Anna, at the stove, turned to say something to her and caught my eye through the window. Her momentary alarm—this was during my Allman Brothers phase—quickly turned to enthusiasm, feigned or otherwise, at my arrival. I held up my bottle of wine and baguette, raised my eyebrows, and mouthed “Door?” She circled her finger in the air like E. T.: go around, or back home, whichever. So I continued along the path, drawing a tight shadow of a smile from the woman at the cutting board, and eventually arrived at a grand door ornamented with a huge metal knocker. A long moment later Anna appeared with an orotund “Oh, hello,” and I was in.
Anna was magnificently curly headed and just shy of troublingly thin, with a squished cherubic face that seemed to promise PG-13 secrets. She’d grown up in the area and had recently moved back for somewhat mysterious reasons, possibly involving a now ex-boyfriend’s arrest for dealing prescription drugs. She radiated the kind of positivity that suggested barely repressed rage.
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