Chapter Eight
Lori
“I can’t believe you turned that guy down,” said Sam. “I know you don’t care much for dating, but sometimes your disdain for boys surprises me.”
It was Monday morning, and I was standing on a chair in the shop hanging up some of the art prints we had bought at the festival. Sam stood behind me, nervously fussing with an unlit cigarette. Although we were both glad the festival was over, she wasn’t looking forward to going back to work.
“It’s not that I hate all boys,” I said, feeling a prickle of irritation. “I didn’t even know that guy, and he wanted to give me his number.”
“I doubt he meant any harm by it. You saw him hand over those thousands of dollars to Old Joe—he doesn’t seem like a bad sort.”
I shook my head resolutely as I climbed down from the chair. “Even if he’s not a stalker, I don’t want him texting me twenty times a day. That would get old very quickly.”
Sam stared at me in disbelief. She knew I had a low tolerance for annoying boys, but I think my refusal had struck her as uncharacteristically rude. I was generally a kind person unless I thought you were flirting. Then, I felt a mysterious urge to flee into the woods where no man ever goes.
“Anyway,” said Sam, “I know you’ve been hurt in the past, but you can’t continue to act as though every potential relationship is going to be just like your last. You’ve grown up a bit, and not every boy is Jonathan.”
Sam and I had a tacit agreement not to mention Jonathan, whom I had never dated but had loved like a boyfriend. I had spent a year of my life pining after him, a fact to which he seemed mostly oblivious. We had gone out to dinner and the opera together, and our friends wanted to know whether or not we were dating and when we were going to make it official.
He gave every indication of liking me, but it was all an illusion, and the relationship ended in disappointment. I’ll never forget how I sat in my dorm and cried on the last day of school when he came in and told me he wasn’t interested and that he didn’t want us to stay in touch over the summer. Shortly after that, he had met a girl in Paris, and they had started dating. Now, they were engaged.
“Sometimes, it just seems like you expect to be rejected by every boy,” said Sam. “So you reject them before they can reject you.”
“Hmmm, deep,” I said sarcastically.
“For real, though. When is the last time you sensed a boy liked you and didn’t immediately run away or try to scare them off?”
“Sam, I can’t even remember the last time a boy liked me. I’ve told you, I’m probably going to end up a nun, and you know what? That wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing. Frankly, I don’t understand how you can bear to spend every day with the same person.”
“Well, when you really love someone, it isn’t difficult,” said Sam. “I might just as well ask how you can bear to read hundreds of pages a night.”
“But you love books as much as I do.”
“Exactly, and that’s the real secret, isn’t it? Love.”
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t dismiss Sam’s advice outright. She could be cynical about everything else, but not this. I had seen first-hand how dating Jamal had made her tender, hopeful, and open-hearted. “Love is just about the only magic we have left in this world,” she had once told me, and she meant it.
It was an unusually busy morning, which didn’t leave me much time for contemplating my tangled love life. Customers were lined up outside the doors before we even opened, and by ten, Sam was turning them away because there wasn’t enough room in the shop. In addition to Joe and Cheryl and some of the other regulars, it seemed like half the people in my Tuesday night Bible study stopped by that morning.
“Joe, I heard you almost won the poker tournament on Saturday,” said Brian as he waited for his vanilla latte. “Tough break, man.”
“Yes, but I still got the money,” said Joe, taking a sip of his tea. “That counts as a win in my book.”
Judging from the astonished looks of those seated near him, it was clear that not everyone had heard about Marshall’s act of kindness. Sensing that he had the room’s attention, Joe explained how Marshall had found him and given him the money.
“He must already be loaded if he would willingly give up twenty-five hundred dollars,” said Alvin.
Joe hadn’t mentioned the exact amount Marshall had given him, but now several customers let out shocked gasps. I winced in surprise; I couldn’t imagine being rich enough to see twenty-five hundred dollars as loose change.
“I don’t know what would possess a person to do that,” said Brian with a shake of his head.
“I don’t know,” said Joe, “but I don’t mind.”
