Port Flamingo Boardwalk.
But in the frame appears Penny, beaming, holding her coconut up like the Stanley Cup. As soon as I see her in the frame, I get this instinctive desire to possess her. That woman needs to be mine. I grab a handful of shots of her. Flipping back through them, I get almost dizzy with her smiling face, adorable nose, her freckles, all that happiness shining back at me from the screen.
Fuck it. The mayor’s shady possible associates can wait.
She takes a long sip of the coconut water, and then she puts her glasses on her head and looks up at me. “You think this spot would be good? For the movie? Want me to show you something else?” She takes another sip through the straw, and her pink lips pucker up in a way that makes me think so fucking much of what she’d look like on her knees with her mouth working the length of my…
She really has no idea what she’s doing to me, none at all. “We’re not out of tickets yet.” I pull two more from my pocket. She pushes her bangs from her forehead, and I see the beginning of a sunburn. “But you’re getting some color.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
She’s in the midst of trying to untangle her sunglasses from her hair—worse than the earbuds by far. I help her out, pulling the fine, long strands from the nose clip, being careful not to hurt her. What she doesn’t understand is that she makes me want to worry. She makes me want to take care of her. And I’ve only known her a day.
Christ.
“I’ve got to stop doing that.” She folds them up and jams them in her purse. She squints into the sun. “You’d think I’d learn to get the ones without the nose pads. But nope, never. I see a pair of aviators, and I’m powerless.”
“You just need someone to look after you,” I tell her and take my hat off. I tighten the adjustment strap a few notches and stick it on her head, the bill slightly to the side. She giggles a little and then repositions it. The hat makes it so she has to lift her face right up to the sun to see me.
“How do I look?”
I tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Sweet as marmalade. Now, how about you, me, and that roller coaster? Perfect for the first plot point.”
She grimaces and then she looks away. “Ummmm…” She clutches the coconut to her breasts and presses her fingers to her mouth. “What about palm reading?”
I glance at the tent. Hell, no. “Not really my thing.”
Penny snorts and gives me a shove. “What, are you chicken? Big bad Russ afraid of a lady with a scarf on her head and Palm Reading for Dummies under the table?”
“Fuck, no, I’m not scared. It’s a bunch of bullshit, is all.”
She puts her hand on her hip. “You think the hero of your movie is going to deny the girl he’s trying to win over a palm reading? Really?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Really?”
Seriously, this woman. Every needle and poke makes me want her more than the last one. “All right, you little pistol. You’re on.”
* * *
The palm reader is in yoga pants and a T-shirt that says Palm Readers Have It In Hand! The tent is a lot like a yoga studio or maybe a meditation retreat. It smells like incense, and there are some dreamcatchers hanging from the bare metal pole rafters. But that’s it. No scarves hanging from the walls, or tarot drawings, or weird accordion music. No creepy old lady drinking whiskey from a coffee cup. Totally classy, totally modern.
Penny and I sit down across from her, in two chairs side by side, and she says, “My name’s Marina and I’m a trained chiromancer. Yes, that’s a thing.” She smiles. “I can do an individual reading for $5 apiece. Or I can do a couple’s reading for $12. Includes a zodiac compatibility assessment.”
Penny repositions my hat on her head so she can see me a little better. “Individual, right?”
But when she says it, I can tell it’s not what she means, and it’s not what I want either. So I pull my wallet out of my pocket and give the palm reader a twenty. “Couple’s.”
Penny whacks my thigh. “Russ. Don’t be silly.”
“Now who’s chicken?”
Which is met with an adorable huff. Bring it on.
“All right, lovebirds,” Marina says, giving me eight in change. “I’d like your first names and your month and date of birth. Dominant hand, please, honey,” she tells Penny.
She turns to face the palm reader, back straight, shoulders relaxed. “Penelope. I go by Penny. My birthday is April 9.”
And then she puts down her left hand.
For a second, I just stare at it. Only lefties notice lefties, and I’m definitely noticing this.
