We had left the church together, left the concert together, and stood together on the steps where earlier I had waited for her. She wore a kilt and walking shoes and a down vest, looking like the many other women there who had hurried in from the country to hear Rampal play a benefit for African refugees. I was still dazed by the memory of the bobbing figure, and the notes as golden as his flute moving through the church like sunlight through leaves. She had sat with what I was beginning to recognize as a typical attentive stillness. Now we stood in the last of the late-afternoon sunlight. I could hear remembered music more clearly than the sounds of city life around us. I put my thought into words. “Wonderful.”
“Unmn,” she answered, then changed the topic. “You listen with your shoulders.”
“What?”
“Your shoulders…move. With the music. Maybe your neck too, chin. It’s not unseemly. You’re never unseemly,” she teased me.
I came back to the real world and wondered if this was the moment for the next step.
“I’m always saying thank you,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake.
I didn’t take it. “And walking away.”
“Yes.” She put both hands into the waist-high pockets. “I don’t know what James thinks.”
“James?”
“Our butler. He calls you the Gentleman. ‘The Gentleman left this for you, miss.’” It was a fair imitation of his voice, redolent with nasal dignity, and I laughed.
“Does it matter what James thinks?” I asked.
“No.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. So I don’t. I enjoy your company, and the things you ask me to do.”
“Am I good enough company to take you to dinner?” It was time to try, to at least try.
“I can’t,” she said quickly.
“I’ll walk you home though. It’s all right, I already know where you live. I won’t go to the door, just stand on the corner until you’re inside. See you safely home.”
She considered that, then nodded her head, agreeing to it. “You’re old-fashioned, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid maybe I am.”