The Might Have Been

CHAPTER Six





The lobby swarmed with men in dark suits and women in formal dresses: a wedding party crowding into the hotel, drenched from the rain, shaking out umbrellas that sprayed everyone, their shoes leaving dark spots on the carpet. The men and women were giddy: the storm would become a story the bride and groom would tell for long thereafter. Twenty years from then, with the way stories grew, maybe they would describe their reception as a party in the midst of God’s fury.

On his crutches, Edward Everett had difficulty navigating through the mass of people. A stocky middle-aged man in a brown tuxedo too snug for his girth shoved past him, nearly bowling him over. A tiny woman in a silver floor-length gown trailing him, her hand gripping the crook of his elbow, apologized, cringing. A small girl wearing a white pinafore and white patent-leather shoes banged into his left crutch, causing him to stumble; she fell into a heap on the carpet, crying. A woman swooped in behind her and, gripping her by the wrist, yanked her to her feet. The girl wailed, “I don’t wanna.”

“Oh, yes, you wanna,” the woman said through clenched teeth. They swept off with the rest of the wedding party toward one of the ballrooms down a long corridor.

There were two restaurants off the lobby: the coffee shop where he’d eaten his breakfast on so many mornings and a more formal one. It was this latter one where he wanted to have his last meal in Canada, a place the guidebook Julie had picked up at the airport on her arrival said featured one of the best steaks in the city. The dining room was far fancier than anyplace he’d ever eaten in his life. The lighting was subdued and the room seemed darker still because the walls were a deep mahogany paneling. Patrons filled roughly half the tables, speaking in quiet tones. Even their gestures were reverential—the way they picked up a silver knife to butter a roll or laid salad forks onto the plate. He stood at the entrance for a moment, separated from the dining room by a burgundy velvet rope. At a podium on the other side of the rope, a tuxedoed maitre d’ spoke into a phone, his brow furrowed, flipping through the pages of a register. “Impossible, impossible,” he was saying in a quiet yet firm tone. When he glanced up, Edward Everett gave him a look that he hoped the man would perceive as understanding: clearly the person on the other end of the call was being difficult. Instead of giving him some sign he appreciated the support, he frowned and resumed leafing through the book. When he hung up, he approached Edward Everett.

“Oui?”

“I’d like a table.”

“A table?”

“Yes. For dinner.”

“I’m sorry. There is nothing,” the man said, gesturing to the dining room behind him. In a far corner, a man who had been eating a solitary dinner while reading The Wall Street Journal folded it neatly into thirds, stood, pushed his chair snug against the table and left.

“But …”

“I’m sorry, monsieur. We are booked.”

“There are empty—”

“I assure you, sir. Our reservations are full. Besides …” He held out his right hand toward Edward Everett. “Your attire.”

Edward Everett glanced at his clothing: khaki slacks and a paisley long-sleeved shirt.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the maitre d’ said. His focus shifted from Edward Everett as if he had dismissed him from his consciousness. “Yes, sir?” he said.

“Ellison, four,” a man behind Edward Everett said.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Ellison. Good to see you again, sir,” the maitre d’ said, and the party of four swept past Edward Everett as the maitre d’ unhooked the velvet rope: three men in their fifties and a dainty, elderly woman; the men in suits and ties, the woman in a lilac dress with a lace collar that rose high on her neck. They followed the maitre d’ to a table. He was an entirely different man with Ellison, party of four; he seemed to shrink a bit in his deference.

“Money,” a woman said from behind him.

Edward Everett turned. “Excuse me?”

“Money,” she said. “It makes me sick.” She was somewhere in her forties, he guessed, nearly as tall as he was, wearing a silver floor-length dress. Her red hair was in tight curls, a white orchid tucked behind her left ear. He noticed she was in stocking feet. A pair of slender-strapped silver high heels dangled from her right hand, rainwater dripping onto the burgundy carpet.

“Ever wear heels?” she said, holding her shoes out to him.

“No,” he said.

“Avoid it.”

“I’ll check it off my list,” he said.

“I’m a refugee,” she said.

“From what?”

“Wedded bliss. My little sister’s, not my own.”

Edward Everett realized she had been drinking; her breath carried the smell of some slightly sweet alcoholic beverage.

“May I help madam?” the maitre d’ said from behind Edward Everett.

“Technically, it’s mademoiselle,” the woman said. “Much to my mother’s horror.”

“Does mademoiselle have a reservation?”

“I have many reservations,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Reservations about the wisdom of white after Labor Day. Reservations about supporting either presidential candidate. In my country, not yours. You don’t have a president. You have that man with the weak chin who has the wife everyone says is so beautiful although I don’t see it. Tell me, Mr. Crutches, don’t you think I’m more beautiful than what’s-her-name?” She struck a pose, tilting her chin up, laying her left hand on the back of her head, and smiled, showing teeth that were nearly perfect save for her right upper canine, which had a small chip in it.

Edward Everett had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Perhaps madam and sir—”

“Mademoiselle,” the woman said with a surprising fierceness.