So then I do the same, put down my left hand. Penny gapes at me, and I nod. I know. I fucking know. And I say, “Russell. Russ to everybody that knows me. July 27.”
The palm reader clicks her tongue. “The Ram and the Lion. Well, well, well. Both fire signs. It means you’re both equally passionate…and both left-dominant. Quite a match! Have you known each other long?”
Next to me Penny shifts in her seat, and I watch her push her knees together.
Fuck.
“Not long at all,” I answer.
The palm reader puts her palms to ours, her cool fingertips barely reaching halfway down my hand, while her other hand almost covers Penny’s completely. “That’s a very powerful combination. Your heart lines indicate a very similar level of emotion. Russ, you seem a little bit more closed off. Do you see here that your heart line is straight, but Penny’s has a few lines running across it?”
“Yeah. I do.”
The palm reader nods. “You’re probably protective of your feelings at first, whereas Penny wears her heart more on her sleeve.” The palm reader moves on to a different line, the curved one beneath our thumbs. A smile creeps up on her face, like she’s in on some surprise that we don’t know about yet. “I’m guessing you share the same very particular sense of humor…”
I flash back to when Penny deadpanned me in the Urgent Care. “How about some jumbo shrimp?” To Lucky being both unlucky and unfortunate. Christ.
“…You probably also enjoy many of the same things. Books, for instance.”
Dickens, holy shit.
Now she moves over to the lines on our thumbs, inspecting each one against the other, like she’s reading fingerprints. “Your chemistry is explosive, but you probably know that already.”
Penny’s eyes flit over to mine, and she watches me, unblinking.
Explosive. That’s the fucking word.
“For the most part, things for you are fairly smooth sailing. You probably feel like you’ve known each other much longer than you have. If you share one flaw, it’s that you’re terrified of wounding each other. You might be prone to miscommunications; the desire to protect the other one from harm could be what hurts you most in the end. But it’s also the biggest asset that you have, that unflinching togetherness.”
Unflinching togetherness. Fuck me.
“What time of day were you born?” the palm reader asks, pressing her fingertips into my palm.
“At night, I think. Eight or nine.”
“Same here,” Penny says.
The palm reader nods, not the least bit surprised. “It’s a love match, and it’s not to be taken lightly. If you open your hearts—and you might not have a choice—you’ll fall in love hard and fast, and permanently.” She looks to me and then Penny and back again. “This relationship is probably already one of the most important you’ve ever had. It may very well be the most important one of your lives, period.”
* * *
In stunned silence, her hand in mine, we leave the palmistry tent. In the bright sunshine, next to a cotton-candy cart, Penny stops and looks up at me. “That was just…”
“Surreal.”
She nods. “How did she know all that?” She considers her palm. “Is that really written on us? All of that? The books? The sense of humor? The… explosions?”
I look at my palm, too. Fuck if I know, but the woman was right on the
money: The books, yeah. The laughter. The chemistry, even more. All of it. I grip her hand a little tighter and lead her along through the fair, past a petting zoo area and a big net rectangle full of squishy foam blocks.
What I want to say is, Don’t you fucking feel it, too? But I don’t want to scare her, and I don’t want to push too hard. “Probably the same thing she tells everybody.”
“Probably. Maybe. Yes, probably,” Penny replies.
But there it is. That sweet, soft hesitation in her voice. She doesn’t believe that, and neither do I.
I take the last two tickets from my pocket and give them to the roller coaster attendant—a guy in overalls, picking his teeth with a toothpick and reading a copy of The Sun Also Rises. We sit together in the front car, both of us still fucking stunned, and I make sure the cage around her is latched tight. The attendant puts a rope in front of the entrance and presses the button to start the ride. A slow tick-tick-tick fills the air as we head up the first steep hill.
“Okay, full disclosure…” Penny says.
Come on. Say it. I’ve never had a fling, but I want to have one with you. Take the plunge, beautiful. With me. Right now.
