Sam looks at her, and she wonders if he’s considering taking advantage of her tipsiness. But in this, at least, he is a gentleman.
‘Do you think music is better when you’re tipsy?’ she asks him.
‘I think a lot of things are better when you’re tipsy.’
Lexi thinks about Galentine’s Day at Kramers with Erin. ‘That’s true. Browsing in a bookshop, for example. It lowers your inhibitions. You’re more likely to just go for it and buy the book.’ And then, because of the tipsiness, she keeps talking. ‘I think Tipsy Browsing would make a great bookshop name, actually. One with wine, obviously.’
‘I like it,’ Sam says. ‘But you can’t be an Austen and not have that feature somehow, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Families, right?’
‘Yeah. Speaking of...’ Lexi takes a deep breath and a final sip of her wine for bravery, and also because the end-of-intermission bell has just gone. ‘Have you spoken to your dad lately?’
‘Actually, yes. I mean, once. And we talked about inconsequential niceties for a few minutes, and neither of us slammed the phone down mid-sentence.’ Sam scrutinises the bottom of his champagne flute. ‘There’s a long way to go still. And I need to see that he’s changed, which I guess will only come with time. But yes. I wanted to say thank you, actually.’ He looks up and meets her eye. ‘Shall we?’
Lexi nods, and takes his arm with hers. ‘I’m really glad. Thanks for telling me. And thanks for coming with me tonight.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he says, and bends down to kiss her cheek. It burns, but in the best way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By week five of the piano lessons, Lexi and Sam are in something of a routine. On Wednesday mornings, 8a.m., always somehow miraculously on time, she’s outside Sam’s door. Every week, he asks if she’s found somewhere to practise. And every week she’s forced to admit that, no, somehow a week has gone by and she hasn’t had five minutes to think about it. So she’s studying music theory and how to read notes. But she’s not really getting any better, as such. Even Lexi, with her limited knowledge, is aware that practising is a big part of the whole learning-to-play-an-instrument thing. But let’s face it: in Jane Austen’s day, women had nothing to dobutsit around playing the piano. It’s maybe easier to be accomplished when you’re not running your own business while being distracted by one of its existential threats.
The thing is, learning to play the piano is less and less the point of these sessions. The point, increasingly, is to get close to Sam. And that... well,thatis working. They walk to their respective shops after the lesson and they talk about all kinds of things: what they’re reading, the latest DC gossip, which politicians and journalists they’ve seen in their bookshops or in line at Peregrine. Never specifics about work, because that veers too close to sleeping with the enemy territory. And she doesn’t want to think about sleeping with the enemy, or that sofa bed in his flat.
So Lexi knows more about Sam’s life now. She knows that he’s the middle of three boys, and the only one not to go into the family business. That his mum, dad, and brothers all still live in New York City. That, like so many New Yorkers, he believes it to be unequivocally the best city, if not in the world, then at least in North America. Everything, apparently, is better there. Especially the coffee.
‘So,’ she tells him on their walk back to the Hill that May morning. She’s stopped walking, and she waits for him to stop, too. ‘I’ve listened patiently to a lot of these rants about NYC. I’ve smiled and I’ve nodded. And I’ve put up with it. But I will not have you slandering the good name of Peregrine.’ She lists for him all the regional competitions they’ve won over the years– a region, which, incidentally, includes New York. She lists the national awards. Then she crosses her arms and waits for an apology.
‘Fine. I conceded that Peregrine is acceptable.’
Acceptable! Huh! Last time Lexi went back to London for a visit she went from coffee shop to coffee shop, convinced that in the year of our Lord 2023 surely there had to be something better than Costa. And, to be fair, therewereplaces better than Costa. But none of those places could hold a candle to Peregrine. She spent half the plane journey back to DC daydreaming about her next latte.
‘It’s delicious, is what it is,’ she protests.
‘Okay, yes, fine. But name another good coffee shop in DC.’
Lexi counts them off on her hands as she names them. ‘Pitango. Cameo. The Wydown. And the Cuban coffee at Colada Shop is To. Die. For.’
Sam sighs.
‘See? No reason to move back to New York, ever.’
‘Except for all the other reasons.’
‘Name one.’
Sam pretends to think, to count them on his hands. Then he chooses one. ‘The theatre.’
Lexi has to admit that Broadway is incredible. But how often does a bookshop owner have both the time and the money to go to the theatre? Let’s say six times per year, tops. And she can easily find six shows per year at the Kennedy Center that she wants to see. Nothing, to her mind, beats the grandeur of the Kennedy Center. Out on the terrace, she likes to pretend she’s an extra on the set ofThe West Wingas she sips her bubbles and looks out over the river, up to the cathedral, high on a faraway hill, or to the Jefferson Memorial, that temple to American independence, greatness, and liberty. You don’t get views like that from the door of a New York theatre.
‘No, but there is the history in the theatres themselves. Ask any actor where they’d rather perform. You can bet your bottom dollar they’re not going to say DC.’
Lexi watched enough interviews back in the heyday of her obsession withThe West Wingto know that’s probably true. The guy who played Josh Lyman was always talking nostalgically about biking through the city with his girlfriend on the handlebars. She imagined him taking her to dates at cheap places that seemed French and therefore fancy because of their red-and-white-checked tablecloths. And the thing is, you can’t argue with nostalgia. Maybethat’swhy so many actors love New York. It’s where they headed, bright-eyed and full of hope, to make their dreams come true. And now that their dreamshavecome true, they feel disloyal when they go anywhere elsewhere. It would be like leaving the love of their life, the person they’ve built their whole lives with, had children with, been through the ups and downs with, weathered a pandemic and an insurrection with, won awards and lost awards with, for a hot young thing on a whim. And some– okay, many– of them would rather do that than leave New York. Because the difference is that New York is still hot.
And Lexi gets it, in a way, because that sense of loyalty is what she feels about DC. She and her sister would fly over every summer as unaccompanied minors, their tickets and passports in a pouch on a lanyard around their necks, the flight attendants making a huge fuss of them. And then they’d land at Dulles and their grandmother would be there to welcome them, her arms already out and open for a hug, smelling of cinnamon from the apple pie she’d just finished baking. On the drive from the Virginia suburbs into DC, Lexi would listen happily to the hum of the conversation between her sister and her grandmother up front as she’d look out at the city, imagining herself in a film with orchestral music swelling behind her. They’d pass the Washington Monument, tall, reaching into the clouds, pointing up to infinity. The Kennedy Center, bright and confident beside the river. The imposing lions at the entrance to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, guarding the entrance to the capital. It was pure magic to her, and it made her feel part of something bigger, made her feel like her American passport really meant something, that it wasn’t just her ticket to a shorter queue at arrivals than the one her sister had to go through. Once, because of delays, they landed after dark, and the lit-up monuments on the drive in made her gasp. It was magical. A film set.
