The List by Anne Calhoun Page A

didn’t want to go out in the rain.”
    “I’m energized now,” she said, focused on her phone. “The theater in Union Square is showing a Clint Eastwood retrospective.
Hereafter
starts in twenty minutes. If we dash we can get there in time.”
    She’d never suggested a date. She texted him to let him know she would welcome a late-night visitor, and he did the same, keeping things far more casual than he would prefer. “Sure,” he said.
    “Do you have plans?”
    “No,” he said.
    “Let’s go.”
    She darted into her bedroom to snatch a pair of Wellingtons from her closet, then hurried down the stairs. He followed, shrugging into his blazer while she stomped into the boots, belted her trench coat around her waist, and plucked an umbrella from the stand. He took her hand at the top of the stairs to the sidewalk and they jog-walked through the rain to the theater.
    “Popcorn? Junior Mints?” he asked. She shook her head, and they walked into the nearly empty theater as the lights dimmed. She kept her jacket on, and hooked the umbrella over the seat in front of her, and watched the movie, a tale of the ultimate severed connection, with a near-feral intensity.
    When it was over, he took a chance. “Dinner?”
    “Sure,” she said.
    He took her to his favorite Ethiopian place, and since she was feeling chatty, probed a little while she studied the menu. “You have art on the walls, but no pictures. None of you, your friends, vacation snapshots, selfies in unusual places, your family, nothing,” he said. Earlier in the afternoon he’d taken the time to look at the art on his way up the stairs. Normally he was too focused on getting Tilda naked and in bed to do anything as contemplative as look at pictures.
    “They got lost in one of my moves,” she said, flipping from the appetizers to the vegetarian dishes. “The originals are in Cornwall with my grandmother, and between school and work, I never got around to replacing them. Fancy a starter?”
    “Depends on what a starter is.”
    “An appetizer.”
    “The sambossas are good here,” he said.
    “That and doro wat sounds delicious,” she said, and closed the menu. The waiter took their orders and left a bottle of wine.
    “You mentioned a business proposal,” he said, his voice lifting just a little to indicate that it was a question.
    “Yes, I met someone at the same party where I saw you for the second time. He’s in charge of North American acquisitions for a luxury goods global conglomerate. I haven’t called him yet, but if things go well, there’s a good possibility that I would take West Village Stationery to the next level.”
    “I still don’t fully understand why stationery,” he said as he poured her a glass.
    With one elbow resting on the table, she played with the stem of her wineglass and smiled rather wryly at him. “Two reasons, I suppose. Do you know how really good paper is made?”
    “No,” he said, and prepared to sit back and enjoy every second of learning.
    “It’s a rather vigorous process by which the fibers are separated from the junk, beaten into pulp—that’s where the expression came from, by the way—screened through mesh to eliminate still more unwanted materials that affect the paper’s quality, then pressed and dried. Making one sheet of paper requires three gallons of water, more as the quality increases. The finest paper in the world has been through a purifying crucible. I admire that, and respect the result.”
    He blinked. Her face, her tone, were far too intense to reflect casual interest, but then again, in his experience people with obsessions were intense about them. “And the second reason?”
    This time the smile softened. A better memory. “It began in childhood, as these things so often do. I went to boarding school when I was eight, and was terribly homesick for the first year. The housemistress suggested I write a little bit of a letter each day, to Nan, my grandmother. I did, and it helped.