She skewers a strawberry with her fork. “All right. I don’t presume to know everything.”
She winks at me.
I reach with a shaky hand for my coffee. I drink it black.
“I just ask that you hear what I’m saying to you, Annie. Yes?”
“I hear you.”
“Good,” she says. “Now, onto other things. How’s work? How’s your class?”
I feel my face fall, my muscles drooping in defeat at the thought of school.
“Oh, dear, I’ve done it again!”
“No, it’s fine. Work is fine. There are a few kids in my afternoon English class who are . . .”
“Fucking assholes?” she asks.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Want me to curse them for you?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Done.”
In the morning sun, her skin is flawless. Pearlescent. She doesn’t have a single wrinkle, a single pore. She keeps insinuating she’s old, older than me, but she doesn’t look it.
“I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well last night,” she says. “I feel like a failure as a host.”
She flags down Tom and asks him to refill our coffee mugs.
“You will come back, won’t you?” Her eyes go wide and watery.
There’s a vulnerability to her. I recognize it clearly because it’s so familiar to me. It’s like we’re wearing the same perfume. It triggers such a profound empathy I want to leap across the table and hug her.
“Of course,” I say. “Of course I will.”
“Do you like to swim? I can clear out the pool. I don’t use it. I don’t like water, but if you do, I can clean and fill it. It’s indoors, so you can use it in the winter.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised you have an indoor pool,” I say. The tension drains from my body, tension I didn’t even realize I was holding. My spine unkinks; my shoulders descend. I’m sitting here eating ridiculously delicious pancakes with my charming new friend, who owns a house with an indoor swimming pool. For all the wallowing I’ve done in the past few months, leading a one-woman self-pity parade, in this moment I feel nothing but lucky. “I love to swim.”
“I’ll get on it, then,” she says. “If I eat any more, I’ll feel sick. I know this and yet . . .”
She takes another bite.
We clean our plates.
“I’m going to be useless the rest of the day,” she says, standing.
We haven’t received a check, but at this point, I’d be surprised if Tom dared to approach with one. He seems terrified of Sophie. I guess some men from his generation would take issue with having to answer to a woman. With paying rent to a woman.
“When will I see you again, pet?”
“Whenever,” I say.
“Maybe Friday? I could come by with dinner?” she asks, holding the door open for me.
“Sure! Do you want my number?”
“Oh, I don’t have a mobile. Well, I have one, but I never use it. I think they’re dreadful. People walking around hunched over. I’d rather go back to the days of sending ravens. Surprisingly reliable.”
She’s an unconventional person, so I don’t find this particularly shocking. I have a hard time picturing her using an iPhone. Still, I’m not sure how she functions without one.
“Friday. Say six o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
“Darling,” she says, giving me a hug, “thank you for a lovely weekend. I’ll see you soon.”
We walk off in opposite directions, and I make it a few steps before I’m lonely again. Nearly instant separation anxiety.
When I get home to my apartment, it’s smaller than I remember. Emptier. I take a shower, do laundry, water my already wilting plant, then prep lessons while eating stale tortilla chips and toast with the free sample of raspberry jam. By the time the sun sets, my loneliness scores against me like rough wool. I want to crawl out of my skin.
I call him.
I want to tell him about Sophie, about her enormous house with a library and ballroom and theater and swimming pool. About how I stayed there last night and in a tired wine fog convinced myself for a minute that it was haunted. I want to tell him about the pancakes, reminisce about the time we got stoned and went to the IHOP in Union Square. We experimented with all of the syrups. Blueberry, strawberry, regular, maple pecan. We tried different flavor combinations, recording our findings on the back of a napkin with a rogue crayon we picked up off of the floor. I want to ask him if he remembers. If he still thinks about it whenever he sees syrup, the way I do.