“What’s that?” The ticking slows as the grade steepens.
“I am terrified of roller coasters,” she says with a gulp.
I turn to her. She looks halfway between happy and scared to death. She’s not shitting me. I make a move to hit the STOP RIDE button, but she grabs my hand before I can.
“It’s okay,” she says, all breathy and flushed. “I’m willing to try it.”
Her bare thigh is only inches from mine, and I put my hand right there in the middle of it. She curls her toes on her flip flops, and we approach the top of the hill.
The ticking slows to a stop. People behind us chatter with nerves, and a little kid lets out a scream of anticipation.
“Listen, Penny.”
“God,” she groans. “I love when you get serious.”
“I’m so fucking glad you stole my bag.”
I bring my hand to the back of her neck to keep her facing me. The safety cages are loose enough for me to bring my lips to hers. Her eyes crinkle at the edges and then slide shut as that spontaneous peck turns into the real fucking deal. I want this kiss to go on forever, but there’s something I have to say, and I’ve got to say it now. “One week. No strings. You and me. What do you say?”
But before she can answer, the cars tip forward, and the bottom falls out from everything.
22
Penny
We zoom up and down and around, and the whole time my heart is in my throat. His hand stays clasped around mine, and I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so very alive, so very free, so absolutely like myself. But as the roller coaster finally begins to slow, my mind starts to clear. One week, no strings.
He grips my hand tighter, and I find I have to look away. I focus on the seagulls circling over the ocean to ground myself again. I’ve had men say a lot of things to me, some good, some bad, some downright astonishing. But I’ve never had one be so incredibly…
Forward.
When we roll to a stop, he helps me from the car and guides me toward the exit of the ride. Even though I’m off the roller coaster, my mind is still swirling like I’m speeding down the tracks. When we’re alone and separate from the little crowds he turns my hat around backwards. “Don’t keep me hanging, beautiful.”
What I want to say, and what I know is true, are worlds apart. Because the truth is that there are always strings. Human beings are made of strings. We get each other tied up in cat’s cradles whether we want to or not. Knotted and twisted and tangled.
“I don’t think we can do that. I don’t think I can do it.”
There a flicker of pain on his face. “You don’t want to even try?”
I do, with all my heart I do. But I know that one week with this man would leave me wrecked. “We can’t…”
“Because of what?”
“Because of the way we feel already.”
He holds his hand to his jaw and roughs up his stubble, and then takes a step back. He turns his head slightly, like I slapped him. “Listen, I’ve got some shit to take care of around here. Stuff to measure, that kind of thing. Not much fun for you, probably.”
He won’t even meet my eye. This big beast of a guy, suddenly shy, speechless, awkward, all because of me. “Russ, I just meant…”
He swipes his hands through the air, like it’s all no big deal. “I know what you meant.” His long eyelashes cast a shadow on his cheeks as he looks down at the ground. “I get it.”
“Do you want this back?” I put my hand to the brim of the hat.
“You keep it,” he says, looking down at the ground. He puts his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he turns to go.
* * *
I walk home down the beach. It’s a long walk, and the whole way I keep my footsteps at the waterline, so the water laps my toes every third or fourth wave. It seems that everywhere around me, there are couples. There’s a man and a woman splashing each other in the waves. A guy in swim trunks spreads out two towels, emblazoned with HIS and HERS.
Pretty soon, I hear the throat singing. The noise has cleared out our portion of the shore almost completely, like some instrument of torture. For a long while, alone there on the beach with my face to the sea breeze, I look out into the Gulf. Part of me feels an adult pride in being responsible. I knew what was going to happen. He was going to undo me, and leave me in a heap. He’d have me feeling like I was chasing fireflies at dusk, trying to capture the uncatchable thing. He’d be buying me cocktail dresses and we’d be raising hell, and the whole time I’d be thinking, Maybe he won’t go. Maybe I can make him stay.
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. A man like that isn’t going to turn his life upside down for a girl like me. That much I know for sure.