“Mademoiselle,” the maitre d’ said, giving a clearly obsequious smile. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable in our less formal dining room. I can have someone escort you there.” He lifted a finger and almost immediately a bellhop stood beside the woman. “I am afraid we cannot accommodate mademoiselle and monsieur,” the maitre d’ said. “Perhaps you can show them to the Salon de Jardin.”

“Certainly,” the bellhop said. He was a squat man with what Edward Everett’s mother called a “drinker’s nose,” the cartilage thick, the skin red and pockmarked.

“We’re not—” Edward Everett tried to say.

“Are you throwing us out?” the woman said.

“Please, madam.”

“Moiselle. Mademoiselle,” she said.

The maitre d’ gave her another obsequious grin. Edward Everett wondered if he was deliberately taunting her.

“I have never—” she said.

Behind her, a half-dozen people waited for the maitre d’: a mother and father and two well-dressed sets of twins, the boys in navy blazers with gold buttons decorated with ships’ anchors, blond hair in crew cuts that matched their father’s; the girls in black-and-white polka-dotted dresses, their hair held back in identical polka-dotted ribbons.

“Maybe we’d …” Edward Everett said, nodding toward the bellhop.

“Yes, sir?” the maitre d’ said to the family behind them, Edward Everett and the woman in the silver dress already in his own personal past tense, his hand on the clip securing the velvet rope to its stanchion in anticipation of another acceptable party.

“Dr. Whitson and family,” the man said, stepping forward and around Edward Everett and the woman.

“Yes, Dr. Whitson,” the maitre d’ said.

“Sir?” the bellhop said to Edward Everett, one eyebrow raised in invitation.

He followed the bellhop to the smaller dining room, although he knew where it was. “Two for dinner,” the bellhop said to the hostess seated behind the desk at the entrance, reading a paperback romance novel.

She sighed, closed the book after folding down a corner of the page she was reading, slid off her stool, plucked two menus from the desk and walked off into the dining room, not even waiting for any sort of acknowledgment from either Edward Everett or the woman who was, inexplicably, following him and the hostess toward a table in a far corner. She seated herself in one of the chairs while Edward Everett maneuvered himself into the other, laying his crutches on the floor and nudging them under the table.

“War wound?” the woman said, shoving the stainless ware off the napkin folded on the table in front of her and laying the napkin on her lap.

“I’m sorry,” Edward Everett said, “but—”

“Look,” she said. “You were going to eat alone. I was going to eat alone, and …” She gave a little shrug, closing her eyes. Edward Everett couldn’t tell, but it seemed she was trying to suppress tears. She took in a deep breath and opened her eyes. “We don’t have to talk. Hell, look at most of the rest of the couples here: they’re not talking.”

Edward Everett glanced around the dining room. At one table, a man made notes in a pocket notebook while the woman with him sorted through her purse as if she was looking for something, laying keys and wadded tissue on the tabletop. At another table, the woman looked up from her plate expectantly toward the man, giving him a small smile. In return, he briefly glanced at her and then looked down at his lap.

“It’s fine,” Edward Everett said, and opened the menu. He felt uncomfortable sitting with the woman; she was older than he was by clearly more than a decade and, although he told himself he would never see any of the people in the restaurant again and would, at this time the next day, be back in Ohio, he hoped they didn’t think he and the woman were a couple: perhaps mother and son, or older sister and younger brother, but not together.

“What is it with men?” The woman closed her menu, slapping it onto the table with enough force that it jangled the flatware.

“What are you talking about?” Edward Everett said quietly. At the next table, two elderly women paused in their own conversation and were studying the two of them.

“I’m not hideous,” she said.

“No,” Edward Everett said carefully.

“You’re thinking, ‘I hope they don’t think she’s with me.’ ”

“No,” he said.

“It’s coming off you like an odor. ‘She’s old.’ ”

“I don’t even know you,” he said. “I just came downstairs to have dinner on my last night here. You followed me.”

The woman held up her hand. “Please.”

“Just don’t—”

“Make any more scenes?”

“Yes,” he said.

She raised her right hand in a scout salute: thumb and pinky circled, her other three fingers up. “I swear.”

Hoping it was as good as the steak for which the restaurant on the other side of the lobby was famous, he ordered a sirloin, medium, and a baked potato. The woman surprised him by ordering the same, except medium-rare, and asked for an extra portion of sour cream for the potato. “And a carafe of your house red,” she said. “Wine?” she asked Edward Everett.

“Sure,” he said.

“Two glasses, then,” she said.

They sat in silence, waiting for their meals. Edward Everett stole a look at the woman, who seemed lost in her thoughts. She stared vacantly at a far corner of the room, tapping a tooth with a long fingernail that was polished a deep red. When she was younger, she was probably beautiful, he thought. Her features were surprisingly delicate; her nose was thin, as were her lips; her makeup was careful in a way that made it appear natural, but as he studied her, he could see it covered wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and creases on her forehead.