“Personally, I think it was the right thing to do.” Alvin took a single bite out of a doughnut hole and chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe the Holy Spirit was acting on him; I don’t know. But I wish we had more examples of guys being generous with their money, instead of wasting it all on video games and bigger TVs.”
“What would you do if someone gave you that much money?” asked Brian, stirring his latte.
“I don’t know,” said Alvin between bites. “I like to think I would give it away, but who’s to say what I would really do if that happened? Sometimes the temptation to splurge is too great.”
“What about you, Lori?”
I had to think about it for a minute. “I’d probably sink it into expanding the business. I know that’s not very altruistic, sorry. But on Saturday, several people told me they wished we would start a chain or move into a bigger facility that could accommodate more customers. I mean, look at us now: there’s barely enough room for the people who are here. Twenty-five hundred wouldn’t cover all of that, but it would be more than what we’ve got now.”
“Imagine having the leg room to walk around when you went into the dining area,” said Sam, clutching her mug in both hands. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
“It’s really all I want in the world,” I replied. “That and a house in Scotland with a room full of books.”
All this while Brian continued to stare thoughtfully down into his mug. “I’d like to meet the man who could give away twenty-five hundred dollars as if it was nothing. I have a feeling that man would have something to teach all of us.”
“Well, now’s your chance,” said Sam, motioning to the doorway with her spatula. “He’s standing right outside the door.”
All eyes turned to face Marshall, who was just walking in. He paused in mid-stride and stared nervously around at all of us, as though half-suspecting that we had been talking about him three seconds before.
“Why’s everybody so quiet?” he asked as he reached the counter. “Did you finally get that silencing spell to work?”
“Haven’t you heard the news?” asked Sam. “Over the weekend, someone gave away a huge sum of money and became a local hero.”
“Oh, that?” Marshall smiled and rolled his eyes. “Joe, I can’t believe you told everybody!”
Joe shrugged as if to say, “What did you expect me to do?”
“Anyway,” said Sam, “what can we get you? Whatever you want, it’s on the house.”
“Really?” Marshall’s eyes glinted ominously. “You’ll let me have whatever I want?”
Sam nodded, though I discerned a flicker of hesitation in her voice. “Anything on that menu up there.”
“Shame!” Marshall snapped his fingers loudly and turned toward me. “I was going to ask for your number.”
“What? Me?” I said in surprise. “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
But Marshall was undaunted. “You ran off before I had the chance to ask you on Saturday, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go until I asked you.”
I was conscious of the fact that every eye in the shop was on us. “It’s funny, because I don’t remember the conversation happening that way. I seem to remember you asking if we wanted help with our pies, and I said no, and then you asked for my number, and I ran off.”
“Yeah, why did you do that?” asked Marshall. His persistence was impressive, if a little alarming. “It’s almost like you were scared of me.”
“I just don’t want anybody having my personal number. The only people who have it are my best friends and my sister, and you were someone I had just met ten minutes ago.”
“That’s not entirely fair. I came in here last week!”
“And yet you apparently left no impression,” I said with a smile.
Somehow, my flagrant refusal seemed to have only emboldened him. “Tell you what,” he said, speaking in a voice loud enough that it carried through the room. “If you won’t give it to me today, then I’ll just have to try again tomorrow. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll come back the next day, and the day after that.”
“As long as you purchase something, I don’t have a problem with that.”
Marshall was on his way out, but he stopped midway through the door. “Oh, I’ll be ordering every day. And I’ll get that number in the end—not from your sister, not from anybody else, but from you.”
He bought an apple fritter, then turned and left. The rest of the shop turned to me as if to see my reaction.
“Boys, right?” I said with a shrug. “I suppose he thinks this is some sort of romantic gesture that will inevitably melt my cold heart.”
“Seriously, Lori?” asked Sam in a tone of disgust. “How long do you think this is going to last?”
“As long as it takes for him to leave me alone.”
“You know he’s going to be coming in here every day, right? He’s not going to let it go until he gets what he wants.”
“Well, in that case,” I replied, “I’m afraid he’s going to be very disappointed.”