Vintage (16 page)

Still, Violet had coffee, had drinks, and, sometimes, even had dinner or sex. She met intellectual men and international travelers. Men who were boring, boorish, or both. Men with graduate degrees, men with neuroses, men with kids. It had been a long time since she’d been truly interested in anyone, though. Since she’d felt a rush of unexpected excitement like she felt when Sam called. Still, she felt hesitant. She just wasn’t sure now was the right time to be pursuing a new romance. The store needed her full attention at the moment. And, unlike other dates she’d been on, no computer algorithm or well-meaning friend had arranged this one. If it didn’t go well, she had no one but herself to blame.

Miles barked and skittered to the door when someone knocked. When Violet opened it, she saw Sam standing there, wearing jeans and a soft-looking button-down shirt. He clutched a bouquet of sunflowers in one hand.

“Hey there.” Sam smiled and handed her the flowers.

“Thank you. They’re gorgeous.” Violet hoped the sweat she could feel under her arms wasn’t soaking through her cotton dress.

“You ready?”

“Yep, just let me grab my purse. You can come in.”

Sam followed her into the kitchen, where Violet arranged the flowers in an antique cut-glass vase, then ran to her room to get the straw handbag she’d chosen. She dumped the contents of her regular purse into it, grabbed a cardigan, and then followed Sam down to the back lot where he’d parked his car, a Subaru wagon with a bike rack on top.

Violet preferred muscle cars, vintage roadsters, and fin-backed Caddies, but she had to admit that Sam’s car fit him. It looked strong, but not too rough, and able to handle a lot of different situations.

They got in and Sam pulled the car onto Johnson Street. “So I was thinking we could stop somewhere to pick up some food to take with us to the fireworks.”

“Sure,” Violet replied. “That sounds great.”

Sam drove downtown to Capitol Square, where music spilled out from bars and people dined at sidewalk cafés in the fading light. Violet and Sam went into a gourmet cheese shop, where they each tried half a dozen samples before deciding what to buy. Sam tended toward the fresh goat cheeses and creamy Brie, but Violet loved aged varieties, the blue-veined Stiltons and Gorgonzolas. She made sure she popped a mint after eating them. She didn’t want to start out the date with bad breath.

Even though she’d lived in Wisconsin all her life, she’d never been in a specialty cheese store. It was a relief, though, to have something tangible to focus on, rather than simply staring at each other across a restaurant table and making awkward conversation. Violet laughed as Sam wrinkled his nose at the stinky Limburger and said goofy things like, “Ah, yes. I can taste the clover the sheep must have grazed on.”

After an intense debate, they agreed on an aged Gruyère, a soft chèvre, and a fresh Gouda flecked with fenugreek seeds. A woman behind the counter with a French accent helped them select a bottle of wine and some crackers, olives, and a small box of handmade chocolates to go with the cheese.

By the time they got back into the car with their picnic, Violet was feeling a lot more relaxed than she’d been when Sam first picked her up.

“That was fun,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve never been there before.”

“I thought it would be good to have a mission—that it would be less awkward that way,” Sam said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a first date.”

Violet was impressed that Sam had thought out their date so that they’d both feel comfortable. “It was a good idea. Very thoughtful.”

“Oh, there’s one other thing I wanted to do before we go to the fireworks.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

Sam leaned over to the passenger seat and kissed Violet, slowly and sweetly, before pulling away and starting the car.

For a moment, Violet couldn’t speak. When her body and brain stopped humming enough for her to recover her voice, she said, “Wow. That usually doesn’t come until the end of a first date.”

“I couldn’t wait.” Sam held her gaze for a moment, then turned his eyes back to the road. “I would have called you to go out right away after I saw you in your shop, but I left the next day for a backpacking trip out west with an old buddy from college. I’ve been ‘off the grid,’ so to speak, for the last couple of weeks.”

“It’s okay,” Violet said. “It was worth the wait.”

At Winnequah Park, where the fireworks would be set off, the lawn was already quilted with blankets. Children waved sparklers and begged their parents for Popsicles from the vendors who weaved their way through the lawn chairs and coolers. As Violet and Sam walked through the grass looking for a place to sit, fireflies rose like sparks from the ground.

