The two reemerged back on the sidewalk after a few faltering steps. During their absence the early afternoon had come and gone. Buildings were already giving umbrage to longer shadows along Fairfax.
Michael was not sure what to make of any of it as they drove back to his car. His preoccupation with the professor made him feel guilty, especially in light of Emma’s grief over her father. Seeing her wounded made his feelings complicated. Some of the paternalism he bore for Brae was now being portioned out to the practically parentless photographer.
Somehow he doubted Emma was aware of Erica’s involvement with the married man, and saw looming betrayal in her future on two fronts. His emergence on the scene put him in good position to comfort her, but he could not say from where that comfort would issue. He was not an opportunist by nature, yet found his crosscurrent of attraction and fatherly regard for the young woman dizzying. It was the father in him that wanted to salvage something of her spirits.
“Emma is such a beautiful name,” he told her.
Her face brightened. “I’m named after Emma Woodhouse. Jane Austen’s heroine.”
Michael smiled. “She’s my favorite writer.”
“Then you’ve read her books?”
“No. I have video box sets of all her novels.”
Emma was thrown by his response. “Why do you like her?”
The painter turned it over. “My friend says poets write tragedy, but philosophers write comedy. Austen’s philosophical outlook on life was similar to Aristotle’s: a place for everything and everything in its place. She was even Aristotelian in marrying off young women to older men.”
“So who do you prefer? Emma or Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice?”
“I love both, equally.”
“Why?”
“Because they both had good relationships with their fathers. That always bodes well for a woman.”
Emma looked off through the windshield with another shade of barely-there melancholy. “I’ve been poor all my life. But when I was a little girl, my father always had money to buy me dresses.”
The bittersweet cast to her face prompted the bachelor to make an observation. “I suspect you may also have a little Emma Bovary in you.”
The photographer was touched by his making such a close study of her. “Is that another book you haven't read?”
“No. I had to read that one in college.”
She laughed and turned over a few stones herself. “You know, you haven’t said anything about your own art.”
Michael demurred. “My art is a little like a crazy aunt you keep in the attic. You only get to meet her if you agree to meet the folks for Thanksgiving.”
“Does that means I have to date you to see your art?”
Her broad grin indicated the question was likely rhetorical.
She continued in the same vein. “Did you have a sweetheart in school?”
Her disarming inquiry made him equally candid. “I’ve made a few attempts at dating, but it never worked out. (Not that anything would have worked out in my twenties.)”
“Are you one of those hopelessly misunderstood romantic-types who writes poems to girls?”
He did not reply.
“Have you written a poem to me?”
Michael looked out the window.
The young woman’s excitement was not dampened. “I’ve always fancied myself as a muse, you know. I could be your muse. You could paint me!”
“You may be of a different mind after you’ve met the crazy aunt.”
Emma laughed once more. “You mentioned your twenties. How old are you?”
He never lied. “Thirty-six.”
She was floored. “You look to be my age!” There was a customary silence following such exchanges, but the young woman was quick to follow up with, “Age isn’t that big a deal, though. Unless you’re drooling on your shoes.”
The graduate student had answered a question that had not been asked: a question posed by her subconscious mind and to which she gave a verbal response. The question being: Does age matter when there is attraction? It was hard to say whether the reply was an assessment of her possible evolvement with the professor, or an unwitting betrayal of feeling for him. Michael turned back to the window to hide his guilty knowledge.
Emma slowed after turning onto Broadway. “Would you like to keep me company while I shoot some pictures out at the putt-putt golf park?” she asked.
Michael’s silence always meant acquiescence.
The photographer swung around short of the coffeehouse and sent the car speeding in the opposite direction.
Chapter Ten/ Back/ Contents Page
Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.