Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,222

Mark too. Brett was using the phone. Rourke was in the kitchen leaning on the counter. I was near him, leaning too. Neither of us spoke. I was ashamed to stand so close to him, but I didn’t know where else to be.

Rob walked in. “What’s wrong with you cafones? You just ate.”

“What do you care?” Uncle Milty asked. “It’s my food. You last the week on a jar of peanut butter.”

“I’m just sayin’,” Rob huffed. The muzzled dog sniffed at the bare platter. “You coulda saved a couple olives for the dog, that’s all.” Rob gave the chain collar a jerk. “C’mon, Cujo. They don’t give a shit about you.”

By the time we reached the dessert place, I’d lost all sense of direction. While the guys went up to the counter to pick out pastries, I sat with the women and played with packets of sugar, trying to figure out where I was geographically.

Rourke was leaning against the coffee bar in his midnight-blue cotton bomber jacket, and he was telling a story about golf. I could tell because at one point he had simulated a golf swing, tossing up an arm, waving flat into the horizon as if to hail an imaginary party onward. His hair swept about his face. With one hand he righted it, then said something to make everyone laugh. To watch him was to feel again what I’d felt exclusively with him—like a woman, feminine and frail, light and in love. I remembered how with Jack, I’d always felt we were intrinsically the same, and though there was refuge in that, there was also a forfeiture of individuality. With Rourke, I experienced opposition, like the simple reflex of a knee when you knock it—legitimate and artless and completely beyond your control.

Mark came to the table first, saying good night. “We’re gonna take off before dessert,” he told us as he distributed kisses. He and Brett had each had a double espresso at the bar, he said, and they were ready to shoot back to the Big Apple. They had to work in the morning.

When he bent to my ear, he whispered, “Why don’t you catch a ride with us?”

Though I felt ashamed of his familiarity, I knew I should not be. I reminded myself that he had been generous. I’d been clear, but he’d been clear too. It was not impossible that I’d misjudged things, and in the process, that I’d misled him. Often, I misjudged things.

I pulled away, saying, “Good night.”

Mark moved closer. He took my hand and shoved cash into it. Forty dollars. “It’s a long walk back to New York,” he warned. Then he turned and passed through our little crowd like a mayor, smiling and shaking hands. Was it possible that Mark knew something I didn’t? Could he see what I couldn’t see? Maybe Rourke had been standing there all along, saying of me, What’s with her?

I kicked out my chair, grabbed my coat, and started to run after him. But before I reached the closing door, Rob casually stepped out and stopped me, saying, “Where to, Countess? This is Jersey.” There is a sensation, lifelike in me still, of Rob holding me, inducing me gently back from the door, steering and stepping like a competent dance partner, delivering me to the haven of Rourke’s arms.

And then Rourke’s mouth on the base of my neck, the mouth I’d waited for, like for proof of God. We kissed, lightly—the first new kiss, and I wondered at the taste, like a willowy almond after-flavor. I had to stretch to reach him, and he had to bend, lifting me a little.

“Did you get my letter?” he asked.

“Yes, I got it.”

And hours later in the car, outside Rob’s place again, the two of us clinging tightly to the heat and pulse of the other.

Are you really here?

Yes, I’m here. Are you? Are you here?

Then when it was nearly dawn, I remember him looking at his watch. It was thick stainless steel with a marine-green face, and the silken hairs of his arms were pressed beneath it. It was five minutes after four.

“I have to be in Rahway,” he said, “at the prison, in an hour. Rob is going to take you back to the city. That okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s okay.”

He pulled me closer. “I’m done on Friday morning. When’s your last class this week?”

“Thursday afternoon.”

“Feel like taking off for a few days?”

“I would like that,” I said.

“I’ll call in a little while, as soon