“So,” she said, startling him. “A six or a seven? At least a five.”

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at me for two minutes. You’re trying to decide whether I’m pretty enough. I know I don’t rate a nine and certainly not a ten—even when I was your age—but come on, you have to give me a five.”

Edward Everett blushed. “I wasn’t—” he stammered.

“Okay,” she said.

The waitress brought their wine and salads and the woman began shoving the tomato wedges to the edge of her plate. “What’s your name?” she asked, lifting a bite of lettuce to her mouth.

“Edward Everett,” he said.

“Well, Mr. Everett, I’m Estelle Herron. Two ‘r’s,’ not one like the bird.”

He considered telling her that “Edward Everett” was his first and middle name but for the first time in his life it struck him that it was odd he was “Edward Everett” and not “Edward” or even “Ed.” She would ask how he got the name and he would have to tell her about his mother’s affection for Edward Everett Horton, admitting that he’d been named for a Hollywood second banana few remembered anymore. He let it go: what did it matter? Once the meal was over, he’d be back upstairs in his room, away from a woman he still doubted was entirely sane.

“What brings you to Montreal?” she said, giving the city’s name a pronunciation that sounded expertly French.

“I was playing ball,” he said.

“Like that?” she said, indicating his cast with her fork, Russian dressing dripping from its tines onto the tablecloth.

“No,” he said. “I got hurt a few weeks ago and the team moved on while I was in the hospital. My season’s over.” Maybe my career, he thought.

“Left behind,” she said. “That makes two of us.” She set down her fork, picked up the carafe of wine, poured them each a glass, lifted hers, tilting its rim toward him, an offer of a toast. He picked up his glass and touched it to hers, then took a sip. He was never a wine drinker—not dinner wines, at least. Whenever he drank wine, it was what he and his friends called “alcoholic Kool-Aid”: highly sweet apple and strawberry flavors. This was bitter and he suppressed a cough, not wanting to show her he lacked sophistication.

“So, what school do you play for, Mr. Everett?”

“Not a school,” he said. “The Cardinals.”

“Really?” she said. “You wouldn’t try to fool a girl, would you?”

“No.”

“I don’t remember any Everett playing for them.”

“I’ve been with the team since July,” he said. “I got called up—I was in Springfield.” Could it really have been that long ago: the month before last?

“Not an auspicious start,” she said, and then went on almost immediately. “I’m sorry. I apologize. I have a tendency to—a lot of smarts, my father used to say, but not a lick of social sense. May he rest in peace.” She picked up her wine and raised it slightly upwards. “How did you get hurt?”

He told her about the game weeks earlier, about the play that hurt him, but not about his performance at the plate, partly because he heard the account through her perception: to someone else, it would seem a baseball version of “the one that got away.” It didn’t count, but the game was thiiiiiiiiiis big.

“My father was a Cardinals fan.” She took another forkful of her salad but paused with the bite partway between her plate and her mouth, as if she was remembering someone. “I’m not from here,” she said, taking the bite finally. “We’re from Indiana. Hoosiers, rah!” She raised a fist in a way that made him think of cheerleaders, and for a moment he could see her at sixteen, red-cheeked, giving a jump on the sidelines of a football game in November, bouncy with youthful excitement. He tried to calculate when that would have been.

“By rights, we should have been Cincinnati fans, but for some reason …” She gave a shrug. “When I was a little girl, my father and I—but you don’t want to hear this. We said silence.” She held up the scout salute again.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You and your father …”

“You don’t have to,” she said, taking another forkful of lettuce and then inspecting it as if it were something distasteful, pulling a small brown and wilted leaf from the fork and laying it delicately on the edge of her plate before eating the rest of the forkful.

“You and your father,” he said again.

“We would sit up listening to Cardinals games on the Philco. The reception wasn’t always clear. We’d get overlap, you know, from other stations. My mother would say, ‘Howard, the girl has to get her sleep.’ ‘There’s plenty of time for sleep after October,’ he’d say. He was my hero for that.”

The waitress brought their dinners but got the orders mixed up: when Edward Everett cut into his steak, a thin trail of blood pooled around the edges of his sirloin.

“Not very ladylike,” Estelle said, switching their plates. “To order meat so near to still being alive.” She went on with her story. “Even after he died, I kept on with it. It was my way to stay connected to him. I remember when I was just out of college, my mother wanted to take me to Paris. It was what women of a certain sort did after college. She’d done it with her mother and so she and I were going to damn well do it. We were not close, but one did not say ‘no’ to one’s mother. Not then.”

She got lost again for a moment in some thought but came back after a second. “I didn’t want to go. The Cardinals were still in the thick of things and I didn’t want to miss it. They had a chance to go to the Series for the first time since 1946 and I was damn well not going to miss it. She didn’t understand. It wasn’t the baseball, it was—”

“Your father.”

