by Gillian Linden

The table was blue linoleum with a pattern of grey shapes netted over it like cobwebs. A waiter brought two glasses of water and a carafe for refills. Brian was late and I didn't have anything to read and so time passed slowly. The waiter returned and dropped a handful of silverware onto the center of the table and put a stack of paper napkins on the far corner where it looked like a snow bank.   He asked whether I'd like a drink. I declined because I was only drinking half a glass of wine a night and if I started before Brian arrived my pacing would be off. "You're waiting for someone?" He asked. "My boyfriend," I said. The waiter looked about ten years older than me. He had a raindrop-shaped head so that his chin wasn't really its own feature, just a tapering off of everything else. His nametag said Frank. "Your boyfriend," he said. I expected him to leave then but he didn't. In fact he moved closer to the table and lifted one of his thighs onto it so that he was half sitting down. I looked around the restaurant and saw that it was a slow night. Two other waiters were hunched over the bar talking and a third leaned against the wall next to the swinging kitchen doors, fiddling with the tie on her apron and looking into the mirror on the back wall, directly, it seemed to me, into the eyes of her reflection.

I was surprised by Frank's intrusion. It doesn't happen often that people strike up a conversation with me and even less often do I feel receptive to it. But that night I didn't mind. I was bored waiting for Brian and Frank knew I had a boyfriend and, in fact, I saw he wore a silver ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. I actually liked the idea of Brian finding me talking to someone else when he came in, late. And so I didn't mind when Frank asked how long we'd been together. "One year," I told him, and offered one of the waters. I pointed to the ring on his left hand and asked what his wife did. "Secretary at a hedge fund," he said, taking a sip. "She basically supports us." I nodded. "What does your boyfriend do?" "Writer," I said, "For a business magazine." "I'm a writer too," Frank said, "Not business though." He didn't say what and I didn't ask. I felt embarrassed for him as I do whenever anyone tells me they are a writer. It's the same way I feel when I see girls wearing belly shirts---that they're revealing things it would be better not to reveal. I looked at Frank's vanishing chin and sloping jaw line and the way his thigh that was resting on my table filled out its pant leg as completely as a sausage in its casing. He wasn't going to make Brian jealous. I sipped my water and stuck the tongs of one of the forks into a napkin to make nearly invisible perforations in the fabric. Brian says it's a nervous tick.

"How did you meet him?" Frank asked. "Brian?" I said. Brian and I had met on Saturday morning when we were both waiting in line at a bank, smiling at a child who belonged to another man. The child, I remembered clearly, was blond and fat and called the bank teller "lady," as in "here, lady," "thank you, lady," "bye, lady," when prompted by his father to interact with her. Brian and I smiled at the boy and then at each other and then, when fifteen minutes later we were both waiting on the subway platform, he came over and said something about how hot it was. It was hot. It was July and the city was boiling and the streets smelled like garbage. I said so and the train arrived and before he had gotten off, I'd given him my number. But I don't like telling that story because it seems a little meager. So I told him, as I usually do, that I'd met Brian through friends, and I asked how he had met his wife. "Jane," he said, and he took a sip of air as though he were about to dive underwater. "I met Jane at a coffee shop."

He was toying with his wedding ring. It turned reluctantly on his finger and I noticed how puffy his hands were. "She walked in," Frank said, "and I was instantly drawn to her shoes. White sneakers. They were spectacular---such voluminous soles. She looked like she was walking on clouds. She had a cold and her nose was pink, her nostrils flared out like petals. And her eyes looked wet, as though she had been crying, but it was probably just the cold. She coughed three times. Short dry coughs. Empty. No phlegm. They sounded metallic. They reminded me of the screen door of my house shutting. Each cough was like that: snap, snap, snap. And they gave me a pain at the back of my throat. Not a lump, physical pain. It grew each time she coughed. By the third cough I couldn't breath it hurt so much. I wanted more than anything for her to stop. So I offered her a lozenge."

