When Toni walked out onto the mall at lunch time, she almost ran into Ned Radkus. “Hi,” she said. “How come you´re not in school?”
“I've never liked school cooking,” he said with a smile. “Whenever I can, I come downtown for lunch. I have to eat at school often enough, just to be with the teachers, to catch the gossip, hear what the kids are up to. But then I get away and get something good to eat. I´m doing Pearl´s today. You want to join me?”
Toni hesitated a moment, but Ned lead on without noticing, so she followed. They walked down the street and entered the rather trendy restaurant, took seats and began reading the menu. They ordered and sat chatting while they waited for their food.
“I liked those pictures of Cabo San Lucas,” Ned ventured.
“Thanks. I don´t usually show pictures around.” She noticed his questioning look. “It´s just that...” She looked him in the eye. “Well, someone always asks why I go alone.”
Ned shrugged. “Well, since you bring it up, why do you?”
“Let´s just say, it´s my way.” Toni looked hard at her plate. Her cheeks were slightly red.
“Nothing wrong with it, you know. Why does it seem to bother you?”
Toni´s eyes flashed briefly. “It doesn´t bother me. It´s just how I like to be.”
Ned let it pass. “Just the same, I thought your pictures were good. I like the way you took so many pictures of ordinary people, the people there.”
Toni relaxed slightly, smiled. “Well, I have to confess that´s sort of selfish.”
“Selfish? How?”
“When I travel, I take a lot of pictures of people at work. I like to get a feel for what people are wearing when they´re making a living. After all, I design working clothes. I need to know what´s changing.”
“I didn´t realize things changed that much.”
“Well, the things that change are kind of subtle. The fit of the clothes, the fabrics, colors. Work clothes now-a-days are a little more casual than they were a couple of years ago. Freer fit. And the way people dress in other countries is different, too. At work, I mean.”
“That must give you lots of ideas,” Ned said.
“Right. And I can catch some of these things before my customers notice them. They come back from the focus groups and tell me I´ve caught something they hadn´t thought of.” Toni looked a little smug.
“You travel a lot? Go to other countries, I mean? Looking at the working people? Must be fun in a strange sort of way.”
“Well, yes, it is. I guess we all look for the things that interest us most, wherever we go. I´ll bet, when you travel, you keep an eye on how the kids react.”
Ned thought that over, smiled back at her. “Yes, I guess I do. I had a friend once who accused me of ogling the school girls, but it really wasn´t so. Kids fascinate me, and I like to see their body language, how they relate to each other.”
“Was she the jealous type?” Toni asked with a grin.
“Who? Oh, you mean... Yes, it was a girl I was traveling with. And she was. But she was wrong. I was really doing research. I can´t help it if some of my research subjects are pretty teenagers.” He grinned back, not a little sheepishly.
“Well, if it makes you feel better, some of the working men I photograph are pretty good-looking, too.”
Ned looked at her soberly. “Toni, I know what you mean. And I like the way you put it. The things we need to look at are things that increase our world-view. It´s a mistake to put the wrong spin on those things.” He looked back at her. “Tell you what. You take pictures of all the working men, and I´ll look at all the teenage girls. Is that a fair division?”
“No,” she smiled, “you need to look at the guys, too. I´m sure you do. And I take more pictures of working women than of men. They change faster and it´s harder to suit them.”
They paid for their lunches and walked out onto the mall, chatting. As they walked along, they stopped to listen to a young woman playing the hammer dulcimer, dropped some coins in her box and said good-bye.
Toni was standing near the curb on Broadway and Pearl, looking at the Girl in A Swing. Ned spoke to her. “What are you thinking? Do you like her?”
“Hi,” Toni said, acknowledging him. “Yes, I do. It´s funny though. Sometimes I worry about her. She sits there looking so lovely and yet, sometimes I think, ‘She´s going to sit there forever, all alone’.” Toni´s shoulders shook slightly, then she turned and looked at Ned. “Lunch? Fred´s?”
