for me.” She turned her face away to the Tumi flagship store windows.
They bought things they didn’t need, like bras and hoodies. They were roped into some Dead Sea scrub, for seventy dollars!—“Made from Dead Sea Scrolls, I’m sure,” said Maggie—and were deciding on lunch at California Pizza Kitchen or their beloved Neiman’s Café, which had the most exquisite monkey bread with strawberry butter, when Larissa spotted the Ducati dude from Stop&Shop strolling toward them with a male friend. They were talking, lightly laughing; they acknowledged the women not at all but for a polite half-second glance, except as they were passing, the Ducati dude tipped his baseball cap at Larissa, his head tilting and his mouth stretching in a casual but unmistakable white-teeth smile.
Barely exhaling, Larissa quickly looked away from his face, casting her gaze down to his faded ripped jeans, his worn boots. His friend was neat, ironed blue Dockers, a white shirt. Not him.
“Who was that?” Maggie asked absent-mindedly as they glided past, and Larissa, picking up on the absent-minded, decided to play deaf, a trick she had learned from her kids. She ignored the question hoping it would hang in the air and be gone.
“Lar! Who was that?”
Didn’t work that time. “I’ve no idea,” said Larissa. “He must’ve mistook me for someone else.”
“Get out.”
“Yes.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. Maybe he was saying hello to you.”
“Larissa!”
“Okay, I’m joking. What, you don’t know him?”
“Larissa!”
“I don’t know him either. What can I tell you?”
“Does he go to school with Emily?”
“Emily? Why would you say that?” Larissa got almost defensive.
“What are you getting all huffy for? He must know you from somewhere.”
“Who’s huffy? But why Emily? And he doesn’t. Just a mistake. But he looks much too old to know anyone like Emily.”
“I didn’t say like Emily. I said actual Emily.”
“No. How silly. Well, what did we decide on? Neiman’s?”
They strolled on.
“You better watch out,” Larissa said, “or I’ll tell Ezra how you brushed your hair for twenty minutes at my house because we were going to be valeted by Manuel at Saks.”
“First of all,” Maggie said officiously, bending her unruly red mop in Larissa’s direction, “you know perfectly well that Ezra wouldn’t care if Manuel and I went at it doggie-style in the parking lot. Of all things Ezra is, he is not Othello. Second of all, that wasn’t Manuel but Esteban. Manuel was off today. Third of all, I never brush my hair, and if your hair were curly, you’d know that. Poor Michelangelo. How he must suffer under your hand if you think you can brush his hair. And fourth of all, Manuel says to me ‘Vaya con Dios’ every time he brings me my car. Now that’s a man who deserves special attention.”
“Does Ezra know this?”
“Ezra loves my little friends.”
Why did Larissa lie?
Why would she need to?
Flushed inside and out, she walked on, stifling the urge to turn around. For some reason she felt he might’ve turned around too. The whole thing made her jerkily uncomfortable, as if ants were crawling on her skin. And what’s more—the ants kept crawling back and forth, worrying the circle around the loop of the question, or was it around the pinpoint of the answer? Why would Larissa need to lie to Maggie about such a minor detail? Why didn’t she just say, oh, he helped me with my groceries? Took pity on a woman with a broken leg. And yet she didn’t. She hid it. Hid herself. Hid him. Why?
At lunch they discussed Bo, her current pervasive, unsolvable problems, (discussed blissfully because they weren’t their problems) and Maggie’s new love of painting (“Are you good, Mags?” “No, I’m terrible. But completely obsessed.”) and about Ezra’s lack of understanding of same.
“For all his bookishness, Ezra can be pretty dense about stuff,” agreed Larissa. “Don’t forget to tell him,” she added, “that he should brush up on his Ecclesiastes.” She hadn’t been a drama teacher for nothing. “For in much wisdom, there is much grief, and he who increases knowledge, also increases sorrow.”
To Jared in the morning, Larissa said, “I found a new market. Stop&Shop in Madison. They give out tasters all over the store, their meats are great, and their fruit is good.”
“Tasters, wonderful,” he said, kissing her. “I’m pleased for you. I know how much you like supermarkets. Go get us something nice.”
There.
She went food-shopping with the full approval of her husband.
The ground was hard like pavement, the grass in slumber. She bundled herself into a maroon cashmere Juicy tracksuit, she fussed with her hair, and drove to Stop&Shop. Before she left, she put moisturizer on, because who in their right mind would go out into that blistering January without protection for their face? She wasn’t as young as she used to be. She had to protect her skin. She had to put foundation on. Then a little blush because in the winter she looked so pale. A little mascara to not feel so plain. Mascara, like a mask for the eyes. Lipstick to brighten those winter lips. Deodorant was a must. So was perfume. Perfume because when Jared came home, it had lived on her skin and he said she smelled good. She put on Creed’s Virgin Island Water to go to the supermarket for Jared so he could nuzzle when he came home and tell her she smelled like summer coconut and lime.
Produce first, then tea, then sugar, then diet soda (again!) It was for hubby. She herself had stopped drinking it: didn’t want her metabolism to slow. With her ankle still slightly throbbing, she bought some chicken, some ground sirloin, a Cornish hen, cast a look of revolt at the calves’ liver, and made her way to the paper aisle.
“Would you like me to get those down for you?” a voice said behind her.
He was next to her, smiling, looking up at the 6-pack of paper towels she’d been trying to pull off the top shelf.
“Please,” she said, lightly smiling back. “I guess it helps to be tall.”
“Well, you’re no slouch in the tall department.” He pulled them down with one arm. “Just not quite tall enough.”
She was quite tall for a woman. Five-eight in her bare feet. He was wearing a black leather jacket today, an aviator scarf, ripped jeans again, old boots. His smile was clean, shiny, like he was thinking of a joke, of something witty to say.
“So what were you doing at the mall the other day?” he asked. “I said hello; didn’t you recognize me?”
That was witty? “Shopping. What were you doing at the mall?” She ignored the other, unanswerable bits of his question.
“Hanging out with my buddy Gil. He says I need some new clothes if I’m going to make an impression on my new bosses. So reluctantly I got myself a white shirt.”
“Oh, yeah?” Should she ask? Well, why not? They were just making small talk in the supermarket. She picked up a box of light bulbs, casual. “Where are you working?” She hoped he wouldn’t say Baskin-Robbins.
He pointed in some nebulous direction. “At the Jag dealership down the street. But that’s later in the day. Two mornings a week I got another job.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“At John Cortese