George was fixed on Alison because she looked like a Jewish refugee, like someone who'd been born under a bridge--or spent her life veering from one exile to another.

He liked that.

Alison worked at Wordsworth in Cambridge at the information desk, and George had to work at finding books to look up; otherwise their conversations never got beyond "What's the title?" and "Would you like us to order that?" Even when her eyes stirred with interest over a particular title on Hebrew culture, for instance, they soon pivoted languidly from George's face to the computer terminal in front of her, leaving him to grope for other subjects. When asked if she was taking courses, she answered, 'Yeah," and nothing else.

Alison dressed in shades of gray and brown, baggy sweaters or oddly-ruffled blouses that looked like they came from the CoOp, and George sometimes fancied that maybe she'd served in the armed forces, or fled from somewhere like Chechnya or Bosnia years ago. When not engaged with customers, Alison rarely looked up from the database over which she brooded, afternoon and evenings, never talking much, and always pulling at her lip with dry, narrow fingertips.

The only time she raised her face was to squint at the wall clock. And then her profile--as seen, for example, from the European History aisle where George usually hovered--seemed even more pronounced, her eyes deep set, cheekbones drawn high from her wide, delicate mouth. Alison's appearance seemed all the more startling because her large, carved head rested on a slender neck and narrow shoulders. Her chestnut hair was always braided. Maybe she came from Lithuania or the Ukraine, now that he thought about it, because it didn't seem likely there were many Jews in Chechnya.

After about three weeks of dropping in and making small talk, George managed to overhear where Alison lived when she phoned in a special-order book about Israel and gave her own name and address.

He hoped she lived alone because there was only one "Schecter, Alison" listed in the Nynex. So much for being Lithuanian, he thought, as he punched in her number.

"Hello," in a sleepy voice.

"Alison, my name's George Barnett. You may recall, I come into Wordsworth's a lot."

"Oh, hi." Her voice sounding thick with a cold and she sniffled. "Uhuh. The one who ordered that Martin Buber book?"

"Yeah," he said without thinking. "You have a good memory."

Before he could add anything, she said, "Could you hold on a minute?"

George heard her put the phone down and murmur something, followed by the sound of a closing door.

"I had to put the cat out. He's shedding."

"What's his name?"

"Pav, after my uncle."

George listened to her talk about Pav for five minutes. Pav was eighteen. He never went outside, a cancer had grown under his chin, and she would have to put him to sleep soon. She didn't look forward to it, and George lied to sound as sympathetic as possible. He'd once struck a cat on a curve and kept right on driving.

"So, is this about another book?"

George swallowed and tried not to rush. "No, as I said, my name's George Barnett, and I work at A.B.P.O., it's a patrolmen's union. I was calling to ask if you might like to have dinner sometime." He got it out in one breath.

There was no response.

He spoke more rapidly. "I often browse near the Judaica section, always wear a tan raincoat and carry a briefcase."

"Yes. I know what you look like." He could imagine her eyebrows sliding together on the other end of the line. "Who did you say you work for?"

"It's a union, the American Brotherhood of Police Officers. I'm a lawyer." He stopped. "An attorney. Worker's rights, that stuff."

"I remember. You're the one who looks like a cop. Barnett...is that, like, French-turned-English or something?"

"I don't speak any French. I've taught myself some Hebrew--just the alphabet-and some German."

"I took some Russian," she said. "I thought it might help my job. A lot of our Judaica books are in Russian, and with all the recent immigrants we've become the main supplier for Brookline." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. Dinner. That's nice of you. I guess we should talk again, next time you come into the store, huh? I'm at the information desk. I don't want to sound like I'm putting you off. I just can't picture you clearly. I'll have to see you again."

"Sure. I'll see you on Monday, then." He said good-bye, but she had already hung up.

Sure, there were the online Jewish dating services some of his friends recommended. And yeah, it was probably worthwhile if you got to that point of desperation. One of his co-workers had met his wife that way, after all. But for George, applying online to meet someone felt like admitting to the world you were a loser. He liked the way things were going with Alison.

When he got to the bookstore, Alison acted like she always did. She sat behind the counter, bent over her terminal. She didn't look for him or appear to notice anyone around her. At 8:30, she grabbed her knapsack, slung it over her shoulder and pushed out the door.

"Alison!"

