When he came back, he said she’d made him coffee and they’d talked about chemistry. She had a degree in biology. She was interested in his work.
“That’s nice,” I said.
A week later, she knocked on the door again. Irvin answered again. This time it was a heavy package. A box that had been delivered to her porch, and she couldn’t lift it.
“It’s a new bookshelf,” she said. “It weighs a ton. Could you carry it inside for me?”
He did.
The week after that, it was a lightbulb. In the ceiling fixture in her living room. She couldn’t reach it, she said. She was afraid of ladders.
Vanessa was five-foot-ten. Taller than me. She could have reached it standing on a kitchen chair.
Irvin changed the lightbulb.
Each time, she found him. Never me. She knew our schedules. She knew I worked Saturday mornings at the dental office every other week. She always came on those Saturdays.
