of Nina opening a door for her. They were deep in the west wing of the manor.
“Welcome to my library,” Nina said, crooking her finger to usher Sarah inward. Sarah didn’t hesitate, following Nina to a table and sitting down in the chair Nina pulled out for her without question. “Let’s call today a holiday. Your ‘work’ will simply be giving me the pleasure of your company.” She nodded to the books. “Feel free to enjoy yourself. You seem like a very literate girl. I’m sure you can find something to your tastes.”
Sarah picked up a hardcover from a stack on the table and flipped through it. “Good God…you must have a million books in here.”
“Five thousand and sixty-eight,” Nina said, obviously relishing her precision. “But who’s counting?”
“Wow.” Sarah looked around. The bookshelves towered like skyscrapers. Intimidating but welcoming. “You must spend a lot of time on the can. Reading, I mean.”
Nina took a moment to blink. “Actually, I have a Barcelona I prefer.”
“I probably would too.”
Nina’s hand dropped to Sarah’s shoulder. “But I did get the joke.” Her fingers played at Sarah’s skin, flowing through the strap of her tank top. If a cat was trying to decide whether to undress someone or not, Sarah could imagine its touch being like that. Not that Nina would ever take so much as a stitch off her. “Excuse me a moment now.” She stepped away, her hand the last to go. Sarah tried not to read anything into that.
She opened the book she’d picked up and stared fixedly at the first page, though her mind was entirely focused on Nina. Sarah heard her taking a cell phone out of her pocket, thumbing it on with an electronic trill, and then the little pulses of selection as she manipulated it. Deft, sure sounds, the kind that would come from Nina’s hands. Then Sarah heard Nina’s weight shift, settling into the posture of a woman making a phone call—the ringtone, the ringtone, the ringtone. Plenty of time for Sarah to wonder who she was calling. Was it Marshall? And if so, why was she calling Marshall? Just because he was her sensei or something didn’t mean they weren’t…groiny.
“Mr. Shannon,” Nina said with the pleasant confidence of someone experienced at broadcasting over the phone. Sarah couldn’t set a doctor’s appointment without feeling as if she was running a marathon. “I’ve noticed the poor weather we’re having and was wondering if you’d like to come up to the house. I’ll be starting a fire, and presently I’ll be making a little something to eat.” She paused a moment. With her ears straining, Sarah could hear Nina’s breath move between her lips like a ribbon of silk. “Really? Very well. Let me know if you change your mind.” She ended the call and turned around to regard Sarah. “That book cannot be very engaging if a mundane phone call like mine can grab your attention away.”
Sarah set the book down. “I guess he couldn’t make it?”
Nina shrugged. “His shack has a space heater, he has a stack of magazines, and he just sat down.”
“It’s just…” Don’t say anything, you little idiot, Sarah’s mind shouted, with translations available in all the Romance languages, but with Nina looking at her as if she was, Sarah didn’t think she could hold anything back. “It’s just I was wondering why you invited him.”
“It’s raining. I thought he might not be comfortable out there in the cold.”
“I get t
hat.” Sarah stood, feeling suddenly vulnerable sitting down with her back to Nina, and paced a few steps. “It’s just he said he never comes up to your house, so…why start now?”
Nina matched Sarah’s movements, mirroring them, strolling along the perimeter of the bookshelves as Sarah walked around the long table. “I invited you. It would be rude not to extend him the same courtesy.”
“But would it be so bad?” Shut up, shut up, shut up! “It just being us girls, I mean?” Sarah could feel her brain tendering a letter of resignation. Now she’d have to watch Floribama Shore.
“You want to have a girls’ night?” Nina asked, seeming amused at the idea, or maybe just at Sarah.
“I, uhh…” Sarah bumped into something. She’d walked past the reading table and managed to plot a collision course with another object. Not a table, precisely. It was a Hi Phile record cabinet like Sarah would find in a record store if she was a hipster. There had to be hundreds of LPs. Jogged by her impact, the album sleeves in the compartment in front of her shuffled forward like dominos falling. Sarah stopped the first one, but the rest kept piling up against it, their covers flashing images at her in kaleidoscopic sequence.