He caught up with her at the corner opposite the Red Line station. Her eyes were hazel, with arched brown eyebrows. Her lips were thin and pale, like she'd been in the water too long, and he wanted to kiss her until their color returned.

She looked him up and down, and he fretted she might make a crack about his height.

"You dress conservatively," she said. He couldn't place her accent. Somewhere outside of New England, for sure, but it wasn't foreign. He didn't mind right away. His hyperactive imagination had brought him this far, and he was grateful for it.

"Well, I always come straight from work. Are you driving home?"

A suspicious smile spread over her face, and she nodded.

He smiled back. "Where's your car?"

Her smile grew wider. "My car?"

He nodded, a little less certain this time, and pointed back across the plaza toward the hotel where he'd parked.

When they got into his beat-up Oldsmobile, she made herself comfortable, pushing back the passenger seat and planting her feet against the dashboard.

"Do you usually work nights?" he asked.

"Not in the store itself. More often I work in Norm's office on the second floor."

Norm. He nodded slowly. "He's the bookstore owner?"

"I'm hungry," she said.

George smiled. Her impulsiveness was something he had not expected. "What do you like?" "Tonight I like pizza."

When they sat down, Alison told him she was from Ohio. She hated Cleveland. Her father sold furniture, dining room sets and chandeliers; in a warehouse shared with his cousins. She dutifully finished high school and then fled, landing in what she considered the more inspiring atmosphere of Boston, where America took on the airs of Europe.

The airs of Europe. George smiled at this expression. For similar reasons his own mother had stayed in Boston after his father died, and he said so.

"What's similar about it?" said Alison.

"It reminded her of Oxford, where she sat out the war with her foster parents." She listened to him for a while as he talked about the rounds he made to the various precincts, and the grievances he tried for the union when arbitration failed.

"How long have you been at Wordsworth's?" he asked.

She said, "A few years." And then: "You're not involved with anyone?"

"N-no."

"Why?" There was a blink from those languid eyes. Then another while he figured out what to say.

"I guess I'm in between." He frowned, already aware of the stirrings of a familiar dissatisfaction.

Alison smiled. "Who was the last?"

George mumbled, "Ann Marie Inacio," the woman he'd officially dated for three months. "We broke up over religious differences. She tired of trying to get me to church. And Ann Marie's parents thought I was going to lure her to Temple or something. I wasn't, but I did give her a few books that annoyed them."

Another languid blink. "What books?"

"Oh, Epstein's book on Judaism, and The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig." He thought she was going to smile, familiar with the titles. But she looked off at a waiter who was sweeping up a broken glass. George described the Rosenzweig book in more detail, and Alison continued to nod, puckering her lips and folding her napkin in successive halves.

For the fifteenth time he took his glass and tasted only ice cubes. "Anyway, Ann Marie broke off after three months, and said I was too stubborn. Which I probably was."

Alison reached for his table-knife and cut up her pizza crusts. "Your father served in the British Army. And he married your mom in England?"

"They met in England. After the war, he came over and took a job at the Navy Yard. When he'd settled himself, he sent for her and they got married."

She smiled again now. "That's nice. That's romantic. Do you have any other relatives? Anyone in Israel?"

"No. My mother's uncle and cousin were deported in Utrecht. She was the only one made it to England. Then she changed her name."

"Your parents married late?"

"He was thirty-eight, and she was thirty-four."

Alison looked impressed. "That's good. I bet I get married later than that, if I get married at all."

George, who was forty-three, frowned. "Why is that good?"

"Twenty years ago my father might have told me to marry Eliot."

Another guy. "Who's Eliot?"

"A dentist I used to see once in a while. But marriage? That would be a disaster. I'd be so oppressed, married to a dentist."

"You wouldn't be poor," he shot back, not liking the sound of the word 'oppressed.' It fell too easily from her lips, like something she picked up in a class.

Alison narrowed her eyes at him and popped another crust in her mouth. Then she excused herself to the restroom and George pulled the waiter aside for more water.

They didn't talk much until after he paid the bill. Alison announced that she wanted ice cream. They stopped at a small J.P. Licks on Mass Ave before parking on Bigelow Street where she lived. Alison said nothing when he pulled up and stopped the engine. She opened the car door and George followed her into the house.

