my teeth without her noticing? But then suddenly I had a rush of counter-panic that I was sitting in my room with the door closed, wasting valuable moments with her.
I got up again and opened the door. “Hey,” I yelled down the hall.
Her head appeared again. “Hey.”
“Want to go to the movies with me tonight?”
Slight beat of surprise. “Well sure. What?”
“Documentary about Glenn Gould. Been dying to see it.” In fact I’d already seen it, and had sat in the theater the whole time pretending she was with me: imagining her reaction at various parts, imagining the amazing conversation we would have about it after.
“Sounds fantastic. What time?”
“Sevenish. I’ll check.”
xxv.
ALL DAY, I WAS practically out-of-body with excitement at the thought of the evening ahead. Downstairs, in the store (where I was too busy with Christmas customers to devote undivided attention to my plans), I thought about what I would wear (something casual, not a suit, nothing too studied) and where I would take her to dinner—nothing too fancy, nothing that would put her on guard or seem self-conscious on my part but really special all the same, special and charming and quiet enough for us to talk and not too terribly far from Film Forum—besides which, she’d been out of the city for a while, she’d probably enjoy going someplace new (“Oh, this little place? yeah, it’s great, glad you like it, a real find”) but apart from all the above (and quiet was the main thing, more than food or location, I didn’t want to be anyplace where we were going to have to yell) it was going to have to be someplace I could get us in at short notice—and then too, there was the vegetarian issue. Someplace adorable. Not too expensive to raise alarms. It couldn’t look as if I was going to too much trouble; it had to seem thoughtless, unplanned. How the hell could she be living with this goofball Everett? With his bad clothes and his rabbit teeth and his always-startled eyes? Who looked as if his idea of a hot time was brown rice and seaweed from the counter at the back of the health food store?
And so the day crawled; and then it was six, and Hobie was home from his day out with Pippa, and he was poking his head in the store.
“So!” he said, after a pause, in a cheerful but cautious tone that reminded me (ominously) of the tone my mother had taken with my dad when she came home and found him buzzing about on the verge of an upswing. Hobie knew how I felt about Pippa—I’d never told him, never breathed a word of it, but he knew; and even if he hadn’t, it would have been perfectly visible to him (or any stranger walking in off the street) that I practically had sparks flying out of my head. “How’s everything?”
“Great! How was your day?”
“Oh wonderful!” with relief. “I was able to get us in at Union Square for lunch, we sat at the bar, wish you’d been with us. Then we went up to Moira’s, and the three of us walked over to the Asia Society, and now she’s out doing a bit of Christmas shopping. She says you, ah, you’re meeting her later tonight?” Casual, but with the unease of a parent wondering if an erratic teenager is really going to be okay taking the car out. “Film Forum?”
“Right,” I said nervously. I didn’t want him to know I was taking her to the Glenn Gould movie since he knew I’d already seen it.
“She said you two are going to the Glenn Gould?”
“Well, um, I was dying to go again. Don’t tell her I’ve been,” I said impulsively; and then: “Did you, er—?”
“No no—” hastily, drawing himself up—“I didn’t.”
“Well, um—”
Hobie rubbed his nose. “Well, listen, I’m sure it’s great. I’m dying to see it as well. Not tonight though,” he added quickly. “Some other time.”
“Oh—” trying hard to sound bummed-out, doing a bad job of it.
“In any case. Want me to mind the shop for you? In case you want to go upstairs for a wash and a brush-up? You should be leaving here no later than six-thirty if you plan on walking over there, you know.”
xxvi.
ON THE WAY OVER, I couldn’t help humming and smiling. And when I turned the corner and spotted her standing out in front of the theater I was so nervous I had to stop and compose myself for a