Page 72 of Meet Me in the Garden

“Not a joke. An excuse.”

“Ah.”

“You avoid me.”

“I try my best to.”

“Why?”

“Apparently you know why.” My heart is pounding, I might be sick, my body is frantic with trying to tell me something.

“Come out with me tonight. Let me take you to dinner.”

“I have children, remember? And a husband.”

“Don’t you ever leave them for a night?” She waits. I don’t answer her, don’t trust myself to speak. So quiet in here now. With each shift and breath, we’re on the verge of something. “Let me know if you change your mind,” she finally says.

She opens the door. A sweep of light. Noise rushes in as she steps out—people talking as they walk by, the distant sounds of machinery—and then she presses the door shut. A click and it’s quiet again.

“They don’t let girls like you keep their babies.” I say it out loud. But the threat sounds hollow, doesn’t grip me like it once did. Instead, I hear Felix, telling me I’m still young, urging me not to give up on romantic love forever.

But Bayard Rustin in the paper. Names printed in black ink for all of Los Angeles to see.

Dinner is hardly sex in a car, though. And really, is anyone watching me all that closely? Could I give myself this, just once? I’m losing hold of my resolve. First painting. Now this.

In the restroom, I splash water on my face, dry it with a towel, study myself in the mirror. My reflection is flushed, full of hunger, thrilled, afraid.

Oh, hello. I know you.

She’s there at lunch, in the cafeteria, sitting next to Al, making it easy for me to join her. I take a tray, aware of her gaze on me as I choose salad and soup, top my coffee with cream. Instead of fleeing as I usually do, I take the spot directly across from her, next to Bernard.

“I can’t remember the last time you joined us for lunch,” he says. “We’ve missed you.”

“She works too hard,” Al says. “You feel pressured to do it? If we unionize, all that would be taken care of.”

“You don’t feel pressure, do you?” Bernard asks. “The company gives us all a fair lunch. Forty-five minutesandhigh-quality food. Al, you’re smoking something.”

“Well,” Al says, “I do enjoy a smoke now and then, brother. Not all of us are so straightlaced.”

Ginny catches my eye, smiles.

“Look,” Bernard says. “The girls are amused by us. We’re bickering like husband and wife.”

“I agree that Odette works too hard,” Ginny says. Her dark eyes are all over my face. “In fact, I invited her out tonight—some of us are going for drinks—and she said no.”

I say, “The trouble is, Felix is away. No one would be home with the children.”

“Send them over,” Al says. “You go out with Ginny and the others. You deserve it.”

“What do you say?” Ginny asks.

“All right,” I say. My body is strangely calm, my voice easy when I add, “Only thing is, I don’t want to disrupt their bedtimes. I’m bound to be out late.”

“Pack their overnight things,” Al says. “You can come for breakfast in the morning, pick them up then.”

Loud voices rise all around us, the clinking of glasses against theFormica tables, the scrape of chairs pushing back, a swell of laughter from one corner, and then from another. Bernard and Al go back to the company union debate and Ginny’s eyes are locked to mine. For the first time, I see her blush.

It’s still light when she pulls up in her little white car. “You aren’t going to invite me in?” she asks as I slide onto the seat.