Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce Page A

indictment, considering Zoë had once said the same of him. I said, “Zoë says fish-oil tablets are a necessary element to a well-balanced diet.”
    He laughed.
    “I like your tattoo,” I went on. “I assume it means something?” The tone of the second comment canceled the approval I’d hoped the first would convey. I hated tattoos, but I flattered myself this dislike was an aesthetic preference rather than a religious conviction.
    “It means something.”
    He stood up to check on one of the dryers. I took this as my cue to leave the subject alone.

    The moment Zoë saw us pull into the driveway, she bolted from the front door to throw her arms around Eli. She leapt into his arms and wrapped her feet around his waist. Eli set her back down on the ground as effortlessly as he might a child.
    She’d made a homemade dinner to celebrate his arrival. We ate whole wheat pasta tossed with organic dried tomatoes, and fresh, sparsely shaved Parmesan; whole grain toasted baguette; and bowls of arugula lightly spritzed with lemon and vinegar and olive oil. Zoë fussed over Eli the entire meal. How was his drive? How were his bites? Did he have to catch the bugs himself? Were they as disgusting as the pictures on the Internet? How was Jillian?
    Jillian was fine, wonderful: she was in Germany studying painting until May. Her schedule was unconventional. They spoke when they could.
    “Don’t worry.” Zoë slapped his knee. “Amy and I’ll keep you company.”
    I had been entirely invisible up to this point. Eli made a rather obvious attempt to divert the conversation my way.
    “Zoë says you’re a writer.” He leaned back so Zoë could clear his plate and glass away. “You’re writing a book?”
    “I’m lucky to write five pages.”
    “I’d love to read some of it.”
    “Amy doesn’t like talking about her work,” Zoë explained from the kitchen.
    “Why not?”
    “It’s a private world, up there in my head,” I said. “Talking about it with other people is like having a stranger come into your house and help themselves to your food, start rooting through your underwear drawer.” I realized too late that this was a poor analogy considering the circumstances of our initial meeting.
    Eli was not offended. “I promise not to go through your underwear drawer.” He lifted his coffee to his lips. “Figuratively or literally.”
    This was the second time underwear had figured into our day’s conversation.
    Zoë set a cup of fat-free tofu pudding in front of each of us. Eli stuck his spoon in the center of the colorless, gelatinous mound. It stood upright on its own.
    “You’re banned from my panty drawer,” I said to him, “but you can certainly eat all the food you want.”
    Later I wondered why I’d said “panty” instead of underwear, panty being such a frilly, flirtatious kind of word.

    Arguably, Eli was attractive, with a face that belonged to someone younger than his thirty-two. Dressed more conservatively, his long hair trimmed and pulled back, you might notice the defined structure of his cheekbones; in the right circles, his narrow face and his deepset eyes might be considered vogue, even beautiful. But you didn’t immediately notice beauty. Too many other superficialities demanded your attention. His clothes were secondhand, well-matched but often stained with paint or plaster. He wore heavy jewelry, silver rings on his fingers and frayed hemp on his wrists and neck. Most distinct of all was the tattoo, a Celtic circular pattern that wound from shoulder to just below his elbow in dark green ink.
    From his dress you could draw immediate conclusions that he made no effort to dispel: In high school he’d been a pothead; he’d grown up a kid who rode his skateboard on curbsides until the local police banned him from the harmless sport, and then he persisted anyway, with that air of martyrdom only an adolescent can achieve; he would have had parents with money who provoked a hatred of materialism