“Exactly. You understand that. She couldn’t. So we went; they were in first place the day we left and they weren’t anymore when we got back six weeks later.” She laughed. “It will sound stupid, but I blamed myself. If I’d been there, listening to the games, they’d’ve won. Silly, and maybe you can’t understand that. One afternoon, we were going to the Louvre and on the way we passed a newsstand where they had the International Herald Tribune; I bought one and, while we were waiting in line to get into the room to see the Mona Lisa, I read the sports page. It wasn’t much—just a paragraph about a game they had with someone, I don’t know: Cincinnati or New York. My mother snatched the paper out of my hands in front of all those people—a rare lapse in decorum for her—and snapped at me. ‘For God’s sake, Esty. We’re in the Louvre.’ She stepped out of line and marched the newspaper to a trash can and came back. I could tell the newsprint all over her hands bothered her. It made me think of Lady Macbeth—‘Out, damn spot’—the way she kept wiping one hand against the other to try to get them clean. The Cardinals ruined her trip to the Louvre.”

“When was this?” he asked.

“No. I won’t tell you. You just want to know so you can figure out my age. You’re …” She closed her left eye and regarded him with her right, calculating. “You were alive by then. I’m certain of it.”

“I’m twenty-six,” he said, for some reason shaving a year off his own age.

“Twenty-six,” she said, laughing. “I’m still not trading you my secrets. Okay, Mr. Twenty-six. What’s your story?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I play ball. I’ve always played ball. That’s it. Not much of a story.” He picked up a roll and broke it in two, buttering half and laying the other half on the bread plate between them and then took it back and put it on his own plate, aware of his gaffe: they were strangers. She wouldn’t want to eat half a roll he’d touched. “Were you part of that wedding I saw earlier?” he asked her.

“My baby sister’s,” she said, and then brightened. “She’s twenty-five. Younger than you, so there you go. That answers one of your questions.”

“Questions?”

“ ‘Is she old enough to be my mother or just an older sister?’ ”

“My mother is—”

“Oh, God, here we go.”

“She’s fifty-nine.” Or had she turned sixty by then?

“That’s a relief. I’m nowhere near fifty-nine.”

She had me late, he thought, but did not say. His mother was thirty-two when he was born, a Catholic woman who by then despaired of ever having children, until he came along: her one and only miracle.

“My sister wanted to be married in Paris,” the woman said, cutting a bite from her sirloin and eating it.

“Wow,” Edward Everett said. “Paris. Your family goes there quite a bit.”

“You see, that’s just it. I went. She didn’t. The fortunes, well, have fallen since my father …” She finished her sentence by waving her fork in the air in a gesture that suggested she was dispersing smoke. “The Herron family, well, had its wings clipped. Financially. This was a compromise. Faux Paris. Here we are in the Salon de Jardin.” She gave a short laugh. “Garden Room,” she said in an exaggerated Midwestern accent, prolonging the “a” in “garden” and the “o” in “room.” She shook her head. “Pretentious—my sister has no idea what this is costing my mother. She took on a mortgage. I only hope to God she can pay it.”

“Isn’t the wedding still going on?”

“I’m confident it is.”

“But you’re—”

“Not there. Correct.”

“Shouldn’t you be?”

“Oh, it most definitely is unseemly that I’m not. The maid of honor has left the building. Not literally, of course. I’m still in the building, but … you know what I mean.”

“Why?” he asked.

“No. I haven’t had enough wine to tell you that particular secret. But maybe soon.” She winked at him, picked up the carafe and poured more wine into her glass, although it was only half-empty, filling the glass until the wine rose nearly to the brim. She started to set down the carafe but then, as an afterthought, filled his glass to the rim as well. “Cheers, Mr. Everett. Cheers.” She lifted her glass in a toast and when they touched glasses, wine lapped from hers onto the tablecloth. “I am not a good customer today, am I?”

They fell into a silence then, eating their steaks and potatoes, while the restaurant around them began to fill up. Before they finished their meals, every table in the place had a party at it and there were patrons two and three deep at the entrance, some standing on tiptoe, craning their necks to gauge their prospects of being seated. The woman had ordered a second carafe of wine without asking if he wanted any and, between the two of them, the second was nearly empty: perhaps half a glass remained in it. Edward Everett had drunk three or four glasses, Estelle twice as much. Her eyes seemed unfocused and as she cut her meat, her movements lacked the precision they had when they began. He finished the wine in his glass and drained the carafe into it to prevent her from drinking any more. Not that another half glass would matter, he thought.

“Shall we—more?” she said.

“Probably not,” he said.

She nodded. “One of us is wise,” she said. Inexplicably, she began crying. Not in a way that someone at another table would notice, but silently, her eyes closed, tears welling at their edges, streaking her cheeks with mascara. “I’ve made a royal botch.”

“How so?”

“Have you been paying attention?” she said, fiercely. “Hello? Maid of honor? Fancy dress? Fifty-dollar hairdo? Orchid?” She plucked the flower from behind her ear, regarded it a moment and then crumpled it, letting the petals fall onto her plate, where they darkened as they absorbed the blood and juices from her steak.

