CHAPTER 13

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

-- DAN

CHAPTER 13

Friday night came, and Matt Sinclair tried very hard not to sweat.

Diedra had a first-floor apartment, two doors past the elevator. Matt knocked five times, quietly, and stood waiting with his hands folded in front of him. Then he decided he didn’t like the way that posture looked, and held his hands behind his back. Then he tucked them in his pockets. When Diedra opened the door, Matt’s arms hung loosely by his sides, and he tried for what he hoped was a steady smile.

“Hi!” Diedra said brightly. She was dressed in new running shoes, faded jeans, and a flattering white blouse that fit rather snugly. She’d curled her hair and put on makeup. Matt’s thoughts, not at their clearest to begin with, further muddled while his heartbeat sped up. His hands started fidgeting, and ended up folded in front of him again.

She said, “C’mon in, I’m almost ready,” and darted into her bedroom.

Matt stepped inside and looked around. Her apartment was a mirror image of his, and it struck him how different the reversal made it look. Several cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner. She hadn’t quite finished unpacking yet.

Diedra’s taste in furnishings was definitely classier than his. It looked as though she actually spent time and effort in picking out items to coordinate with each other, as opposed to Matt’s technique, which was more like a blind stab whenever a furniture store announced a clearance sale. Attractive prints by Matisse and Renoir decorated the walls. The coffee table was oak, he thought.

Diedra returned from her bedroom holding a big fuzzy gray cat. The cat stared at Matt with enormous yellow eyes, and as he watched, the animal’s tail puffed up.

“This is Elmer,” Diedra said, stroking the cat’s head and back. She kissed Elmer lightly between the ears and rubbed her face against him. “Do you like cats?”

Matt stayed where he was. He knew where this would go, and lost his smile. “I do, yeah, but they usually don’t like me.”

Diedra missed his sudden tension and moved toward him, still holding Elmer. “Oh, Elmer likes everybody. He’s a big sweetie. If you sit down he’ll probably jump in your lap and go to sleep.” She took another step and Elmer started straining against her; one more step, which put them within five feet of Matt, and Elmer yowled, scrambled up onto Diedra’s shoulder and launched himself off her back. He paused briefly at the bedroom door to glare and hiss at Matt, then disappeared under Diedra’s bed.

Shocked, Diedra quickly said, “Excuse me,” and went after the cat.

She dropped down onto the floor beside the bed and tried to coax Elmer out, but he wouldn’t budge. He stayed tucked into the far corner, all his fur raised. Presently Diedra gave up and came back into the living room, where Matt stood, nervous.

“I don’t know what that was,” she said. “I’ve never seen him act like that before. He even loves the vet.”

Matt shook his head sadly. “Animals don’t like me much.” She seemed to be waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t have anything else he could tell her. He said, “Maybe I smell funny.”

Diedra looked at him silently for a few moments, one eyebrow slightly cocked.

She seemed on the verge of backing out of their date. And what if she did? Wouldn’t that be for the best? Shouldn’t he go back to his own apartment, or to the basement? He stood quietly and watched as she made up her mind.

Finally Diedra shrugged and picked up her keys. “Well. Ready to go?”

“Yep,” he answered, hoping the evening wouldn’t turn out to be a painful mistake.

He tried to match the length of his strides to hers as they went to the car. New sweat ran down between his shoulder blades, and he shrugged at the itch.

“So, uh...how was your day?” He ground his teeth and wondered if he could sound more inane.

“Not bad. A lot like yesterday. This full-time job arrangement...y’know, it takes up a lot of time.”

“I’ve heard that. Guess that’s why it’s called ‘full time.’”

“Yeah.” Diedra giggled.

She laughed! She laughed at the lamest comment I could possibly have made, but she laughed! It was something, at least.

They went to her car. That was a stipulation; Diedra had explained that she never got into a guy’s car on a first date, and Matt couldn’t argue with her. So his old Monte Carlo sat in its reserved spot, and they took Diedra’s Civic.