“How’s this?” Sam asked, stopping at the top of a small hill, a few yards removed from the crowd.

“Perfect,” she said. She still felt warm inside from the unexpected kiss. They sat cross-legged on a blanket Sam had brought and sipped wine while they waited for darkness.

“So you remember me from Bent Creek,” Violet said. “Is it just because I hung around Jed?”

“No—well, yes. Everyone knew Jed. But there was something different about you. You didn’t dress like the other popular kids, for one.”

Violet laughed. “Yeah, I was the only kid who wore her grandmother’s fur coat to school. I got teased a lot about the way I dressed before I started dating Jed. Then people kind of shut up about it.”

“So why did you leave town?” Sam spread chèvre on a hunk of bread and handed it to Violet. “You always seemed so happy and confident in high school.”

“Did I? I wasn’t. I think the problem was that I wanted what I thought I was supposed to want, without thinking about what would really make me happy. I think that’s why I stuck with Jed for so long. Taking care of him gave me a purpose, and I didn’t know who I was without that.”

“Do you know now?” Sam asked. “I mean, what makes you happy?”

“Independence. I like working for myself, having my own business. Though I wish I could be better at certain parts of it.”

“Like what?”

Sam’s questions were so fluid, his expression so sympathetic, that Violet forgot to be self-protective when she answered. “What I consider to be the boring stuff. Computers and records. Oh, and legal stuff. I’ve run into some problems with my landlord that have made my life pretty stressful lately.” She stopped, nibbled on the piece of bread. “God, I’m not doing a very good job of selling myself, am I?”

“You don’t need to sell me anything. I asked
you
out, remember?” Sam leaned back on his elbows and stretched his long legs in front of him.

“Violet, is that you?”

Violet turned her head and saw Karen and Tom walking toward her. Karen carried Edith across the front of her body in a cloth sling.

“Hey,” Violet said, motioning for them to come over. “Karen, Tom, this is Sam.”

Karen’s eyes swept over Sam. “Nice to meet you. This is our daughter, Edith.”

“Speaking of Edith, give me that baby,” Violet said, reaching her arms up.

Karen took the baby from the sling and deposited her in Violet’s arms. Edith stirred and stretched, then settled back into a slumber.

“You’re brave, bringing this little one to the fireworks,” Violet said. “Won’t they wake her up?”

“Oh, we’re on our way out,” Tom said. “We just came to walk around the park a little bit. Gotta get out of the house every now and then.”

Sam held up the wine bottle. “Would you like some?”

“Nah,” Karen said. “We should get going before they start blowing things up and wake the beast.”

Violet stroked the baby’s clenched fist. “She doesn’t seem like much of a beast right now.”

“That’s why she needs to keep sleeping.” Karen scooped Edith from Violet’s arms and stuck her back in the sling, all with such quick skill that the baby didn’t stir. “You two have fun.”

“Bye,” Sam said. “Good meeting you.”

After they were out of earshot, Sam asked, “You like babies, huh?”

It wasn’t the type of question Violet was accustomed to hearing on a first date—most of her computer-arranged companions wanted to talk about how much money they made or how they didn’t usually date people they met online, always lying on both accounts. With the baby question, Violet felt like she was being tested, but she didn’t know which answer to choose, which circle to fill in with her no. 2 pencil. If she said she didn’t like babies, she’d be lying. If she said she did, she feared she’d scare Sam off.

Finally, she said, “Nah. I hate puppies, too.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, and kittens are obnoxious, too.”

Violet picked a handful of grass and sifted it through her fingers. “It’s so crazy to see Karen with a kid. I wonder what Edith will be like once she starts walking and talking and stuff.”

“I hope she has an easier time of things than I did when I was a kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you remember me at all from high school, you’ll recall that I was kind of a dork growing up. I was a sci-fi and
Star Wars
fanatic and didn’t know the first thing about how to talk to girls.”

She tilted her head and looked at his face, so handsome in the fading light. “Yeah, I remember,” she said. “When you first came into the store, I couldn’t place you, but I pulled out my yearbooks.”

