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“He’s a member of a brain trust. Meets with other geniuses to discuss and solve world economic problems. All quite hush-hush, top-secret stuff, so secret that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“What?”

He laughed again. “I wasn’t kidding about our living in many places. Often we go on family trips to foreign countries and around the country, when he’s going to be away for a prolonged time, that is.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“None that I know of,” he replied with a sly smile. “You’re an only child, too, I take it, and your parents own a jewelry store on Main Street, a jewelry store that has been in your family for decades.”

“You did some homework?”

“I’ve scouted the neighborhood. A few interesting people live on this block, especially that elderly lady who hangs her clothes on a line at the side of her house, visible to anyone walking in the street.”

“Mrs. Carden. What about her? What makes her so interesting? Many people like to hang out their clothes in the fresh air. Mrs. Carden’s not unique.”

Mrs. Carden was an eighty-something retired grade-school teacher who had lived for ten years as a widow and never had any children of her own. She would smile and nod at me when I walked by, but I didn’t think I had spoken a dozen words to her in the past five years. I was curious about why someone new would find her interesting.

“Oh, I think she is quite unique,” he insisted.

“Why?”

“She whispers to her clothes as if they were errant children, scolding a blouse for being too wrinkled or a skirt for shrinking. I think she put a pair of stockings in the corner, sort of a time-out for wearing too thin or something. Maybe that’s something a grade-school teacher would do, but I’ve always found people who hold discussions with inanimate objects unique, don’t you?”

“Errant children?”

“Hang around with me. I’ll build your vocabulary,” he said, winking.

“If she was whispering, how did you hear her? Were you spying on her, too?”

“A little, but I have twenty-twenty hearing,” he kidded. “So watch what you whisper about me.”

“Bray . . . den,” I heard again. It sounded the same, a strange, thin call, like a voice riding on the wind.

“Gotta go,” he repeated, backing away as though something very strong was pulling him, despite his resistance. He spun around to slip home through the hedges and then paused and turned back to me. “Can you come out for a walk tonight?”

“A walk?” I smiled with a little incredulity. “A walk?”

“Too simple an invitation?” he asked, and looked around. “It’s going to be a very pleasant evening. Haven’t you ever read Thoreau? ‘He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all.’ Are you afraid of walking? I don’t mean a trek of miles or anything. No backpacks required.”

“I’m not afraid of walking,” I shot back. “And I love Thoreau.”

He lifted his arms to say, So? And then he waited for my response.

“Okay, I’ll go for a walk. When?”

“Just come out. I’ll know.”

“Why? Are you going to hover between the hedges watching and waiting?”

He laughed. “Just come out. A walk might not sound like very much to you, but I’ve got to start somewhere,” he said.

“Start? Start what?”

“Our romance. I can’t ask you to marry me right away.”

“What?”

He laughed again and then slipped through the bushes. I stepped up to them to look through and watch him go into his house, but he was gone so quickly I didn’t even hear a door open and close.