They had nowhere to go but her car. So they went and sat in her car.
“Is everything okay?” she said, turning on the engine and staring ahead at her comforting tombstones. Was it her imagination, or had some new ones popped up? She could swear there were more gray markers in the ground than last week.
“It’s fine,” he said curtly. After a silence that seemed to Larissa like someone stopping playing the piano because he couldn’t figure out what the next note was, Kai continued, “You know—everything is not fine, but I really can’t talk about it, so …”
“I understand.” She wanted to tell him that Brian and Gary already mentioned a funeral, but there was no good way of explaining her reasons for dropping by his dealership when he wasn’t there, and talking about him to not one but two men. She was silent because she herself couldn’t figure out what the next note was.
“Everything okay at work?”
“I guess. Monday’s my day off,” he said, taking a gulp of coffee, then another, and staring at his open and untouched container of sushi.
Who had died? Was it his mother? He looked pale enough for it to be his mother. A friend of his? He had mentioned that he had to leave Hawaii because of stuff. Could this have something to do with that? Larissa was idly curious, slightly concerned, but mostly shamelessly relieved that he was back. A funeral in Hawaii seemed a long dry spell away from her current pool of calm water.
“How’s the weather been here?”
Talk about small talk. “It’s been pretty good,” she replied. “A little chilly. It rained all weekend. What about Hawaii?”
“Same old, same old,” he said. “Never changes. Eighty. Sunny. Windy in the afternoon.”
“Sounds fantastic.”
“I guess.”
Oh, so now he didn’t want to chit-chat even about the weather. They sat. The music played low, Alice Cooper, the Ramones.
Could she here deny the story that is printed in her blood? Leonato says to Friar Francis in Much Ado. Love conquered all, despite one’s best intentions. What a lesson it would be for her young charges. Larissa had to go. She didn’t want Michelangelo to worry.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” What she wanted was to touch him.
“For what?”
She said nothing. He said nothing. Then he groaned, in small restrained anguish. “Larissa,” Kai said. The way he said it, her name had a din to it, like a song of the summer swallows, something deep that rolled off his tongue.
The name was a caress. Larissa, he caressed her with her own name. The rest of what he said was insignificant.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. But trust me that the story is worse and more tawdry than you imagine, and there will be nothing for you to feel but pity, and the reason I don’t want to tell you is because I don’t particularly want your pity. Can you understand?” He didn’t look away from her as he spoke. “It will seem like I’m trying to manipulate you with tragedy. And I don’t want to do that.”
“I understand. Don’t worry. Just … take care of yourself.”
“I might eventually tell you,” he said.
“Eventually? Why not now, said the undertaker.”
Kai half smiled, half didn’t. “Funny. But I won’t ever feel like telling you.” He looked wretched when he said it.
“Does it have anything to do with why you left Hawaii in the first place?”
“Everything.” He took his empty can, his uneaten sushi, opened the door. “Nice to see you again,” he said.
“Yes, you too.”
That was positively breaking the courtesy barrier! Larissa thought as she drove to pick up Michelangelo, the fingers gripping the wheel trembling from the tension.
Next morning at 9:30 the phone rang. She was getting ready to drive to Pingry and debated not picking up, but the caller ID said, “MADISON JAGUAR DEALER. With all due haste she picked up.
“Larissa?” Kai said. Again!
“Yes, hello,” she said. It set her blood coursing, his calling her house, like breaking and entering.
“Um, Brian just told me that your navigation system is in,” he said. There was an amused glint to his voice. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong but I didn’t know you needed a navigation system.”
“I didn’t think I did,” said Larissa. “But it turns out I do.”
“Do you remember me trying to sell it to you?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know I needed it then.”
“I see. Okey-dokey. When can you bring in the Jag so we can install it?”
“When is good?” She had to order twenty-five copies of the play and write up the audition notice. That would take some time, probably most of the morning.
“Now is good.”
“Now?” Not twenty-four hours as director and already the play was interfering adversely in her life! She should’ve never accepted. Oh, hell. She would call Ezra, make nice, ask Sheila to order the books, and she’d write the casting notice this afternoon. What was one more day? “Yes, okay,” she said to Kai in an even voice. “I’ll bring it in.”
“Thirty minutes?”
In twenty-eight Larissa was at the dealership. She brought her car to the back, walked through the service door, filled out some paperwork, signed on the dotted line, gave her credit card (what would Jared say when he found out that she bought a navigation system she didn’t need for $2900?) and took her receipt.
“Nav will be ready this afternoon,” said Brian. “You want one of my guys to give you a ride home?”
“No, that’s okay, I’m fine today,” Larissa said, keeping it succinct, her face impassive like her voice. She smiled.
Brian didn’t even glance at her. She liked hiding behind the polite words. Everything so smooth, normal, even keel, not a prob, nothing to see here, folks, just passing through, like all wives who have work done on their cars. She strolled through the dealership, smiled at the idle business office guys, barely acknowledged Crystal, the snippy receptionist, and made her way to Kai’s desk, where he was looking into a computer, drinking coffee and on the phone. Nodding to her, he pointed to the chair in front of him. She perched and waited. He was on the phone five minutes or more, searching for a car for a prospective client. The phone rang for him half a dozen times. The receptionist walked over to mouth to him there was another phone call waiting and he pantomimed to her to take a message. When he hung up, he faced her. “How you doing?”
“I’m good. You?”
“Busy like a bee. Dropped off your car?”
“Yep. Brian said it’d be ready this afternoon.”
“For sure.”
“If you’re too busy, Brian said he can have one of his guys give me a ride home …”
Kai shook his head. “I am one of his guys.” He grinned. “You ready?” He was less pale today. He took his keys. “I’ll be back in ten,” he called out to the business office crew, who were gawking at them in a way Larissa didn’t appreciate.
“It’s