By John-Henry Doucette

Lydia faced the door at La Ragazza Aglio on College Hill. She saw the girl in the black dress walk into the restaurant. The boy who followed wore blue jeans and a red rugby shirt. Lydia watched them over Ty’s hairless head, buried in a menu though the food was ordered.

“Oh dear,” Lydia said. “This won’t do.”

“Reconsidering eggplant?” Ty asked.

“Always. A girl in a black satin dress walked in.”

“Don’t tell her I’m married.”

“She’s had her hair done. She’s wearing a silver charm and silver earrings. The boy she’s with looks like a frat party reject.”

“Maybe he’s funny.”

“That’s even worse. Someone should warn her.”

“Don’t you pretty ones like to laugh?”

She smiled when her husband glanced at her, looked at her neck, exposed and supporting a strand of pearls. “Yes. Oh, he’s a train wreck, Ty. He didn’t hold her chair.”

“He’s probably nervous.” Ty regarded the menu. “Or maybe raised by wolves. He’s her project. These are some prices, Lydia. We’re really in for it.”

“Life is short.”

“The Garlic Girl, is that really what it means? Bet she’s never been kissed.”

“Ty, he’s slouching like a hobo.”

“The boy in jeans?”

“Yes. He looks like he has scoliosis.”

Ty put the menu next to his salad. “He’s nervous. Pretty girls make boys nervous. And those black dresses? The desired effect is nervousness.”

Lydia wore a blouse that was open to show her neck. She had a lovely neck. He often told her so. He smiled. She touched her neck, asked, “Do I make you nervous?”

“Oh yeah. But you got me interested in this girl.” He tried to turn. “Goddamn chair.”

“Don’t bother. She’s blonde.”

“What a shame.”

“Don’t the Italians have blondes?”

“They can keep them.” He coughed. She waited for it to end, for him to touch his napkin to his lips, but when he touched his napkin to his lips he coughed some more.

“He’s smoking,” Lydia said. “The boy with the girl.”

“I’m fine,” Ty said.

“You don’t sound fine.”

“It’s the smell is all.”

“I’ll ask him to stop. Oh, she’s smoking, too.”

“Did he light it, at least?”

“Yes. I’ll tell them to stop. They’re the only ones I see, the only ones smoking.”

“Let them smoke. Everyone tells smokers to stop. It’s uncivilized.”

“They don’t listen,” Lydia said.

Ty smiled and coughed. She stopped a waiter and asked whether they could move to the patio. The waiter said of course, and she pushed Ty out. She set the brake on the chair. She sat. The patio door was glass but Lydia could not see the girl and the boy.

“How did we come to such an ugly city?” she asked.

“It’s beautiful. I came from West Warwick to meet a Brown girl.”

“You came to meet Brown girls and you married RISD.”

“It’s cool out,” he said.

“Is it too cold?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

“Let’s go back,” she said.

“No,” he said. “We’ll finish and go home, lay in bed.”

She looked at Ty, looked at the city.

“That boy should dress up for a girl like that,” Lydia said.

“They’ll have a story,” Ty offered. “She’ll tell the kids, ‘Your Daddy dressed like an ass and I took pity. He’s become my lifelong project. God rewards charity.’”

“A big wedding then?”

“Not too big. A storm hits the day before.”

“No power in the church.”

“Candlelight, then off to the Faculty Club. There’s power at the Faculty Club. Give them a leg up, a nice reception, power. Speeches at the Faculty Club, tasteful speeches and a band, bubbles blowing from a fountain, and they’ll pretend how it goes from there.”

“Perfection.”

“Angell Street apartment, College Hill condo, the Blackstone house. He’ll make concessions in his career to keep them in Blackstone.”

“So will she. Her concessions will seem to matter less than his concessions.”

“Only in the way she’ll tell it.”

Lydia scoffed. “It will matter less to him but it will not matter less to her.”

“She’ll dream about Block Island and Jamestown and Newport, island farms that no longer exist, pretend gardens, private schools among Catholics. She’ll tell him about her dreams. He’ll say, ‘What about the East Side?’ She’ll say, ‘What about it?’”

“Yes, but they’ll have to change, Ty. The smoking, for one thing, it will have to go. They’ll have to quit for the kids. She’ll find out about the baby and then she’ll quit first.”

“He’ll try for the first one.”

“He should have tried harder,” she said. “For her if not for the kids.”

The food arrived. It looked complicated. Ty said it looked like they were eating kaleidoscope guts. Lydia did not respond. She looked at the patio door, saw light reflected in it, the skyline of another city beyond the Providence River, not the girl and not the boy.

“This city,” she said.

“They fall in love,” he responded. “They’ll look back upon a date in La Ragazza Aglio and think about before they wanted everything to change. No matter how he tries, no matter where her opinions and fantasies intersect with that sharp tongue she got from her mother, somehow Blackstone – Blackstone – isn’t good enough. She really wants an island. When he can no longer hold her chair he will regret the times he should have held her chair  and forgot to do it but he will not live to be sorry.”

Ty coughed, touched his napkin to his mouth, and they exchanged apologies.

“Eat a little, Ty,” she said.

“I can’t find the chicken through all this goddamn parm,” he said.

She ate, he picked. Their waiter offered him a container when they were done.

“No need for a container,” Ty said. “Just wheel out our check.”

She got the card from her purse. After the waiter ran it she signed Ty’s name. She wheeled him toward the door. The boy and girl watched them enter from the patio. Ty saluted the boy, who seemed to smile with a thousand teeth. Lydia saw the girl look at her neck, at the pearls. The girl was nervous. Lydia thought the boy should be more nervous but he showed those teeth. The ashtray lay between them, idle. The boy ate, the girl considered it.

“Excuse us,” Ty said. “She’s taking me to the cemetery before curfew.”

But Lydia did not push Ty’s chair past the table. The girl was slim but her face was freckled and round. She had long hair and the hair had waves from a beauty salon. The girl smiled because Lydia was going to talk to her and the girl expectantly moved her head and the waves in her hair crashed together, crashed into the city light. The girl was happy. There were many things a woman could tell a girl. Lydia waited until she remembered the right one and when she knew she took her hand off Ty’s chair and touched the girl’s arm, a soft, slender pipe connecting the black satin dress to a small hand that held a salad fork above a complicated entrée as though the pieces of the girl had not yet agreed where to begin.

“What a lovely dress,” Lydia said.