I turn away from the water and head for home, feeling the texture of the sand change from solid to powdery under my feet. It gets rougher, with more broken-up shells, the closer I get to my house. As quietly as I can, I slip through the gate onto my patio, because so help me God, I can’t handle Maisie and all her questions right now. Inside my house, I find Guppy, asleep on the couch.
Going down onto my knees, I take off Russ’ hat and wrap my arms around Guppy. He puts his huge head on my shoulder and sighs while his tail whacks the sofa arm.
“Sorry I was gone so long.” I give him a kiss on his cheek, as big as an Icelandic pony’s.
He answers with a great big lick up my face, drenching me in slobber. I lie down on the rug, looking up at the ceiling fan, and dig my phone from my purse. I open up my favorites and give the mayor a call. I figure I’ve got about a 10 percent chance of reaching him, but I have to try. It’s not like me to disappear for hours, and he’ll worry. His contact photo is him holding a tiny bunny rabbit at the City Adoption Drive. Someone behind him gave him rabbit ears as I snapped the shot.
“Penny!” he booms as he answers the call, bellowing over some polka music in the background.
“Just wanted to know if you needed me for anything. I’m not feeling so good, but I can come back in.”
Oh-pah, oh-pah, oh-pah, oh-pah. “You’re breaking up!”
I inhale hard. “Sick. Staying home. Sorry!” When I was a little girl, Grandpa and I used play telephone via tin cans and string. Cell service in Port Flamingo is no better.
“Need me to bring you some soup? They’ve got borscht!” he bellows. “And it’s delicious!”
“Where are you?” I squint at the time. He doesn’t sound liquored up, and it’s the middle of the afternoon.
“At the Elks! It’s Polish Freedom Day. You feel better. Don’t worry about a thing.” Then I hear a rustling, but the call doesn’t end. Among his many technological challenges, hanging up the phone is top of the list. I hear the noise of his pocket against the speaker as a man yells, “Mayor! Let’s get a photo!”
So I end t
he call myself and drop my phone on the rug. Guppy stares at me from above, his jowls drooping. I reach up and pet his massive head, the fur on top as soft as cashmere. “We’ll be okay. It was craziness, anyway.”
Guppy considers me seriously, his wet nose glistening. He swipes his paw through the air in our signal for pet me, mama. I grab his paw mid-swipe and press my thumb into the crevice between the thick, leathery pads.
I’ve never had any luck with men, and I’m not about to find the love of my life in a guy who wants a fling. That is not happening. That never happens. Nobody falls in love just like that.
So I give Guppy one more kiss, and head for the bathroom. On my way, I notice that Russ made my bed. In the bathroom, I see he left his towel folded, and replaced my drying rack back in the tub where I’d had it overnight. By the looks of the little flecks of hair in the wastebasket, he cleaned up after himself after making a pass with his trimmer over his stubbly, gorgeous beard.
I brace myself on the sink. Staring at myself, I feel my heart break a little bit.
Or maybe a lot.
Silly. So, so silly.
Guppy comes into the bathroom and rests his head on the counter, looking at me in the mirror. Normally on a night like tonight, I’d sit with Guppy on the sofa, eat a pint of pistachio ice cream, and re-watch Bleak House with my box of white wine within arm’s reach. I place my finger on a lone beard hair that he didn’t clean up, a tiny dark line on the countertop. I focus on its coarseness between my thumb and forefinger. I think about how he made me feel—like no man ever has. Or probably ever will again. Life is made of ever so many partings, welded together.
“Anything but Dickens, Guppy. Anything but that.”
23
Russ
After she leaves, I do what guys have been doing when they’ve gotten rejected since the beginning of time, and head for the bar. Actually, it’s a tent called the Sundown Saloon. The front flap has old-timey western saloon doors painted on either side of the opening. Inside is an older guy, grizzled and tan, cleaning pint glasses until they squeak. “Getcha something, partner?”
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