A Hundred Summers: The ultimate romantic escapist beach read. Beatriz Williams
it.”
“Of course I don’t. It’s an awfully nice jacket. Here we are.”
He looks up at the neon-pink coffee cup blinking above our heads. Before I can intercept him, he makes an expert adjustment of his crutches and opens the door for me. “Nice place,” he says.
“Best pancakes around. Also, it’s open early on Sunday morning.”
I’m handling this like a cool cat, like a woman of the world, as if I accept seven a.m. dates to Sunday breakfast every weekend of my life. My body swings past his, into the welcome coffee-scented warmth of the vestibule. At least my familiarity with the diner is unfeigned. I nod at the waitress. “Hello, Dorothy.”
“Oh, hiya, Lily. What can I …” Dorothy’s words slow and fade. Her frizzing head cants back, traveling up Nick’s long length to land at his face. I can almost hear the pop of her eyes from her head.
Nick smiles down at her. “Breakfast for two, please, Dorothy. A quiet corner, if you’ve got one.”
Her throat works. “Booth all right for you?”
“Of course.”
In a daze, she takes two menus from the counter and leads us to a booth in the corner. The restaurant is nearly empty. One older couple, dressed for church, eats furtively near the door, and a policeman sits at the counter with toast and coffee. The air feels overwarm, overbright, after the foggy dankness of the outdoors. Behind me, Nick’s crutches make rhythmic clicks and thumps against the linoleum.
I slide into one side of the booth. Nick slides into the other and props the crutches next to him. Dorothy hands us our menus. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asks, scratchily.
“Yes, please,” I say.
“As much as you’ve got,” adds Nick.
Dorothy sticks her pencil behind her ear. “Right away,” she says, and turns back down the aisle, casting me a wide-eyed look.
Nick doesn’t notice. He’s gazing at me, smiling. His face is drawn and pale and softer than I remember. He sets down his menu. “I gave myself fifty-fifty odds you’d come downstairs.”
“Then why did you drive down here at all?”
“Well, for one thing, I left a hundred-dollar bill in the left pocket by mistake.” My eyes widen, and he laughs. “Not really. The thing is, I went right to sleep last night, I was bone-tired from the game and everything, but I only slept for two hours. I woke up around midnight and couldn’t go back. I kept thinking about dinner, thinking about you. At two o’clock I jumped in the car and started driving. I figured I wasn’t going to get any more sleep anyway.”
“But it’s only a three-hour drive.” My mouth is dry, my ears are ringing. I dig my fingers into the menu to keep them from shaking.
He shrugs. “I lay down on the seat for a bit when I got here.”
I picture him folded in his late-model Packard Speedster, huddled under his overcoat, trying to find a comfortable spot for his cast. “How did you know which dormitory was mine?” I ask.
“Woke up Pendleton and asked him before I came. I took a chance you were in the same house as Budgie.” He knits his hands together above the menu and leans forward. His eyes turn earnest. “Do you mind, Lily?”
Dorothy comes and pours our coffee. I wait until she moves away, and say: “I don’t mind, Nick. I’m glad you came.”
He blinks and looks down at the menu, and then he reaches forward and takes my hand, very gently. His thumb, broad and enormous, brushes against the base of mine. “Good, then.”
I glance down at my hand, which looks tiny inside his. “I didn’t sleep much, either,” I say, almost a whisper.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”
I look back up. “But why?”
Dorothy returns with her pad of paper and her composure. “Decided yet?” she asks, as friendly and careless as she’s ever been, except her face is a little flushed.
“Two eggs, scrambled,” I say, “and lots of toast.”
“Well, now.” Nick turns to her, keeping my hand firmly in his. “I’m hungry this morning. Four eggs, bacon, toast. How are your pancakes?”
“Best pancakes in the Berkshires,” she says. “Ask anyone.”
“I’ll have a tall stack, with butter and syrup.” He hands her the menu. “Thanks, Dorothy.”
“Thank you, sir.” She takes his menu and mine, and mouths something at me as she goes, something emphatic.
“Do you have that effect on all the girls?” I ask dryly.
“What effect?”
“I mean Dorothy would gladly change places with me right now.”
“I’m not a flirt, if that’s what you mean.”
I shrug my shoulder in the direction of Dorothy’s disappearance. “But you like to charm people.”
He laughs. “If only Pendleton could hear you now. He’s always telling me to be nicer, to come out of my corner and talk a little.”
“Then what was that all about?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just happy.”
My hand still sits in his. He gives it a little squeeze, and I feel a smile stretch across my face, because I am happy, too. “You haven’t answered my question,” I say.
“I haven’t, have I? All right, Lily. Miss Lily Dane of Smith College, Massachusetts, and … and where else?”
“New York.”
“Of Massachusetts and New York. The Upper East Side, I’m reckoning.”
“And Seaview, Rhode Island,” I add, smiling.
He rolls his eyes. “And Rhode lousy Island, where your family has probably summered for generations, hasn’t it? Turn your head. No, the other way. Out the window.”
I turn to the steamed-over plate glass, the shadowed buildings across the street. “What, like this?”
“Now move your eyes and look at me. Just your eyes. Tilting up a bit. Yes.” He breathes out. “Just like that. That, Miss Lily Dane, of only the best sorts of places, that is why I couldn’t go back to sleep last night.”
I turn to face him, laughing. He’s leaning against the back of the booth, smiling, watching me benevolently. “That?” I ask.
“You flashed that look at me about halfway through dinner. I was talking about, oh, what was it? The hospital, I guess. And you looked at me sideways, with those funny dark blue eyes of yours, and I couldn’t remember my own name. I stopped short. You must have noticed.”
“I think so.” In fact, I remember perfectly. He’d been talking about the brand-new X-ray machine, and about radiation exposure. I’d thought, at the time, he’d stopped only because he was afraid the subject was too technical for ladies. I had sat there in my elegant chair at the Hanover Inn, overflowing with frustration and longing to tell him that I did care, that I wanted to hear everything he had to say.
I reach for my coffee cup. The heat curls around my nose and mouth, while the white ceramic bowl covers—I hope—my flushed cheeks.
He stretches out his arm for his own cup and lifts it, left-handed, because his right hand still holds mine. He drinks deeply and sets it down in the saucer without even looking. “So there I sat, like a complete idiot, my train of thought snapped in half. I said to myself, Greenwald, this girl leaves in an hour. You had better figure out how you’re going to find her again. Why are you shaking your head?”
“I