The Glass Shoe (11 page)

Ryder eyed her thoughtfully. "How are you with trivia?"

"Are you by chance referring to that trivia game I found in the closet with these cards?"

"I was, yes."

"Well, if you feel brave..."

"Your cousins are fond of trivia too?"

"No. I just read a lot."

"I think I feel brave," Ryder said, and went to get the trivia game.

They opted not to use the gameboard, deciding that they would each simply use the dice to select the categories and collect tokens for correct answers. Whoever ended up with the most tokens would be the winner.

It was a relaxing game to play, and an informative one when two people were tentatively getting to know each other. They pulled the thick cushions off the couch and sat on the floor with the big coffee table between them and the fire burning brightly beside them. Nemo, clearly feeling left out of things, dragged his rug closer and sprawled out near Amanda, thumping his tail companionably against the floor whenever a remark was addressed to him.

"All right," Ryder said when Amanda had selected a category. "Brace yourself. What type of betting is used in horse racing?"

"Parimutuel."

"Damn. Take a token and roll the dice again."

She did, and he went on to the next card. "Who was Napoleon's first wife?"

"That's easy. Josephine."

He looked at her suspiciously but with a gleam of amusement in his eye. "Have you memorized these cards?"

"Are you kidding? Look how many there are. Tell him, Nemo. Tell him I'm playing fair. Besides, I'm bound to miss one.
Sooner or later."
She took another token and rolled the dice again.

Ryder studied another card. "This is a good one. What does a nihilist believe in?"

Amanda frowned, working it out in her mind.
"A nihilist?
Nihilist.
Annihilate.
To destroy completely, to—nothing.
He believes in nothing."

"Maybe we should have stuck to gin," Ryder said ruefully.

She grinned at him and took another token. "Persevere. My next category is"—she rolled the dice— "sports. Not my strong suit."

He smiled evilly after looking at the card. "How many men does a Canadian football team field?"

She didn't have to frown this time. "Now, there you've got me. I haven't the faintest idea."

"Twelve.
My turn."

His category was geography. Amanda read the question silently,
then
giggled. "If you can answer this, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. What's the principal language of Trinidad and Tobago?"

Ryder blinked.
"English."

"Give the man a cigar."

"I'll take a token." He did,
then
rolled the dice. "The category is literature."

"And the question is: What writer was nicknamed Papa?"

"Hemingway."

"Oh, a literate soul.
I had no idea."

"Don't scoff. Bite her, Nemo. The next category is—entertainment.
Question?"

"What symbolized justice and law to the Lone Ranger?"

" 'Who
was that masked man,' " Ryder murmured almost as if by rote, then added, "A silver bullet."

Amanda tried not to think about masks. "At least you aren't gloating," she said.

"I’ll do that later.
When I win."

She made a rude noise and went on to the next question. Ryder answered that and another one successfully, but was baffled by how many feet apart the stakes were for men's horseshoe pitching.
Forty.

Amanda was momentarily puzzled by the question asked her, but only because her answer didn't seem to make sense. "The difference between two square miles and two miles square is—two square miles. That is—I mean, two miles square is—is actually four square miles, so the difference is two square miles."

Ryder looked at the card in his hand and nodded slowly. "Well, you're right. I'm not quite sure how you got there, but the correct answer is certainly two square miles."

"I could draw a diagram," she offered solemnly.

"No. Thank you, but no. There are some mysteries in life destined to remain so."

Amanda nodded.
"Me and the sphinx.
The next category is geography. Read on."

"Where's the Sea of Tranquility?"

"No earthly boundaries in this game, I see. It's on the moon.
'Tranquility Base here.
The eagle has landed.' "

"It's funny how we remember some phrases so well, isn't it?" he remarked, reaching for the next card.

"I think it's because we learn by rote," Amanda said consideringly. "We learn to connect things to other things.
The moon landing.
Pearl Harbor."