"And she took it?" I asked, feeling like the story was a little ridiculous. The dust pattern on the table was beginning to bother me so I began working at it with the napkin.

"No," Frank said, and smiled a little, giving shape to the bottom half of his face. "No, she didn't. She had her own. Ludens, cherry flavor. She must have seen how upset I was by the cough, though, because she apologized. And then she introduced herself. I would have, but I was still shaken, a little stunned. She said her name, Jane. I thought it was the most beautiful name I had ever heard. I still do, don't you? Jane. It sounded just like a bell. Not when she said it--- her voice was hoarse from the cold---but when I heard it in my head. Jane. Not the little Christmas bells, the ones that tinkle, a real bell, a bell that chimes, like the ones in the carillons. Have you ever put your ear in the cup of one of those bells?"

"No," I said, "I didn't think you were supposed to." There had been a carillon in my college that would play all day long. It was student operated and at different hours you would hear the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, set to bells. I'd always found it annoying.

"Not when it's ringing," Frank said, "When it's still. If you put your ear in it when it's silent it sounds like a conch shell, the sound of the ocean, as they say, or, I think, more like papers being shuffled. I'd heard it before, of course, Jane. Everyone has. It's a very common name. But I'd never realized how perfect it was. It's so succinct. I think names of more than one syllable are a phenomenal waste. And it rhymes with everything--rain, mane, feign."

"Right," I said. "It does."

"Jane," Frank said, "is the reason I became a writer."

I imagined a desk drawer at his house filled with poems rhyming Jane. Jane lane pain stain drain. And I thought of Brian's apartment, its absolute lack of clutter.

Brian was half an hour late. Frank was looking at me, waiting for a response but I didn't want to talk about his writing and so I asked how Jane liked her job.

"She loves it." Frank said. "The hallway outside of her office has very thick carpeting. She says it reminds her of money. And the conference room has a view of Central Park that's reflected on its glass walls and then on the glass walls in front of her desk, so she can look at it all day."

"How lucky," I said.

"Exactly," said Frank. "It's like magic."

"Yes, right." I said, even though I don't think reflections are magical. If I looked at that reflection all day, I thought, I'd be obsessed with the fact that I wasn't looking at the real thing. I wondered what made Jane different, and if she was different, and then I didn't want to be talking to Frank anymore. "I think I should get going," I said.

Frank seemed to put more weight on his standing leg, as though he might get up. "But what about your boyfriend?" he asked.

"He told me he might get stuck at work," I said, "and not to wait around forever." This was not true. Brian was often late and did expect me to wait. He had once been four hours late arriving at my apartment for dinner. We'd spent hours discussing whether punctuality was a virtue. "Oh," Frank said.

Leaving was awkward, as it always is at that point---after you've sat down but before you've ordered. Everyone in the restaurant must know that someone hasn't arrived, or has changed the plan. Also, I never know whether or not I'm supposed to leave money. "Well, bye," I said to Frank, and took my wallet out of my bag. "No, no," he said, and I left.

Outside the air smelled like fireplaces. A mother passed me with a child whose head was entirely wrapped in a bright green scarf so that only a patch of brown hair was visible at the very top. You couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. I thought about not calling Brian to let him know I'd left. I wanted him to have to make his way to the restaurant and have a moment or two of worry when he found I wasn't there. But I didn't want him to run into Frank and so I called and left a message saying I'd gone home.

Once I'd heard Brian tell his friend's how we'd met. He forgot the fat child. He said that standing in the bank, he had been drawn to the collar of my shirt, which was white even though the rest of the shirt was plaid. He said he'd wondered if I'd sewn it on myself. I hadn't even owned the shirt that day at the bank. I'd been wearing a dress. I remember because it was a light dress and I wore it nearly every day that summer. And I remember the bank teller commenting on it, saying something about how I looked nice and cool. I corrected Brian but he insisted that he was right. He said he knew the dress I was talking about but it was the collar, absolutely the collar that had made him want to approach me on the platform. He said without that collar we might not have met.

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