Passionate

Passionate

by

Andrew Wetmore

all rights reserved

I heard my phone ringing when I came into the reception area at my office. I arrived at my desk in a rush and a tangle to answer it. “Leo Evans,” I said a little breathlessly.

“This is Harriet,” someone evidently named Harriet said. “We have to talk.”

“All right,” I said. “What’s the topic?”

“This is Harriet,” Harriet said. “I can’t believe you want to have this conversation over the phone.”

“I truly don’t,” I said.

“Then I’ll come over,” she decided. “I’ll leave right now.”

“Uh, okay. When do you think you will get here?”

“I’m leaving from home,” she said, “and I don’t plan to run any errands on the way.” And she hung up.

She sounded young, with a low, slightly husky, voice. I could imagine her with luxurious, dark hair, vamping in a deep, red dress. I looked through my email contacts list: no Harriets.

My office is in the old business district of our small city. If I knew where Harriet called home, I could be clearer about whether she would turn up in five minutes, as opposed to her maybe catching the next flight from Vancouver. I remembered my grandmother sending a telegram once from Florida: “Arriving New York Airport 5 PM”. This was before computers, before cell phones. My father dispatched family members to Kennedy, La Guardia, and even the Newark airport, and was not at all amused when my grandmother finally called from the train station to know why she had not been met.

I cancelled a meeting or two and hustled a client through his session so I shouldn’t be busy when Harriet arrived. I couldn’t really settle on whether I was nervous or mildly excited. I did know, though, that if this turned out to be a too-clever foot in the door on the part of a salesperson with big hair and a red dress, I would toss her out the window.

From my window, up a couple of floors from ground level, I could easily see cars that parked across the street. For the ones on my side, though, I had to press my face up against the glass and squint down blurrily, all the time wondering what I was hoping to see.

“What are you doing?” a voice said behind me.

I turned quickly, rubbing at my cheek. “Harriet?”

“You looked like you were either hiding from something or deciding to jump.”

She’s fair and smooth-faced; a bit younger, slimmer, and trimmer than I am. Lean like a runner, and with a runner’s short hair. Harriet is either a distant cousin or married to one, and I only see her at family gatherings. She is distinctly worth seeing; although up until this meeting I could not have told you her name with 100% certainty.

“Ah, Harriet,” I said. Would you like some coffee or something?”

“I’ll close the door, shall I?” she said. She had on a sleeveless dress with a wide belt, a summer-tea-party sort of dress that must have been a bit chilly here in October.

She sat poised at one end of the sofa. I could not decide whether to sit beside her or a formal distance away, so I leaned against the desk. As she looked up at me, I realized she was blushing.

“I can’t just have an affair, Leo,” she said. “It’s not fair to anybody.”

“You were going to have an affair?”

She cocked her head. “I wasn’t planning to have one, no. But who I can’t have an affair with is you.”

“Me?” I felt an irrational coldness in my stomach, as an investor might experience upon hearing that a stock he does not own has dropped fifty points.

“I’ve been thinking about it since Uncle Arthur’s birthday party. You don’t have to pretend you haven’t been thinking about it, too.”

Now it was my turn to blush. I remembered the birthday party with a sudden clarity. Uncle Arthur was turning 91, and all the clan had turned out. The house was full of people I rarely saw and hardly knew, among them Harriet and her husband John. Or Jim; something like that. There were streamers in the air and children underfoot and a big cake in the middle of the table, and we all gathered round for the cutting of the cake.

Uncle Arthur is still pretty sharp, but he mostly saves his energy these days for observing. As a young man, he had all sorts of adventures that the older relatives know about but refuse to relate. “Ask him yourself,” they’d say; but Uncle Arthur hasn’t told stories for many years.

I was standing in the wide doorway to the dining room, taking in the scene: Uncle Arthur sitting at the head of the table, looking as small as a child behind an enormous cake and turning his head to listen to two great-grand-nephews who were asking a question. Behind him and all around the table the family stood or sat, colorful in their summer party clothes.

A slim arm slipped around my waist and gave me the slightest of tingly hugs. Still watching Uncle Arthur, I leaned into the hug.

The hand slid down my hip in a pleasant and familiar manner, and that’s when I remembered that my wife had had to work that weekend, and had not come to the birthday party. And that this now-low-slung arm and hand could not reasonably be hers.

I had turned and looked and found Harriet suddenly looking up at me in confusion. We had flushed and drawn apart with grimacing smiles. “I thought you were my husband,” Harriet had said, and we covered our confusion by applauding Uncle Arthur as he blew out the candles. And that had been that.

Or not quite, it now turned out. “That’s the same dress you wore at the birthday party,” I said.

She smiled. “I knew you’d remember. I haven’t dared wear it since then.”

“It’s very nice,” I heard myself saying. I could imagine myself imagining hooking my fingers under her wide belt and drawing her towards me. I looked away, tried to think.

“Things happen because they’re meant to happen, don’t they, Leo?” Harriet said. “I mean, my husband isn’t tall like you. He doesn’t look like you. Why would I think you were Jim at the party?”

“The confusion of the moment...?”

