Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen Page B

her eyes on the man in the blue and green and white shirt.
    The humming continued.
    â€œCoffee. Or … would you like tea?” Billy asked, taking no notice of the guest in the corner. “Mrs. Hale says you might prefer tea.”
    â€œTea would be lovely. Yes,” she almost whispered.
    â€œComing right up.” He turned. “Morning, Hector,” Billy breezed past him, but the man made no acknowledgment except a slight nod of his head.
    Letting the fall of her hair curtain her face, Iris glanced at the humming man, who was now making small circles in the air with his long-fingered hands, like butterfly wings fluttering. His lips were moving bap bap bap bap. He looked up and stared at her blankly, then returned his attention to his writing.
    â€œWhere are you off to today?” Billy was back with the tea and toast.
    â€œI haven’t quite decided,” she replied quickly.
    â€œIf I may suggest?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIf you haven’t seen the Mapparium, then you should go. Just around the corner, across Huntington.”
    â€œMapparium?” She pretended to be interested.
    â€œYeah, it’s awesome. It’s like … it’s hard to explain actually. It’s a giant walk-through globe with a map of the world painted on glass. Inside out, like. Like you’re in the middle of the earth looking out. Really cool. The acoustics are unreal, and—”
    From butterfly hands came a groan. “Hey, Billy, pipe down, can you? I need to finish this.” The man hadn’t looked up.
    â€œYeah, sure, Hector. Sorry, man.” Billy moved so he was masking the tall man from Iris’s view. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged and lowered his voice a notch. “Anyway. It’s three stories high and there’s over six hundred glass panels held together and they’re individually lit from behind. And there’s a glass bridge, midway though the earth, that takes you across from one side to the other and—”
    â€œIt’s the world as it was in 1934,” said Hector. He stood up then and strode from the room in a kind of whoosh, but not before first looking directly at Iris, then back to Billy. “And don’t forget to say it’s a whispering gallery.” Whoosh. He was out the front room. Bang. He was passing in the street below the window, striding away, his fair hair like wings beating behind his ears.
    â€œWas it something we said?” Iris said, trying to make light of what was feeling to her like an awkward situation.
    â€œDon’t worry about it. Sometimes he’s like that, Professor Sherr. He’s a real good friend of Mrs. Hale’s. He’s Californian. He stays here a few times a year. He can be really nice, when he’s not composing.”
    â€œA musician?”
    â€œYeah. He’s playing tonight at the park.” Billy pointed through the room and out the window. “Jazz.”
    Iris felt her face blush for no reason at all. Billy kept chatting and he told her he was helping Grace out while she took in a few guests over the summer. He told her he was a sophomore at Boston University, hoping to major in computers. “I’m a bit of a computer geek,” he said.
    â€œSo, you’re about my daughter’s age, then?”
    â€œTwenty in September. Twenty-ninth.”
    â€œMy daughter’s going to be nineteen at the end of the month.”
    *   *   *
    Iris didn’t wait for Billy to return with the brochure on the Mapparium that he’d proposed to get. Instead she went up to her room to change her shoes again and brush her hair. She looked at herself one long moment. Will she remember me? A few minutes later, map in hand, she left the guesthouse and walked in the direction of St. Botolph Street. The day was already hot. Iris passed alongside a long expanse of iron railings that enclosed a park. Children’s voices rang in the near distance.