" 'A
day that will live in infamy.'
" Ryder
nodded. "You may be right.
Ready for the next question?"

"Shoot."

"Who painted the Sistine ceiling?"

"An easy one.
Michelangelo."

"Okay. What does TKO stand for?"

"Technical knockout."
Amanda smiled suddenly. "I'm not totally dumb about sports. I just know a few select things." And she proved that by correctly stating that the two categories of harness racing were pacing and trotting. She had, however, no idea that there were two heads on a croquet mallet. "They have heads?"

"It says here they do." Ryder looked faintly baffled himself, but picked up the dice for his turn.

Amanda watched him, feeling relaxed and comfortable. But then he looked at her, and she was instantly conscious of the electricity arcing between them. Hastily she reached for the cards. "Urn... what travels in gaggles?"

"Geese."

He felt it too, she knew. It was in his voice, an almost imperceptible roughening,
a
suddenly husky note.
That intensity creeping back.
They couldn't ignore the strange awareness for long, either of them. She realized that. It was unnerving—and exciting. All her senses felt almost painfully alive, sensitive to everything around her in a way they'd never been before.

The lightness of the game was only an interlude.
An area of calm between recognition and completion.
But it was like the eye of a vast storm, with raw turbulence visible all around, a tangible force that could never be contained.

"Amanda?"

Quickly she reached for the next card.
"The category?"

"Geography," he said after a moment.

She kept her gaze fixed on the card she held. "What country would you have to visit to see the ruins of Troy?"

"Turkey. I think."

"You think right. Next?"

The intensity receded. But it didn't vanish. It hovered close, on the edge of awareness.

Ryder was able to answer correctly that the swallows were supposed to return to the San Juan Capistrano mission every March 19, and knew that the last major league baseball player to bat.400 was Ted Williams, but he didn't know that the one thing in India you were forbidden to fly an airplane over was the Taj Mahal.

Amanda knew that a ring-shaped coral island was better known as an atoll, but couldn't remember that Sherlock Holmes's landlady was Mrs. Hudson. She got her turn back quickly, however, since Ryder didn't know that the only mammal with four knees was the elephant.

"Four knees?" he demanded skeptically.

"Says here."

"I knew that giraffes didn't have vocal cords, but I didn't know elephants had four knees."

Amanda suddenly recalled a circus visit years before. "Their back legs bend backward at the joint instead of forward. All four legs bend the same way. So they have four knees."

"Or four reversed elbows." Ryder blinked and seemed to consider what he'd said.
"Two knees and two reversed elbows?"

"Reversed elbows?" Penny said, coming into the room with a tray. "What on earth—?"

Looking up at Penny solemnly, Amanda said, "Elephants have four knees.
Or two knees and two reversed elbows.
Ryder was trying to decide."

Penny put the big tray down on the coffee table beside the game board. The tray held coffee and sandwiches. "I think," she said in a conversational tone, "you two can definitely stand a little fuel for your systems. They seem to be operating at something less than full throttle."

"I resent that," Ryder said to her.

She eyed him. "I'm not surprised."

Amanda intervened hastily. "Is Sharon back yet?"

"No. I just called into town to check. They got there all right. But they won't be heading back this way until the
storm's
passed. Jake says even with the four-wheel-drive they found it rough going. The worst is supposed to be over within a couple of days, so they'll try then."

"Do we have enough supplies?"

Penny nodded. "Sure, for at least a week. And the bunkhouse has plenty. Well be fine." She looked at Ryder again, and shook her head with exaggerated pity. "It's a shame for a mind to go. And you barely in your prime."

He returned her gaze very seriously. "Did you know," he said, "that you can't fly an airplane over the Taj Mahal?"

The storm raged, more or less, for two days. There were intervals of calm, but they never lasted long. The old house groaned and creaked in wind gusts of over forty miles an hour, and blowing snow was driven against the windows until it was almost impossible to see anything else.

