our own survival. We truly can’t imagine that, like most species that have ever lived on earth, we, too, might become extinct someday. The others died out because they couldn’t adapt to the changing environment. Poor us!”
“Indeed!” Edward wrote under that last line, before scrawling a big, red A at the top of the first page. Then he thought, in a flash of spiteful satisfaction, of Bruce Silver, still selling paper in a digital age.
Second Date
E dward was looking in the crazy drawer for a rubber band when he came across the letters in response to the personal ad. Not that he had forgotten about them. He’d only kept them tucked away, out of sight, while he tried to keep his increasing loneliness out of mind. Now he laid the letters out on the kitchen counter and contemplated them, while he flexed the rubber band over and over again until it shot from his fingers across the room.
Roberta Costello was an amiable woman, practically the antithesis of Karen Leslie. Edward had chosen her letter because it exuded warmth and an appealing modesty. “Hello!” she’d written. “Am I the zillionth woman to write to you? I hope not.” She described herself as a widow, “average” in most respects, including her height and weight and even her looks.
She was actually quite pretty, with graying black hair anddark eyes. And she gave him a big smile and a little hug when he picked her up at her town house in Teaneck, not far from the restaurant she had suggested for Sunday brunch. “The best omelets in the world,” she’d promised. “We always went there.”
Although Edward had made a reservation, it wasn’t honored. The place was mobbed when they arrived, and they found themselves in the midst of a noisy, impatient crowd of couples and families waiting for tables. Bee, Edward remembered, had resisted the popular restaurant brunch, which she claimed was “just breakfast, only later, and in public.” She’d preferred eating eggs in their bathrobes, exchanging sections of the Sunday paper across the kitchen table. This was just the sort of scene she had probably wanted to avoid.
“Shall we try going somewhere else?” Edward asked Roberta. A baby was crying nearby, and he had to shout a little to be heard.
“Well, if you want to,” she said, but he detected a note of disappointment in her voice. So he didn’t offer the next suggestion that came to mind—that they stop at a deli and buy all the ingredients for a meal and bring them back to her place. She might have taken it as an inappropriate move on his part, when what he really wanted was a quiet meal in a domestic setting. He would have even done the cooking, as he’d often done on Sundays at home.
When they were finally seated and handed menus, the waitress greeted Roberta as if they were old friends, and she gave Edward the once-over, which felt like a severe assessment. “Did I pass muster, do you think?” he asked after the waitress left, and Roberta smiled and said, “Oh, Wynona’s just being a little protective. Vince was a big favorite around here.”
Roberta had been widowed about the same time as Edward, but her husband had lingered for two years, breathlessfrom emphysema, she said, and mad as hops. Edward imagined that he might have taken his anger out on Roberta—there was a resigned weariness about her, in the corners of her eyes and mouth, whenever she forgot to smile. But she said that he’d only railed against his bad luck, his lifetime smoking habit, the crappy, poisonous air in industrial New Jersey.
He had worked, she told Edward, as an account executive at an oil refinery in Linden, having risen up through the ranks from the pipelines on merit and perseverance. Roberta had been an adjuster for a large insurance company, work she’d once enjoyed. But she had retired soon after Vince died. He’d left her well provided for—his main concern—and she had lost interest in her job, anyway.
Edward was grateful that he had stayed
“Indeed!” Edward wrote under that last line, before scrawling a big, red A at the top of the first page. Then he thought, in a flash of spiteful satisfaction, of Bruce Silver, still selling paper in a digital age.
Second Date
E dward was looking in the crazy drawer for a rubber band when he came across the letters in response to the personal ad. Not that he had forgotten about them. He’d only kept them tucked away, out of sight, while he tried to keep his increasing loneliness out of mind. Now he laid the letters out on the kitchen counter and contemplated them, while he flexed the rubber band over and over again until it shot from his fingers across the room.
Roberta Costello was an amiable woman, practically the antithesis of Karen Leslie. Edward had chosen her letter because it exuded warmth and an appealing modesty. “Hello!” she’d written. “Am I the zillionth woman to write to you? I hope not.” She described herself as a widow, “average” in most respects, including her height and weight and even her looks.
She was actually quite pretty, with graying black hair anddark eyes. And she gave him a big smile and a little hug when he picked her up at her town house in Teaneck, not far from the restaurant she had suggested for Sunday brunch. “The best omelets in the world,” she’d promised. “We always went there.”
Although Edward had made a reservation, it wasn’t honored. The place was mobbed when they arrived, and they found themselves in the midst of a noisy, impatient crowd of couples and families waiting for tables. Bee, Edward remembered, had resisted the popular restaurant brunch, which she claimed was “just breakfast, only later, and in public.” She’d preferred eating eggs in their bathrobes, exchanging sections of the Sunday paper across the kitchen table. This was just the sort of scene she had probably wanted to avoid.
“Shall we try going somewhere else?” Edward asked Roberta. A baby was crying nearby, and he had to shout a little to be heard.
“Well, if you want to,” she said, but he detected a note of disappointment in her voice. So he didn’t offer the next suggestion that came to mind—that they stop at a deli and buy all the ingredients for a meal and bring them back to her place. She might have taken it as an inappropriate move on his part, when what he really wanted was a quiet meal in a domestic setting. He would have even done the cooking, as he’d often done on Sundays at home.
When they were finally seated and handed menus, the waitress greeted Roberta as if they were old friends, and she gave Edward the once-over, which felt like a severe assessment. “Did I pass muster, do you think?” he asked after the waitress left, and Roberta smiled and said, “Oh, Wynona’s just being a little protective. Vince was a big favorite around here.”
Roberta had been widowed about the same time as Edward, but her husband had lingered for two years, breathlessfrom emphysema, she said, and mad as hops. Edward imagined that he might have taken his anger out on Roberta—there was a resigned weariness about her, in the corners of her eyes and mouth, whenever she forgot to smile. But she said that he’d only railed against his bad luck, his lifetime smoking habit, the crappy, poisonous air in industrial New Jersey.
He had worked, she told Edward, as an account executive at an oil refinery in Linden, having risen up through the ranks from the pipelines on merit and perseverance. Roberta had been an adjuster for a large insurance company, work she’d once enjoyed. But she had retired soon after Vince died. He’d left her well provided for—his main concern—and she had lost interest in her job, anyway.
Edward was grateful that he had stayed
Similar Books
