“So then there isn’t a special man in your life?” Blocks smirked as we walked up to my front door.
“Like I told you, I’m not looking. But no, Blocks. No special man in my life.”
And really, that was only half a lie.
* * *
I COULDN’T IMAGINE myself ever getting married. Not to a man like Tom Buchanan who’d be arrogant enough to wrap pearls around my neck worth the price of a small city. And certainly not to a man who called himself Blocks and fainted from heat in the middle of a church aisle.
Blocks, as it turned out, sold boxes. He was a traveling salesman, he told me and Daddy the following morning over breakfast, and he’d been in Tom’s class at Yale. He’d been president of Tom’s class at Yale, which made Daddy smile and compliment him on how important it was to be a good leader.
“Who do you sell boxes to?” Daddy asked him. The answer was everyone. Lots of people needed boxes now that the war was over and shipping had picked up all around the country. I personally could not imagine a business more dull.
But Daddy was so enamored that he invited Blocks to stay with us for a few weeks while he “recovered from his fainting spell.”
“Get to know Louisville,” Daddy said. “Jordan’ll show you around.”
Blocks eagerly agreed, and I pushed away my grits, suddenly not very hungry for breakfast at all. I’d taken a month away from the golf tour, planning to rejoin them again mid-July. I hadn’t imagined the time away would hurt me too much since all our matches this past year had been postponed till next year due to the influenza scares. My time off now was partly for Daisy’s wedding but mostly to spend some time with Daddy, whose breath rattled heavy in his chest every time he took the stairs, and whose face had turned a worrisome shade of gray. The month away had seemed like more than a good idea when I’d left Charleston, but now that I was about to be stuck with Blocks, it felt like a mistake.
I spent the next few days taking Blocks around the city, and the man wouldn’t shut up the whole damn time. Worse, he kept trying to hold my hand, and I kept on having to gently push him away and remind him I wasn’t looking for a beau. Yet, he’d said several times, with a wink.
When I finally couldn’t stand acting polite one moment longer, I took him to the golf club, told him I needed some practice and he could watch or hit balls, too, if he was so inclined. He said he’d watch and also insisted he wanted to buy me a gift there, as a thank-you for my hospitality. I didn’t want him to be buying me gifts, but I’d been wanting a nice new aluminum putter, so I didn’t say no.
“Your swing is mighty impressive, Jordan,” he said after he’d watched me drive the balls, one after another, for almost an hour. My shoulders were sore. How quickly I’d fallen out of shape being back in Louisville.
I walked over to the putting green without responding to his compliment, and Blocks trailed along after me. I gave the new aluminum putter a whirl, relishing the cold weight of it in my hands.
“But you’ll give this all up soon.” Blocks was still talking. “Get married, have a family, won’t you?” he asked.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, no. Why would I give this up?” I swung around so quickly, I narrowly missed hitting him with the putter.
He jumped back and laughed a little. “You might scare off a lot of men, Jordan Baker. But personally, I like a powerful woman.”
“Oh, Blocks.” I sighed. And I wasn’t sure what else I could possibly say to the man and still maintain politeness. So I said nothing else at all. I shook my head, laughed him off, and turned my attention back to the golf ball.
* * *
“GOODNESS, THIS MAN is so annoying,” I whispered one evening on the telephone to Mary Margaret, exactly three weeks after Daisy’s wedding. “Blocks Biloxi who sells boxes, and to hear Daddy tell it you would’ve thought he knows how to spin straw into gold.”
She laughed in response, that deep-throated, husky laugh. It made me miss her desperately. And I felt a sudden surge of homesickness for my life in Charleston, for our little dorm room where we’d spent hours whispering after lights-out. It was funny how I’d longed for Louisville for so long, but now that Mary Margaret was in Charleston and I was here, Louisville didn’t really feel much like home to me any longer. Hearing her laughter now filled me with a simultaneous rush of happiness and sadness. I imagined her sitting in the hallway of our dorm, at the telephone, twirling a lock of her brown hair around her finger, pursing her pretty pink lips together as she talked. And I longed to be there right next to her.