as if he’s keeping back some of his amusement for himself. “What was it?”
“A musical instrument. I don’t know what you’d call it. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Eve isn’t sure if he’s teasing her. Luckily, the instrument makes a convenient conversational shield. “It’s like a violin—strings and a bow—but squarer, with a really long neck.”
“Sounds like the kind of thing Mick plays,” says Robert. “Weird contraptions that don’t even have English names.”
There’s a sudden edge in his voice: annoyance, or jealousy? Praising Micajah, he was feeding his own ego, Eve realizes, and she dislikes being his audience: for the showing off and the putting down. She’s starting to wish, for more than one reason, that she hadn’t agreed to join them for lunch.
“My dad thinks I’m a terrorist,” Micajah says, unruffled. “Because I play music from places where the State Department doesn’t want you to go.”
His vibe is somewhere between bohemian and outlaw.
“Well, if it makes you millions, I won’t complain!” Robert’s laugh is a braying bark. Eve sees the couple at the nearest table stiffen and pretend to ignore him.
“Yeah, all that money,” says Micajah quietly. “I’m planning to spend it on gold-leaf underwear. Not ostentatious. Just for that coddled feeling.”
The corners of his mouth turn down. His eyes, mischievous, catch Eve’s. She feels a trickle of sweat run down her back, even though it’s cool inside the restaurant. The sports bra she chose for her hunting expedition feels like an implement of torture around her chest.
“You’re going to move out of that roach motel,” Robert says. “Buy something that’s going to appreciate.”
“I appreciate where I live now,” says Micajah. Then, to Eve: “Did you buy it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a musician?”
“No. But even if I was, it’s not playable. The back is smashed.”
“So why did you buy it?”
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“And you couldn’t just leave it there.”
She feels transparent to his eyes.
“If it wasn’t broken, I probably couldn’t have afforded it,” she says. “It has this incredible carving, vines, twining all over it. I’m pretty sure it’s jasmine. It made me think of the secret gardens in children’s books. Or The Arabian Nights.”
“How the hell do you know it’s jasmine? It’s wood, for Chrissake.” That’s the spoiled-brat side of Robert: hating not being the center of Eve’s attention.
She reaches into her purse for a business card, and gives it to him. “I’m a garden designer now. I use jasmine a lot. It’s resilient, it lasts all summer, and it smells delicious when you sit outside in the evenings.”
Robert holds the card at arm’s length, as if he doesn’t believe what’s written on it. Eve had no particular interest in flowers back when he knew her. She gets the sense that he considers her change over the years as a kind of betrayal.
Micajah is glancing from his father to Eve, clearly wondering if they were once lovers. They weren’t. Eve is a little shocked by how much she cares that Micajah should know that. As the little sister, she had a Don’t touch sign plastered to her forehead. When Bill died, she went to the funeral with the guilty thought that maybe the extremity of emotion might propel them into each other’s arms. She hated herself for this callous disloyalty to her brother, allowing her desire to contaminate what should have been the purity of her grief. She didn’t know, before she got to the church, that Robert was married with a baby son.
The waiter arrives, a plate in each hand and the third balanced on his wrist. He gives Robert his steak, Eve her salad. Conscientiously, she ordered from the cheaper end of the menu.
“Saltimbocca,” the waiter says, setting Micajah’s plate on the table, twisting it to its most advantageous angle. “Jumps into the mouth. That’s what it means.” He’s flirting, helpless as an iron filing in Micajah’s magnetic field. Earlier, when he took their orders, Eve registered his agitation. She feels a pang of sympathy for him. Women used to be like that around Robert. She’d seen girls chase him down the street and force their phone numbers on him. He gloried in it with the laziness of a lion.
“Thanks, Josh,” Micajah says, remembering the waiter’s name from his spiel earlier, and meeting his eyes for a short moment before turning his attention back to Eve. Elegantly done, she thinks—a masculine gentleness his father never had.
“At least it’s not roses,” Micajah says.
What if the carved flowers had been roses? Would she have bought it? Maybe not. It was the jasmine—secretive, blooming in darkness—that seduced her.
“I hate roses,” he adds.
“Why?”
“Drag queens of the flower world.”
“Meaning what exactly?” his father chimes in. He looks from Eve to Micajah, Micajah to Eve, like a boxing referee before saying the word “Fight.”
“The whole sickening cultural orthodoxy of them,” Micajah says. “The fake valuation, like that ‘a diamond is forever’ crap. The environmental destruction of the factory rose farms, gobbling up the land in places like Kenya while the local people starve. It’s like their whole purpose in the world is to lie. I screwed around on you, darling, so here’s a bunch of roses. And that’s not even getting into the S&M of it. A symbol of love that makes your fingers bleed? Except, no, let’s pretend roses don’t have thorns, and hire slum kids to slice them off with razors.”
“He’s a hothead,” says Robert.
“I care,” says Micajah. It seems like an old battle between them.
“Do you really think it’s possible to have love without hurt?” Eve asks Micajah, then wishes she hadn’t.
“I don’t know,” says Micajah. “Is it possible to love deeply and choose not to feel the pain? Hell, it’s worth a try. Because if you don’t, what happens? You end up wrecking what’s beautiful.”
Like Bill. And like that unknown person who smashed the instrument but couldn’t bring himself to destroy it completely.
“Are you going to get it fixed?” Micajah asks Eve. “Or, you like broken things.”
It’s a statement, not a question. Again, she feels him looking straight into her heart. Flustered, she glances around the restaurant: the other diners chatting and laughing, the waiters moving competently about, the gerberas in vases on the tables.
“What were you doing in a junk shop in the Bronx, anyway?” asks Robert. “Looking for secondhand plants? I guess you found one!” That barking laugh again.
“Scouting for a friend’s antique shop. It’s what I do on weekends, sometimes. Now that my son’s grown. Allan.” Even after twenty-four years, she feels a warmth in saying his name. “He’s in Cambodia right now, taking a year off after pre-med, working for Smile Train.”
“What’s that?” asks Robert, though he doesn’t sound genuinely interested.
“A charity that fixes cleft palates on kids,” says Micajah. “That’s seriously cool,” he says to Eve. “You’re proud of him.”
“I am.”
“You should be proud of yourself too. You brought him up right.”
Flustered, she manages a half-smile in response. She’s glad she doesn’t know what to say, as she doesn’t trust her voice. Whatever words she’d find might come out as a squeak, or shaky, or have no sound at all.