Leo touches the spine of every book, and agrees to pose for selfies with three customers. He chooses a book on French provincial cooking （he doesn’t cook） and a newly released Stephen King novel.
I have to admit I like walking through town with Leo. People I know greet us with surprise and curiosity. Both of these things are better than pity. Everyone knows Ben left me. And everyone knows he sort of used me up and tossed me aside. “She did everything for that man,” they’d say, shaking their heads. Besides Mrs. Sanducci, who is recently widowed at eighty-six, I think I’m the only single woman in town. Look at me having fun, I want to say. Look at me next to something glamorous.
We stop at the hardware store to check in on Mr. Mapleton, and Leo buys a spray nozzle for my hose because he thinks they’re fun. I argue that I use my thumb and get the same effect, and now Leo and Mr. Mapleton have ganged up on me. “This woman lives like the Unabomber,” Leo says. “Have you been to her house?”
“That’s her, just the basics. And she’ll use and reuse something until it crumbles in her hands,” Mr. Mapleton tells Leo.
“You should see her bath towels,” Leo says and laughs.
“I can only imagine,” says Mr. Mapleton. “But not the husband. That guy was in here all the time, buying a slightly newer version of something he already had. I used to tell my wife, ‘That Ben’s got everything but a job.’？”
I’ve heard this a thousand times, but I laugh because it’s true and also because I like how he’s always been on my side. “And he took it all with him,” I say. “I like to think of Ben wandering around the globe with six sets of torque wrenches.”
Leo adds the spray nozzle to his bag with the cheese, and we say good-bye. “Enjoy your stay,” Mr. Mapleton says. “I’ll have my eye on you.”
* * *
? ? ?
“What happens now?” I don’t even know how many times he’s asked me this today. Last time the answer was: I put the kids to bed. Before that it was: We watch Wheel of Fortune. Preceded by: We have dinner. Between school and dinner was two hours of Fagin training. I’m not entirely sure if Arthur did his homework.
I pour a glass of wine and head toward the sunroom.
“Can I come?” I also don’t know how many times he’s asked that today.
I grab a second glass.
My sunroom is only big enough for a small couch, an armchair, and a coffee table. There are two ferns at all times, one dying and one getting started, on a regular rotation of grief and replacement. It looks out over the lawn to the tea house, where I can see Leo has left the door open to welcome him back.
Leo sits on the couch, so I take the armchair. He’s in a button-down shirt and shorts. He looks like he should be in the Hamptons or Malibu, any place but on my sagging beige couch. “Will you write tomorrow?” he asks.
“I think so; I need to start something new.” I take a sip of my wine.
“Let’s hope it’s not a musical.” He smiles an ironic smile. I’ve seen this smile before.
“African Rose,” I say.
“Stop it,” he says. “So, what’s the inspiration for the next script?”
“It’s not inspiration, it’s more like math.”
He sips his wine and leans back into the sofa cushions. “Explain.”
“I write movies for The Romance Channel.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Those two-hour movies that are mostly commercials?”
“Well, I’ve written a lot of them. That’s what I do.”
“Hilarious.” He pours us each a little more wine, killing the bottle. “So why is it math?”
“Maybe not math. Did you ever play Mad Libs as a kid? Where you have to fill in the nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and then there’s a story?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Give me a gender, a location, and a career.”
“Okay . . . female, Chicago, real estate developer.”
“Okay, easy. Stephanie, a young urban real estate developer, takes a trip to rural Illinois to look into buying a dairy farm and turning it into a corporate retreat center. The young handsome owner of the farm doesn’t want to sell, and they butt heads. But as she spends more time on the farm, she sees how important it is to the community and they fall in love. In fact, she’s helping him organize the annual Founders’ Day festival later next week. They kiss. The night before Founders’ Day, she gets a call that she needs to shut down the farm immediately or lose her job. She leaves for Chicago. He is heartbroken.”