Glass said nothing. He liked Prosecco. He liked the gesture, too, the drinks coming uncalled-for and set down before them with an actorly flourish. It made him feel an old New York hand; he could almost see the caption, “Glass in the Bleeding Horse, one of his favorite Manhattan eateries.” He often thought of his life in journalese, it was an old habit. He wondered if Louise considered him common, too, like the wine.
“How is the work?” his wife asked, her eyes on the menu. “Have you made a start yet?” The rain-light from the window gave her the look of an early Florentine madonna as she sat there with her long, angular, pale face inclined, and the menu she was holding might have been a psalter.
“No,” he said, “I haven’t made a start. I mean, I haven’t started writing. There are things I have to do first.”
“Research, you mean?”
He looked at her sharply. But there was no way she could know about Dylan Riley; he had told no one about the Lemur. She was still reading the menu, bringing to it the rapt, radiant attention that she brought to everything she did, even, he ruefully recalled, lovemaking. “Yes, research,” he mumbled, “that kind of thing.”
The waiter came and Glass ordered linguine with clams and Louise asked for a plain green salad. It was all she ever ate at lunchtime. Why, then, Glass wondered, did she spend so long poring over the menu? Having taken their order, the waiter pointed his pencil inquiringly at the empty third place, but Louise shook her head. “David might look in,” she told Glass. “I said we’d eat and he could join us for coffee.”