Light of Day Page 3

  “Yes, it is,” she replied. “I’ll call you later this week about the reception.”

  He inclined his head in a half nod. “Fine.”

  Lila shouldered her bag. “Thank you,” she said, her voice matching his cool tones.

  “Drive carefully,” he replied.

  As she closed the door behind her, he was already engrossed in paperwork. She tried not to mind, but as she traveled through her day, she found her mind tripping over him now and then.

  When her deliveries had been completed, Lila returned the car to Allen and took the bus to the used-car lot he had recommended. In the lot she circled several models that fell into her general needs—something fairly small, fairly new and fairly economical.

  A salesman in a raincoat materialized almost immediately. “What can I help you with today?”

  “I’m here to buy a car,” she said, crouching to look in the windows of a station wagon. Clean, she noted, and not the kind of hasty clean that was given cars when they came on the lot. The grooves in the vinyl showed no build-up of grime, and the acrylic cover of the speedometer was sparkling. “Tell me about this one,” she invited.

  As the salesman outlined the special points, Lila continued to circle the car, running hands over door panels, bending to examine wheel rims. Finally she lifted the hood and began poking around the engine. She cut the salesman off in midsentence. “I want to drive it,” she said.

  “What? Oh, great. Climb right in. I’ll get the key.” He hurried off toward the office.

  Behind the wheel Lila settled in the driver seat, checking the angle of her back in the seat, the way her hands fit on the steering wheel. When the car managed as well as it looked and made none of the telltale sounds she’d been taught to recognize, she smiled in satisfaction. “I’ll take it,” she said, pulling back into the car lot.

  Nonplussed, he hurried inside to comply, and within a few hours, Lila was one car richer.

  It was odd to drive the car into her driveway. Allen drove up behind her and unfolded himself from the car, a big, redheaded man with sharp blue eyes and the chest of a bear.

  “Guess this means I lose out on my special dinners, huh?” he said, though obviously delighted at Lila’s choice.

  “Well, considering your engagement, I thought it was time to quit, anyway. Dana will feed you.”

  “True. But she can’t make black forest cake like you can.”

  “I’ll give her my recipe.” Lila thought of her motorcycle, still stranded at the restaurant. “It feels weird, Allen. I’m getting more and more normal all the time.”

  He laughed, giving her arm a squeeze. “There’s no such thing as normal, Lila. I thought you would have learned that by now.”

  “There is normal—white picket fences and two children and a husband who works in the day and comes home at night.”

  “Those are externals.” His eyes sobered. “They don’t mean anything at all, really. I’m going to be that man pretty soon, and I love Dana’s baby. But I’m no more normal or average than—” He broke off. “Than anyone else.”

  Lila unlocked the front door and waved Allen in ahead. “You aren’t normal because you’re an artist,” she insisted.

  “I’m not normal because there’s no such thing.”

  “My brothers are normal to the point of nauseating,” Lila said, tossing her purse on a small table just inside the door. “They all live just like they think they’re supposed to. They go to church on Sundays and PTA on Wednesdays and grocery stores on Monday mornings.”

  Allen grinned, sinking down on the pillows near her small wood stove. “You still don’t get it. You would be Lila Waters even if you lived in the most perfect little house in the suburbs with two children and a couple of dogs and clothes drying on the line in the backyard.” He paused. “You’d be even more of yourself, because you wouldn’t have to keep up all these pretenses of how unusual you are, how you’ve broken the mold of your family to be somebody else.”

  “No way.” She shuddered for effect and bustled into the kitchen to get dinner. “You’re just hoodwinked because you’re in love,” she called through the archway between living room and kitchen. “You used to agree with me one hundred percent.”

  Allen stretched his long, skinny legs out in front of him and propped his head on hands folded behind him. “Rebellion is a blast at eighteen,” he said. “We had a good time being bohemians in college, but really, Lila, that’s all past.”

  She laughed. “You’re right. It’s painful to have to grow up though, isn’t it?” She paused in the act of tearing spinach leaves. “I’ve been agonizing about buying a car for two months, so afraid it was going to change the way I looked at things.” She shook her head. “All I feel today is relief.”

  “Good for you.” He stood up. “Maybe next you’ll think about buying some real furniture instead of these damned pillows.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t count on it.” But as she scrubbed mushrooms for the salad, she thought of Samuel. If the truth were known, she’d be embarrassed to bring him into her living room, with its flamboyant fabrics and colors and defiant air. When she looked over her shoulder into the room, she thought it looked like the expression of the twenty-year-old she once had been. She didn’t know how the woman she’d become would change it.

  They were thoughts she put aside to listen to Allen’s stories of the inevitable chaos resulting from his wedding plans. The date had already been changed three times to accommodate various guests and locations, and it looked as if they might have to change it again. “Just give me a week’s notice,” Lila teased. “I don’t want to miss it—or worse, show up all dressed up for somebody else’s wedding.” She set the table with spinach salad and bread.

  “You’re making my cake, lady. If you forget, I’m in trouble.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “Maybe I can teach my intended how to make this sourdough cornbread,” he mused softly, crumbling it between his fingers.

