The green dress looked better standing up than it did while Iris attempted to pull on her tights.
She had one foot in, one foot caught, and an expression in the mirror that made her think of a heron swallowing something uncooperative. The silk slipped off her shoulder. She sat down on the bed before she could fall over and make the evening memorable for the wrong reason.
At fifty-two, she could process a disputed refund, persuade trustees to reject a bulk sale and reattach a dress strap with stitches smaller than an ant. Apparently hosiery required fresh training.
She gave up on the tights.
The dress fell beautifully over her bare legs. The shoes were low, black and comfortable. She had a coat warm enough to cross the parking lot. No regulation required her to suffer privately before she was allowed a pleasant evening.
Downstairs, her phone buzzed with a message from Winnie.
Leave the house. Whatever you’re doing to your hair, it’s done.
Iris laughed and took her keys.
Leo’s occupied the first floor of an old house on the river road. The bar had been added later, and whoever built it had preferred practical woodwork to straight lines. Iris had eaten there three times in the last decade, twice for staff Christmas parties and once for a birthday Colin had seemed in a hurry to finish.
Tonight, warm air and the smell of garlic met her at the door. From the back room came Winnie’s laugh, followed by Hugh saying something about professional witnesses.
Daniel stood beside the coat hooks.
He wore a dark blue shirt without a tie, open at the throat. His hair looked as if he’d run a hand through it in the car. For the first time since she’d met him, he appeared to have arrived somewhere without an object to assess.
Then he saw her.
It was not a theatrical reaction. He stopped reaching for a hanger. His gaze moved from her face to the dress and back, slowly enough that she knew he had looked, carefully enough that she did not feel inspected.
“You finished it,” he said.
“I did.”
“I’m glad.”
Her pulse behaved foolishly. “Me too.”
He held the hanger while she slipped off her coat. She felt him behind her without contact, close enough that the fine hairs on her arms seemed to take an interest.
“I’ve been told where we’re sitting,” he said.
“By Winnie?”
“Apparently there’s a system.”
“There always is.”
The system put her beside Daniel, with Winnie opposite and Hugh at the end where he could complain about the doorway. Priya arrived late in a yellow blouse, carrying her lipstick and an apology for the bus, and was welcomed as if they had feared she’d gone to Australia.
Nobody asked Iris where Colin was.
She hadn’t known until that moment that she’d been waiting for it.
They ordered too many appetizers because no one wished to make the first person feel greedy. Daniel wanted the fried calamari. Iris disliked calamari.
“More for me,” he said.
“That was unusually honest.”
“I’ve had a long day.”
He ate it with visible pleasure and refused to defend it when Hugh claimed the coating was the only worthwhile part. Iris found this almost as attractive as the pillowcases.
Around them, conversation loosened. Priya described a customer who wanted a mirror wrapped because she disliked what it had shown her. Hugh told her not to give anyone ideas. Winnie recalled Leonard trying to demonstrate a self-wringing mop at a council event and flooding his own shoe.
“He said it was the operator, not the product,” she said. “Told everyone he was defective.”
They laughed. Then the laughter softened, and for a little while people remembered him without turning the evening into a memorial service.
Daniel asked Winnie how long she’d worked there.
“Forty-one years, with an interval for a husband who thought Florida would improve him. It didn’t.”
“Did you come back together?”
“No. I came back with the car.”
Iris had heard the story before. Tonight she noticed the small sadness under the punch line, and the way Winnie took a drink afterward.
“Did you always sew?” Daniel asked Iris.
“Badly, to begin with.”
“What was the first thing?”
“A skirt for a doll. I used the wrong bit of my grandmother’s good tablecloth.”
“The wrong bit?”
“The middle.”
His laugh was immediate and delighted. She wanted to make him do it again.
She told them about her grandmother’s sewing room, the biscuits kept in a tin that had held buttons until someone confused the tins, the dreadful yellow coat Iris made at sixteen because a magazine promised it could be finished in a weekend.
“Could it?” Daniel asked.
“If you didn’t put your arms in.”
She had forgotten how much there was to tell about herself that did not involve keeping something running. Daniel listened, occasionally interrupting with a question that made the memory clearer rather than turning it toward his own story.
After dinner, Priya found the old jukebox in the bar.
“Absolutely not,” Hugh said when the first song began.
“It’s been thirty seconds,” Winnie told him. “Try developing as a person.”
Two regulars were already dancing between the bar and the front window. There was a narrow strip of polished floor, not officially a dance floor, though the bar stools seemed to have left room on purpose.
Winnie went to inspect the music choices. Daniel followed her.
