Look. I’ll tell you the story. But you have to appreciate the situation first.

You know, I used to say it all the time. People aren’t any better than they have to be. And let’s get this much straight. It’s still true. With most people.

The golden rule was stolen a long time ago and melted down to make pinky rings for crud who like to use other people for sport.

Crud comes in all flavors.

Every guy who gets soft on a gal wants to think she’s better than he is—wants her to be the true thing. But women are no better than men. They have a little less muscle, so they make up for it in other ways.

Your mother was not a saint. She married your father. Isn’t that proof enough? If she hadn’t married him, that would have made her smarter, not better.

This is not cynicism. It’s life.

You are not the center of the universe. You are a speck. Just another zygote that got too big for the womb.

You want to play a name game? Want everything to fall into neat categories? Good. Bad. Better. Best. The universe doesn’t give a damn. You’re just as dead as the next guy when your time comes. So you do what’s right because you know it, not because somebody told you to.

Get that much straight. If you don’t want to be a crud yourself, then stay out of the way. Keep your head down. Don’t advertise. And don’t smile for no reason.

Otherwise, always carry a role of quarters.

I might have to add something to that last bit of philosophy. Tape the role so when your fist hits the other guy’s ribs, the quarters don’t break out all over the street. You won’t have time to pick them up.

And that’s about where I was in my thinking at the time. I had a few years on me to get there.

On that Sunday night I was walking home—at least what I was calling home just then. A room with a sink. The toilet and shower were down the hall. My fist was in my pocket. I had half the role left and used my thumb to push the ragged paper over what remained. I didn’t look back. There was nothing to see that I couldn’t hear.

I shouldn’t have been out in the first place. It was after midnight. There’s no cover on a street that late on a Sunday night. Even most of the crud are home with their warm TVs. The ones who are out are the losers who don’t even have their own TV’s and hang around the bars to watch what they can and maybe get lucky.

The fact is, the night had nothing on how dark I felt. That should have been warning enough.

I’d made a big mistake. I’d met a woman I thought was better than me. Now I was walking home alone on a Sunday night and wondering just how stupid I could be. I’d left her at the YWCA. She said she was staying there. But when I went back to tell her something–when I’d gotten up the nerve to actually say what I was thinking, she wasn’t there. She didn’t even have a reservation. And I was pretty sure she had no family in town because she was just off the bus from Albany.

That was a moment I can remember like it just happened.

Buses aren’t like they used to be. They used to stink, and they still do, and the toilets didn’t work, and they still don’t, but you used to meet some interesting people. I have stories I could tell. I hit the road when I was barely eighteen. Maybe I told you about that before. I hitched and bused from here to California. More than once. But I hadn’t met anybody worth talking to on a bus in years, until I sat down next to this gal in a green shirt and jeans. A ‘slip’ of a girl as my dad might say. She had her shoes off, and was wearing those little white socks that don’t reach your ankles and her jeans were worn white at the knees. She had her arms around her legs and her knees were pulled up under her chin and I thought she was asleep. I thought she was probably still in high school. And–get this—the guy behind me in line as we got on the bus was a bad piece of work I’d seen on the street in Boston before. He didn’t know me. But I knew him. And I figured pretty fast that if he got the chance he’d take the seat beside the girl, so I took it first.

Now this is the set up when you are about to play the fool. You’ve just done something noble–or at least decent under the circumstances. You’ve done the right thing and you’re patting yourself on the back for a good move. You’re distracted by your own hubris. That’s when you get hit up-side of the head.

I turned on the little overhead light and pulled out the paperback I was reading to pick up where I left off.

That’s when she spoke.

“Harry’s a jerk. Why does he want to have anything to do with that women–What’s her name? Jean? Jean’s got nothing to offer him. I quit reading in the third chapter. I couldn’t take it.”

She still had her legs drawn up and she was looking over one knee cap at my book. Like I say, it kind of caught me off guard.

I said, “That’s the story. If you like Harry, you want to see how he survives. I can’t fault him for being a fool–not after looking in the mirror this morning when I shaved.”

She nodded just a little, mostly by rocking her body. You know the way.

I don’t know the numbers on the other rules, but rule number two is that you don’t fool around with girls. Women are difficult enough. Girls are automatic trouble, and no fun because they don’t know enough to make it fun. So I just went back to reading my book. It’s about three and a half hours from Albany to Boston. Part of that’s the stop in Springfield. We weren’t even through Troy before she spoke again. It was almost 8 pm and there was nothing else to look at out the window. That’s what I thought.

She says, “What’s in it for her? He’s got no money. He’s got a drinking problem. He hates himself. She’s only looking for the main chance. The big break. What does she see in him?”

So I told her only what I knew at that point in the story. It was just a guess. “A kindred soul. Somebody who knows the ropes and might offer some small comfort in a cold world.”

