“So,” I said. “I have a bit of a problem. My car over there”—I gestured vaguely toward my poor, incapacitated Camry—“won’t start. I think it’s probably my battery, but I don’t have any jumper cables. I was wondering if you maybe...”
I trailed off, as if not completing my sentence meant that I hadn’tactuallymade the request. If he turned me down, or said he couldn’t help, I’d left myself some wiggle room of plausible deniability. Like, calm down, psycho, I was just going to ask if you maybe agreed that it sounded like a battery problem! Obviously I can take care of it by myself!
But he only shook the hair out of his eyes and, without moving his attention from me to my car, said, “Sure.”
?THE ONLY SLIGHTwrinkle was that Sam hadn’t parked at the library. He’d had another errand to do nearby, so he offered to go get his truck from that place and bring it back to hook up to my poor dead vehicle. The idea of walking even a quarter mile in the oppressive Florida heat wasn’t appealing, but the idea of having another glimpse into whatever errand Sam might’ve been up to most definitely was, so I offered to walk back with him.
The sidewalk was narrow enough that it was hard to stay side by side without bumping each other occasionally, but I didn’t want to lead because I didn’t know where we were going, and I certainly wasn’t about to trail behind like some puppy. I tried to make myself as small as possible, but these hips weren’t going anywhere. Sam rubbed his palm on his pants before reaching up to grasp his books with both hands, as if they were so heavy he needed the extra support.
The silence between us grew as thick as the humidity, but Sam didn’t seem in any hurry to break it. I wondered, not for the first time, if Conner had somehow gotten it wrong in the game of telephone through middleman Josue. Because if Sam supposedly found me interesting, why wouldn’t hesayanything?
It’s not like we hadn’t talked before. He’d strung whole sentences together about mowing the lawn. If that was such a scintillating topic, imagine how stimulating talking about car trouble could be.
“You don’t talk much,” I said finally. When in doubt, I liked to state the obvious.
“Whereas you talk to cats about serial killers,” he said. It was delivered so deadpan that I had to turn my head to catch the slight smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.
“I was on the phone with mydissertation advisor,” I said, although I believed she’d hung up by the time I was seeking a cat’s opinion on Ann Rule. But Sam didn’t need to know that. “Whose cat is that, anyway?”
“Not really anybody’s, I don’t think,” Sam said. “We have a lot of outside cats in the neighborhood, if you hadn’t noticed. The lady on the corner has a few, and they just keep having kittens.”
“This one’s been fixed,” I said. “She has the ear-tip to prove it.”
“She hangs out by Pat’s because she feeds all the animals,” Sam said. “You’re lucky it’s not springtime, because there’s this one cardinal who hangs around Pat’s bird feeder and then will launch himself at your windows, on the attack against the territorial threat of his own reflection.”
That had been possibly the longest I’d ever heard Sam speak, and it was about a cardinal. He hadn’t said anything to indicate he’d gone all Betty Draper on the bird with a rifle, so it looked like I could checkcruelty to animalsoff the warning sign list.
Sam turned toward a parking lot, but I hadn’t been paying attention, and so his shoulder bumped mine, sending me stumbling slightly into the brush by the sidewalk. He reached out a hand to steady me.
“I am so sorry,” he said.
“Not your fault.” I tried to give him a smile, because he lookedtruly upset that he might’ve hurt me, but I worried it came out more like Wednesday Addams’ attempt to mollify the counselors at Camp Chippewa. I was very conscious of the warmth of his hand, which was still wrapped around my upper arm.
He sighed. “I’m not normally this clumsy,” he said.
“Seriously. Not a problem. Nobody’s phone got cracked, nobody dropped any books.” Looking up, I realized that we were in front of a large building with a sign that saidJOCELYN’S MUSIC, Sam’s truck parked in the far corner of the lot. “This was your errand?”
Sam removed his hand from my arm to run it through his hair, and I was surprised at how bereft it made me, to lose even that brief contact.
“I teach lessons here,” he said. “Over the summer. It’s not much—maybe four or five hours a week, depending on who’s signed up—but it’s a good side job to make a little extra money.”
A few things clicked into place—his seemingly random comings and goings in the middle of the day, those fuckingkhakis. I gestured to his outfit. “I guess this business casual look is your uniform?”
He glanced down at himself. “Technically, they call itneutral professional. It’s supposed to be a solid light-colored shirt, no logos, and khaki pants. Navy or black are too harsh, apparently. I just bought a few sets of this exact outfit because it was easier that way.”
“So if I opened your closet, it’d look like Doug Funnie’s, a row of white shirts and khaki pants all lined up?” I shook my head, wanting to dispel any image of his closet or why I’d be in his bedroom in the first place. I started walking toward the music store.“Let’s go inside for a sec,” I said. “I could use some... well, nothing from here, actually. But I’m hot and the air-conditioning sounds good.”
Really, I just wanted to look around. Now that at least one of Sam’s mysteries had been solved, I was curious about this place where he spent some of his time. I didn’t remember it being there when I was a kid, but then again, I was never very musical. I’d tried to teach myself guitar in high school when it seemed like the cool thing to do, but I should’ve tapped out after mandatory recorder lessons in fourth grade.
Inside, the place was bright and filled with instruments of all types—violins and violas hanging in a glass case by the door, keyboards set up to form one walkway through the store, and a couple of drum sets that had to be the bane of every employee who had to hear small children banging on them every day. There was a kid in front of one set right now, happily pounding a loud, percussive beat while his mother talked with one of the clerks.
“So what lessons do you teach?” I leaned down to peer inside another glass case by the front counter, showing various expensive items that appeared to be replacement parts for instruments I’d barely be able to name. Another clerk appeared from behind the counter, greeting me with the sunny solicitousness of someone who thought she might be about to make a sale. I stood back up quickly.
“Oh, hi, Sam,” she said, apparently spotting him behind me. Was it me, or did she sound a little breathless when she said his name?You have no claim on him,I reminded myself.You’re not jealous.
“Hey, Jewel,” he said. “We’re just browsing.”
Jewel?Now I was jealous, because that was a beautiful fucking name. I wished my name was Jewel.