The Coach House Read Free Page B

took another sip, put the cup down and patted her lips with a napkin while he patiently waited for a response.
    “No.” Her smile was polite. She shook her head and tried to sound nonchalant, but at the same time she had to control her internal excitement. “You seem like a very nice man. I’m sure you’re a very nice man, but I’m just not comfortable going out with a complete stranger.”
    “Let’s change that,” he suggested.
    “You’re very persistent,” she accused, feeling more flattered than annoyed by it.
    “Yes, I know.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
    “I find it generally works for me,” he said with a hint of a smile.
    “I’d feel better if I knew someone who could vouch for you.”
    “Me, too,” he admitted. “But in absence of that…”
    She sipped more tea and fiddled with her napkin. “Okay,” she surrendered, desire overruling logic. “I’ll have dinner with you tonight. At Rosa’s.”
    His eyes widened. “Then it’s a date! I’ll pick you up at eight and…”
    “Seven thirty. And I’ll meet you there.”
    He studied her face. “Seven thirty it is.”
    “I hate to run, Richard, but I have to get back to work.”
    She got up from the table and walked away from him, feeling his eyes on her back. Before the elevator doors closed, she watched him reach over to touch her lipstick-stained napkin.
    After work that day, Marie flew home to get ready for her date. Half listening to Bing Crosby sing “Just One of Those Things,” she slipped out of her dress and stood in front of her closet in her teddy, garter belt, and lace-trimmed silk panties—lingerie she had treated herself to a few months earlier when the post-war rations on lace and silk had been lifted.
     
    It was just one of those things
    Just one of those crazy flings
    After considering a dozen different outfits that now lay scattered on her bed, she settled on a black knee-length pencil skirt and pale gold silk blouse. The soft ruffles down the front of her blouse came to a V as they neared her breasts, exposing just a hint of cleavage. She added a belt to the skirt that accentuated her waistline and completed the outfit with a pair of black high heels. After adjusting the seams in her stockings, she looked in the mirror and gave herself a smile of approval.
    Marie had dated a few young men in college but had never felt the level of excitement she was feeling while getting ready for her date with Richard. Something about him made her think it wasn’t going to be just a date. With other men, she gave little thought about what she wore, how much she would tell them about herself, and what questions she would ask. But this time was different.
    When she arrived at Rosa’s, Richard was already there, chatting with the owners, Beatrix and Arturo. Cubby-faced Beatrix, somewhere in her fifties, was barely five feet tall. She was so buxom that the hem of her dress was an inch higher in the back than it was in the front. She greeted Marie with open arms. After the embrace, she shook her fist at Richard and advised Marie through her toothy smile, “If this goombah gives you any problems, you let me know.”
    Marie and Richard settled into easy conversation. Marie told Richard about her background, how her mother raised her, how she died when Marie was sixteen, and how the neighbors took her in until she graduated from high school. When Richard asked about her father, she admitted she had never known him.
    When she told Richard that she graduated from New York’s Parsons School of Design right after the war, he was surprised. It was an era when very few females went to college, let alone during wartime. He asked her if she went there on a scholarship. Then came the second most difficult thing for Marie to admit about her past: that someone had established a college fund for her, and she didn’t know who it was.
    Richard asked her a litany of questions that evening, but he left the most substantial