“Ten minutes.” He followed her to the door, where she indicated that she’d wait at a bench across the street, before he flipped the sign on the door to closed.
Alice sat on the bench, remembering what Gabby had said about testing Duncan to see if he was interested in spending more time with her. Was that what her stomach was doing, unbeknownst to her, gauging his interest? Her hunger was quickly overshadowed by nausea. She wasn’t ready for whatever this lunch was.
The customers slowly trickled out with their bags of journals and pens. It was a veritable meat market, if you could call it that when everyone was eyeing the same piece of meat. A half hour later Alice was so famished she’d grown lightheaded. At last Duncan skipped out of the store, exhilarated.
“Sorry,” he called as he jogged across the street. “I know they say people on the West Coast are friendlier. Personally, I’d take a curt, genuine East Coast exchange over an insincere but cheery conversation any day.”
“Well then, you shouldn’t have moved to Santa Barbara.” Alice meant this teasingly, but the smile fell from his face. This move hadn’t been a choice, not entirely.
They walked a few blocks to a deli in silence. It was the first moment of awkwardness between them, one Alice had created. Perhaps this was a sign that she and Duncan weren’t suited for each other, one that should have enabled her body to relax.
After they ordered at the deli counter and settled outside at a white plastic table with matching chairs, Alice broke the silence. “Why did you pick Santa Barbara?” she asked cautiously.
“Well, I wanted a city similarly sized to Portland, and I’ve lived my whole life in smelling distance of the ocean. I couldn’t imagine not seeing the water every day. Anywhere on the Atlantic just reminded me too much of home.” Home was Portland, a place he couldn’t live anymore. Everywhere else was somewhere to harbor him. He’d been displaced by love. Alice was right to be cautious with him.
Inside, the cashier called Duncan’s name, and he leapt up to get their sandwiches. He returned to their table on the sidewalk and handed Alice hers. She carefully unwrapped it.
“What about you, have you lived your whole life in Santa Barbara?” Duncan asked, taking an enormous bite of his baguette.
Alice shook her head, realizing how little they knew of each other. She pulled off a piece of her sandwich and tossed in into her mouth. “I went to med school on the East Coast.”
Duncan coughed in surprise, spitting a small piece of ham onto the table. To Alice’s dismay he picked it up and threw it into his mouth again. “You’re a doctor?”
It was funny the way you could understand a person, their humor, their smiles, while knowing almost nothing of their biography. “No, I dropped out at the end of my first year. It was too much pressure.”
“I dropped out of college when I was a sophomore. I’ve always liked to learn, but the institution, I hated the way it expected nineteen-year-olds to know exactly what they wanted to do with their life. The only thing I knew I wanted to do at nineteen was party. Hence the dropping out. Do you always eat sandwiches like that?”
“Like what?” Alice was not aware she ate sandwiches in any particular way.
“Like you’re afraid of them. Like that—” He pointed to the piece she’d ripped off and was about to eat. “The entire point of a sandwich is that you can just take a bite.” He gnawed at his baguette like it was a turkey leg at a Renaissance fair.
Alice popped the bite into her mouth. “I like eating this way. It’s neater.”
“Actually it’s not. Look at that glob of mayo on your finger.” She wiped it off, then tore off another piece. “I can’t watch,” he said, covering his eyes. “Tell me when you’re done.”
“I literally just watched you eat a piece of regurgitated ham off the table.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Trust me, you did. I watched it arc from your mouth onto the table. And then you ate it. Plus, you have mustard in your hair.”
“No I don’t,” Duncan protested, running his hand through his ponytail until he located the dab of mustard. “Fine then,” he said, holding out his sandwich, expecting her to tap her bread to his. “Cheers to us both being disgusting.”
Alice laughed and made a point of taking a bite straight from her sandwich. Duncan nodded, impressed.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a party guy,” Alice said, steering the conversation back to their pasts. She found herself wanting to know more about him outside the bounds of the bindery.
“Back then the prospect of free beer was enough to make me social.”
Alice could tell there was a lot more to the story than he was telling her. Then again, there was a lot more to her story too. He hadn’t pressed, so she wouldn’t either.
“How’d you end up a bookbinder?”
“Well, I started off a carpenter. I mean, it’s not something you stop being. I still am a carpenter. I was doing custom jobs when I met Maryanne. My ex. She had bought this hundred-year-old wood frame house. Gorgeous bones. Everything else about it needed to be refinished. It took me the better part of the year to fix it up. When she moved in, so did I.” The expression on his face changed as he recalled the beginning, the glorious start before everything was ruined. “Her dad was a bookbinder. When I proposed, I wanted to hide her ring in her favorite book, but I’ve always loved books, and I just couldn’t bring myself to cut one up. So I asked him if he could make a fake one for me to use, with the name on the spine, the cover image, except blank inside. I guess it was my way of asking for his approval. He said he wouldn’t do it but he’d show me how to do it myself. After we were married, my father-in-law got Parkinson’s and there was only so long he could keep binding. His sons weren’t interested in taking over, and I just kind of fell into it from there. Now, after everything, I wish I could give it up, go back to restoring houses, but it’s different. Carpentry was a craft. Binding books is an ethos, a lifestyle. For me anyway. It’s just too much a part of me to stop, even though I’d probably be a lot happier if I did. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t know.”
“You still love her.” Alice’s stomach sank. She could convince her mind to lie, not her body.
“I don’t think you ever stop loving people, not really. It’d be easier if you did. Even for Maryanne. She grew to hate a lot about me, but that’s just another form of love. A tortured one.” Duncan took the last bite of his sandwich and balled up the wax paper. “You done?”
