Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,116

patients until one o’clock, and before I had finished my appointments for the day, he had already called to thank me for a “wonderful night.” He wondered if I’d be free again that evening, “if you’re not too sick of me,” he said, laughing self-consciously, and I called him back as soon as I got out to the parking lot and told him yes, he could come over around six and I would make dinner for him.

The fears that assailed me before we went out on that first Friday night: that our date would not turn out well, that too many years had passed since we had last known each other and we were now too different from who we had been in college, that we were nothing more than two lonely, aging people desperately trying to relive the happier days of early adulthood, when all possibilities were still open to us, seemed to be, to my profound relief and joy, unfounded. We might have looked older and weighed a little more and also been veterans of one failed marriage each, but his essential kindness, his sense of humor, his generosity and willingness to laugh, were still intact. I felt like he had been dropped out of the sky by some benevolent djinn.

But it worried me to feel so happy. If you’re used to nothing much happening, except for minor crises and disappointments, it’s hard not to be suspicious of your sudden good fortune.

When I eventually told Michael that I was going to Paris in a few weeks to see my son, he asked haltingly if I might let him . . . well, if he might be able to join me? He didn’t have to tag along with me the whole time if I didn’t want him to, but he hadn’t taken a vacation in a year and a half and he hadn’t been to Paris in many years, and what a romantic city it was. What did I think?

“Yes,” I said without a second’s hesitation. I had been hoping that he would ask because I hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to invite him myself. We had only been seeing each other for two weeks when I brought it up, and though we had spent about ten nights together during those two weeks, I worried that I might be rushing things by asking him to join me on a vacation all the way across the continent, on the other side of the Atlantic. When I confessed this to him, he said, “Don’t be silly, Lucy. You’re a grown woman and I’m a grown man. We can do whatever we want. I want to go, if you really don’t mind.”

“Of course I want you to come. I just wasn’t sure if I should ask.”

“You should always ask for what you want,” he said. “No one can read your mind.”

“No, I suppose not.”

I called Billy the next day to tell him that I was bringing a friend with me to France, and he seemed genuinely curious. “A boyfriend?” he asked.

“A man friend,” I said.

“Really? That’s nice.” He paused. “You’re not planning on staying with me, are you?”

I laughed a little, grateful, I suppose, for his directness. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“If you want to, you could, but the second bedroom is about the size of a large coat closet, so you’d definitely be better off staying at a hotel.”

“Billy, we’ve already made reservations at George V.”

“Damn. Who’s paying?”

“I think we’ll probably split it.”

“Is this guy after you for your money, like that loser from a couple of years ago?”

“Michael has his own money.” He seemed to, but I wasn’t sure if it came from his law practice because half of his cases were pro bono and I don’t think the paying cases were likely to make too many people rich. He had alluded to some property he owned in Colorado, and I suspected that this was where his money came from. He kept picking up the checks when we went out, and I did not sense any nervousness on his end when the servers delivered these checks, some of them easily more than I spent on a week’s worth of groceries, to our table, like I had with other men who did not want to pay or were worried that they couldn’t afford to pay. His house was near the Rose Bowl and beautiful; he had traveled all over the world and dressed attractively but was not flashy with his