She lived on the first floor, sharing a kitchen and a large common room with some M.I.T. students. She said she had it virtually to herself since the others worked late at the lab.

She turned on the television and sprawled on the floor with the pint of New York Fudge Swirl. Feeling awkward, George sat on the couch with a plastic bottle of Evian water, and watched her cat, Pav dip his tongue into a saucer of milk, and then limp into Alison's bedroom. His gray fur was oily and clumped, like he'd been pulled out of a drain.

"Isn't it awful?" said Alison. "It falls out if I brush it too hard. I have to take him sometime soon."

George looked through the half-open doorway across from him. Alison didn't have a bed; a small mat was spread on the floor in the corner, some blankets and a pillow beside, and clothes and books lay strewn over the dresser. The view evoked a certain wantonness, and it made Alison seem even more attractive. George looked at the clock above the television and wondered when the lab rats would get back.

Alison ate the Swirl and channel-surfed until she consumed half the pint. He sat, drinking his water, watching the feline hobble back and forth from the kitchen like something from Pet Sematary.

She got up finally, turned down the volume of the television, and sat beside him on the couch. "You made it, you're still here," she said, as if she was surprised he hadn't gotten up and let himself out the door.

"When does everyone get back?" he said, coming out of his slouch.

"Not till after one-thirty. Why does that bother you?"

"It doesn't bother me."

"They know I like to have company." Alison shifted her skirt underneath her as she pulled her legs up on the sofa. "You shouldn't wear ties all the time, and carry that goddamned briefcase." She touched a finger to his tie. "You called me first, remember?"

He leaned in and kissed her. Alison's lips were still cool from New York Swirl, but the fragrance of her hair, not perfumed, reminded him of something close, warm, like the folds of his leather wallet. She crossed her open eyes at him as their noses rubbed. She pulled away, slid her hands around his shoulders and lay her head against his chest, as though to hear his heart beat. Her fingers searched, tickling, and he fidgeted. "I can tell," she whispered. "I can tell."

George closed his eyes and relaxed. "You have a classical face."

Alison raised her head and looked at him closely, seriously. "I guess I appreciate the compliment," she said slowly, but she frowned as the words came out. Her hands slid to his chest, smoothed his rumpled shirt.

George stared at the buttons of her blouse, which he planned to unfasten before he had spoken.

Alison adjusted the collar of her blouse. She watched his mouth as she continued. "I'm not being loyal to anyone, but I don't want to be rash. You just reminded me why."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's no other way to say it. I wish you were more like me."

"I am. Should I get rid of the briefcase?"

Alison laughed sharply, briefly. He loved the way her voice rose from a quiet shyness to sudden, braying intensity. "You are too young to be going around like that. When I first saw you, I thought you were fifty."

George said, "I'll wear torn dungarees and open shirts."

She took his hands in hers. "I don't want you to do that," she said softly. "Five years ago I would have, right away." As if to emphasize this, she rocked gently back and forth. George inhaled carefully, not to reveal how much it excited him, but he felt he was being humored.

"You mean because I'm a lawyer or something?"

She got up and turned off the television. "Those books you mentioned tonight. That kind of bullshit is all I grew up with. Epstein and Buber and those others. We even keep a few of them sitting on the shelves at work, but nobody buys them. Nobody cares. Of course, if I get married he'll be Zionist, he'll be Jewish. But not that kind."

George kept nodding, like he was digesting all her words. She looked uneasy and turned back to him, staring at the floor. "Okay?" she said, without raising her head. "Okay?"

He glanced again toward her wrinkled makeshift bed. "Okay," he said and rose to leave.

Not that this stopped him. He didn't call for dates or phone, for she would demur. But sometimes after work, her office window behind Wordsworth's would be lit, and he'd stop and knock. She'd invite him in, make tea and talk about her day while she caught up on the inventory.

Afterwards they'd go out for something to eat and he'd drive her home in spite of every protest.

Things changed on a cold night in March. He was given a message at work that she had called. He phoned her back immediately.

"I can't talk. I have a lot of work to finish before going to Washington," she said.

"Which Washington? When's this?"

"D.C." She said, "I'm invited to give a seminar along with some feminist book-sellers, day after tomorrow. I'm taking the train. I'll call before I go."

"Is there someone in the office with you?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You can't talk, but there's something wrong."

