Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,45

so tall!”

Henry turned to Micah and sent him a deadpan gaze.

“He wants to check behind your fridge,” Micah told Yolanda. “That’s where Pest Central suggested.”

“Cookstove too,” Henry said. “Is your cookstove gas or electric?” he asked Yolanda.

“Well, gas, actually,” she said. She tucked a frond of hair behind her ear.

“So, they could be getting in where the gas pipe comes through the wall,” he said, and he started for the kitchen with the other two trailing after him.

In the kitchen doorway, he set down his tool kit and bent over it to draw forth a long, heavy flashlight. Micah and Yolanda, blocked from entering, stayed in the hall and watched as he began making his way around the perimeter of the room, periodically tapping the flashlight against the baseboards.

“Last night I was watching TV and a mouse ran right in front of me,” Yolanda said. “I’m not the scream-and-jump-on-a-chair type but I was pretty startled, let me tell you. There’s something about when you see something move and you weren’t expecting it, you know? Move in the very corner of your eye. You think, Eek! and your heart speeds up and the back of your neck gets prickly.”

“It’s atavistic,” Henry tossed over his shoulder.

“Pardon?”

“It’s a reflex from our caveman days.”

Yolanda looked at Micah.

Henry finished his circuit of the kitchen and returned to the doorway. Both of them stood aside to let him exit and proceed back up the hall, flashlight swinging from one hand.

“Is he married, do you happen to know?” Yolanda asked Micah in a low voice.

“I have no idea.”

“Hmm,” she said.

She gazed after Henry thoughtfully.

“Yolanda,” Micah said, “can I ask a personal question?”

She brightened and turned back to him. “Finally!” she said. “I thought it would never happen!”

“All your Internet dating and such. Going out with all those strangers. Do you ever think of giving it up? I mean, don’t you ever get tired? Why do you keep on trying?”

She didn’t take offense, although she easily could have. “I’m just a slow learner, I guess,” she said, and she gave a little laugh. Then she sobered and said, “I think I do it for the pre stage.”

“The…”

“The stage where I’m planning what to wear and putting on my makeup, thinking this time things might work out. And when they don’t, I’m like, Well, at least that part was fun. That part was worth something. You have to pick yourself up and carry on, is what I say.”

“Well, but whatever happened to learning from experience? Whatever happened to not getting into the selfsame position all over again?”

“Give up and play dead, is what you mean,” she told him.

He could see that neither one of them was going to change the other’s mind.

Henry had finished his inspection, evidently. He came back down the hall and bent to return his flashlight to his tool kit. “Your entry point does look to be behind your cookstove,” he said, straightening. “I’m going to nail some metal sheeting around the…By the way, I see where your exterminator set his traps with peanut butter.”

“Is that not all right?” Yolanda asked, looking up raptly into his face.

“Well, myself, I prefer tahini.”

“Tahini!”

“And on top, a little sprinkle of sesame seeds.”

“Sesame seeds! I thought tahini was sesame seeds.”

“I’m just offering my personal opinion.”

“Oh, right, and it makes perfect sense!” Yolanda said, practically singing.

Henry gave her a bland look. “No complaints from your other tenants?” he asked Micah.

“Not so far,” Micah said. “Of course there will be, the minute you’ve finished here and gone.”

Henry nodded philosophically.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it,” Micah told him. “Bill comes to me, as usual.”

“Sure thing,” Henry said, and he bent over his tool kit again and lifted the top tray to peer beneath it.

Micah