Free Next Life Might Be Kinder by Howard Norman Page B

paid assignment, to extend the episodes of “The Case of Lucy Daire’s Real Family,” originally broadcast in 1939. Elizabeth was wearing only a denim work shirt, a few sizes too big for her, held together by a single button at the navel. “Making your favorite aphrodisiac salad for you, Sam. I bought an expensive bottle of Chablis, too. Way too expensive. I couldn’t be happier.”
    She took a small fillet of tuna from the refrigerator and seared it for a few minutes in a pan slicked with olive oil. She put two eggs on to boil. She took out a head of lettuce and washed it leaf by leaf under the spigot, pressing each on a paper towel to soak up the moisture before setting it in a big wooden bowl. She put two large red potatoes, cut in quarters, in a pot of water and lit a flame under it. She put a handful of green beans on to boil. She took out a bread board and cut three scallions into quarter-inch pieces and pushed them with the knife into a saucepan, where she sautéed them for a minute or two in olive oil. On a separate board she cut the tuna into quarter-inch pieces. She took out the potatoes, peeled the skins, and cut the pieces into neat rectangles. She took up the eggs with a spoon and ran each under cold water. Then she cracked and peeled their shells and sliced the eggs into the salad. She put in the potatoes and fish and scallions. She sprinkled in peppercorns, laid the green beans on top, and dropped in half a dozen or so sweet grape tomatoes. She emptied a can of white kidney beans in the bowl. She added an oil-and-vinegar dressing, tossed it all lightly—just twice—with long wooden spoons, and set the bowl on the table. She brought out two plates and forks and cloth napkins. She took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured us each a glass. I was famished and the salad looked so good. “Thank you for all this,” I said, and reached for the bowl and wooden spoons that lay crosswise on top.
    But before she sat down, Elizabeth put an album by Marianne Macdonough,
Winter Trees,
on the phonograph and set the needle on the song called “Upward.” Fiddle, guitar, and flute accompaniment, with a voice straight from the Cape Breton highlands. The first stanza was:
    Â 
It only takes one glass of wine
To do as I please.
The breeze gently unbuttons my blouse,
I comb your hair with my fingers,
You kiss me upward from my knees.
    Â 
    As the song continued, Elizabeth opened the button of her denim shirt.
    Â 
Last night I was reading an Acadian romance,
All pounding hearts and rain,
And owls at prayer in the trees,
When, my sweet love, you set my book
Beside the pillow
And kissed me upward from my knees.
    Â 
    â€œGet the hint?” she said. She lay down on the Victorian chaise longue.
    Elizabeth used to say, “I have certain defining impulses.”

I Put In the Fix with Arnie Moran
    A LFONSE PADGETT WAS a psychopathic thug in a bellman’s uniform, but I could not see this at first. I saw only the bellman’s etiquette, the practiced sense of deference. Like any bellman in any hotel lobby, he was part of a hierarchy: hotel manager, concierge, bellman. I did notice that he often acted put out, to the point of dramatically sighing in exasperation at normal requests. And I witnessed one incident that far exceeded feigned insult or petulance, when the hotel manager, Mr. Isherwood, asked him to unload six large suitcases from a limousine—a rare sight in Halifax, especially at the Essex Hotel, because wealthy people usually stayed at the Lord Nelson—and to “fetch them up to the Provincial Suite,” on the top floor, “as quickly as possible.” I happened to be in the lobby to buy a newspaper when I overheard the exchange. Padgett more or less snapped at Mr. Isherwood, “I’m going to take my coffee break first.” “No,
after,
” Mr. Isherwood said. “I don’t
fetch
luggage,” Padgett said.