  “Now, that’s easy,” she said. “You just have to keep up with the starter, so it’s ready when you are.” Lila gave him a wry smile. The original starter had belonged to Allen. He’d brought it home from a trip to Alaska between their sophomore and junior years in college. The old miner who’d given it to him said it had been mixed in 1947 and had been kept going ever since. Intrigued by the story, Lila had asked for a little starter for herself. Not even two months after giving it to her, Allen had accidentally let his spoil, and had endured Lila’s teasing ever since.

  She touched his arm. “I’ll make a wedding present of it—the recipe, the starter and even some bread.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  He left early. As Lila straightened up the kitchen, she thought wistfully of the old days, when Allen would have stayed until three or four in the morning, arguing politics and religion and history with her.

  She curled in a window seat off the kitchen, pulling aside the paisley curtain to watch the endless rain. Lately she’d been toying with the idea of returning to school for a master’s degree. Unfortunately it was nostalgia that prompted the idea, and that didn’t quite seem the best reason in the world to struggle with a thesis, especially when she’d found no use at all for the history degree she’d already collected.

  “See what you get, Waters?” she said aloud. “Everybody told you to do something sensible.”

  But sensible had never been her goal. It was just that she’d been a little lonely the past year. Her recurring back problems had forced an early retirement from the restaurant business, and then Allen had fallen in love. Even timing had something to do with it. At her high school reunion, Lila had learned that she was the only woman in her entire class who had not been married.

  It had made her feel odd, not out of any need to be married, but because she’d still not met anyone who’d stirred her up enough to make her even consider it. Maybe, she thought now, her standards were too high.

  “Nope!” she said firmly to the windows and jum
ped up. One thing she wouldn’t do was moon. Her narrowed eyes lit upon the flamboyant cushions scattered around her living room, and with a quick pursing of her lips, she scrounged up paper and pencil to sketch out alternatives to the paisleys and India cottons and satins now dominating the room.

  She was deeply engrossed in her brainstorming when the phone rang. She answered distractedly, adding the general outline of a chair to her drawing.

  “Lila.” Even the single word seemed to hold a whisper of exotic winds, and she knew who it was before he added, “This is Samuel Bashir.”

  The pencil went still in her fingers. “Yes.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” She grinned to herself, looking at the blocked-out representation of her living room. “What can I do for you?”

  “There have been some changes made for our event next Saturday. I thought, if it would be no inconvenience, I could bring them by to you on my way home.”

  “It’s not at all inconvenient.”

  “Fine, then. Perhaps an hour, at most.”

  “Do you remember how to get here?”

  “I remember,” he said firmly.

  As she hung up, Lila licked her lips and shook her head over the sketches she had made. “Too late, sister,” she murmured, then scooped them up and tossed them in the wastebasket. Once again Samuel Bashir was going to get the real Lila.

  * * *

  The phone call was an excuse, Samuel knew. He could easily have saved the changes for Monday. But all day he’d been restless, and not even the work he’d found for his hands had done much good. He wanted to see her for a few small moments. Surely, he thought, there was nothing wrong with that.

  As he walked up the slender, old-fashioned sidewalk to her door, he knew there was something wrong with it. Lila was an innocent. Not naïve and certainly not stupid, but nonetheless an innocent. He had no business seeking out her company.

  He sighed as he stepped up onto the small stoop. A man grew weary of forever viewing the seamy side of life. Surely he’d earned a few moments of respite.

  His knock was answered instantly, and there stood Lila, her wild curls tumbling loose over her shoulders. “Hello, Samuel,” she said. “Come in. It’s cold.”

  The room he stepped into was no surprise, somehow. Lacquered China red bowls were mixed with brass and silver knickknacks, and a huge East Indian tapestry hung on one wall. “It looks like an opium den, I know,” Lila said with a rueful lift of her eyebrows. “I’ve just noticed I’m growing out of my bohemian stage. In fact, when you called I was brainstorming ideas to change it.”

  He smiled. “Pity. It suits you, this room.”

  “I’m not sure how I should take that,” she answered, but a broad, impish smile accompanied her words. “Would you like a brandy and some coffee? It’s ready if you have time.”

  “No brandy,” he said with a slow, tired shake of his head. “But I’d enjoy a cup of coffee.” He glanced around, debating the choice of cushions on the floor.

  As if sensing his debate Lila said, “We can go in the kitchen if you’d be more comfortable.”

  He smiled slowly, thinking of home, so far away and so long ago. “No, this is fine.” To show her he meant it, he settled himself near the little wood stove, where a small fire burned merrily.

  “I’ll be right back, then.”

  There was a good smell in the rooms, a hint of incense tossed with pine and rain. The area was lit with small lamps that flung out a handful of cheer, and plants crowded into every available nook and cranny. He hadn’t lied. He honestly liked her house, for the same reasons he was drawn to the woman. There was no artifice about either one.

  She returned with a tray, which she settled on a small lacquered table. Pulling a fistful of pillows over, she sat opposite him and poured coffee from a ceramic pot. She’d brought a glass of brandy for herself and this she tasted before she spoke.

  “How was business tonight?” she asked.