"I should be out of here soon. See you when I get back."

"Alison, what's wrong?"

She hung up.

When George got to Cambridge after nine that night, the window on the second floor behind Wordsworth was still lit. She answered his knock, coming out of the back office barefoot and looking tired. She smiled weakly and buried her face in his neck.

"Are you still going to Washington?"

She nodded. "The six-forty-five train, tomorrow morning."

"It's almost ten, let me take you home."

"I can't, George. I still have to finish this list for Norm. I can sleep on the train-even work on my notes for the seminar." She turned, and walked to the computer.

He followed her. "How come you couldn't tell me this when I called? You sounded like someone had a gun to your head."

Alison sat down, brushed her hair back and started typing at the keyboard. "Eliot showed up. The dentist, remember? We've been getting involved again." George nodded, remembering all the weekends they didn't share between their nocturnal dinners.

"He's on antibiotics. Chlamydia. So naturally, he thinks it must be my fault. He stormed in here and wanted to know who I've been sleeping with. We had a big fight. I mean, I have to go to the doctor's now too, goddamnit. Who the hell does he think I am?"

George looked out the window.

Alison's shoulders slumped. "And I had to take Pav into the vet's today. He went into convulsions this morning, so I held him while the doctor put him to sleep. I've had that cat since I was in junior high."

He sat down at the chair opposite her desk. "I wish you'd called me. I would have come with you."

She stared at the wall as though she hadn't even heard what he said. "I can't think of getting a new cat. Not yet."

How are you getting to South Station in time for a six o'clock train in the morning?" She pouted. "Six forty-five," she corrected. "I don't know, how am I?"

"I'll drive you. From my place."

She looked at him in silence, nodding her head.

As usual at midnight she said she wanted something to eat. George insisted she get her things at home before anything else. He waited in the car while she packed. Alison dumped her bag in the trunk and she said, "Let's get Chinese food."

But the only place open was a sub shop in Kendall Square called Boda's. Alison pulled her feet up, eating her steak and cheese with slow deliberation, and playfully asking George what his apartment looked like.

"You've been working too hard."

"Don't be patronizing. It'll be nice to see your apartment. I'd love to live alone. I just can't afford it."

"What are you talking about? The lab nerds are never around. You might as well be living alone. What would you do on your own you aren't doing now?"

"I'd have sex much more often." She leaned over the table as she took a big bite of her sub, her eyes riveted on him with a certain gleeful malice.

A tray clattered in the kitchen and a stream of Spanish obscenities filled the restaurant. George smiled, in spite of his anger and said, "Is that what this guy Eliot does for you? Makes you say shit like that? I can't believe you say that, considering what I do for you, and without asking anything in return."

For a moment, he caught her off guard. Her lips trembled but she put down the sandwich. "You do expect something in return," she said. "Ever since we've known each other, you've expected more from me than anyone I've known. I knew that as soon as we started talking in that fucking parking lot."

George shrank, and for a shivering instant, he wondered if he'd just ruined their relationship. Alison knew it, in spite of her blinking eyes and the quiver in her voice.

"Every time you tell me what you think of Eliot, or any of the guys I've dated, you're really telling me what you think of me."

Her eyes, so close, hardened as she looked into his.

"I just slept with them, George. They expected nothing more than sex, which is really an easy thing to get used to, especially since most men are so simplistically selfish. That I can deal with. You expect much more than that."

"That's why we're just friends, right?"

She nodded, subdued now. She looked down at her sub sandwich. "Let's get out of here."

Outside, broken ice and filthy snow littered the sidewalks, and Alison almost slipped as they crossed the street. George took her arm in spite of his rage, and she did not withdraw it.

She didn't say anything on the way home. George lived on the second floor of an old flat-top on the edge of Neponset.

Alison left her bags in the kitchen and walked around the study, looking at his law books and some of the pictures he'd hung on the wall.

"Do you mind if I take a shower tonight? I hate doing it in the morning."

"Fine," he answered, a little too quickly. "Let me just move my stuff into the study, and you can have the bathroom and the bedroom to yourself."

She said carefully, "George, stop it. I'll sleep in the study. I just want to take a shower and crash. That couch is a pullout?"

He nodded.

"I just need a blanket, no pillow. Set your alarm for five-thirty, and that should be enough time."

