long legs and broad shoulders. Why the hell isn’t his wife with him? Perhaps she’s at home, preparing Sunday dinner for her man. Lighting candles. Slipping into something soft and gauzy that she will slip off again when she has undressed this strangely diffident, successful university professor. “What are their names?” I’m watching the dogs, who have already lost interest in me.
“Feel free to scoff. This one, the Alaskan Malamute-plus-who-knows-what, is Toby, and that one, probably Beagle-plus-Spaniel-plus-something else, is Andrew.”
“As in Belch and Aguecheek? And does Sir Toby have Sir Andrew under his thumb, and pinch his food, and send him into fights with puny poodle ladies?”
Cleveland grins. “Toby’s the boss, yes, but on the whole Andrew doesn’t mind that. No cakes and ale for either of them, though.”
Two English Lit nerds discussing dogs that are named after Shakespearean characters. But even that doesn’t ease the atmosphere.
He nods at the bike.
“So, you’ve been getting some exercise.”
“I’ve been round the lake.”
“Really. Wow.”
“Yes, but now I’m lost. Could you tell me, kind sir, the way back home, please?” I bat my eyelashes at him, only twice, but it feels as dangerous as if I had reached between his legs to feel his crotch.
Cleveland flashes me a deliberately lecherous grin.
“As it happens, my cottage is just up there, along the track. There’s a nice fire burning, and tea’s a-brewing, just right to warm the cockles of bicyclistes in distress.” He says the word in French, as if they were a breed he takes a special interest in. Bicyclistes in distress.
“You know the fruit farm about a mile beyond the old bridge road? That’s where I live. Now, if I keep close to the lake here, that should get me near it, but I don’t know how best to cut off from the lakeside path. I don’t want to go round and round again…”
With perfect composure Cleveland gives me directions, clear and precise, easy to memorize, easy to follow, and I cycle off. Calm. Calm. Did he just ask me…have I just refused…what? A cup of tea with a colleague, a peace cup, since neither of us seems to smoke, sorely needed after last week, after the last few weeks. I’m cycling straight toward a two-story cabin. It is built into the slope that leads down to the lake. Its lakeside half sits on stilts; there’s a wraparound porch, a shack that seems large enough to double as a garage, and a breathtaking view of the lake directly behind it. I can’t stop and admire it, though, because Cleveland must be following me, and the last thing I want is for him to catch me goggling at his house. He’ll be thinking that I’m waiting for him. He’ll be thinking that I want to come in after all.
“I bet you get a ton of mosquitoes,” I say when he has reached the little footpath crossroads on which I’ve stopped.
He pushes his hands into pockets, frowning.
“Visitors usually respond a little more favorably.”
“I’m Jewish.” I grin. “You see a bagel, I see a hole. No, seriously, this is…a dream.”
If he asks me to come in again, I will.
He looks at his house as if it wasn’t his at all.
“You think?”
“Hey, Cleveland, one compliment is enough! If you want to go fishing for ’em, the lake is right there!”
This makes him smile. “Well, you’re evidently hiding out, too, on that farm.”
I am stumped, for the second time within ten minutes.
“At first I only rented it, but when—” He hesitates and seems to reconsider. “I was able to wheedle some money out of the college about nine months ago, and I decided to buy it.”
“Oh—nice! What’s the secret?” I laugh. Playing for time.
“Get offered a job at Stanford and hope your college will bribe you to stay!”
He glances over at me, smiling. Looking very handsome, but not like a man who is going to ask stray females in for cups of tea. Not like a man about to cross any lines. The moment has passed. We’re just making conversation.
“I had heard that about you. That you refused a job at Stanford. Me, I didn’t even apply for any jobs on the West Coast. It’s just too far away.”
“From?”
I finish that thought, and to my own surprise the answer is, “From England.”
He’s still looking at me, but he’s not laughing any more. “Mmhmm.”
“Why didn’t you go? To Stanford?”
“I tried the idea on for size,” he says readily, “but I think it’s fair to say that both sides realized that