She opened the door for him. He got in, moved the seat all the way back to accommodate his legs, and reached across to unlock the driver’s door as she reached it. She gave him what he thought might have been a brief, appreciative glance as she settled into her seat, and Matt wondered if unlocking her door had been a point in his favor. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m...a little nervous,” he said as she turned the ignition. “I figured I’d go ahead and tell you, in case it wasn’t obvious.”

She backed the car out of the space. “Why?”

“Why am I nervous? Well...I haven’t been on...anything like this, ah...any kind of social engagement in a couple of years. I’m not sure I’ll remember how to act.”

“Oh yeah? Why such a long time?”

He shook his head. “Long story. Long boring story. Cure for insomnia boring.”

“I don’t know. I doubt any story you told could be too boring.”

Matt didn’t respond to that. Instead he said, “So. What’s the place we’re going? What’s it called? It’s a vegetarian place, right?”

“Right. You do like vegetarian food? I hope?”

“Yeah, yes I do. I guess we should’ve ascertained that before now, huh?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him again, and one corner of her mouth quirked up.

“What?”

“‘Ascertained.’ You just used that word in a regular sentence.”

Matt cringed.

“No, hey, listen, it’s a good thing. Don’t be ashamed of having a decent vocabulary.”

A pause, as Matt thought about that, and about how abruptly his formal education had come to an end. He could tell Diedra was waiting for him to respond, but his tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth, and he let the silence stretch.

# # #

They didn’t say anything else until they got to the restaurant. It was a small, narrow brick building on North Highland, not far from the St. Charles Deli, with a couple of wrought iron tables and chairs outside. The whole front wall was glass, and Matt saw about a dozen people inside, seated and eating. He followed Diedra in.

A waitress greeted them and said, “Sit wherever you want to, I’ll be right there.” Diedra gave him a questioning look, and Matt shrugged and said, “How ‘bout that table in the corner?”

Diedra nodded and led the way. Matt took a chair backed up to the wall, and Diedra said, “Do you want to sit like that so nobody can sneak up on you?”

Matt glanced behind him. “Hey, now that you mention it, that is kind of nice.” She giggled. That’s twice. Am I doing something right? “It’s actually a sort of neurotic derivative of my movie-watching habits.”

“Which are?”

“Well, I guess it’s only one habit. I like to sit in the very back row.”

“Why? So you can neck with your date?”

“No...so nobody can throw popcorn at me.”

She giggled again, and Matt felt the knot of his insides loosen up a tiny bit. Diedra opened her mouth to say something, but the waitress showed up again. She gave them each a glass of ice water, silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, and a menu.

“Are you both ready to order now, or do you need a few minutes?”

Diedra opened her menu, but didn’t really look at it. “I know what I want, but I think you’d better give us some time.”

Matt opened his own menu and was bombarded by dishes he’d never heard of before. “Yeah, I think I’ll need a couple of minutes at least.”

The waitress, who wore a hand-made name tag that read “Lynn,” smiled and nodded and left them alone.

Matt felt Diedra watching him as he looked over the selections. Another silence stretched out, but this time Matt broke it. “Uh, can you recommend anything?”

She seemed happy to make suggestions. “Well, everything they serve is good. Except the cornbread—they cook it with bits of purple cabbage in it, which is pretty weird, I think. But aside from that, everything is good. I can vouch for the lentil burger and the barbecued tofu especially, but I’m going to get the vegetable samosas and dal soup.”

Matt’s eyes wandered across the paper until he found what she meant.

“Ah. In the Indian section.” He peered over the top at her. “I guess that makes sense.”

She dropped her eyes, and Matt set the menu down on the table. “Did I just put my foot in my mouth?”

“No, no...” She paused briefly. “See, the first time I had any Indian food was in a restaurant.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.” She exhaled slowly. “My parents came here from Bombay before I was born, and they decided to embrace the culture a hundred percent. That’s pretty unusual as far as native-born Indians go. So when I showed up, they raised me totally American. Which is good, I mean, I don’t have any problem with that at all...but I also don’t have all that much knowledge of my own culture. So, uh, in answer to your question, no, you didn’t put your foot in your mouth.”