George stood in his shorts and a Tae Kwon Do tank-top, looking balefully at himself in the mirror while Alison talked to herself in the shower.

He heard her come out of the bathroom, toss her hair up in a towel, still mumbling and humming. "Goddamn," she kept saying softly, like a child hearing the curse for the first time. "Goddamn."

In the study the floor creaked under her feet as she moved about, dropping the cushions on the floor and pulling out the mattress. The movement stopped abruptly, and he turned on his bed when she appeared in the doorway.

Her hair was still in the towel, and she wore a baggy t-shirt and DKNY white cotton lace panties with her hands crossed in front of herself.

"Is that your father?" she said softly. The picture on the wall back here? The soldiers sitting at the tables. It looks like a big barracks."

He followed her into the study, and she stopped before an early picture of his father: near Dover, a month before D-Day.

"He looks like a refugee," she said."

George started. "His eyes were blue," he said, not knowing why he said it.

"But he's short. How come you're so tall?"

"My mother's tall."

Alison turned to him now. "George, when did he die?"

"When I was nine."

"Was he a good father?"

A tremor welled up inside, like he wanted to laugh. Here she was again, sounding so sincere, and all he could do was stifle a childish giggle.

He took a steady breath and said, "He was a good father."

"And your mother never remarried."

George shook his head. "Good night, Alison. I'll wake you in three hours."

Even in the dark he could hear her shifting on the mattress. George tossed for an hour. Finally he went into the hallway and opened the door to the study. Stray light from the street reached the floor where Alison lay with an arm thrown over her brow like she had a headache.

"I'm so wasted," she said.

He sat down on the floor by her side. "I'm sorry, the way I treated you tonight. It's wrong. I know, like I've got some kind of claim where none exists." He stopped, realizing he was doing it again, sounding like a goddamned lawyer.

She held still, as though she were holding her breath. Finally she gasped, and her hands reached over to him. She pressed her face to his shoulder, till her lips touched his ear.

"I know I'm a creep sometimes. I know what I say hurts you. And I do it deliberately."

She relaxed and let go. George could see her moist eyes reflecting back at him. "How did you guess about me?" she said at last.

"Guess?"

"That I'm not Jewish. Ever since you started watching me in the book store, scoping me out. Then calling me. When did you figure me out?"

He stared down at her in the dark, utterly at a loss for something to say.

"I had this feeling you were onto me, you know? Like you wanted to show me up or something. I didn't realize until tonight, when I teased you, that you really gave a shit."

His mind raced back over each and every meeting, her sudden withdrawals and demurrals whenever he reached for her hand or moved his face close to hers.

"I mean, there's some Jewish ancestry on my dad's side, you know, if you go back to my great-grandparents. But they converted. Episcopalian.

He nodded, still wordless, thinking of his father.

"You're so serious about what you want. And how you go after it. I thought you were onto me when you stood there in front of my desk, trying to make me look like a fool. Then I started to think, well, it could be like in those movies. You know where the guy starts out to humiliate or get someone, and then they're surprised in spite of the charade. They fall in love..."

She continued to watch him, while he nodded mutely at her words, the strange, stifled hilarity and unreasonableness of it all lodged like a sunken boulder in his mind.

As she continued to watch him expectantly, he lay down beside her. Alison continued sniffling, and George didn't take her in his arms until she pulled the t-shirt up over her head and said, "What."

Alison said nothing when they got up in the morning. She dressed and they drove to South Station. George took her bag out of the trunk and walked her to the platform. She didn't speak, but she turned often turn to look at him and smile.

"If you want me to pick you up Sunday night..." He stopped when he saw the look in her eyes.

She kissed him on the lips and boarded the train, and he didn't wait for it to leave the station.

George didn't see her again.

He started seeing a nurse he contacted through one of the online dating services. Her name was Emma Weinstein. She had a predilection for holistic medicine and transcendental meditation, but she didn't look like a refugee.

§ § §

John Farrell is a writer working in Boston. He has written science articles and book reviews for publications as varied as Salon and National Review Online. His fiction has appeared in Aboriginal Science Fiction and Lit Pot.

He is the author of Digital Movies With QuickTime Pro. John can be contacted at jfarrell@caregroup.harvard.edu.

 

This piece was first published in INK POT #1 - 2003, a literary journal.

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