15

“What do you say we skip the afternoon session?” With that, he nudged her. Diana hoped her recoil was not visible.

“It’s always the creeps who come right out with it,” Lida once advised. “They pretend they’re kidding, see? But they’re hoping you’ll take them up on it.”

“Paul Riley,” Allen Dilworth muttered in the vicinity of Diana’s ear. “He’s a neo-Romantic by way of explanation. Swinburne, in fact.”

Diana laughed. “I should have supposed it.”

Allen handed her a platter, and their fingers brushed and crackled with electricity.

“Oh.” Diana laughed. Her face, she felt, was burning.

“Yes,” he said, watching her as he had when she read.

The palms of her hands felt soggy. But beyond him she saw Riley, waving them toward two seats that he had saved.

“I think,” she wished that she could say aloud, “I’ve gone stark raving mad.”

For amid the banality that Riley’s presence imposed upon their talk, she felt aglow—as though, if the room were darkened, she, Diana, could light it.

And Allen? Did he feel that way too? She imagined the overhead lights extinguished, the windows shaded.

But her fantasy was interrupted by her own rote answers to Riley’s questions.

“Black school, huh?” Riley put a forkful of food into his mouth and poked Diana again with his elbow. Diana watched him chew, chew, chew. At long last Riley swallowed. “Bet they don’t use memos at your school,” he said. “Bet they use the drum.” He began to beat on the tabletop with his open palms. “Boom-da-da, boom-da-da, boom.” The silverware rattled against the china. Riley laughed hard, his face turning a splotchy red.

Allen squirmed uncomfortably. He leaned forward, nearer to Diana, to speak his reprimand. “I say, Paul,” he began.

“I know, I know,” Riley halted him. “Just making a little joke, that’s all. No offense meant.”

Allen and Diana sought to break the ensuing silence simultaneously. They both laughed at their clumsy attempt.

“Go on,” Allen said.

“No, you go ahead,” Diana insisted.

They laughed again, easily. It was as though they’d been laughing together all their lives.

God, had it been this simple all along? The Diana of old would have been demure. No, withdrawn. Would have moved away, afraid that he would see or suspect that she wanted to move toward. In other words, the Diana of old was, as Lida had ended up screaming that makeover day, “… a king-sized asshole, that’s what! How are they supposed to know what you’re afraid of? They think you’re rejecting them. Jesus.”

“They would reject me,” Diana had cried. “They would laugh at me. Or just not notice me at all. You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

“God damn it,” Lida had said. “Are you going to sit around hankering for the rest of your life? Because nobody is going to rescue you. Nobody is going to know or guess how you feel. Nobody is even going to care how you feel. You have to make the move. You have to make the statement.”

“What statement? What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But Diana did know.

Lida had said it out loud anyway. “You don’t have anyone, kiddo, because you look as though you don’t want anyone. You look as though you don’t and then you act as though you don’t.”

“I don’t want to be laughed at,” Diana had said. “My sons will laugh. Men will laugh.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s so superficial.”

“If that’s all there is, then it’s superficial. But I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

And now here Diana was, in New Hampshire, with two men flanking her, vying for her favors. Amazing. And all along it had been so simple.

Diana felt bold, as she had earlier on the highway, bold and free. Here, in New Hampshire, she could step out of—or was it into?—character. Here, in New Hampshire, Diana could test, could find out which it was. Out of? Or into?

She leaned back in her chair, the way that Lida often did. She even smiled at Riley. Or rather, she was smiling when she turned his way and even the sight of him chewing did not extinguish the expression on her face.

By the time the name of Allen’s predecessor was raised, Diana was feeling very Lida-like indeed.

“Let’s don’t get started on him again,” Allen cautioned Riley.

“Why?” Diana interrupted. “Is he so disreputable? Does spittle run out of the corners of his mouth? Does he—” She stopped and began to giggle, unable to go quite as far as Lida once had.

Allen laughed uneasily, but laughed nonetheless. But Riley? Riley didn’t laugh at all. He sank instead into a pensive silence.

“I’m sorry.” Diana sobered, thinking she’d offended him. “Actually I was quoting a friend of mine.”

Riley looked at her. “What friend?” he asked.

Diana was perplexed. “I doubt that you know her,” she said.

“What friend?” Riley insisted. “What’s her name?”

“Her name is Lida,” Diana said, instinctively leaning toward the safety of Allen.

“Lida,” Riley repeated. “Lida. No. Don’t know her.”

Had it not been for the arrival of a raspberry mousse toward which all subsequent comment might be aimed, the moment would have routed Diana’s newfound confidence. She emitted a number of ooohs and mmmms and yummies before Riley excused himself and lumbered toward the exit. Diana watched him go. She pushed her dish away. “I hate raspberry mousse,” she said. “I hate raspberry anything.”

Allen grinned at her. “Astonishing,” he said.

“Wasn’t it? What could have come over him?”

“Oh, Riley?” Allen only now considered him. “I think that your remark—the, uh, one about the spittle—reminded him of someone.” He spooned some of the mousse into his mouth. “Mmmm,” he said.

Diana found that watching Allen chew was far from disagreeable.

“I’ve seen this happen once or twice,” Allen continued. “Riley apparently had a romance with one of the students. Long time ago. Whenever anything or anyone calls her to mind, he falls into this—what would you call it? A reverie?”

He paused, but Diana did not answer.

“Actually,” Allen told her, spooning up more of the mousse and eyeing the serving that Diana had shoved aside, “if you’ll come home with me later, I’ll give you the full story. It’s our campus whodunit. And how’s this for a hook?” He dabbed at his lips with his napkin, delaying the line. “The student? Christine Rivers?”

Diana nodded.

“She’s dead.” His eyes glinted with glee. “Murdered.”

Diana dropped her eyes, toyed with the hem of the tablecloth. If you’ll come home with me later, he had said. If you’ll come home with me! She felt his hand on her shoulder.

“Have I gone too far?” he asked. “Are you shocked and dismayed?”

Diana didn’t look up. “Only shocked,” she said.

“Ah. Then you’ll come?”

Diana sat, gathering courage. At least twice, she thought. She looked up now, looked at him steadily. “I’ll come,” Diana said.

They sat together while the recitations droned on. Diana basked in Allen’s presence until the readings were over. And then, she was suddenly afraid to stand lest her skirt be stained. Worse, she sensed that he knew why she hesitated, towering beside her, offering his hand.

It was an odd little house with Tudor affectations. It lay flush against the side of the hill. From the window of the bedroom upstairs, Diana had a striking sense of height.

In the spring, he told her, daffodils would blanket the steep slope. In the summer, the leaves of the trees would obscure the stream that sparkled at the base of the hill.

They stood at the window a long time, Diana with a fullness in her lips and her breasts, a crazy knowledge that inside her body, cells and molecules were straining toward him.

Poor Lida? No. Lucky Lida. To have done this a thousand times.

His lips teased across her forehead and his fingertips slipped inside the collar of her blouse and along the base of her neck. He undid the clasp of the pearls that she always wore.

It had an underwater quality, a weightlessness, slow and buoyant. Though she could not remember taking it down, her hair hung in tangles past her shoulders.

His tongue slid like satin along her legs, his mouth like velvet, opening, closing.

Just before she fell asleep, she heard him say, with genuine amazement, “Jane Austen?”