“I’m glad.” He unfolded the paper napkin and dropped it in his lap. “That would have been number 146 on my List of Things To Do Around New People: ‘make offhanded racial slur.’“

She laughed, and it actually was musical, just like in all the songs and corny poems. Musical and resonant, like chimes. He continued: “That’s right after ‘complain of incontinence,’ and right before ‘comment on new person’s weight problem.’“

She laughed harder, and Matt so enjoyed listening to her laughter that he didn’t quite notice as her hand moved across the table and closed on his. He felt something touch his skin, and almost jerked away before he realized what was happening, before he looked down and saw her touch him. Then he feared to look up at her, because she didn’t take her hand back. It wasn’t just a fleeting touch. She kept it there, on his, of her own accord.

He took a deep breath. It didn’t seem real. She didn’t seem real.

Her skin was warm and smooth and, as her laughter subsided, with the index finger of his other hand he slowly traced a line across the back of her knuckles. Very gently he turned her hand over and glided his fingertips across her palm. The palm and the undersides of her fingers were slightly lighter than the rest of her skin. It fascinated him.

Then Lynn the waitress came back, and Matt finally risked making eye contact with Diedra. She grinned, just a tiny bit, her eyes heavy-lidded, and gracefully closed her hand and pulled it away, out of his. The moment ended.

“Ready?” Lynn asked, tentatively, sensing the interruption. She had a small pad and pen.

“I think so,” Diedra said, and turned toward the waitress. Matt couldn’t think over the whirring of blood in his ears. “I’ll have the samosas and dal soup. And iced tea.”

The waitress dutifully scratched the order down, and turned to Matt. He croaked out, “Same for me.”

“Okay,” the waitress said. “Your food’ll be out shortly.”

Matt watched her go, and felt each individual bead of the sweat popping out above his eyebrows. After a pause which might or might not have been awkward, he couldn’t tell, he mumbled, “So, uh...what were you saying?”

She raised her eyebrows slightly, and her lips still curved, just a bit at the corners. Something had changed, but Matt didn’t have the presence of mind at the moment to try to figure out exactly what. He decided to concentrate on listening to her, and on observing basic table manners, such as not stabbing himself with a fork.

# # #

The dinner progressed smoothly from there. He listened well as Diedra told him about her childhood, and the wretched time she spent in high school, and her four years in college. She asked him about his own past twice, but both times he neatly sidestepped the question and asked her another one about herself. He knew she was aware of the evasions, but she let them go.

The food was good. The dark green dal soup was spicy enough to warrant long sips of iced tea, but not hot enough to burn the tongue, and the samosas’ crusts were wonderfully flaky and light. Matt had never tried either of the dishes, and was pleasantly surprised.

“So,” he began at one point as he set down his glass of tea, “did your family actually used to have these? At meals? Ever?”

She swallowed a bite of samosa and smiled, shaking her head. “No. That’s what I meant before. I first had this stuff at an Indian restaurant we went to when I was seven. I’m not sure how authentic it was. For that matter I’m not sure how authentic this stuff is. But that’s what I meant. I can’t tell, ‘cause I don’t have any first-hand experience. They wouldn’t teach me to speak Hindi, either.”

She paused, drew in a breath as if to speak, and paused again. Matt said, “What?”

She smiled a little sheepishly. “Along the same lines...authenticity and such...my, ah, name isn’t really Diedra.”

Matt didn’t know what to say. “...Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s Disha. It means ‘direction.’ My mom’s boss, when I was a little girl, her name was Diedra, and I wanted to be just like her. So I told all my friends to call me Diedra, and, well, it just sort of stuck. Even my mother calls me Diedra now. Most of the time.”

Matt shrugged slightly. “I think Disha is a beautiful name.”

She smiled lopsidedly. “Yeah...I like it too, now that I’m grown. But I’m too used to Diedra to switch back.”

Matt hesitated, glanced around at the restaurant and back to her. “I like this place. Authentic or not, I like it. I’m glad you wanted to come here.”

“Good.”

At Diedra’s suggestion they split the bill. In the parking lot, as she unlocked the passenger-side door, Diedra turned to him and said, “Do you really want to go to the movie?”