A few minutes later a power ballad filled the room with the sound of a man determined to finish a sentence across several octaves.
Iris looked at Daniel as he came back.
“You did that.”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily.”
“I enjoy it.”
“You seem so normal.”
He pulled out his chair, smiling. “I’ve been trying to warn you.”
Priya stood. “Come on, Iris.”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“I don’t dance to this sort of thing.”
“What sort do you dance to?”
It was another dangerous question with a simple answer she could not remember. At weddings she danced with Colin when the right song came on. At Christmas she moved her shoulders while washing dishes. There had been music before these carefully sanctioned occasions. She used to dance while changing the sheets, radio loud enough to be heard downstairs.
Daniel held out a hand.
“Would you like to?”
She looked at his hand, then his face.
“Are you good?”
“No.”
That decided it.
He led her to the edge of the space with none of the confidence she had seen when he presented figures. One hand took hers. The other settled lightly at her waist. She put her free hand on his shoulder, felt the warmth beneath the blue cotton, and forgot for a moment which parts of her were supposed to move.
“Fair warning,” he said. “I only know one thing.”
“Dancing?”
“Moving left. Then right.”
“What happens if the song asks for more?”
“We disappoint it.”
She laughed, and he smiled down at her, and for several seconds she did not notice the room.
They were both stiff at first. Daniel concentrated enough that she could feel it in his hand. She relaxed her fingers and he noticed, easing his grip without letting go.
His body was not the body of a young man. Nor was hers. That was part of what she liked: the steadiness of him, the small adjustments, the fact that he smelled of clean cotton and something warm she wanted to stand nearer to.
“You’re thinking,” he said.
“So are you.”
“I’m counting.”
“Does it help?”
“Not so far.”
She moved a little closer. His hand settled more securely against her waist.
This was not an accident. Neither of them pretended it was.
When the song finished, she stayed where she was until he said, “Another?”
“If it’s better music.”
“I can’t promise that.”
The next song was worse. She danced anyway.
By ten, Hugh had left to collect his wife from her sister’s, Priya was sharing a taxi with a colleague, and Winnie had begun refusing all offers of a ride because she was not, as she put it, an endangered parcel.
Daniel got the bill divided without fuss. Iris counted her own share and added a tip. She was aware of him beside her, jacket on now, waiting while she finished.
Outside, the sky was clear and cold. Her car was across the small lot. His stood nearer the road.
“Would you like a walk?” he asked.
She looked toward the river. A path ran behind the restaurant, lit by two low lamps. She had a coat, comfortable shoes and no one waiting at home to ask what time she’d be back.
“Yes.”
They walked beside the water. The river was dark and unexpectedly loud around the old bridge supports. Somewhere downstream a dog barked once.
Daniel put his hands in his jacket pockets.
“I didn’t know whether to ask you tonight.”
“To dance?”
“Yes. And this.”
“Because I’m still married.”
“Because you’re having a difficult week. I didn’t want to make it more complicated without asking.”
She stopped beside the railing. “It already is complicated.”
“I know.”
“I enjoyed tonight.”
“So did I.”
“I don’t need you to turn it into something sensible for me.”
He was quiet. Then he looked down at the water.
“All right.”
She stood beside him, her shoulder near his. She had expected relief after saying it. Instead came a strange, expansive fear, as if she had opened a door and discovered a room larger than the house should hold.
“I’d like to see you again,” he said.
“Monday. Customer collections. Very romantic.”
“Not at the store.”
She turned toward him.
“A proper evening,” he said. “Without everybody else’s chairs in the way.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner.”
“We just had dinner.”
“I’m a creature of habit.”
She thought of the dress, her grandmother’s sewing room, the absurd earnestness of him choosing a song nobody could defend.
“There’s an old movie theater in Millport,” she said. “They show films that have stopped being current without becoming obscure.”
“I know it.”
“I’d like that.”
“Saturday?”
“The curtains. I promised to stay until five.”
“Afterward.”
“Yes.”
He smiled then, slowly, and she felt her own answer become warmer in response.
They walked back. At her car, he waited while she found her keys.
“Iris.”
She looked up.
“You look lovely.”
The simple words reached her before she could turn them into politeness. Her throat tightened. She had not expected to be undone by a compliment she believed.
“Thank you.”
He waited until she was in the car, then crossed to his own. She sat for a moment with her hands loose on the steering wheel.
At home, she hung the green dress properly instead of leaving it over a chair. Her feet were a little sore, but the rest of her felt curiously awake.
She turned on the small radio in the bedroom. A weather forecast. Then an advertisement. Then, finally, a song she liked.
Iris took the pins out of her hair and danced while she brushed it.