“I …” he began, although he had no idea what to say. He had never been good with women who cried. His mother. The girls he dated. He had always felt helpless in the face of them, even when he was the cause of their grief: girls he no longer wanted to see, girls who misinterpreted his attentions at parties, when they saw the prospect of a capital “R” relationship after only an hour together and all he was seeing was sex.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. “You’ve landed one crazy, crazy broad here.”

A busboy came by to collect their plates and the waitress wheeled a dessert cart to their table: a half-dozen cakes and some sort of torte.

“What’s the worst thing you have on the cart?” the woman said.

“Worst?” the waitress asked.

“Most wicked. Dessert that most says ‘I am off this diet I’ve been on for three months to fit into this dress.’ That sort of thing.”

“I like the triple chocolate cheesecake,” the waitress said, holding up a plate that bore a thick slice of the dessert, a chocolate cake with some kind of chocolate crumb crust, chocolate syrup dribbled across it in a pattern of overlapping arcs.

“Done,” Estelle said.

“Nothing for me,” Edward Everett said.

The waitress wheeled the cart off. Estelle picked up her wineglass although it was essentially empty and drained the last few drops by tilting it above her open mouth and letting them fall onto her tongue. “I don’t think they’re serving triple chocolate cheesecake at the wedding. I think I won this round.”

The waitress brought the cake to the table and set it in front of Estelle, who took up the dessert fork, cut a small bite from the edge of the cake and put it into her mouth, closing her eyes and giving a look that suggested ecstasy. “That is so much better,” she said when she had swallowed the bite. “You should have some.”

“No, really.”

“I insist.” She cut a slightly larger bite from the cake and held it across the table toward him, cupping one hand beneath the fork. Tentatively, he took it. The sweetness filled his head.

“Ooh,” he said.

“Yes, ooh,” she said. She removed the butter patens from a small dish of them, stacking the slivers neatly on the table, cut a piece of the cake, laid it into the dish and slid it toward him.

“Estelle,” someone said from across the restaurant. “Estelle.”

“Jesus,” she said. “Jesus Jesus Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

A tall, bony older woman in a blue sequined dress was pushing her way through the crowd of patrons waiting at the entrance.

“Madam, you’ll—” the hostess said.

“My daughter,” the woman said, pointing toward Edward Everett and Estelle.

The hostess let her pass. Like Estelle, the older woman had an orchid nestled behind one ear. Her floor-length dress wrapped her so tightly that she could take only small steps. Partway across the dining room, she gathered some of the fabric in her hands and pulled the dress until it extended to just slightly below her knees, allowing her to walk more quickly.

“Estelle,” she said again when she reached the table, whispering through clenched teeth. “This is unacceptable.”

“It’s not one of our better days, is it, Mother?” Estelle said. She took a forkful of the cake and made a show of moving it toward her mouth slowly. “This really is quite good,” she said. “You should try some, Mother. Miss,” she called to the waitress who was pouring coffee at the next table. “Would you bring another of these for my mother?”

“Yes, madam,” the waitress said.

“Technically, it’s mademoiselle,” Estelle said.

“Oh, Estelle,” her mother said. “Now is not the time.”

“It never is.”

“What about your sister?” her mother asked.

“My sister will be fine. She’s all well and married. Mrs. John Ogden. He’s an attorney,” Estelle said in Edward Everett’s direction. “She married quite well. Vanderbilt. Law review. Order of the Coif. He’s an associate right now, but his father is senior partner and so it’s in the cards for him.”

“Estelle, I don’t understand why you’re doing this to us.”

“Mother, just go back to the reception. Enjoy yourself. Just say, ‘She’s Estelle.’ That’s always been enough of an explanation.”

Edward Everett became aware that the diners at the nearby tables had stopped their conversations and were listening intently to the two women. He wondered if he should get up and leave Estelle and her mother in what passed for privacy in such a public place.

“Estelle, please.”

“No, Mother. I am going to finish my very nice meal here with Mr. Everett and then—and then, I don’t know where the evening might take me.” She gave Edward Everett another wink.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I don’t know—Mr. Everest?”

“Ever-ET,” Estelle said. “Not like the mountain. Like the city in Washington.”

“Mr. Everett, I don’t know what pull you have with my daughter, but, could you?”

“Leave him out of this, Mother.”

“Maybe I should go,” Edward Everett said, extending his good leg to snare his crutches so he could draw them out from under the table.

“And leave me with the check?” Estelle said. “I see your plan.”

“No. I can just sign …” Edward Everett lifted his hand to signal the waitress.

“I was being funny,” Estelle said, touching his raised arm, and he lowered it. “Please stay.”

“Who—” Estelle’s mother said.

“Mr. Everett is a serial murderer,” Estelle said.

“Mr. Everett, I don’t know anything about you, but my daughter—”

“She didn’t believe me,” Estelle said. “Tell her.”

“I’m not a serial—” he started to say.

