Page 101 of Meet Me in the Garden

She looks at me again, the way she has been all night, giving nothing away. Then she opens the door to my car and slides in. We drive to my house. It’s nearly eleven, a school night, and I pray that Clément and Nathalie will already be sleeping. We park, I unlock the gate and lead her down the steps. The kids’ bags are by the door, their shoes kicked off. The house is dim and silent. Ginny’s face is a blur of sadness. She accepts my hand when I offer it and I take her into my room and close the door. She sits on the edge of my bed. “I’m so tired,” she whispers.

I kneel on the floor at her feet. I unlace one of her shoes and then the other. Resist pressing my mouth to the inches of skin between the hem of her blue jeans and the tops of her socks. She lies down and I sit next to her, take her head in my lap. She closes her eyes. A rush of rightness at being here with her, so sweet it has no place in a night like this one. She falls asleep, her head under my hand as I pet her hair, and for whatever brief and wondrous time we have, I want this and this and more of this.

“Do you still love me?” I ask, but she’s sound asleep. After a time, she turns over, her head on my pillow now, and I’m wide awake so I get up and go out onto the patio. The moon’s close to full, the stars brighter than usual, and I sit in the cool night and my heart races. I hear a car pulling up, and then another. Al’s voice: “Odette, you up?”

I open the gate. Around them, scattered on the sidewalk, filling the back seats of their cars, are cages full of pigeons. “Lionel got a phone call,” Al says. “I don’t especially care to repeat it.”

Lionel’s standing in the yellow of a streetlamp. I remember his soap smell from the morning, the perspiration on his forehead, his urgency. Now his shoulders hunch. “I’ve gotta go for a while,” he says.

We carry the pigeons down the steps and to the coop. Ginny appears in the doorway. Neither of them seems surprised to see her. She’s an extra pair of hands, unfastening the latch to the coop and taking the pigeonsinside. The birds ruffle and squawk and now Clément and Nathalie are outside, too. “What’s all this?” Clément asks.

“I need you to take care of them for me,” Lionel says. “A few months, probably.” Clément stands an inch taller than Lionel now. His height, their man-to-man conversation—it fills me with fear.

“Having the birds here isn’t going to put us in any danger, is it?” I ask.

Lionel shakes his head. “It’s not the birds they’re after, it’s me. Plus, I left them the one they want.” Her soft gray body, the quickness of her heart. Our index fingers, making their way down her spine.

“When are you leaving?” I ask Lionel.

“First thing tomorrow.”

“You can sleep at my place,” Ginny says. “I’ll go by your house and pick up anything you need.”

He hugs Nathalie and Clément and Al and me. And then he and Ginny drive away.

THIRTY-THREE

THE NEXT WEEK,I’m in the restroom near the cafeteria, washing my hands, when Ginny walks in. I catch her reflection in the mirror. She barely glances up but then sees that it’s me, and she stops. It’s only the two of us, the long line of stall doors open.

“How are things in Listening?” she asks. Enough to make me cry. This show we’re putting on for no one.You were just in my bed, I want to say.You fell asleep with my hand across your hair.But we’re tentative, polite, and I want to shake her, shake myself, wake us both up. I want to know why she was crying. I want to know why she got into my car. Once, I made the rules and obeyed them, and it was excruciating but it was clear. And now nothing’s clear and I don’t know what we’re doing.

The door swings open and Claud’s there, gesturing for me to go out, tugging my arm, leading me down the hall. “The first layoffs were just announced. A long list of people, all of them on the union side.”

A ringing in my ears. “Al?” I ask.

“I hate to be the one to tell you.”

I race down the hall and up the flights of stairs to the third floor. The secretaries are huddled together, talking low, dabbing eyes, and I open Al’s door without knocking and here he is. Standing at his desk, placinga framed photograph of Adele and the kids into a box. Bernard’s seated in the chair across the room. Both of them, silent.

“Al,” I say. “How could they do this?”

“Fifteen years,” he says. “Flawless performance reviews. Let go without a day’s notice.” His jaw is set. A slight tremor in his hands as he packs his things. “People are saying the bathrooms are bugged,” he tells me. “Everyone knows that’s where most of the conversations take place. Be careful with what you say.”

“I’ll walk out with you,” I say. “I’ll hand in my resignation right now.”

He goes still for a moment, turns to Bernard, who says nothing. “I appreciate that, Odette. More than I can say. But the impact wouldn’t be worth your sacrifice. Not like, say, if some of my fellow managers found themselves similarly moved.”

Bernard’s eyes have been fixed to the corner of the room. His gaze doesn’t waver. Al finishes clearing off his desk, takes the frames from his walls. I ask the secretaries to find me some napkins and Ruby brings me a stack from the cafeteria. I wrap Al’s lowball glasses from the wet bar, his framed artwork. Once everything in sight is packed up, he opens the drawer to his files. Frowns down at them.

“Go ahead and leave them,” Bernard says. The first sentence he’s spoken.

A shadow across Al’s face. Voice low, he asks, “Are you sitting here as my brother? Or as the personnel manager?”

Bernard shifts in his seat, doesn’t answer, fixes Al with a hard stare. Al’s hands close into fists and I move my body between them. “Bernard,” I say. “You’d better go.” A silent moment. Terrible. My whole body on alert. Al enraged, Bernard seething. “Go,” I say again, and this time, he listens.

“I knew he was loyal to the company,” Al says. “Butthis?”

“I know,” I say. “I know.”