“What’s your name?”the girl asks me after she follows me back to my lounge chair, where I dry off and make a valiant attempt to recover my dignity by wiping off the smeared eye makeupthat wound up everywhere but my eyelids.
I’m caught off guard. Isn’t the adult supposed to ask the child that question? And isn’t the child supposed to get suddenly shy?
“Sam,” I say while rummaging around my tote bag for the sunglasses so I can cover my raccoon eyes. I don’t feel them. “What’s yours?”
“Guess.”
This kid is a master of putting me on edge in very low-stakes ways.
“Hmmm.” I dig into my mental reserves of Old Timey Names That Probably Make Kids Laugh. “Is it Winifred?”
She scoffs. “No! Guess again.”
Out of the corner of my still-irritated eye, I see her dad approaching with a pair of towels in his hand.
“Is it…Petunia?”
Exasperated sigh. “Do agoodguess.”
“I really thought I had it with Petunia.” I shake my head in mock defeat. “You’re gonna have to tell me.”
Her dad sits on the edge of the lounge chair next to me, but I try not to look at him.
I can’t see very well but I can make out a little grin on her face. “You give up?”
“I’m waving a tiny, invisible white flag,” I say, gesturing with one hand.
“Kira,” she says. “K-I-R-A.” I’m sure in a few years she will also offer a firm handshake. “Kira Ro Jensen-Martino.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. What a name.” I allow myself a quick glance at her dad. “Do you want to be in the circus when you grow up?”
“No,” she answers, like this should be obvious. “I’m gonna be a YouTuber.”
“Definitely not,” her dad says.
“YouTuber sounds like a pretty nice job,” I reply, becauseright now, any job sounds nice.
“What doyouwanna do when you grow up?” Kira asks. I’m unsure if she simply can’t tell what age I am or has seen directly into my soul and pulled out the heart of my biggest insecurities.
I open my mouth to make something up (hair stylist, pilot, chiropractor) when her dad chimesin.
“She already told you—she’s a government agent.” I turn my head to look at him, but without my glasses, everything farther than a couple feet in front of me is blurry. “Do you need an extra towel?”
I shake my head and wipe under my eyes again. “Actually, the government agent bit was a lie. I’m a Juilliard-trained actor,” I tell him.
“Really?”
I can’t see his face properly. I stare at the area of his head where I imagine his slightly raised eyebrows mightbe.
“Yeah, I just hang around local pools hoping to practice my craft.”
“In that case, Kira’s a great scene partner because she likes to be the director, too.”
I’m squinting hard, trying to make out his features. I’m basically conducting a conversation with one of those anonymized witnesses onDateline.“In addition to my impression of a water orangutan who can’t swim, I can pull off a super accurate ‘depressed twentysomething woman reading a book.’ I’m available for children’s birthday parties.”
He laughs, and my eyes go straight to his hands, which seems more polite than looking at the other parts of him that I can sort of see.
Hands are my favorite part of the body. Eyes are the window into the soul, but hands contain a lot of information, too. And I don’t mean in the reflexology sense. We explore our immediate world with our hands. Sometimes we explorepeoplewith ourhands.
