Truly(39)

May found it quite entertaining.

Little glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice joined their bread plates. Someone ordered an apple cheddar omelet, and the waiter grabbed an apple from a box beneath the counter, sliced it in half, chopped it into pieces, and handed it to the grill guy, who cooked it with onions and eggs while talking to a customer.

The clientele were interesting, too—wrinkled old people and hip students, families and singles, a uniformed policeman who ate three gigantic blintzes. The B&H didn’t seem to serve a particular demographic. It was simply here, and so were all these people.

Their soup arrived, steaming and alarmingly pink.

“Wow.”

Ben smiled. “Dig in.”

“It looks radioactive.”

“That’s the beets. Just try it.”

“What if I don’t like beets?”

A lifted eyebrow. “Do you?”

“I don’t honestly know.”

“I guess you’d better find out.”

There was no way to try the borscht tentatively—the soup was too chunky, full of big pieces of beets, cabbage, potatoes, and some white beans. May dipped her spoon, closed her eyes, and gave it a go. It tasted earthy and sweet, with a vinegar tang and some other flavor it took her a minute to identify. “Dill?”

Ben nodded, his mouth full. May quit analyzing the soup and ate it. Delicious.

The pierogis arrived next—monster pierogis. Baseball-size filled dumplings, some containing spinach, others mashed potatoes, still others a mushroom-sauerkraut combination that should have been disgusting but actually made her moan with happiness. She tried not to eat too many and failed miserably.

“What do you think?” Ben asked when the pierogis were almost gone. May was embarrassed to realize she’d said almost nothing since the food came, too busy shoveling it in and watching all the action around them to remember the necessity of polite conversation.

“I think I could hug you for giving me the last sauerkraut one,” she said. “And also that I can’t believe what you’ve done to me.”

A crooked grin. “What have I done?”

“You’ve made me fall in love. With sauerkraut.”

Ben laughed, and she felt it move through her, wonderfully aware, for a moment, of everything—the sound of his happiness, the weight of excellent food in her stomach, the pleasure of novel experiences, the pressure of the jeans at her hips and the heels of boots so new they weren’t even scuffed yet resting on the dirt-seamed linoleum floor.

She felt remade. Reborn.

“I never eat sauerkraut at home,” she said. “I always thought it smelled disgusting.”

“But you’re not at home. In New York, you love sauerkraut. Who knew?”

“Who knew?” She winked at him. Must have picked that up from Celestine.

Ben’s dimple-creases deepened in response, which made her want to put her hand on his thigh and lean in and breathe at the nook of his neck and shoulder. Put her lips there.

Cray-zee.

Crazy felt pretty good.

The waiter came over and smiled at them both. “Everything okay?” He slid the check between them.

“It’s wonderful,” she said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Great, as always,” Ben said.

“Good to see you here,” the waiter replied. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I’ve been all over the place.”

The waiter wiped his hands on the rag at his waist, and Ben put his last bite of pierogi in his mouth, apparently thinking the conversation was over.

“How’s Sandy doing?” the waiter asked.

The pause while Ben finished chewing his last bite of pierogi stretched out uncomfortably. A man bumped into May on his way along the aisle, and the world shrank back to its normal size, the diner too small, full of strange smells and strange people.

Ben reached for his glass and took a sip of water. “She’s fine.”

“Good.” The waiter spotted a diner hailing him from down the counter. “I’d better get back to it. Tell her I said hi, will you?”

“Sure.”

May tried to be subtle as she glanced at Ben’s left hand. It was just as bare as it had been before. If he had a wife, he was hiding her well. If he had a girlfriend …

Sandy could be anybody. His sister. The dog from Annie.

And even if she was his girlfriend, Ben was allowed to have a girlfriend. They hadn’t made any kind of declarations to each other, except the one where he’d told her he didn’t want to get in her pants.

Somehow, she’d nearly managed to erase that one from her memory.

“Sandy’s my ex-wife,” he said.

So much for subtlety.

“Okay.”