Free The Miracles of Ordinary Men by Amanda Leduc Page A

many women, then.” She spoons chutney onto her plate and dips in a poppadum. “I’m not that special.”
    â€œIf you say so.” The waiter places another bottle of wine on the table. “Somehow, I don’t think that is true.”
    They stumble on like this until the food comes, and then Israel talks for most of the meal. He tells her about a childhood in Mexico — the colour, the food, parades down the Paseo de la Reforma. A mother who prayed a hundred times a day, a struggle with numbers at school.
    â€œYou call them the
times tables
,”
he says. “Even now, I find them difficult.”
    â€œYes,” she says, surprised. “I know.” In return, she tells him about Thailand, about the hills, about sleeping drenched in opium and rain. About the café job she took when she moved back in with Roberta, about the man she met there and the job opportunity that took her to Toronto, then Montreal. She does not tell him about Timothy, or the phone calls.
    â€œAnd now you’re back,” he says.
    â€œI’ve been back for two years. Almost three.”
    â€œWhy?” Israel spoons the last of the jackfruit on his plate. “If it was so wonderful — why come back?”
    â€œMy mother got sick. I moved home for a while, to help.” She laughs; she can’t help it. “And it drove me crazy, so I moved here. Now there’s practically an ocean between us, and I’m still only a few hours away.”
    â€œAnd now you are a secretary.” The sentence thuds onto the table. “Do you enjoy your job?”
    â€œYes. I’ve dreamed about being a secretary since I was five. Doesn’t everybody?”
    â€œThen why are you there?” he asks.
    â€œWhy didn’t I get a bonus?” she blurts. “At the end of last quarter. Everyone else got a bonus. Even Debbie.”
    â€œDebbie,” Israel taps his glass before he continues, “is an exemplary worker. This is what Penny tells me.”
    â€œSo — what? I’m not? Do I need a fucking degree to organize your desk?”"
    â€œI was a good son,” he says idly. “Once upon a time, I
was
exemplary. But there is more to this world, Delilah, than following the rules. The Debbies of the world, exemplary or not — they will not matter. Is that what you want? Do you not want a future that reaches higher than an annual bonus?”
    Five days ago, she knew nothing about this man apart from his taste for coffee. Five days ago, he was only The Boss. “What could I do that would make things any different? I make barely enough to pay my own bills.”
    The waiter brings them tea. Lilah crumples her napkin onto the plate and watches it unfold, slowly, like a flower. This is what she’s learned, from years of travelling and searching and needing something else: that there isn’t
something else, that some people will forever look at the world and see broken things that they can’t change. One moment of clarity, fuelled by opium and mountain rain — it’s an illusion, nothing more.
    â€œOpportunity is not about money,” Israel says. “God does not mete out miracles only to the rich.”
    â€œI haven’t seen much evidence of God in the last few years,” she says. God
.
Why is it that her life always leads her here?
    â€œPerhaps,” Israel shrugs. “Or perhaps God has just been . . . waiting.”
    â€œWaiting for what?”
    He reaches across the table and takes her wrist, then turns her palm up so that the veins are illuminated in the light. “Who knows? God is very patient.”
    She stares at his hand, transfixed, and shivers as his thumb traces a circle at the base of her palm. She pulls away. “Well. Whatever.” Suddenly desire is a hard knot in her stomach. She can’t speak, she’s so surprised.
    Israel smiles again. “Yes,” he says. “I know.”
    â€”
    He