Where or When by Anita Shreve

beside her, turning his body slightly in her direction. He lays his arm along the back cushion of the banquette. She seems uneasy with the side-by-side arrangement, crosses her legs. Her skirt rides up slightly on her thigh. He allows his eyes momentarily to fall on the span between her knee and the hemline of her skirt. Her stockings are sheer, with a dark tint. He orders a Stoli martini, bone dry, with a twist, and wishes he could inject it. She orders a glass of wine.
    â€œThe tape,” she says. “At first I didn’t want it. I didn’t want you to be sending me things. But last night I listened to it finally. It was . . .”
    She stops, unable to find the word.
    He waits, and when she doesn’t finish the sentence, he says, “It was meant to be lighthearted. A joke. Kind of.”
    He thinks it may have been partially intended as lighthearted, but he knows, and he knows she knows, its true intent was something larger and deeper.
    â€œI hadn’t heard any of those songs in years,” she says. “They . . .” She puts her fingers to the gold chain at her neck. “It was a kind of excavation. I felt it as that.” She looks down, as if she may already have said too much.
    â€œThis is very strange,” she says.
    â€œIt certainly is.”
    â€œCan you remember it? What do you remember?”
    â€œI remember some things,” he says. “Some things very vividly. Other parts are a blur now.”
    A waiter arrives with the drinks. Charles picks up his glass, swirls the ice, takes a swallow. He watches as she brings her glass to her lips, pauses, then looks at him. She moves her glass in his direction.
    â€œTo . . . ?”
    He does not hesitate. “Reunions,” he says.
    â€œAnd time passing,” she adds, nearly as quickly.
    He nods. He catches her eyes as they both simultaneously take sips of their drinks. When they are finished, he says, recklessly: “To the next thirty-one years.”
    She seems startled. As if there were no reply to this.
    She surveys the room. “I was surprised,” she says, “that the place is so unchanged. I thought somehow it would be different.”
    He studies her profile, the same profile he saw briefly in the car. It has always intrigued him how much one can tell about a person with one quick glance at a profile—age mostly, also weight, sometimes ethnic background. Her profile is classic, but she is not a classic beauty, he thinks, and he suspects she probably never was, the forehead too high, the eyebrows too pale. Yet he is certain he has never seen a more arresting mouth. And he doesn’t know if this is because it is a feature he has remembered all these years, the prototype by which he subconsciously judged others; would he find it so if he met her today for the first time? Her neck is long and white. Closer to her now, he can see that there are small discolorations, like freckles but not, on the backs of her hands and inside the neckline of her blouse. Her nails are cut short, unpainted. Like him, she wears a wedding ring.
    He examines the dining room with her. To one side are floor-to-ceiling windows that, he knows from memory, give onto a sloping lawn leading down to the lake. The windows are arched at the top and let in a diffuse light that spreads across the room. The ceiling is high, vaulted, with fading cherubs depicted in blue-and-peach mosaics. He remembers now that there were jokes at dinner about the naked cherubs. When they were children, they ate at refectory tables—eight, ten, twelve to a table. The chairs scraped the floor. Now there are banquettes against the south wall, small dining tables covered with heavy damask linen, upholstered chairs in red-and-white-striped silk. There are white flowers in delicate vases on each of the tables.
    â€œDo you suppose the food is any good?” she asks.
    â€œIt can’t help but be an improvement over what we ate