She nodded again. I went back to reading.

Then she says, “Why does he stay. Why doesn’t he get out. Florida. California. Someplace warm.”

I shook my head at that. I was thinking that only kids and old people believe they can escape the cold by going south. I said, “You’re still too young to know it yet. But the cold wakes you up. It keeps you awake. Too much can kill you, but that’s true of heat as well. Warm puts your brain to sleep.”

She laughed a little. “Do you really believe that? You don’t do you? You just said it to be saying something. Maybe if Harry wasn’t hanging out in cold places he wouldn’t be looking for comfort in the wrong places.”

This was a wise appraisal.

“Maybe.” I say. “But I’ve been to Florida. I’ve never seen so many walking dead. I’ve been to Southern California. You figure out right away why they think they need cocaine to enjoy the scenery. It’s too warm.”

Now I was being cute. Of course. I was trying to be smart. That’s the hubris again. What I should have said is that if I had any brains worth saving I’d have stayed in La Jolla. It was never better for me than that. But that was then. I couldn’t go back.

She said, “Bull shit.”

So she caught me again.

She put her legs down then. I took advantage of the moment, in what light managed to get over her way. She was thin. But I got the first idea that she might not be a girl anymore.

I defended myself the best I could under the circumstances.

“Yeah. Warm may not be so bad, but it might pass for an excuse when you don’t have anything more intelligent to say. I suppose Harry is a creature of habit. He stays close to home because that’s what he knows and understands best. In a place like California they have other rules.”

Her hair was dyed black. It was short and neat but I wondered what color it had been. She was using something on her eyebrows as well. It made her skin seem pale. One of the eyebrows rose up in an arch.

She says, “Harry has a dog. Isn’t that enough?”

I said, “No.”

She folded her hands in her lap. She asks, “You ever have a dog?”

She looked like a girl again.

I said, “Yes.”

I was going to tell her about dogs but she spoke up first.

“Did he get old?”

I said, “I suppose he’s getting there. He’s in California now. He likes the warm. How about you?”

She took a breath and cleared her throat. “She got old. I miss her.”

Now I was pretty sure again that she was too young to be chatting up, so I lifted my book. Harry was in a predicament. I wanted to know how it came out. But I only got through a dozen pages or so.

We were at the Massachusetts border. She had been looking at me. Or maybe just reading over my shoulder.

She says, “What do you do?”

I actually thought for just a moment that if I ignored her she might take offense and settle back to her own business. But I’m that stupid.

I said, “Whatever’s paying. Mostly I cook. I was just in Albany to back-up in the kitchen at a lawyer’s convention.

She asked, “Are you any good?”

I told her the truth. “No. Just good enough.”

She said, “What would you like to do?”

I told her. “I don’t know. I’ve tried a bunch of things. I worked in Florida a few years ago doing framing work on houses after one of the hurricanes. That was good money but about as boring as anything I’ve ever tried. I just don’t know.”

She nodded at that. “And you’re from Boston?”

I told her, “Yeah. Well. Watertown. Close enough.”

I wanted to ask what school she was in. If nothing else, I wanted to make a point about her age. But she didn’t give me the chance.

She says, “I’ve been a waitress, mostly. One thing you learn about being a waitress is to stay away from the cooks.”

That got a laugh out of me. Its true. But it seemed like some kind of invitation, so I said, “Why is that?”

She says, “You know,” and she raised one eyebrow at me again.

Yeah. I knew. There wasn’t any place I wanted to go with that line of conversation. I said, “Why are you going to Boston?”

She said, “School.”

I said, “Where?”

She said, “No place yet. A friend of mine took night classes at Harvard once. I could never get into Harvard through the front door but it’d be great to say I went to school there without lying.”

So I asked, “Are you from Albany?”

She shakes her head and tells me. “Saratoga Springs. My daddy is a cook at a hotel there.” Then she smiled. “So I know about cooks.”

Now I was in trouble. You see. I was already interested enough to be putting my head up where it might get whacked.

I said, “Is this your first time away?”

She laughed again. “No. I’m twenty three years old. For Christ sake, if you’re still living at home when you’re twenty three you aren’t worth spit.”

So I was hooked. I mean, look. This situation was a no brainer and that’s my territory and I know it well. Her father was a cook. She knew about cooks. And she liked to read. She was old enough to know better. I was like a fish with the hook through my lip.

I said, “What would you like to do?”

She said, “I don’t know. Just like you. I don’t know.”

I put my book away.

I say, “But you’ve done something else than wait on tables, right?”

She sighed, “I’ve worked in a few stores. Sales clerking. I was a bartender for almost a year. That was tough. But I haven’t done much. I haven’t done enough. That’s my problem. Not many options. So I’ve been saving my money. But I’m impatient. I want to get it going.”

I understood that pretty well. I said, “I guess you have more patience than me. I hit the road when I was eighteen.”