“Things happen because they’re meant to happen.” She nodded, agreeing with herself. “Jim saw, you know. He was over by Uncle Arthur, looking right at us.”

“I hope you had a good laugh about it afterwards,” I said.

“He never said a thing,” Harriet said, blushing again. “He pretended like he never noticed. But he’s been a lot more...attentive to me since the summer.”

“That’s good, then.”

“I’m not used to it,” she said. “I mean, I’m not used to feeling...passionate about anybody but Jim. When I close my eyes, I don’t know who I’ll see.”

“But nothing happened, you know. Nothing actually happened.”

“You leaned into me. You felt it, too: I could feel you feeling it. Those feelings don’t come by chance. They mean something,” Harriet nodded again.

“Can’t it just mean we’re good friends, good relations?”

“But we’re not good friends. We hardly even talk to each other. You talk to the uncles and aunts more than you talk to me.” She stood up. “It’s been sixty-four days, and you haven’t even called.”

“I don’t stay in touch with family much.”

“That’s my point!” Harriet was within arm’s reach. I could step forward and she could rest her head against my chest and we could be a slow-dance couple, if there had been music playing. I pushed off from the desk and took a couple of steps toward the window.

“We hardly ever see you at family events. Nobody even gossips about you much. So what happened, happened for a reason. I just know it.”

I took a breath. “Look, Harriet—”

“And Uncle Arthur,” she said as if laying down a trump card.

“What about him?”

“When he saw us standing like that, together, he smiled on us. It was like a blessing.”

“Harriet, he’s a zillion years old. I don’t think he could see any further than the cake.”

“He hardly ever smiles any more,” Harriet said, “but he smiled at us.”

“Listen, my dear,” I said. “There isn’t any ‘us’.”

“Did you tell your wife what happened?”

“What?”

Harriet stepped close again. “When you went home from the birthday party, did you tell your wife what had happened? Did you have a good laugh about it afterwards?”

I hesitated, and she nodded again. “You didn’t tell her and you didn’t laugh about it. So you knew there was something, too. Even then.”

I opened my mouth but she stopped me with a gesture. “Don’t tell me I’m very sweet, but I’ve got it wrong. I’m a keen observer and I’ve been thinking about the birthday party a lot. Thinking about you a lot. I’m not very sweet right now, Leo: I’m passionate. And I’m not used to it.”

I noticed I had crossed my arms over my chest. “There’s nothing we can do about it, Harriet.”

“Is that why you haven’t called? Because you couldn’t imagine what we could do about it?”

“You said yourself it wouldn’t be fair to anyone,” I pointed out.

“It hasn’t been fair to me these past two months,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You knew,” she said. “You just didn’t do anything. It was...tantalizing.”

I felt impelled as if by a point of etiquette. Had I not protested enough? What sort of a cad was I not to take her in my arms right now and comfort her? What do people have couches in their offices for, anyway? I found myself saying that she was too important to treat that way.

“That’s why we have to change this,” she said. “I waited sixty-four days and nothing happened, and I still feel passionate.”

“Look, Harriet. If I were going to have an affair, you would be the first person I would think of.”

“Because I’m younger and impressionable, and you think maybe my husband doesn’t understand me?”

I took a breath. “I’m not explaining myself well.”

She smiled. “Well, you should practice up.”

“What?”

She touched one of my arms with the tip of her index finger; pressed a little as if seeing was I done yet. “Were you planning to take me away with you somewhere in the near future? And I don’t mean for a hot weekend. I mean away.”

“Do you want to go away? Is that what this is about?”

“No, that’s not what this is about. This is about what happened between us at the birthday party.”

“Harriet, I can’t make an honest woman out of someone who already is an honest woman.” I gestured weakly with one hand and then let it fall. It ended up on top of her hand on top of my other arm.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t think you could. That’s part of your charm. I was right not to have the affair with you.”

She slipped her hand free and walked to the door. “I told Jim you wouldn’t be calling or emailing me any more.”

“You did what?”

“He was completely reasonable about it. And very attentive. He said, since nothing actually happened then we could say no more about it.”

“Harriet, have I ever called or emailed you?”

“But you thought about it,” she said. “I used to sit at my computer these last two months, reading the messages you were thinking of sending. It was very disorienting.”

My face felt too large for my head. “You have to tell Jim that nothing happened. You have to convince him.”

“I will,” she said. “Now that I’m sure that it’s over between us, I will tell him so as clearly as I know how. He deserves some special attention, seeing how attentive and patient he’s been.”

“Harriet,” I said as she opened the door. She turned like Ginger Rogers, with a swirl of her skirt and her lips slightly open. “When you called earlier, you said you were coming here from ‘home’. Did you mean my home?”

Harriet smiled. “I knew your wife would want my assurances that it was all over between us. It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t clear the air. And, just as I had thought, you never told her about what happened at the party.”

“You told her...you told her that nothing happened between us.”

“She wasn’t there, but I left a note explaining everything. Everything. I know you’ll be able to fill in any parts I left out when you two talk it over.”

She closed the door gently behind her.

On my desk, the phone began to ring.

#30#