she was too ready with. He felt he knew that this wasn’t her real laugh, though he had no idea what her real laugh would sound like.
“Hi,” he said. He tried to step out of the shadow he was standing in, so as not to appear to be lurking.
The man and the woman looked at him, then gestured to the waitress, who turned almost completely around to face him.
“Yeah?” she said. Her tone wasn’t as friendly, somehow, as Bruce had expected it to be.
“I, uh, I’m sorry if you were offended before. I wanted to say something before I left.”
“Offended before what?”
“Well, when the guy I was talking to came on to you like that.” Bruce grimaced. This had been a bad idea.
“Umm,” the waitress said, remembering. She swung forward a bit from the post, letting herself dangle, letting whatever she was drinking rock toward the edge of her cup. The man and woman watched her. Bruce could tell from their expressions that they were waiting for her to make them laugh. “You mean your golfing buddy with the panty fetish?”
“I guess—”
“This guy was classic,” she said, turning to her friends. “You know, the kind who doesn’t even seem to be into it? Like he’s posing as a pig, but he barely has the energy? Sad, really.”
The other woman nodded, looking appreciative. The man said, “What did he do?”
The waitress looked at Bruce. Her eyes were cold. But just as Bruce was about to retreat and let her role-play Jebbie’s indiscretions without him, something in her face softened. She’s decided to be kind, Bruce thought. Interesting, that she had to decide that.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re nice to apologize.”
At this, the man and the woman did laugh.
“Scamper,” the waitress said to them. “You have work to do.” Then, to Bruce: “You’re not my type. That’s why they’re laughing at me.”
Bruce hoped that his smile looked convincing. He had a sense of wanting to cheer this person for the way she fascinated him, for the lightness she had sparked in his chest, and a sense of wanting to walk quickly away from her. Watching her from some safe distance—that would be ideal. And yet he stayed where he was, the smile creasing his face.
“I’m Charlotte,” she said to him. “Would you like some tea?” She held her mug out to him. “Loving cup. It’s green tea, I think.”
“No, thanks.”
“I don’t drink anymore, so …” She raised the mug to her lips and slurped from it, her eyes popping at him as she did so, punctuating her sentence.
“I’m Bruce.”
“Hold on—” She turned away from him and stuck her head through the swinging door that led into the kitchen, yelled something Bruce couldn’t quite understand. Bruce found himself staring at the place her black T-shirt gapped open over the waistband of her skirt, at the crescent of white flesh that was revealed as she stretched away from him. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought I heard somebody calling me.”
“Well,” Bruce said. “I should go.”
“No. Okay. It was nice meeting you.”
She looked at him. “Hey, do you want to come hear some music with me?” she said. The question had a plaintive quality that seemed to belie other things about her.
“Now?” Bruce smiled.
“It’s a friend’s band. They’re playing on the Lower East Side. Where do you live?”
“Lower West.”
“Close enough,” Charlotte said. “Great. I’ll just get my stuff and we’ll go.”
INCREDIBLY, they shared a cab downtown. Bruce slumped against the seat leather, Charlotte having given the driver directions to a club, shouting them through the Plexiglas safety shield. He could hardly believe his luck as they sped down Fifth Avenue, the lights of the city bleeding past their windows, reaching into the darkness inside the car just far enough to touch the edges of their clothes and faces before bouncing and sliding away. The spiky ends of Charlotte’s hair went red, then white, before she caught his eye and he looked away from her.
“You’ve been kidnapped,” she said.
“I know,” he answered.
She laughed. Bruce knew that she was making fun of him, at the nonchalance he tried to affect, but he felt himself not caring. He was too glad to be in motion, to let this girl carry him where she wanted to go. Charlotte. The Flatiron District blazed before them, and they veered left. The cabbie’s cell phone rang. He raised it to his ear, began jabbering angrily in … Urdu? Bruce looked: the name on the medallion was Jinkha Birywani. Bless you, Jinkha, Bruce