Chapter 9: Engaged

By ten o'clock the clinic had seen it too.

The old woman with the newspaper held it up when I walked in, pointing at the photo with a shaky finger.

"This you?"

"That's my face," I said. "It isn't me."

"He's older than I am," she said. "And I'm eighty."

"I know."

Ben's sister took the paper from her, looked at it for a second, and dropped it in the recycling.

"Okay," she said. "Who wants coffee?"

Ben was in the back with the Monday surgeries.

He didn't come out for an hour.

When he finally did, he was drying his hands on a paper towel, and he leaned on the counter beside me without looking at me.

"So," he said. "June."

"I'm not marrying him."

"Okay."

"I mean it. My mother sent that in. I said no in front of the whole staff. I'd say it in front of the Pope."

"Okay," Ben said again.

He balled up the paper towel and shot it at the trash can across the room.

It went in.

"I'm just saying," he said, "if you're ever stuck in a church you don't want to be in, we have a van."

His sister snorted so hard she spilled her coffee.

I laughed until the pit bull started barking.

On Thursday I put on Daisy's last good suit, which I'd kept for exactly this, and took a cab to Midtown.

The old man's company had three floors of a glass tower overlooking the river.

There were models of container ships in glass cases in the lobby, every ship he'd ever bought off a dying company.

Vandermeer Shipping's flagship was in the newest case. My grandmother's first big ship.

He'd already put it on display.

The receptionist upstairs said he was in a board meeting.

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