Seating Arrangements Read Online Free PDF

princess,” she said, teetering toward tears. Daphne was an accomplished crier, plaintive and capable of great stamina. For a girl so physically delicate and soft in voice, she was unexpectedly stalwart in her emotions. Her tears were purposeful, as were her smiles and pouts. Biddy called her Lady Macbeth.
    Ducking back behind his paper, Winn did what was necessary. “All right,” he said. “Daphne, you are my princess.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely.”
    Daphne nodded and ate a grape. Then she cocked her head to one side. “Am I your fairy princess?”
    Biddy, when Winn went looking for her, was getting out of the shower. Through the closed door he heard the water shut off and the rattle of the shower curtain. She was humming something to herself. He thought it might be “Amazing Grace.” Knocking once, he pushed open the door, releasing a cloud of steam. Her bare body, flushed from the shower, was so close he could feel the heat coming off her back and small, neat buttocks. A foggy oval wiped on the mirror framed her breasts and belly button, the dark badge of hair below, his tight face hovering over her shoulder. After fall stripped away her summer tan, her skin tended toward a certain sallowness, but the hot water had turned her chest and legs a rosy pink. Already, her breasts looked swollen. A white towel was wrapped around her head. Her reflection smiled at him. Biddy , he had planned to say, maybe one is enough . He would suggest they sit down and make a pros and cons list. He was holding a yellow legal pad and a blue pen and had already thought of cons to counter all possible pros.
    “What is it?” she asked, her smile draining away. He wondered if she had already guessed that he had trailed her to this warm, foggy room to argue her baby away from her. She had some lotion in her hand, and he watched her rub it on her sides and stomach, across stretch marks from Daphne that were only visible in the pale months. “Winn?” she asked. “What?”
    “What was that you were just humming?” he asked.
    “ ‘Unchained Melody,’ ” she said.
    “Oh.”
    “And?”
    “And what?”
    She took another towel and wrapped it around herself, tucking in the end beneath her armpit. “What else?”
    “Nothing important.”
    “What’s that for?” She pointed at the legal pad.
    “I needed to take some notes.”
    “About what?”
    “A work thing.”
    She turned to the mirror and asked, almost casually, “Are you excited about the baby?”
    Winn was silent.
    “Are you?” Biddy prodded.
    “Yes,” Winn said. “No.”
    “No, you’re not excited?” She and Daphne had the same way of wrinkling their foreheads when their plans went awry. “What were you going to say when you came in here?”
    He tapped the legal pad against his thigh. “I’m not sure.”
    “Winn, out with it.”
    “Fine. I was thinking about saying we shouldn’t jump into anything. We didn’t exactly plan this.”
    “We always said we would have two.”
    “We hadn’t talked about it in years. Maybe four years.”
    “No, we talked about it last year. On Waskeke. At the bar in the Enderby. You said you’d like to try for a son.”
    “We’d been drinking, and that was still a year ago.”
    “I didn’t think it was empty talk. We always said we’d have two. I understood our plan was for two. We always said so.”
    “I thought … I assumed , apparently incorrectly, that we’d both cooled on the idea.”
    “You should have said if you’d changed your mind.”
    “You should have said you wanted another one.”
    “Let me ask you this, if you could know right now that it’s a boy, would we be having this conversation? Would you have made one of your lists? That’s what you have there, isn’t it?”
    He hid the pad behind his back and soldiered on. “I didn’t know you’d gone off the pill,” he said. “Did you do it on purpose?”
    She rummaged in a drawer. “I forgot for a week. I know you don’t like to be