“Estelle,” her mother said sharply. “This has to stop now.”

“No,” Estelle said. “The only thing that has to stop is the scene you’re making. We were perfectly enjoying ourselves until you came in. Please go. Please give Alicia my love. Tell her that I hope she and Jack will have many happy years.”

Her mother gave a sigh, shook her head. “The Ogdens will wonder what sort of family they have married into.”

“It’s not like they can wrap her up and take her back to the store. It’s a no-deposit, no-return deal.”

“I can’t go back and face those people.”

“Yes, you can, Mother. Courage under fire. That’s the motto. Courage sous le feu. Remember? Sous le feu.”

“This is just making Frank’s decision—”

“Leave him out.” Estelle banged her palm on the table, rattling the dishes and toppling Edward Everett’s wineglass. Only his quick reflexes kept it from tumbling onto the floor and shattering.

“Is there a problem?” the hostess said, approaching the table.

“Estelle, one last time.” Her mother’s tone was pleading now. She began wringing her hands in a gesture that he imagined might have been the same one she used in Estelle’s story about the International Herald Tribune and the Louvre.

“The last time?” Estelle said. “Good. Then we’re finished.”

Her mother opened her mouth as if to say something but instead sagged as if she had been staggered by an actual physical blow, turned and left, a little unsteady on her feet. After a moment, the silence that had descended on the restaurant during the scene broke: flatware clinked against plates, conversations began again, no doubt people rehearsing the stories they would tell when they went home. You will not believe what happened in the restaurant tonight.

“I am sorry, Edward,” Estelle said. “So so so sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you—”

“It’s fine,” he said. Still, how he had ended up across a table from her, part of an argument with her mother, was vague to him.

“Who is Frank?” he asked her.

“He was someone I was with and now I’m not anymore. That’s all.”

Their waitress approached their table and set the slender leather portfolio containing the bill onto it. “Will there be anything else?”

“I don’t think so,” Edward Everett said, opening the portfolio. The sum staggered him. Fifty-seven ninety-six. If he added a fifteen percent tip, it would approach seventy dollars. He had never seen a restaurant check for so much, at least not one that he was paying. He studied it—two steaks, potatoes, salads, two carafes of wine, two chocolate cheesecakes, one of which they’d never received—waiting for Estelle to offer to pay half but she did not. He took the pen the waitress had slid into the portfolio, glanced at Estelle, noted a tip of ten dollars, and scrawled his name on the line at the bottom of it.

“The restaurant should just hang on to the check,” Estelle said. “That might be worth something someday, what with your autograph.”

“That’s not likely.” He realized he had gone more than half an hour without thinking of his injury, without the thought that next year at this time, he might be stamping prices on grapefruit and bananas in a supermarket instead of playing ball.

“Oh, come on, now. As my mother always said, Courage.” She gave the word a French pronunciation, rhyming it with “garage.”

“Well,” Edward Everett said. “It’s been—”

“Are you going?” she said.

“I have to pack. I have to phone—” he stopped short of saying “my mother,” as that would make him sound like a boy, and went on, “—to make arrangements for someone to meet me at the airport. I’m sure you will want to get to the reception after all.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” She gave him a look, one he understood to mean, “Don’t leave.” Did she want to sleep with him or just not be alone? He doubted it would be the former: there were so many years’ difference between them.

“I should go,” he said.

“Okay.” She sounded disappointed. “I’ll walk out with you, though, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

Getting up, he realized for the first time that he was slightly drunk. Over the past weeks, he had become adept at maneuvering on crutches but as he left the restaurant, he had trouble getting his arms in sync as he hefted himself across the dining room, weaving through spaces that were more tight now than when he had gotten there, because of how crowded it was. At one table, where four obese men incongruously ate four identical cottage cheese salads, he had to reverse course because he could not slip between their table and the one beside it, where a pregnant woman nearly reclined in her chair rather than sitting up in it. By the time they reached the lobby, pushing through the dense crowd of people waiting for a table, he was exhausted, as if he had just run several miles.

The lobby, too, was crowded. Outside, the rain—which he couldn’t hear when he was in the windowless restaurant—continued to pour and a throng was gathered just inside the doors to the hotel, peering out at the street. He turned to say good-bye to Estelle, but for some reason she was shrinking back into the restaurant.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s Frank,” she said, pointing to the lobby beyond them. Edward Everett looked in the direction she was pointing but could not tell whom she meant: a heavyset man in plaid shorts with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was too tight for his belly was talking earnestly to a plump woman in a matching Minnie Mouse T-shirt, clutching a shopping bag from the Museum of Fine Arts. An athletic, bespectacled, ponytailed, white-haired man in a blue suit stood chatting with a young blond woman in a gold dress that barely reached mid-thigh. Three middle-aged men, in nearly identical brown suits, stood at the concierge desk, listening while she gave directions to somewhere, tracing a line on a map one of the men held out for her.

“I don’t know—” Edward Everett said. Estelle shifted her position so that Edward Everett was between her and the lobby, as if she needed him to buffet a strong wind.

