The Tutor and the Senator's Widow novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Fan District

Eleanor climbs the stairs to Sam's tiny apartment, a second kiss follows, and the chief of staff's car is parked outside.

Eleanor didn't sign.

She picked up Lowell's pen, turned it over, and set it back down on the folder.

"I'll read it first," she said.

"It's forty pages of boilerplate."

"Then it will take me an evening."

Lowell's smile stayed exactly where it was.

"Of course. Take the weekend." He stood and buttoned his jacket. "Beau and I only want what's best for you."

He left a business card on the table, and he left the folder, and he took his time at the door.

Eleanor waited until his car pulled away.

Then she picked up the folder and put it in the bottom drawer of the sideboard, under the good napkins.

"I can't read forty pages of that," she said. "Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know what I'm looking at."

Her voice cracked on the last word, just barely.

I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I took out my notebook and said, "Then we do tonight's lesson. Let's start with what a mean is."

She gave a wet little laugh and sat down.

We worked until ten.

She was a very good student, and I told her so.

She looked at the table as if I had said something far more intimate.

At the door she said, "Come to dinner on Saturday."

"That's a date."

"That's a dinner," Eleanor said. "I don't date."

"What's the difference?"

"A date has an ending in mind."

I felt heat climb my neck.

"Saturday I'm busy," I said. "My roommate is at her boyfriend's. You could come to my place. It's tiny and the stairs are terrible."

Eleanor Fitzhugh, the senator's widow, looked at me with something close to wonder.

"I would very much like to see terrible stairs," she said.

She came on Saturday at six, in jeans.

I had not known she owned jeans.

She climbed three flights in the old brick building on Floyd Avenue.

She carried a bottle of wine and a paper bag from a bakery.

On the last landing she stopped to catch her breath.

"You weren't exaggerating," she said.

"I never exaggerate. I'm a statistician."

"You're a first-year."

"The numbers don't care."

My apartment was one room and a closet, with a futon, a desk and a window over an alley.

I had cleaned for four hours.

Eleanor stood in the middle of it with her bag in her arms and looked at every inch.

She looked at the books stacked along the baseboard.

She looked at the framed photo of my family in front of the body shop.

She looked at the string of paper lanterns my mother had mailed me.

"Who is this?" she asked, pointing at the photo.

"My parents. Petersburg. They fix cars."

"They look proud."

"They're loud about it."

My father called while she was still holding the photo.

I answered because ignoring him is a bad idea.

"Mija," he said, in Spanish and then in English. "Did you eat?"

"I'm about to, Papa."

"With who?"

"A friend."

Eleanor raised one eyebrow.

"Tell your friend," my father said, "that if she makes you eat cereal for dinner, I will drive up there."

"I will," I said, and hung up, and Eleanor was laughing.

"I like him," she said.

"Everyone does. It's a problem."

We ate takeout pad thai on the futon because the desk was too small for two plates.

The wine was better than anything I had ever tasted, and I said so.

She told me it cost fifteen dollars, and that restaurants charged four times that.

For the first time all week, I stopped feeling that I was in the wrong place.

At some point I put my plate down.

At some point she did too.

"Sam."

"Hm?"

"You never ask me about him."

"About Senator Fitzhugh?"

"About what it was like."

"I figured you'd tell me when you were ready."

She turned her whole body toward me on the futon.

Her knee touched mine.

"I was twenty-four," she said. "I had one semester of school left."

"And Alden?"

"Alden was gentle with me. He was the first person who ever listened. And I stopped finishing things."

"You're finishing one now."

"I am."

I took off my glasses to clean them on my sleeve, which is what I do when I'm nervous.

Eleanor took them gently out of my hand, and set them on the desk.

"Better," she said, looking at my bare face.

I wasn't sure which of us moved first.

Her hand cupped the back of my neck, and the kiss was slower this time, and I felt it all the way to my toes.

I climbed halfway into her lap without deciding to.

Her hands settled on my waist, then under the edge of my hoodie, warm against the skin of my back.

I heard myself make a small, embarrassing sound.

"Sam," she said against my mouth. "Slower."

"I am going slow."

"You're really not."

I pulled back to laugh, and that was when I saw the car.

It was parked across the alley, under the one streetlight, with its engine running and its lights off.

A grey sedan.

The man in the driver's seat had a grey crew cut.

I had not told anyone where I lived.

Eleanor followed my eyes and went very still.

"He has been in my house six times this month," she said. "I didn't think he'd follow me here."

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