Page 43 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra

SOMETHING STUPID

David surprised me with lunch at the shop. He’d stopped at Tilly’s – my favourite baguette bar the next street over from where I was – and brought me a still-warm crusted roll with home-made egg mayonnaise, complete with a vanilla slice for afterwards. Naturally, I was every bit suspicious. David sometimes went so long without seeing me at the shop that I started to wonder whether he even remembered where it was. Then something miraculous like this happened and my knee-jerk response was: He wants something… That had been the first thing I’d said to him, too, when he stepped into the shop with the fully loaded brown paper bag of treats.

‘Can’t a man treat his wife to a little lunch now and then?’ He’d feigned outrage. ‘Besides, I spent the entire morning writing and I am absolutely exhausted with it all. Honestly, Patti.’ He landed hard on the free stool opposite my serving side of the counter. ‘I don’t know how I ever sat in front of a computer screen all day for a living.’

‘That’s because you weren’t. When you were working all day, everything was done on a typewriter still.’

‘That is both cruel and untrue.’

‘Are you ever going to tell me about this book, anyway?’

I’d left it uncommented on until now. There had been days in recent weeks when David had been consumed by the tap-tap-tapping that I could hear from behind his closed bedroom door. Then there were other days when there wasn’t a whisper of the book; instead, he just lounged around the apartment waiting for a woman to arrive, or leave. Given that he’d opened an opportunity to discuss it, though, I thought it might be a sign that he was ready.

‘It’s sort of…’ He paused while he bit into his wedge of a sandwich. Wholemeal bread – that would have been freshly baked – with chicken, bacon, tomato and red sauce. David and I knew each other’s orders from anywhere we might ever possibly want to eat. I’d come to think of it as one of the perks of marriage. ‘It’s sort of a… semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional, sometimes quite surreal story about… Well, it’s kind of…’ He looked up towards the ceiling, as though waiting on a muse to descend with a synopsis for him.

I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s about sleeping with lots of women, isn’t it?’

‘In a sentence, perhaps. But it’s much more complex than that, Patti, it’s–’

‘May I read it?’

‘Now? But it isn’t even finished.’

‘How far through it are you?’

‘Well that depends entirely on how long I live.’

‘Oh, my David.’ I laughed and leaned forward to cup his cheek. ‘You are a case.’

‘I’m not sure what that means but you aren’t making it sound like a good thing.’

‘It is, I promise you.’

He took another bite out of his sandwich and spoke around the mouthful. ‘You can read it when it’s done, and if I die first, you must promise to make sure it’s published.’

‘I’ll make it my own life’s work to make sure your life’s work is published,’ I said with my hand resting over my heart.

‘See, when you say it like that, I can’t take you seriously.’

I set my sandwich down and sipped at my tea to swill my mouth before changing the direction of the conversation. ‘So what will you do with the rest of your day?’

‘Are you kicking me out?’

‘No, I’m checking for a motive.’

‘Patti, it’s just a free lunch!’

‘There’s no such thing.’ I picked up my crusty roll again. ‘I’m quite certain you taught me that. Now, what are you doing with the rest of your day?’

‘I’m going shopping, all right? A little shopping, and then home.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Clothes shopping?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Vintage clothes shopping?’