Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw Page A

like to meet him,” she says, pulling her mother’s attention off Wendy, but with the smile intact.
    “I’m sure you would.”
    Jesse waits just long enough to see that this is it, the conversation has been closed, then tosses her keys high into the air and catches them just above her head as she steps on the rubber pad before the automatic door and heads out to the parking lot.
     
    “Alice?” Jesse asks a collegiate-looking guy who shuts down a vacuum cleaner when she comes into the dining room. It’s early Thursday morning; she’s bringing the contract for the house over to the Fenny Inn.
    “Kitchen,” he says, pointing.
    Jesse comes through the swinging door and, seeing Alice in a long apron, laughs.
    “What?” Alice says.
    “You look just like a chef.”
    “Well, what’d you think?” She nods toward the leatherette Re/Max folder Jesse is holding. “Time to sign my life away, eh? Have you had breakfast? Why don’t you let me fix you an omelette? I’ve given up hope of ever seeing you in that dining room. Might as well feed you in my kitchen.”
    There aren’t any chairs, so Jesse hikes herself up onto a wooden stool against the wall, activating an old place of soreness just inside her right shoulder blade, left over from some peculiarity of her stroke, something done wrong in an infinitesimal way, but repeated a million times in all the practice laps of her youth. The insult has never been quite forgiven by the aggrieved muscle, which still kicks back with an occasional reminder.
    Alice pulls from a shelf over the black iron stove a copper-bottomed pan, into which she smears what looks like half a stick of butter. She cracks eggs one-handed into a metal bowl, beats them with a wire whisk, shreds a minor mountain of Swiss cheese onto a plate.
    “I’ve got one of those hinged pans, does the job for you,” Jesse says. “I suppose I’ll have to hide it if you ever drop by. And my bacon bits. My seasoned salt. My entire recipe card file.”
    Alice, having finger-sifted the cheese onto the bubbling eggs, makes a little move with her wrist, which both flips the omelette over on itself and slips it to one side of the pan. When the omelette is done, she slides it onto a plate and hands it to Jesse, along with a fork and a napkin. She pours both of them large cups of coffee, and sets Jesse’s on the windowsill next to her. Then she wipes her hands on a towel stuck in the waist of her apron and leans back against the big chopping block in the center of the room.
    “You eat. I’ll look at the papers.” She opens the Re/Max folder Jesse has brought with her and scans the contract, pulls a fat fountain pen from a hidden breast pocket, and signs.
    “This is the most delicious plate of eggs I’ve ever had,” Jesse says. “I’m proud to sell a house to the person who made these eggs.”
    Alice smiles and says, “Good. Let’s go swimming.”
    “I told you, I don’t anymore.”
    “I don’t know why, but I just don’t believe that.”
    Jesse finishes the last of the omelette.
    “Alice, I appreciate your cooking, and your buying this house, and I’d like you anyway, but I’m a different kind of person from you. This is a different place from where you come from. I have my husband and my godmother. My brother. I don’t have many friends. You seem to find me so interesting and I think I’m plain as can be. Or maybe I’m a plain person who just looks interesting. A plain person with a few sticks of dynamite strapped to her chest. I can feel you’ve got all these questions for me. You tripped onto my big secret, which I hope you’ll hold for me. But ordinarily, I don’t share confidences. I hate the gossip around this place.”
    “Tell me about it,” Alice says. “My lover’s moving down at the end of the month and I can practically feel the phone receivers already lifted, all those itchy fingers poised above the push buttons.”
    “Maybe I’m being too hard ass?” Jesse says.
    “I’m not