“Can we wait here for a minute? Then you can have your life back. I promise.”

Edward Everett maneuvered so that he was facing her, nearly losing his balance when he set one of his crutch tips onto a slightly uneven spot on the floor.

“Esty?” a man said. “Esty?”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Estelle said.

Edward Everett turned his head. The ponytailed man in the blue suit was making his way toward them, the young woman trailing behind with her hand laced through the crook of his arm as if she were being escorted onto a dance floor.

“Esty, your mother has been going crazy looking for you,” the man said.

Estelle stepped around Edward Everett. “She found me, but she’s probably still going crazy.”

Up close, the man seemed perhaps as old as sixty, the woman with him nearer to Edward Everett’s age. He could tell that her hair was not naturally blond; where she had parted it, not quite at the center of her scalp, the roots showed through as auburn.

“You really should go back, Estelle,” the man said.

She let out a bitter laugh. “I think you gave up any right to tell me what to do, oh, I don’t know, seven or eight weeks ago. Isn’t that what it’s been, Barbara?”

The girl gave the man a tentative look, biting her lower lip in clear discomfort.

“This really isn’t a good time for this,” the man said.

“I’m sorry to inconvenience you, Francis,” she said, drawing out the “s” of his name in a prolonged hiss. “Edward, this is Francis Mattingly and his ‘plus one.’ Francis and plus one, this is Mr. Everett.”

“Estelle,” Frank said, touching her forearm. She flinched as if he had burned her.

“Don’t put your hand on me. Ever again.”

“Mr. Everest, maybe you can convince her—it’s her sister’s wedding.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“Look,” Frank said. “We’re leaving. We’re leaving and you can go in. That’s—”

“I don’t think I told you this part of the story,” Estelle said to Edward Everett.

“Really,” Frank said, dropping his voice to a near whisper, “you needn’t.”

“Need, no. Want, yes. I think I neglected to tell you that I was engaged up until seven or eight weeks ago. What was it, Barbara? Seven or eight?”

“I don’t—” Barbara said.

“How could you come to this wedding?” Estelle said.

“Jack is my—” Frank started to say.

“I know who the f*ck he is. I just didn’t think you would have the—” She let out a guttural scream, balled up her fist and struck Frank on his left shoulder. Then, suddenly, she was swinging wildly at him. One of her blows knocked the glasses off his nose and they flew across the lobby, landing several feet away, where a bellhop wheeling a luggage cart toward the registration desk ran over them, crushing them.

“My God,” Frank said, his right hand flying to his face, feeling for the glasses that weren’t there any longer. “You’re crazy. I knew you were crazy.” At the registration desk, the hotel manager was squinting in their direction, reaching for a telephone.

“Maybe we should …” Edward Everett said, certain the manager was calling the police. Estelle was weeping audibly now, standing in the middle of the lobby, her face buried in her hands, rocking back and forth where she stood. He should just walk away; she was no one to him, just a crazy woman who had attached herself to him an hour or so ago, someone whose last name he couldn’t even remember—some sort of bird, she’d said.

Frank was hunched over his glasses, picking up the pieces, the bent and snapped frame, the larger shards of glass, putting them gingerly into the breast pocket of his suit jacket as if they were something he could mend if he was careful enough.

The manager was crossing the lobby toward them, followed by a man in uniform.

“Estelle, you should really go,” Edward Everett said.

Estelle lowered her hands. Her face was blotchy from tears, her cheeks darkened with mascara. He should just leave her. He wasn’t part of their story. He didn’t even know what their story was. But he said, regretting it as he did, “Come on, Estelle.”

He began making his way unsteadily toward the elevators, Estelle following him.

“Damn it, Estelle,” Frank was saying. “What am I supposed to do?”

“F*ck you, Frank,” Estelle said. “F*ck you.”

Incredibly, they made it to the elevators with no one stopping them. As they reached them, the nearest opened, the bell dinging, the green “up” signal lighting. They pushed their way amid the crowd of people waiting, just barely fitting into the car. As the doors closed, someone on the other side of the doors called out, “Hey!” One of Edward Everett’s crutches was caught in the doors and they began to slide open. He pulled it toward himself, losing his balance and stumbling back against the obese man in the Mickey Mouse T-shirt.

“Watch it, man,” he said, giving Edward Everett a shove forward with his belly. But the doors shut. As they did, Edward Everett caught sight of the manager and a man in uniform. “Madam, madam,” the manager was saying.

“Mademoiselle,” Estelle said quietly, but they were safe, on their way up to the eleventh floor, while in the lobby, no doubt, Frank was telling whoever would listen about how he had been assaulted and giving a description of Estelle and Edward Everett. It struck him that Frank had no idea what his last name was. Everest, he can hear Frank saying, Something like that, like the mountain. That was not him; it was someone else.

