Natalie wants to see Kristie’s tattoos, which are impossible to hide all the way, even with the long-sleeved shirt Fernando has told her to wear underneath her official Archer’s T-shirt.
“I love those.” Natalie sighs. “I wanted to get one on my ankle, just a tiny peace sign, and my momflipped out. It wasn’t worth the battle, so I gave up.”
Apeace sign! thinks Kristie. A peace sign is so innocuous. Who would flip out about that?
“Did your mom care? When you got yours?” Natalie is looking earnestly at Kristie. She’s so bright-eyed and unsullied; she looks like a golden retriever.
“She, ah,” says Kristie. She blinks down at the silverware and shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak. “No,” she whispers finally. “She didn’t.”
“Wow,” says Natalie. “You have that kind of mom, huh? You’re so lucky!”
When she’s all done Kristie walks outside, tip money in her pocket. Soon she’ll have to open a local bank account. She sees someone standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking out at the water, past the pebbly beach, toward the lighthouse. His hands are in his pockets. He turns when he hears her footsteps. It’s... Danny! Gil’s Garden Danny; Ships View Danny.
“Bicycle Girl,” he says. He’s grinning widely.
“What are you doing here?” She’s grinning too; she hardly knows him, but somehow he seems already like an old friend.
“I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d take a chance and see if you were working. I peeked inside, and some guy with a goatee told me you’d be getting off soon.”
“Fernando.”
“I thought maybe we could get a drink.”
Kristie doesn’t want to go into the sobriety thing now, with this guy she doesn’t know, so she says, “Ahhh...”
“Or a not-drink. A walk?”
“Maybe ice cream,” she offers.
“Ice cream!” His face lights up, and she likes that. “I know a great place. But it’s not in Rockland. It’s in Camden. Is Camden too far?”
“What’s Camden?”
“You’ve never been to Camden?”
She shakes her head.
“You have so much to learn! You’ll love it.”
Camden’s downtown feels bigger than Rockland’s, and livelier, though Danny explains to Kristie that it’s actually smaller in both geography and population. There are people everywhere: people talking in clumps on the sidewalks, and sitting on restaurant decks, and walking their dogs and pushing strollers with sleepingchildren in them. Driving in they pass a small green on the side of a church with a tall white steeple. Danny parks on a side street, and they walk to an ice cream stand called River Ducks. Danny orders coffee ice cream in a cup and Kristie orders black raspberry in a sugar cone. She can’t remember the last time she’s eaten ice cream in a sugar cone. It’s probably been fifteen years.
Danny leads her to a bridge over a small river. All along the bridge hang bright plants, and benches line the edge of the bridge. Danny explains that the plants are tended to by the hotel on the other side of the bridge. He touches a few of the plants, gently, identifying them: zinnias, lantana, million bells. He tells her that he wants to own his own company one day, or maybe take over for his boss, Gil, when he retires. They sit on one of the benches.
She asks if he’s from here, and he says, “Sure am. Can’t youheahit in my accent?” He leans hard on the second syllable, theah. Then comes the question she has been expecting, and also dreading. “So, Bicycle Girl,” he says. “What’s your story?” While he eats his ice cream he presses his knee against hers. His knee is soft and warm and her heart jumps at the feel of it.Calm down, heart,she tells it. It’s just a knee.
“No story,” she says, same as she said to Natalie not so long ago. She concentrates on licking the drips of ice cream that are making their way down the cone.
“Everyone has a story,” he says. That knee again. She presses back; it’s like their knees are speaking their own language.
She tells him that her mother just died, bladder cancer, and that she wanted to start over somewhere new. She almost gets the whole sentence out without a wobble but then she thinks about this one time toward the end when her mother lifted her hands up like she was pulling at a rope. For some reason that was the saddest part of the whole thing, the pulling at the imaginary rope. Then her voice goes.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She can’t get the image of the hands outof her head. What were the hands reaching for? She’ll never know. She turns her head away from his, blinking hard in the direction of the hotel, wondering if she can keep the tears in. “She had a hard life,” she says. “And then at the end it started to get better, and then it was over.”
Danny says, “Hey, hey.” He puts his hand under her chin and turns her face toward his. He’s so gentle that the tears come out. He takes a clump of the skinny ice cream napkins and wipes under her eyes. Then he kisses his own thumb and presses it carefully onto the spot where the tear was.
There’s a little girl, maybe four or five, crossing the bridge, holding her mother’s hand, probably on vacation; probably excited to be up past her bedtime. The mother also has a baby in a front pack. Kristie looks down at the girl’s blue sandals but still she can feel the girl staring at her. It’s disconcerting and fascinating, seeing a grown-up cry when you are a child. Kristie remembers being young and knowing that.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. She doesn’t look up until she’s seen the blue sandals move along.
