“Oh, big time. I get to show off my handinessandsave the day.” Figures. He still loves swooping in with heroics.
“What if I asked you to rob a casino with me?”
“The two of us making out on top of bags of stolen money?Full of adrenaline? That’s the kind of date that gets you to third base.”
I can visualize it. “Hot. What if... we ran into each other at the pharmacy where you were buying constipation suppositories and I was getting medicine for a pus-filled blister in my eyeball? Is that a date?”
A laugh bursts from him. “You’re coming up with such sensual ideas for what we’ll do after this.”
We barrel smoothly along the trail, sunshine dappling his arms with green and yellow flowers of light. I keep decelerating to let Alex cruise ahead so that I can observe him easier. He’s wearing a yellow and black windbreaker with long black drawstrings. Jeans. The red hat that I’m learning is essentially a permanent fixture. He periodically checks on me over his shoulder, slowing when I slow.
We speed over a bridge, creek burbling below, then under a trestle, past train tracks overgrown with weeds. I yell at him to stop and look both ways. He turns down a deer path.
“Where’re you going?” I skid to a stop.
“C’mon!”
“I don’t wanna get lost.”
“Girl, do you think I do anything by accident?”
I grumble, heading after him. “High-handed, cocky know-it-all. You make mistakes all the time. Like, the other day, I saw you driving the wrong way down a one-way street.”
“Prove it.”
“I bet you still call the hardware store Perry’s, like all the boomers do.”
“What else would I call it?”
“Newsom’s Goods. It hasn’t been called Perry’s in ten years.”
“Damn. Really?” He points. “Careful here, it gets bumpy for a minute.”
“You’re lost.”
“You insult me. Listen, you hear that?”
I pay attention. “Hear what?”
“That’s a tufted titmouse. Should’ve brought my binoculars.”
I stare at him, bemused. Alex is a talented, intelligent man, but this is beyond the pale. “How can you hear amouse? Do you have bionic eardrums?”
Alex almost falls off his bike. “A tufted titmouse isn’t amouse, it’s a bird.”
“How would I know that? Here’s another bird for you.” I make a rude gesture with my hand.
“Stop making me laugh, I have a stitch in my side.” He clutches his ribs, accidentally kicking his bike chain instead of the pedal.
Another bird twitters nearby,see-wee, see-wee. “What’s that one called?” I mutter. “A fluffy dickrabbit?”
“That,” he tells me imperiously, “is a house finch.”
I make him stop so that I can look it up on my phone. He watches in dismay.
I play a video for him. “That’s not a house finch.Thisis a house finch. Totally different sound.”
A muscle in his cheek jumps. “I meant to sayeastern phoebe.”
