Five Days by Douglas Kennedy Page B

salesman’s grip. I pocketed the card. I told him my name.
    â€˜My first grade teacher was named Laura,’ he said, ‘though we called her Miss Wigglesworth.’
    â€˜Well, my mother told me that, after much debate, the name choice came down to Laura or Sandra. My father preferred the latter, but my mother was certain I’d end up being called Sandy.’
    â€˜Sandy’s a little bit Californian, isn’t it?’
    Now it was my turn to giggle. Richard Copeland certainly had an easy conversational style. But he was also somewhat cautious with his body language, as if he was always fighting a certain physical shyness. I could see him looking me over and then trying to mask the fact that he was looking me over. The banter between us was simultaneously breezy and guarded. I characterized him as a flirt who was not totally at ease with being a flirt. But this was, without question, a flirtation – of the sort that two strangers have when caught together in a long line and they know that, in fifteen minutes, they’ll never be seeing each other again.
    â€˜Funny you say that. When I was thirteen my dad mentioned to me that I almost ended up with another first name, but “Mother hated the name Sandra”. And when I asked her why she was so against that name, Mom said that Sandy would have made me sound like “a surfer girl”.’
    â€˜Spoken like a true Maine mother.’
    â€˜Oh, Mom would have been very much at home in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.’
    He looked a little surprised by that last comment – almost flinching a bit.
    â€˜Have I said the wrong thing?’ I asked.
    â€˜Hardly,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it’s not every day you hear someone make reference to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.’
    â€˜Most of us read
The Scarlet Letter
at some point in school.’
    â€˜And most of us have forgotten all about it.’
    â€˜Well, I can’t say I’ve downloaded it onto my Kindle . . . not that I have one.’
    â€˜You prefer paper?’
    â€˜I prefer real books. And you?’
    â€˜I’m afraid I’ve crossed over to the dark side.’
    â€˜It’s not a mortal sin.’
    â€˜I do have twenty books in my in-box right now.’
    â€˜And what are you reading right now?’
    â€˜You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
    â€˜Let me decide that. What’s the book?’
    I could see him blush. And stare down at his well-polished black cordovans.
    â€˜Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter
.’
    â€˜That
is
a coincidence,’ I said.
    â€˜But the truth.’
    â€˜I’m sure.’
    â€˜I could show you my Kindle if you don’t believe me . . .’
    â€˜No need, no need.’
    â€˜Now I’m sure you think I’m weird.’
    â€˜Or just weirdly literate. Anyway,
The Scarlet Letter
. Hester Prynne and all that.’
    â€˜It remains a great novel.’
    â€˜And rather prescient, given the current wave of religiosity sweeping the country.’
    â€˜â€œ
Prescient
”,’ he said, phonetically sounding it out as if it was the first time he’d ever spoken it. ‘Nice word.’
    â€˜That it is.’
    â€˜And even if I don’t agree with a lot of what the Christian Right bangs on about, don’t you think there are certain things about which they have a point?’
    Oh, no. A serious Republican.
    â€˜Such as?’ I asked.
    â€˜Well, such as the need to maintain family values.’
    â€˜Most people with families believe in family values.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t totally agree with that. I mean, look at the divorce rate—’
    â€˜But look at the time before divorce, when people were trapped in marriages they loathed, when there was absolutely no latitude for anyone, when women were expected to give up careers the moment they got pregnant, when if you dared turn your back on a