was mid-lipstick application, so it sounded more like Ide. Uh. Ish.
“I don’t want to ruin his life,” she said, although what she really meant was I don’t want to hurt his feelings. She’d had the sense she’d done that, somehow. When he’d dropped her hand, she’d felt it in her stomach. Like a tiny stone of regret had lodged itself there.
Then again, what about the feelings of her neighbors? What about sitting with Emily yesterday, encouraging her to stop reading articles online about problems with short-term rentals? What about the way Marian had looked at her with expectation by the mailboxes, or the way Jonah had shaken a small fist at her and said, “We’ll get him next time!”
What about what Nonna would want?
“I only want him to . . . I need him to understand why this won’t work here.”
Deepa made a humming noise as she put the lipstick away and pulled out a setting spray. In the third-floor bathroom, if they were working out some design problem, this is the point at which Deepa usually got ideas. It was like all the touch-ups were brain calisthenics for her.
“No offense, Nora, but since you’ve moved back there you have told me no fewer than six things that your neighbors do that would absolutely have me packing a go bag and fleeing back to the wide world of living with people my own age.”
“That’s rude. They’re—”
Dee waved a hand, twisting her fresh-painted lips. “They’re your family. And they’re great, I know. I’m sure he got the sense of that with the food drop-off, or whatever it was. But you need this guy to see the stuff that his future renters would find absolutely bizarre. The stuff you hardly even recognize as unusual.”
Nora furrowed her brow, thinking. The fact that nothing came immediately to mind probably proved Deepa’s point, but then she looked down to the desk calendar and saw what she had written on it for tomorrow night. If she flipped the page, she’d see the same entry again, on the next month. And the next and the next.
“Like a monthly poetry reading?” she said, not even really to Deepa.
“There’s a monthly poetry reading at your apartment building? Uh, yes. I’d say that’s weird.”
Nora’s mind was already racing with ideas. Where this kind of creativity download had been when Austin had been in the room and they’d been trying to figure out this situation with the eco-influencer from hell, she wished she knew, but it didn’t really matter now.
“It’s not weird,” she muttered. Then she looked up and smiled through the screen at her friend. “But I’m about to make it a whole lot weirder.”
At first, there was no doubt in Nora’s mind that she had Nonna’s full support.
In the first place, there was the weather, which could be nothing less than a gift from above: warm but not humid, not a cloud in the dusky, early-evening sky, a light breeze fluttering the colorful line of paper lanterns strung up from one corner of the fence to the other. It’d seemed so unbelievably perfect, in fact, that Nora had even pulled up a radar app on her phone, double-checking to confirm there wasn’t some freak, fast-moving rainstorm on its way.
But no—for the next six hours at least, it was nothing but clear skies ahead.
And that was plenty of time for a poetry reading.
It wasn’t the weather alone, though, that had Nora feeling confident. When she’d hung up the phone with Deepa yesterday, she’d set about making a list, and it’d been a long one—impossibly long, really—and when she’d made her way down to Marian and Emily’s afterward, nervous about how Marian would take a request to alter her monthly plans, she wasn’t actually sure she could get it all done.
But like the weather, everything had fallen exactly into place. Marian hadn’t only been on board, she’d also—in the spirit of the great public school teacher she’d been for decades—set immediately to work on the evening’s . . . uh, elevated . . . agenda, while Nora and her other neighbors got to work on the logistics. Oh, nearly everyone they called last-minute could come? Great. The florist over on West Fullerton happened to have a whole bunch of flower crowns from a canceled event on deep discount? Terrific. Benny was looking to unload a bunch of that same American Wheat Ale he’d offered to Will a couple of days ago? Perfect. Hey, a guy two buildings down had a microphone