Matt took a half step backward. “Don’t you?”

“Well...no, not really. Look, when you go to movies you sit for an hour and a half and don’t say anything. And I was thinking, to begin with, that that would be okay, ‘cause I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. But as it turns out, you’re someone I really want to talk to. So no, I don’t really want to go to the movie.”

Matt shrugged. “Okay. But I’ve got to tell you, as a by-product of not going on any dates for two years, I’m clueless as to what there is to do around here. I mean, as far as social activity goes. What would you like to do?”

“I love the way you talk,” she said quietly, not quite under her breath.

Matt thought he understood her, but said, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Nothing.” She moved around to the driver’s side. “Well, get in the car.”

Matt did as he was told.

# # #

“Oh, good, there’s a parking place.”

Diedra swerved the Civic into an empty slot in a six-space parking lot that faced a circular area of well-kept, very green grass. Nestled between a post office and a long, gently sloping embankment covered in kudzu, the clearing managed to preserve a certain pastoral serenity, if one could overlook the discarded beer cans and fast food wrappers littering the parking area. A white wooden post rose from the ground at the far edge of the pavement, and looked as though it might have once supported a sign, but it ended in worn splinters after four feet.

“Welcome to Anonymous Park,” Diedra said as Matt got out of the car.

She came around and took his arm.

“I never knew this was here,” he said, gazing at the statue that rose from the grass in the middle of the clearing.

“Not many people notice it. That’s what makes it so cool. C’mon.”

She pulled him out onto the grass, which felt springy and soft under his feet. Concentrating on the statue, he didn’t notice the look she gave him as her hand closed around the wood-hard muscles of his forearm.

In the clearing’s center stood a fifteen-foot-high bronze man dressed in Revolution-era clothes, holding a massive book under his left arm and gesturing passionately with his right hand. Thoroughly imposing, he stood on a bronze rock partially overgrown with vines. Matt noticed a square indentation in the rock directly below the tips of his shoes; a plaque had once rested there, but now the space was empty. Three low concrete benches surrounded the statue, and Diedra dropped onto one of them, patted the space beside her for Matt. He sat down slowly, his attention rapidly re-focusing on her.

“Isn’t he great?” Diedra asked, waving at the statue.

“Yeah.” He didn’t quite know what to think about it. “Who is he?”

“I have no idea!” she said, and laughed. “That’s why I call this place ‘Anonymous Park.’ I found it a couple of years ago, and neither the sign nor the plaque was here then.” She craned her head to look up at the massive bronze face. “I heard somewhere he might be John C. Calhoun. Who knows. I can’t tell if that book is the Bible, or the works of Francis Bacon, or what. He’s pretty intimidating, though. Makes me feel sort of safe.”

Matt tried to think of some kind of comment concerning the statue that wouldn’t sound like total garbage, but then realized Diedra had moved closer to him and lost whatever train of thought he might have had. He looked down at her, and she put one hand to his face, quickly caressed his cheek, and kissed him.

It was brief, but there was heat in it, and as soon as their lips parted Matt wanted to disappear. Jump up and run away from her. He felt split down the middle, as one side of him desperately wanted to touch her again, while the other side cursed him and jammed a pitchfork of guilt into his stomach.

Diedra showed him that smile that continued to kick him in the ribs. She didn’t scoot away from him, but instead swiveled on the bench and pulled her knees up to her chest. It was an elegant way to stay close to him while establishing a sort of barrier.

Finally Matt said, “What, uh...I...wasn’t expecting that.”

She cocked her head impishly. “I know. That’s why I did it.”

He tried to calm his breathing and heartbeat, and hoped none of his sudden panic came through on his face.

The two of them sat on the concrete bench and talked, under the watchful eye of the bronze statesman, until night fell and the cicadas began their determined droning. They talked about movies, and religion, and touched briefly on national politics. They discussed the space program, and whether they liked green or blue glass bottles better, and what their favorite rides at DisneyWorld were, and the pets they’d had as children.

Somewhere along the way Matt realized he was falling in love with her, and it felt like dying, and he couldn’t stop it.


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