Nina came over and gave her a hand, swiping albums back into their resting places.
“I didn’t figure you for such an audiophile.”
“Please. I’m more of a snobby elitist,” Nina said. “I hold the very unfair position that if you can’t listen to it on LP, it’s not worth hearing.” She flicked through a few of the albums, stopping at one with a cover that was a simple picture of an unpretentiously pretty woman, photographed as if in an unthinking moment of stillness. “Judee Sill. I think you’d like her.”
“You’re giving me this?” Sarah asked, disbelieving.
Nina gave her a look. “Do you have a record player? No, but we can play it on mine if you like.”
>~~~<
Crumpled newspaper flared orange, blackened, and crinkled into ashes. Before it did, the fire spread upward, starting in on the logs. Nina touched the fireplace match to a few more places along the wads of newspaper, then tossed the whole thing into the fire.
“How’s the record player treating you?” she asked.
Sarah lowered the needle onto the rotating platter. “I can’t find the aux cord,” she joked.
A song started playing, sounding to Sarah like Tori Amos a generation early, a gentle, undemanding, yet plaintive singing voice, the lyrics soft but strong…relieved, she thought. Like the work of someone who had known real pain.
“‘Jesus Was A Cross Maker,’” Nina’s voice issued forth from the minibar. “The first single by the first artist David Geffen signed to his first label. She ODed on heroin before she was thirty-five, came from a broken home, went to prison, drugs, health problems…and she still sang like this. I suppose it doesn’t make it okay that she went through all that—but at least it didn’t all disappear. So many people, when they’re done, they just disappear, with all they’ve gone through, all they’ve sacrificed. She stayed. I think a lot of her got to stay.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say to that. She just kept listening as the record kept spinning, the needle in its groove. There were two chairs by the fireplace, and Sarah sat down in one of them, laying her stocking feet on the brickwork of the fireplace. The flickering heat was like putting on socks fresh out of the dryer.
Nina came away from the minibar bearing two glasses and a bottle of wine. “I mean, you hear how…jaunty it is, don’t you? That’s not happiness, not exactly. That’s joy. It’s a kind of determination to be content. I’ve always thought so, anyway.”
She leaned down in front of Sarah, setting the glass on the carpet within Sarah’s reach, then relaxed back into the opposite chair. The bottle went into a wine cooler, placed incongruously by the fireplace. She’d already poured herself a drink.
“Salut,” she said, and sipped.
Barnaby trotted into the room, circling around the furnishings and sniffing at both women for pats.
Sarah looked down at the wine glass by her side. “I can’t drink this.”
“Nonsense. It’s a perfectly good Albariño.”
“I mean, I’m only twenty.”
“Is that too young to drink alcohol?”
“Yes.”
Barnaby gave Sarah one more sniff, then had himself a big doggie yawn and shuffled in front of the fire to lie down. He turned over onto his back and wiggled around, inviting someone to pet his belly. Sarah reached out with her foot and rubbed it around on his ribs.
Nina swirled her drink. “I thought you could drink at eighteen, and then at twenty-one you could join the Army and get blown up someplace no one should be fighting over anyway.”
“It’s the other way around.”
“I like my way better.” Nina made a sweeping gesture toward Sarah. “Go on. It’s not even real wine; it’s white wine.”
Sarah picked up the glass—cold in her hand—and took a sip. “It’s bitter.”
“Most things are, when you get right down to it.”
“Profound.”
“No, holding wine just makes me look sophisticated. You should see me smoke a cigar.” Nina waited for Sarah to take another sip and then followed suit. “I hate drinking alone. And yet I own a wine cellar. Explain that.”
“The duality of man.”
“Just so. May I ask you a personal question?”
