One More Place

Kate’s message arrived while Laura was putting the garden hose away.

Dinner Saturday? Just a few people. You’d like them.

Laura stood with the hose in one hand and read the last sentence again. Kate had never quite accepted that liking people and wanting to spend Saturday evening meeting them were separate questions.

Who are the few?

The reply took longer than the invitation.

Come at six.

Laura laughed and finished winding the hose. She would probably go. Kate cooked well, and her evasions were at least familiar.

Years earlier, another woman had invited her to dinner with almost exactly the same assurance.

At the time, Laura’s practice had grown beyond the point where she could reasonably call it new. She had employees, clients who referred other clients, and a calendar that filled while she was trying to clear it. The office was doing well. That fact appeared in the accounts and in the increasing number of people who began conversations by saying they knew how busy she was.

She liked being busy. She liked the work itself, and the authority she had gradually earned to decide how it should be done. Marriage had become something she would consider when the practice required less of her. Whenever that seemed close, she hired someone, took on a larger matter, or discovered a new expense that made the larger matter necessary.

She had dated occasionally. There were men she liked, dinners she enjoyed, and evenings during which she found herself mentally revising a letter while someone described a vacation. After one such dinner she returned to the office to retrieve a file and stayed until eleven. She knew this was a poor advertisement for her availability.

Her friend Tom’s wife, Helen, had opinions about it.

Helen expressed those opinions indirectly, through invitations Laura could usually decline on the grounds that she had already agreed to something at work. This time, however, Helen called several days ahead and began by asking what Laura was doing Friday.

“Why?”

“Because we haven’t seen you.”

“You saw me Sunday.”

“In the grocery store. You were holding a telephone and buying soup.”

Laura remembered the soup. “It was a difficult week.”

“Come for dinner.”

Laura agreed before Helen could ask what made Friday difficult too.

On Friday afternoon, a client called just as she was preparing to leave. By the time the conversation ended, she was late. She changed her shoes beneath the desk, carried her jacket to the car, and arrived at Tom and Helen’s house still considering something she should have asked.

A man she did not know opened the door.

For a moment she thought she had come to the wrong house. Then Helen appeared behind him, wiping her hands on a towel.

“There you are. Michael, take her coat.”

He stepped aside and offered his hand before accepting the jacket. Laura noticed that he was older than she was, with gray beginning at his temples and a face that looked as though it spent some time outdoors. He wore an open-collared shirt and seemed entirely comfortable answering someone else’s door.

“Have they put you to work too?” she asked.

“Only the front entrance so far.”

Helen took Laura’s bag, though Laura had not offered it, and directed them toward the living room.

Tom was opening wine. There were four glasses on the table.

Laura looked at them, then at Helen.

Helen asked whether she had found much traffic.

It was an innocent question, delivered with unnecessary care.

Dinner had not quite reached the table. Tom handed Laura a glass while Helen went back to the kitchen, leaving her with Michael. He asked about her week. She gave him the shortened version, the one that omitted names and everything likely to require explanation.

“Yours?” she asked.

“Long.”

He smiled as he said it. She liked that he did not immediately compete with her account.

Tom returned with bread and mentioned that Michael’s practice was only a few miles from Laura’s office. That was how she learned he was a cardiologist.

“I’d have guessed something less sedentary,” she said.

“What gave me away?”

“The tan.”

He glanced at his forearm. There was a distinct line above his wrist.

“Bicycle,” he said.

Laura admitted that she ran. He asked where, and she described a route near her apartment. He knew the road where it crossed a steep little rise, although he had encountered it on two wheels.

“That hill is longer going up,” she said.

“I’ve noticed.”

Helen called them to the table before Laura could ask anything else.

She had arranged the places with an attention that became apparent only when Tom sat down and Michael pulled out the chair beside Laura. There was nowhere else for either of them to go.

The meal was good. Helen had made something that could remain in the oven while guests arrived late, and Tom complimented it with the gratitude of a man who had survived earlier, less forgiving arrangements. For a while they talked about a restaurant that had closed, a mutual friend, and a repair to the house that had begun as a small leak and become a wall without plaster.

Michael listened well. When he spoke, he gave people room to answer. Laura found herself telling him more about the office than she usually told someone outside the profession: the difficulty of hiring, the pleasure of watching a younger employee become capable, the odd discovery that being in charge meant handling matters she had once assumed belonged to someone else.

He understood that last part immediately.

“I spent a surprising amount of Tuesday discussing a copier.”

“Did you resolve it?”

“I approved another visit from the man who hadn’t repaired it Monday.”

Laura laughed. “We may have the same man.”

Their work differed, but the edges of it were familiar. He had built a practice too. He knew what it meant to be responsible for people whose wages depended on keeping the place running. He also knew the late arrival at home, the meal assembled from whatever required the least attention, the book left open at a page he could not remember reading.

He had been single for several years. She learned that without receiving an account of why. It came into a story about buying a dining table he rarely used, and he moved on easily enough that she did not feel required to disclose anything in exchange.

After dinner, Helen asked Laura to help carry plates.

In the kitchen, Laura set them beside the sink and waited until Helen looked up.

“How long have you been planning this?”

Helen took a serving dish from her hands. “Dinner?”

Laura continued looking at her.

“Tom thought you’d get along.”

“Tom.”

“He did.”

From the other room came Tom’s laugh, followed by Michael saying something Laura could not hear.

Helen lowered her voice. “You both keep saying you haven’t time to meet anyone. I had a table and an evening.”

Laura wanted to object on principle. It was difficult to identify the principle while she was enjoying herself.

“You might have told me.”

“Would you have come?”

Laura reached for the last plate.

When they returned, Michael was examining a photograph on the mantel. It showed Tom several years earlier, standing beside a bicycle with an expression of considerable suffering.

“He took me riding,” Tom explained. “Once.”

“The hill was optional,” Michael said.

“You mentioned that afterward.”

Laura looked at the photograph. Tom’s shirt was dark with sweat. Beside him, Michael seemed to be enjoying the morning.

She turned to Michael. “How far was optional?”

He considered his answer just long enough to make her laugh again.

They stayed later than Laura intended. Her bag remained in the hallway, and she did not once reach for the telephone inside it. When she finally stood, Michael rose too.

Outside, the air had cooled. They walked down the front path together, each carrying a coat they had not put on.

“Were you warned?” Laura asked.

“About dinner?”

“About me.”

He stopped beside her car. “Helen told me a friend was coming. Successful attorney. Works too much.”

“That sounds balanced.”

“I said I probably wouldn’t be very good company.”

“What did she say?”

“That you probably wouldn’t either.”

Laura laughed, looking back toward the house. A shape moved away from the front window.

Michael had noticed it too. He waited until she turned back.

“Would you have dinner with me sometime? Somewhere they haven’t assigned the seats?”

She could feel herself beginning to consult the week ahead. There were appointments, a deadline, an evening she had meant to reserve for catching up. Then she looked at him standing beside the car, willing to wait for the answer without helping her toward it.

“Yes,” she said.

They chose a day. He wrote his number on the back of a receipt from his wallet and handed it to her. She put it in her bag, where she could find it.

Laura went inside from the garden and washed the soil from her hands. Kate’s invitation was still on the phone beside the sink.

For a moment she could remember the feel of that receipt, folded once, and the unfamiliar pleasure of having an evening ahead she wanted to keep clear.

She dried her hands and sent Kate a reply.

Six is fine. Should I bring anything?

Just yourself.

Laura carried the phone to her desk and added dinner to the calendar. Then she went upstairs to see which of her clothes the cat had been sleeping on.