They kept a fire going all the time in the den fireplace, mainly because the furnace went out twice. The first time it happened, Amanda went down into the basement and spoke sternly to it, adding a well-placed kick for emphasis.

"A furnace," Ryder told her severely, "is a piece of machinery, not a stubborn human."

"It worked, didn't it?" Amanda retorted.

They both listened to the soft roar of an undeniably working furnace, and Ryder was forced to admit that her tactics had accomplished their objective.

When the heat went off on the second day, it was Ryder who unearthed a tool kit left by some of the workmen and descended into the basement.

"It's an electric furnace," he told Amanda and Penny in the kitchen as he was preparing to go down. "My business is electronics, after all."

Amanda, who had a strong feeling that electric furnaces were somewhat different from electronic games and computers, ventured to say, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"It's just a piece of machinery," he said, and gave them both a step-to-one-side-you-peasants look as he picked up the toolbox and turned away.

They watched him disappear down the stairs to the basement. Amanda glanced at Penny. "What do you think?"

"I think we'd better bring in more wood and keep the fire going. Just in case. The wind's dropped for the moment, and Nemo needs to go out anyway."

Feeling slightly guilty at doubting Ryder's electronic expertise, Amanda nonetheless shrugged into her coat to go help bring in wood. She told herself firmly that it wasn't Ryder she was doubling, not really. It was just that the furnace had baffled men who specialized in furnaces.

So they brought in wood and added some to the fire in the den. All the rooms not in use had been closed off, the furnace vents shut so that all available heat would be concentrated in the occupied parts of the house. Ryder had repacked his things and moved to a second-floor bedroom near Amanda's so that they could close off the entire third floor.

"Now I've got a shower curtain," he had said gravely.

Amanda had managed not to look too guilty about the room she'd first assigned him, and had merely asked if there were enough blankets on his bed.

That had been the night before. Now, helping Penny fix supper in the big, warm kitchen, she listened to the increasing wail of the wind outside and, occasionally, a curse that floated up the steps from the depths of the basement. There were a good many bangs and thumps as well.

Amanda went down a half hour later to take Ryder a cup of hot coffee, but returned rather hastily, trying to smother giggles.

"Not just a piece of machinery after all?" Penny murmured with a smile.

"He says it's got gremlins in it," Amanda explained in a shaking voice. "At least I think that's what he said... with all the other descriptive words deleted."

Penny looked reflective. "I like a man who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. Or is he?"

"Oh, definitely.
And not just his hands.
He had a smudge of oil or something across his nose." That sentence prompted another thought, and she added, "Is the hot water heater okay?"

"So far."

They worked together companionably for some time, both listening to the noises from the basement. Then there was a long silence. They looked at each other speculatively and waited. A couple of minutes later there was a final ringing thud—and the furnace started up.

Amanda looked at the basement door and waited. When Ryder came through it, she kept her face expressionless with an effort. He looked, she thought, like the survivor of a war fought against a very greasy army.

"I," he said with exquisite control, "want a shower."

Penny eyed him,
then
said mildly, "Supper's almost ready. Don't dawdle. "

When he was almost at the hall door, Amanda said gravely, "Ryder? How'd you fix it?"

He half turned to give her a goaded look. "I kicked it," he said bitterly.

He was in a better mood by the time he got cleaned up and ate. In fact, Amanda thought later, he was a very even-tempered man. She glanced up from the book in her lap, taking the opportunity to study him since he seemed engrossed in his own book.

They were both sitting on the couch in the
den,
Amanda curled up like a cat in one corner with her stocking feet half tucked under a faded old gingham pillow. It was becoming a habit to end up in the den and read in the hours before they turned in for the night.

Penny, whose rooms were on the ground floor near the kitchen, watched television in her sitting room each evening; she'd said nothing about it, but it was fairly obvious that she was taking pains to leave them alone together as much as possible.