“Now,” Nash said, when they stopped laughing, “tell me about your day.”
Darcy took a sip of wine. A big sip. She and Nash had exchanged the briefest of romantic histories. He knew she’d been married and divorced. She knew he’d spent some time traveling around the country with a woman named Buffy. Darcy had restrained herself from any remarks about vampires, and she was secretly glad to know Buffy was now traveling in Europe. She wanted to tell Nash about her accidental meeting with Boyz in the grocery store today, but that was all so much. Too much for a casual phone call. Nash probably hadn’t even had dinner yet.
Besides, she needed to tell him about tomorrow night.
She decided to tell him the simple truth.
“I’ve spent the day shopping and cooking. I’m going to the chamber music concert tomorrow night with Mimi and her grandson Clive—they invited me to join them. So I told them to come over before the concert for a light meal.” She described the menu to Nash, emphasizing the care she was taking to make the food easy for the older woman to deal with.
“That’s nice of you,” Nash said. “Don’t make it too spicy. My grandmother enjoyed spicy foods, but as she got older, they gave her terrible hiccups.”
“Hiccups!” Darcy laughed, and suddenly she was flooded with a wave of affection for this man. “Nash, do you like classical music?”
“Some of it. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich. But chamber quartets make me kind of itchy.”
She laughed again. “I know exactly what you mean.” Impulsively, she added, “Nash, I have so much to tell you.”
“Good to know, but let’s save it for another time, okay? I’ve got to shower and eat and lie down. I’m exhausted from hauling around a three-hundred-pound man.”
After they said goodbye, Darcy took a glass of iced tea out to the backyard and stretched out on a lounger. Above her, the stars were just beginning to emerge as if the darkness were a curtain, pulling itself back to reveal their sparkle. Her conversation with Nash had been so easy. He hadn’t even asked about Clive. Well, what, after all, could he have asked?
She gazed around the table, imagining where she’d put the plates and glasses, wondering whether to use candles or the tiny delicate lights she had strung in the hedges. They ran on batteries, and she didn’t know how long they’d last. Candles, she decided. Besides, it would still be light out when her guests arrived.
9
The last piece of music the chamber quartet played was too fussy, Darcy decided. It made her feel fidgety—Nash had called it itchy.
Or maybe it was the realization that the concert was about to end, and she and Clive would help Mimi into the car and out of the car to the house on Pine Street, and then what would Darcy do? What should she do? Clive had driven his rented Subaru, and Darcy had sat in the backseat, of course, so that Mimi could have the front passenger seat. So that was the way they would drive home.
And then what? Should Darcy simply step out of the car, thank them for the concert, and walk across to her own house? She imagined how she would wave to them as she put the key in her front door.
Yes, that was exactly what she would do. This night was about Mimi.
Although…while they ate their dinner out on the patio, Clive had talked about the book he was writing about the blues. How the music was urgent, raw, visceral. Muddy Waters. Robert Johnson. Bessie Smith. How rock ’n’ roll grew out of the blues, how the Rolling Stones were influenced by the blues, how the lyrics were often simple and true, howls of pain because of lust or infidelity or alcohol or poverty. When Clive spoke about his subject, he seemed more alive and capable of passion.
“I didn’t know any of that,” Darcy said at the end of their meal. “I’ll have to listen to some blues sometime.”
It was a casual comment—she was stacking their plates on a tray to carry inside—and she didn’t mean to be asking for an invitation.
“Come over some evening,” Clive said. “I’ll give you a concert. I’ve got stacks of CDs.”
“And that’s an understatement.” Mimi chuckled.
“Oh, well.” Darcy hesitated. “Yes, that would be nice.” She turned away, flustered.
And felt Clive’s hand on her waist. “Here,” he said. “Let me carry that tray in for you. I’ll come back and help Mimi to the car.”
During the chamber music concert, Clive and Darcy bookended Mimi as they sat on the hard wooden pews. The Congregational church was at the top of a short but steep hill, with steps rising from the street, but Mimi couldn’t negotiate those, so Clive went to fetch the car and brought it up the drive next to the church. Darcy helped Mimi down the ramp and into the front seat. Darcy slid into the backseat, and they drove through the narrow winding streets home.