In the next millisecond, Sarah had a dozen nightmares of being asked about the tanning lotion. “Sure.”
Barnaby tired of Sarah and got up to sniff at Nina, then laid down at her feet.
“You seem like a very bright girl. Good work ethic. I can’t imagine you doing poorly at school…”
“So why am I here and not pledging Delta Theta Psi?”
Nina studied Sarah, eyes prying at the neutral expression on her face. “Should I not ask? I’m interested in you. I want to know what’s inside your head.”
“Well, I’m interested in you,” Sarah fairly burst out. “But you don’t see me asking questions—”
“You’re interested in me?”
Sarah shut her eyes. Tension built between her eyebrows. “I think the wine’s going to my head.”
“Nonsense. It’s white wine. It only goes to your bladder.”
“I don’t mean ‘interested’ in, like, a creepy way…a gossipy way…”
“If you have questions, you can always ask me. Provided it’s all right I get to ask about you.”
“That’s fair.” Sarah took a lazy sip. It really wasn’t bad, once you got used to it. “Why don’t you ever go into town?”
“I do, occasionally.”
“Yeah, but not to get Burger King or anything. I don’t think I’d ever seen you out before that car accident.”
“Your loss,” Nina said, cavalier.
“Really. How come?”
Nina’s eyebrows jogged as she took a slow sip. “I suppose I make people uncomfortable. It just seems better not to…task them that way.”
“You don’t make me uncomfortable.”
“No? Not even a little?”
Sarah took a drink, holding the gulp in her mouth a long moment before swallowing, feeling her tongue tingle like it’d touched raw sugar. “No. Not even a little.”
“I must be losing my touch. Why aren’t you in college? I’d heard you were being educated at a very nice school.”
Sarah snorted. “We’re going from ‘why don’t you get Burger King’ to ‘why’d you drop out of school’?”
Nina ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass. The sound splayed itself through the room. “We can’t help what we’re curious about, Sarah. It calls to us.”
The needle escaped the loop, skipping over the record with a jagged sound, and Nina got up and went to it. Barnaby immediately jumped up to follow, leaving Sarah staring at the fire—coils of flame coming off ember-red logs. It popped and hissed, sending sparks to sting her socks. She pulled her feet back a little.
Nina raised the needle. The scratching sound stopped. Sarah heard a switch clicking, the record player slowly winding down. She stared at her reflection in the wine glass as she spoke.
“I wanted to go pre-law. But then I saw a life where I spent seven years at school, then eight years as an associate—fifteen years before I could enjoy being alive—and all so I could help people with millions keep from losing thousands to people with hundreds. And that’s a career. That’s a goal. I’m supposed to accept that? I’m supposed to want that?”
“I don’t think that’s every lawyer on the planet,” Nina said, coming back, Barnaby still at her heels.
“It is when they have student loans. I mean, if I were passionate about being a public defender, I’d do it—I’d sleep four hours a night until I’m in my thirties. But that’s not what I want… I just want something that I want, you know? Not my mom, not my dad, not…Ronald McDonald. Something I want, for me, that I can hold on to because it’s mine. Fuck,” Sarah finished, realizing how much she’d said. She looked up at Nina, standing over her in the light of the fire. “What about you? What do you do for a living?”
“What your father taught me to do.” Nina swirled her drink. “Mathematics, algorithms—what do you remember about him?”
“Math. Lots of math. That was his job, right? To be boring?” She sobered. “Distance. It was like I was throwing a ball to him and he was out of range. It’d come down, roll across the ground, and he’d have to wake up and take a few steps to pick it up and throw it back to me. I’d catch it, throw it back, and he’d be too far away again. Why? What do you remember?”
“A very wise man,” Nina said after a moment, sitting back down. “He seemed to know everything. Even now, I don’t feel like I’ve learned all that he was trying to teach me.”
“Did he ever talk about me? Or my mom?”
The Woman at the Edge of Town Page 6