Upstairs, he led Estelle to his room, where she went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door. Edward Everett, exhausted from the physical effort, slightly tipsy from the wine, dropped his crutches and fell back onto the bed. In the bathroom, Estelle had the sink faucet on all the way, the water splashing loudly into the basin. Despite that, he could hear her weeping.

This is crazy, he thought. How had he ended up with a sobbing stranger in his bathroom? An even better question was, how would he get rid of her?

He pushed himself from the bed and made his way to the closet, dragged out his suitcase and dropped it open onto the floor in front of the bureau in the room. He began packing. When he had moved into the hotel, he had tipped a bellboy to bring his bag up to his room, and he lived out of it until Julie arrived. “Tch,” she said when she saw that even his clean clothing was a mess, as he had kept it all in his suitcase, pulling it out when he needed it. She had unpacked it, phoned the main desk to ask for an iron and an ironing board. He’d had no idea he could do that: call and it would appear with a knock on the door. She carried his dirty clothing downstairs, where there was a Laundromat, then brought it back upstairs and ironed everything, hanging his shirts in the closet, folding his underwear and jeans and slacks and laying them neatly into the drawers of the bureau, and then balled up his socks by pairs. Telling him he needed more clothing, she had read the labels in his jeans and shirts, taken money he’d given her and gone to a department store, coming back with bags of shirts and slacks.

But now he had to do it all himself and it was cumbersome. Finally, he supported himself on one crutch, pulled everything out of the closet and the bureau drawer and dumped it onto the floor beside the bed, hefted the suitcase onto the mattress and sat on the bed, stowing it all as best he could. When the suitcase was full, he had three pairs of slacks and four shirts that didn’t fit. He considered what to do: Repack? Leave them for the maid?

The bathroom door clicked open and Estelle emerged. She had brushed her hair, washed her face, reapplied her makeup. She seemed composed, yet when he looked at her, she averted her eyes, as if she was embarrassed he was watching her.

She sat in the overstuffed chair where he’d spent so many of his hours in the room during his pity parties—watching television or staring out the window.

“Are you better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said in a quiet voice. “Much.”

He waited for her to offer some explanation or bit of gratitude for what he’d done—kept her company, rescued her from Frank—but she said nothing. She stared out the window, although it was full-on night now and she couldn’t possibly see much, save for pieces of buildings illuminated by streetlamps or the lights of the hotel on the far side of the park. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing, the fat nearly full moon framed almost squarely by his window.

“I should finish my packing,” he said.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.

He reopened his suitcase, pulled out half of the clothing he’d stuffed into it and began folding each piece as neatly as possible and laying it into the suitcase.

“Frank was my teacher,” Estelle said, squinting out the window as if she were trying to make out an object in the distance. “I went back to school when I was twenty-six. I wanted a—well, it doesn’t make any difference. I didn’t finish what I was studying. I met Frank. He was my professor in a seminar I took on Old English literature in my second term. I was—now he just seems like a pretentious shit. I mean, a ponytail? Since when? It’s to impress that little tart.” She took in a breath and let it out slowly. “He was electric in the classroom. Do you know anything about literature?”

“Not really,” he said; the last book he’d read was a Perry Mason mystery.

“Well, this won’t mean anything to you—I don’t mean to offend you. I mean, it’s okay that you …” She laughed. “You’ve been so nice to me and here I am sounding like … What was it Agnew said? I’m an ‘effete intellectual snob.’ ”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“I remember sitting in class one day while he was giving a lecture on the Junius manuscript. It meant nothing to most of the people in the room. I mean, who reads Old English? No one was paying attention to him. One girl was knitting, another was addressing invitations to her wedding, but in front of the room, Frank was alive, talking about—but who the f*ck cares? I was a silly girl. Hardly a girl. That was—how the f*ck could I have been engaged to him for eleven years? Who is engaged for eleven years?”

He realized she wasn’t really talking to him; he was just another human being who happened to be in the room as she rambled.

“Do you want to f*ck?” she said abruptly.

“What?” he asked.

She stood up from the chair beside the window and crossed the room toward the bed where he was sitting.

“F*ck,” she said. She sat beside him and, after hesitating a moment, laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not married or anything, are you?”

“No,” he said. Was his proposal that hung in the air between himself and Julie an “or anything”? He hadn’t talked to her in weeks. He imagined her in her apartment, reading, glancing expectantly at the telephone on the table beside her couch, a yellow princess phone that had a small chip in the receiver from a time Audrey had slammed it into its cradle when a boy she liked told her he didn’t want to see her anymore.

Estelle slid closer to him on the bed until her hip rested against his. “I’m forty-one,” she said. “It seems old, I know. A girl in my high school got pregnant our freshman year and the baby she had would be your age now. You could be my son; I’m that old.” She began tracing an index finger lightly along the inside of his thigh. “But forty-one isn’t that old. You’ll find that out.”

“You’re just angry,” he said. “That’s all. You don’t really want to do this.”

“Maybe angry, yes,” she said. “But I want to do this.” She cupped her hand over his groin. “You do, too. We both need this.”