“Those were some rough years.” Sam crossed his arms, and his eyes took on the same darkness as the July sky.

The first few fireworks—test rockets, really—popped above them and the spectators oohed and fell quiet. Violet thought about the people she’d chosen to spend her time with back in high school, and the pleasure they took in making life miserable for kids who didn’t possess good looks, athletic ability, or some other inherent cool factor.

“I know Jed was part of the group that picked on you,” Violet said. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop them.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “Anyway, I don’t really remember you having any part in it. You always seemed to kind of hang back a bit from the rest of the herd.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think for myself much, either. Anyway, I’m sorry things were so rough for you back then.”

“Well, I turned out reasonably okay, so I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” Sam said. “Unless, of course, it means you’ll sleep with me, in which case, you can feel as sorry as you want.”

As she sat through the rest of the fireworks display, Violet wondered if she’d ever be able to leave Bent Creek behind her. As much as she tried to move on, reminders still surfaced from time to time, like frost pushing stones through the soft dirt of a spring field. She’d be going along, living her life, when suddenly she’d trip on one.

Violet looked at Sam in the flickering light and wondered again, like she had in the store, why she hadn’t noticed his kind eyes or contagious smile back in high school. She’d been too busy soaking in the validation that came along with being part of the in crowd. It had taken her years to gather up the courage to figure out who she was without it.

When the grand finale exploded its gaudy, deafening display, there was so much smoke in the sky that Violet couldn’t see clearly anymore.

Sam must have noticed the shift in her mood, because as he drove her home, he asked, “Are you okay?”

Violet nodded. “I guess all the talk of Bent Creek just got me thinking about some not-so-good memories.”

“Well, Bent Creek is miles—and years—away from us now,” he said as he pulled his car into the lot behind her building. “Let’s focus on the moment, huh?”

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“What?”

“Focus on the moment and not get caught up in thinking about all the bad stuff behind you, or worrying about the future.”

Sam turned off the ignition. “Well, first, you do this.” He leaned over to Violet in the passenger’s seat and kissed her neck.

A warm current ran through Violet’s body. “Mmm-hmm,” she said. “And what else?”

“This.” He kissed the other side of her neck, then lingered at her lips. The summer night was still and hot, and it was all Violet could do not to climb into the driver’s seat and wrap her legs around Sam.

“I’m still having trouble focusing,” she said, putting on her most inviting smile. “Do you want to come up and help me some more?”

Sam opened his door.

In her room, on top of the bold green blooms of her Marimekko bedspread, Sam unzipped the striped dress that Violet had so carefully chosen earlier that evening. She pulled at the straps of her bra, clutched at Sam’s shoulders to bring him closer, so eager was she to feel him on her, in her. But Sam slowed her, kissed each freckle on her skin as he revealed it.

Violet had brought other men back to her apartment before, but never on the first date. With Sam, though, she had a sense of urgency she hadn’t felt with anyone else. She sensed she had already missed out on too much time with him, too many years wasted chasing what other people thought she should want, rather than what
she
wanted. And, in this moment, she had no question about what she wanted.

Other men treated sex like an action movie they’d chosen to watch with her, attacking the experience with consumer-level hunger and hoping, as a side benefit, that Violet enjoyed it, too. Sam approached the experience more like reading a long and beautiful novel, taking as much pleasure in what was yet to be revealed as in what lay before him on the open page. And, after they’d reached the satisfying end, with Violet tangled breathless and bare in Sam’s arms, they went back to the beginning and began again.

INVENTORY ITEM
: blazer

APPROXIMATE DATE
: early 1980s

CONDITION
: excellent

ITEM DESCRIPTION
: TWA uniform jacket. Navy blue, double-breasted blazer with shoulder pads. Wing insignia on left lapel.

SOURCE
: retired airline attendant

Amithi

AMITHI STOOD AT THE
register, clutching a bulging garbage bag in each hand. For the last month or so, ever since the awful Chicago trip, she had been coming in to Hourglass Vintage at least once a week. Each time she came, she brought a larger haul of items to sell, as if purging her closets could purge her past of all secrets and lies.