Free Knit in Comfort by Isabel Sharpe Page A

something too.
    She mounted the steps to his porch and peered through the screen door into the dim interior. “Knock knock.”
    â€œBack here, come on in.”
    She wandered through the small dusty living room, furnished in Bland American Drab, the stone mantel strewn with those porcelain figures Dominique made so much fun of. Then through the dining room, past a sturdy wood table and beautiful built-in china cabinets she restrained herself from peeking into. Then the kitchen, probably remodeled in the fifties, yellow metal cabinets, green formica counters, and, incongruously, a new enormous black refrigerator, futuristic in context.
    â€œPoor Elizabeth, stuck with teetotalers next door.” David opened the freezer door and pulled out Bombay Sapphire gin, a shaker, a glass, and a small pitcher.
    â€œI’ll manage.”
    â€œNo, you’ll suffer. But you can always come here.” He poured an enormous amount of gin into the shaker, sloshed in vermouth and dispensed crushed ice from the door of the DarthVader refrigerator. “‘One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.’ James Thurber.”
    Elizabeth laughed and ran her hand over the faded counter. “I know one too. Dorothy Parker…Give me a second, I can’t remember it all.”
    â€œTake all the time you need. I’m going nowhere.”
    She moved toward the back door, frowning in concentration. It was the kind of oh-so-witty quote Dominique’s friends were fond of outdoing each other with. “It’s a little poem, very funny. Something about being under the table.”
    â€œDon’t know that one.”
    â€œIt’ll come to me.” She examined a wall hanging, a linen tea towel with pictures of wooden-clog-wearing Dutch children holding hands. “What do you do, David?”
    â€œBesides plot against squirrels and mix pitchers of martinis?”
    â€œBesides that.”
    â€œI’m a professor of English at Boston University.”
    â€œImpressive.” She prowled further. A few old-lady-type decorative items, a glass apple, a dusty arrangement of dried flowers in a pewter vase. Not much she’d equate with David’s personality. Weaponry and poison would be more fitting, maybe S&M gear. “So you live here in the summer?”
    â€œYou’re such a Northeasterner.”
    She walked back and leaned on the counter next to him, seeing up close that he was older than she thought. Maybe late thirties or early forties. Touch of gray at his temples, lines at the corners of his eyes, the faintest loosening of the skin on his stubbled jaw and long, masculine neck. “What do you mean?”
    â€œNortheasterners don’t chat, they interrogate, without compunction or introduction.” He tumbled the gin and vermouth; condensation on the shaker turned to frost. “Olives? Lemon? Onion?”
    â€œLemon. Like yours. But I’m a transplanted Midwesterner, so your theory doesn’t work.”
    â€œLearned behavior.” He bent to get a nearly zestless lemon from an otherwise empty vegetable bin and pared off the last strip, squeezed the peel, then ran it around the rim and the inside of the glass before he let it drop. “My great-aunt lived in this house.”
    â€œI knew that. I asked you if you live here every summer.”
    â€œNo, I don’t.” He poured the drink expertly into the fresh glass, topped his off, then drained the rest into the pitcher. “I’m here for the same reason you are. To escape life.”
    â€œI’m not escaping.” She took the lid off a cookie jar in the shape of a chicken and peered inside. A tiny dead bug, otherwise empty. “Escaping is a looking-back thing. I’m doing a looking-forward thing.”
    â€œAh, right. Completely different. Here you go, Queen Elizabeth.” He handed her the drink and picked up the pitcher.
    â€œCome outside with me and