“You’re going to have to walk me through the rest of it too,” Caroline said, the distance of her voice indicating that she’d put him on speaker. “I found this thing with my vacuum tubes and rotary phones. Who is thisto the order of?”
“Me.” Adrian paused. “My full name.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “Anything else?”
Rolling his eyes so hard they nearly hurt, Adrian instructed her to write the amount on the two separate lines.
“Is it okay if it’s not in cursive? They don’t teach it in school now, you know.”
“That’s fine,” he said impatiently. His stomach was beginning to rumble. Maybe it was the thought of goat cheese tarts. He’d forgotten to pack lunch.
“And date, which date is that?”
“Today’s date, Caroline.” He sighed.
“Signature—that’s my signature you want?” she asked very sweetly.
He squinted at his phone, beginning to feel suspicious. “Yes, the same one you signed up at the bank with.”
“Okay, almost done. The memo line. Should I putnothing illegal, or do you think that’s a red flag for the bank?”
Adrian put down the phone. Looked at the ceiling. Wished for strength. When he found some, he picked up the phone again.
“Did you already know how to write a check?” he managed to ask in a civil tone of voice.
A strangled giggle slipped out of Caroline’s throat. Possibly there was a snort as well.
“Yeah, but you were being kind of a dick about it.” She laughed at him.
Adrian popped his jaw to the side, contemplating an appropriate rejoinder for a long minute as Caroline’s chuckles faded into more sounds from her kitchen. It would be so much easier just to flirt with her.Would you like me to be nice to you? I can be nice, he’d purr, imagining her blush like she had last night. His stomach rumbled again.
“I’m sorry, I’m probably just hungry,” he finally admitted.
“Oh! Do you want one of these tarts? I could bring you one in a ziplock baggie. The recipe makes four.”
“To the symphony? No, thank you,” he said, imagining the usher’s expression if Caroline tried to smuggle a savory pastry into the mezzanine.
“Are you at your studio? I could drop it off. I’m already done with class today. I’d love to see your paintings.”
Adrian winced, looking around a studio cluttered with much fabric and zero finished works. It wasn’t like she couldn’t already guess the art wasn’t doing well right now—given the potential sex work and all—but maybe she didn’t care to see him metaphorically naked either.
“No, thank you,” he said again. “I’m busy the rest of the day.” He’d get lunch and come back to finish the canvases, he decided. There was usually an Italian food truck roaming the neighborhood. Or maybe he could go to the library afterward. The problem was likely that his reference images were uninspiring. He’d want to paint if he found better images of the Thracian soldiers.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Caroline said, now sounding subdued, which made him feel even more like a dick. “Um. Are we still on for tomorrow night?”
“Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Adrian said, trying to make his tone gentler this time. He hesitated, then decided to be honest. “I’m looking forward to it.”
They met in front of Boston’s squat brick symphony hall, like hundreds of other concertgoers trickling in from the early September twilight. The largest contingent of the audience were elderly ladies with beaded bodices and sensible shoes, though there were also girls in their twenties with glossy hair and structured dresses. Caroline was glad she’d asked Adrian what to wear. There were some people dressed down in jeans and sweaters, but the black dress she wore straddled the line between the two camps. Nobody could tell, probably, that she’d never set foot in a concert hall in her life. Especially since she was with Adrian, who looked as native to the scene as she did buying chips at the gas station.
“When was the last time you were here?” she asked him after they were seated, trying to imagine a life where she came to the symphony often. In this hazy future, she was dating a T.J.Maxx version of Adrian, and maybe his face didn’t stop traffic, but he was impressed by Caroline’s taste in entertainment, and he had his hand on her knee.
Oh, I’ve followed Bach for years, she’d tell him.
Adrian tilted his head back to think. “My ex was a season subscriber. So we used to come about once a month. If she was busy, I came alone.”
Caroline tucked that mention of an ex away for future consideration, quashing the instinctive prickle of affront. The ex must not have been a very good girlfriend if she had more important things to do than taking Adrian to see his favorite music.
The full hall went quiet and still as the conductor walked out to his podium. Hundreds of voices hushed,hundreds of bodies took deep breaths as the performers raised instruments. Caroline froze, trying to fix the order of the ceremony in her mind.