  Samuel sipped the hot coffee and shrugged. “Not what I would have liked.”

  “I know that feeling,” she answered. “The difference is you have the ability to do something about it. I’m very glad your firm has taken over.”

  “It seems like a good place.” He paused. “But I think I’d rather talk about other things tonight.”

  “Tired, are you?”

  He rubbed his forehead briefly. “There is much work to be done there.”

  “I know.” Impulsively she told him of her recent purchase.

  “What kind did you buy?” he asked.

  “A station wagon.”

  “Practical choice. Did you get tired of your motorcycle?”

  Lila laughed. “I’m going to keep it, but I’m getting too old to ride a motorcycle in the rain.”

  He reached for his jacket pocket and the cigarettes there. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not a bit.” As she turned to reach for a brass ashtray behind her, he admired the curved outline of her thigh beneath her long, loose skirt, which she’d paired with a soft yellow T-shirt that effectively hid her body. Her clothes were almost extreme in their modesty, and Samuel wondered if she’d been raised with a strict mother. He smiled.

  “What is it?” she asked, catching the grin as she turned.

  He shook his head and accepted the ashtray. “My clothes again, right?” she guessed.

  With an apologetic lift of his shoulders, he nodded. “Most American women are not so, er—”

  “Prudish?” she finished for him.

  “No.” He exhaled, trying unsuccessfully to come up with the right term. Modest wasn’t quite right either, since a leather bomber jacket was hardly demure. “I don’t know the word. You cover yourself up. Women don’t do that here anymore.”

  “Where you come from, do they do it there?”

  He grinned. Her curiosity this morning had pleased him, but he wasn’t really at liberty to discuss it. He sidestepped the question again. “Some do. Some don’t.”

  “It’s the same here,” she replied, lifting her glass. With a smile, she tucked a bare ankle under the long skirt.

  “So it is.”

  A silence fell between them. Lila carefully placed the glass back on the table and folded her hands. Instead of filling the pause, Samuel let her lead the conversation in the way she would choose.

  When she spoke up, her question surprised him. “Tell me how a businessman came to have a photograph of Einstein on his wall.”

  “To remind me,” Samuel replied.

  “Remind you of what?” Her shoulders were expressive beneath the tangle of curls; she used them with her hands and eyebrows to frame and underline words.

  Samuel looked at her for a moment, wishing again that there was not so much of his life that he was forced to hide. “Many things,” he said, finally. “Peace. Honor. Vision.”

  The brandy settled in the back of Lila’s neck, relaxing her gently. “Hmm,” Lila said. “Pretty noble concepts. I don’t really know much about him.” She frowned in thought. “He was a pacifist, though, right? And he worked hard for Israel.”

  He inclined his head with a smile of encouragement. “Yes, that’s right.”

  She shrugged away his approval. “I guess a history degree is good for something, after all.”

  “Is that your background—history?”

  Lila nodded. “Emphasis on the twentieth century.”

  “Why were you working in the restaurant, then? Surely there is something you could do.”

  “No, truthfully there isn’t. Nothing I like, anyway. I’m in love with history, but I’m too restless to be a good teacher and I hate doing research for others, because they always seem to want information about times and places that bore me silly.” She looked at him. “You don’t seem exactly suited to this business yourself.”

  He flashed his honest grin, off-center and pleasing. A glitter danced in his eyes. “Like you, I am in love with a subject for which there is no work I
would enjoy.”

  “Which is?”

  “Physics.” He studied his cigarette a moment, then looked at her, genuine amusement lightening his features. “I worshiped Einstein as a boy and thought I would grow up to take his theories another step. Unfortunately—” he paused and sighed “—the heart is willing, but the mind is weak.” He lifted one eyebrow. “I found my talents do not lean in that direction.”

  Lila said nothing for a moment, imagining him engrossed in the study of matter and energy. It suited him much better than his role of restaurateur. She realized it wasn’t his aura of power that had made the latter seem odd, but a certain intensity of concentration. “How crushing,” she murmured at last. “Did you study long?”

  “I’m a handful of pages short on a doctoral paper, which I will never finish.”

  “You seem to take it in stride.”

  “Well, Einstein himself said that one should do things for which one has talent. I seem to be a very good businessman.”

  Lila laughed. “And I’m a very good baker.” With a sense of camaraderie, she leaned over the table. “I think we’re better for knowing, for having had the education anyway.”

  “Yes,” he said, but there was a troubled expression in his eyes suddenly. As if aware of it, he reached again into a jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “This is the changed menu. I’ve given some of the recipes to Gerald. Do you know anything about Arabian food?”

  She frowned, taking the menu. “Not really. Why the change?”

  He touched the bridge of his nose, like a man with a headache. “The teaching staff wishes to welcome their visiting professor, but the original order will be impossible, since the visitor is from the Middle East. He likely will not care for shellfish. We will have to concentrate on other dishes.”

  “I see.” She glanced at the revised menu. “This looks wonderful. Black-olive pâté?”

  “A favorite of mine.”

  “I don’t suppose Gerald was particularly thrilled with the change. He hates to step outside his area of expertise.”

  “I agreed to prepare the dishes he was unfamiliar with.”