They walked a block down the mall to a storefront out of the 60´s. Fred´s restaurant was old-fashioned, the menu a little out of date, but the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. Toni took off her jacket, and when Ned reached for it, she let him take it and hang it on a hook near the door. She began a study of the menu. When Ned sat down, he did the same until the waitress came and took their orders.
“The thing I love about her,” Ned said, “is her patience, her assurance.” Toni looked at him, momentarily puzzled, then nodded her head as he went on. “I think we see her caught in a moment of time, maybe just before her young man walks up the porch steps. She isn´t worried; she knows he´s coming.” Ned looked at Toni, who now was staring out the front window. “That´s the wonderful thing about art like that. We each see it a little differently.”
Toni looked down at the table, adjusting the table setting. “I don´t know what it is.” She looked at Ned. “Every time I see you, I say something strange like that.”
Ned, smiled. “I shouldn´t worry about it. There´s nothing wrong with saying what you feel. Any more than there is in feeling what you feel.”
“Well, it´s weird. And it scares me a little. It´s like you´re spooky – you set me off. You hadn´t been there thirty seconds and I said that.”
“What you been up to this week?” Ned asked, making an obvious change of subject as their food was set before them.
Toni replied with a light run-down of her activities since they had last met and challenged him to tell her about how he´d spent his time. His response was about his work, as hers had been. He told of how he was trying to help one or two youngsters, about one or two others who refused to be helped. She listened attentively.
When they had finished eating, they weren´t really through talking. The unfinished business between them was like another presence at the table. After a moment or two, however, Ned got up, and they went to the cash register to pay. Toni got her jacket and they went outside, her face somehow relieved, although the tension between them was still in place.
Before long it was clear that Ned and Toni would meet for lunch – always by chance – about twice a week. Toni tried to be careful always to appear on Pearl Street, at the corner near her office, at precisely the same time each day. Ned always seemed to appear from around the other corner, or from across the street, just at that time. They each tried to remark in advance about days when one of them knew there was no possibility of meeting, passing their schedules to one another in a sort of off-hand matter. They became closer in some ways, but Toni´s aloofness remained between them. Again and again, she caught herself on the verge of confidences, nevertheless often saying things that ended with a small revelation. Ned never pushed her, never tried to press her for more. He accepted her as she seemed to want to appear.
On Wednesdays, Toni and Ned each went separately to Tom´s with the gang, talking with all of them, making no reference to their frequent lunch-time meetings. Once or twice, Toni noticed Melanie give her a sharp look that quickly transformed into a genuinely friendly grin. Somehow, Toni was sure it meant something, but she could not fairly put a deeper meaning to it. Sometimes she and Ned sat next to each other, but not on purpose – mostly because of the occasional rotation that took place on Wednesdays. When they were next to each other, they talked with each other or with others. No one seemed to sense they were hiding anything. And, of course, they were not.
One day, at lunch, Ned said, “How about dinner Friday night?” They were at Fred´s, now a frequent meeting place. Toni had been chatting about something that had been said at Wednesday. Ned´s question did not interrupt her; she had come to a stopping point. But it took her totally by surprise. Her eyes grew large, color came to her cheeks. For a long moment she said nothing.
“Golly, I´m sitting here with my mouth open like I was catching flies,” she said, closing her mouth abruptly. Then, she said, “I don´t know, Ned.” Ned said nothing, waited for her to sort out whatever was going on inside her. When she looked at him again, there was pleading in her eyes.
“I thought we might go to that Italian place up on Iris. It´s called La Fenice. I happen to know it has good food. Think it over.”
Toni began to speak, then stopped. “Thank you,” she said. “Can I tell you later?” Ned nodded and Toni resumed her talk of something that had nothing at all to do with dinner or food or going out with a man.
They ate lunch, chatting as they usually did, then paid and left the restaurant. They walked down the mall, stopping to listen to the musicians, look in the store windows.
At Toni´s corner, she turned to Ned and said, “Yes. Dinner. Yes.” Then, with a look of total confusion, she turned and bolted into the door of her building, slipping in front of a man who had opened the door for himself and found himself looking at the straight back of a woman who ran ahead, past the elevator, and took the stairs upward two at a time.