She didn’t speak for almost a minute. I kept my mouth shut and waited to see what she might say.

“Where did you go?”

I figure she was asking herself whether she wanted to know anything more about this guy. I suddenly felt lucky. That’s another warning sign. Rule number three maybe. When you start feeling lucky, it’s because you don’t know all the facts.

I said, “Alaska first. I mean, that was the place. Right? The pipe-line was humming. I worked the kitchen on a cruise boat out of Seattle. Then I got a job in Anchorage—in a kitchen–of course. I tried to get a job with one of the oil companies. But by the time I got there, they were laying people off. I hung around awhile. Then I went to California. Got a job driving nails. That was good for awhile. More fresh air. I got a tan. Then things didn’t work out. I tried Florida after that. Now I’m here again.”

She responded to that almost before I finished speaking.

“Ever think about going to school?”

I say, “For what?”

She arches that eye brow at me, but even bigger than before. “To learn something.”

I wasn’t going to back down on a count like that. “You mean to get a certificate to show that I’m a human being. No thanks. I already know that.”

She says, “Don’t you think you have anything to learn?”

This is a subject I talked about often enough even then. I didn’t want to get a rant going.

I say, “Yes. Sure. A lot. I try to learn something every day. But I come from a long line of Irish heretics. I’m not interested in getting anybody’s permission to think. And if I find something I want to know and I can’t get it out of a book, then I’ll go to school. But I haven’t found that yet.”

She sat there for maybe five minutes then without saying a word. I was pretty sure she was going to pick my little speech apart. But she didn’t.

She was looking out the window into the dark or else looking at the reflection of me sitting there looking at her when she spoke again.

“I wish I could feel that way. I just don’t think I’m going to stumble across the right thing all by myself. I figure it can’t hurt to go to school for awhile.”

I think I used to look at it that way too. But I‘d met a girl in California who had her degree already and was working for the Institute of Oceanography. She had brains to spare, but she was as stupid as a hammer. All she really wanted was somebody to take care of her and empty the garbage, so she could be free to have deep thoughts about the survival of the sea otter and the abalone. I read some of her papers. I read the book she helped write. Her name was the fourth one from the top. I told her that her programs were full of crap. All she needed to do is leave the frigging sea otter alone and learn how to cook the abalone. But she wouldn’t.

I figured the little girl next to me on the bus was looking for answers. Another thing I know for sure is that you don’t get answers from people who want to hand them out like candy. You get answers from asking your own questions.

I said, “Going to school might not hurt. But I wonder if they don’t get a hold of your brain and start squeezing it into the shape they want. Look around. Everybody talks the same. If you draw your vowels out in a different way they think you’re stupid. If you point out that Shakespeare didn’t talk the way they do either, they think you’re even more stupid. They all think alike. They even read the same books, if they read at all. They watch television. They listen to crappy music that’s ripped off from older crappy music. They work in little offices doing little things and growing old. I can grow old without the degree.”

She was pretty quick responding to that as well.

“How about money?”

“Yeah. How about the money. That’s a nice trap they have. The harder you work, the more they take.”

It was right then that I get a tap on the shoulder. It was the Piece-of-work who had been behind me in line when I got on the bus. He says, “Keep the chatter down will you. I’m trying to sleep.”

Now I keep my voice down anyway. I’m not a loud talker. Right? But it’s a bus. It’s a public place. I wasn’t talking much above a whisper anyway. And the girl hadn’t been loud either. I was pretty sure that my conversation was bothering this guy for other reasons. Missed opportunities and all that.

So I stand up in the aisle and I tell him, “You may want to talk with me about that when we get off the bus. But right now, you might want to mind your own business.”

He laughs. It’s the kind of snarky laugh of somebody you don’t want in the seat behind you and I got angry in a flash and put my hand in my pocket for the roll of quarters. His eyes got big for just an instant. I realized he thought it might be something more than a roll of quarters. He didn’t answer. He tried for the laugh again. It was a little weak.

I sat down. I said, “Money isn’t worth much if you don’t know how to use it.”

It was kind of a left-over thought, but she looked pretty serious now. I think she was disturbed by what I said to the Piece-of-work behind us.

After a minute she says, “Sometimes it gets pretty thin just trying to get by.”

I thought about that a lot. I saved my money and spent as little as I could.

“I think it’s a matter of priorities.” I told her. “I’m looking to get myself a truck. I have my eye on a three year old Ford with twenty thousand miles on it that a buddy of mine uses to drive out to job sites. My buddy wants a 250 for loads and this is just a little 150, but it’s fine for me. I’ll build a little camper for the back and I can go up to Moosehead when the weather’s good and get a spot in the state park. And I know a place in the Adirondacks where there’s a little deep water lake. You can catch trout on the brook that runs out of there that are the direct relations of ones that were swimming when the Mohawks were still singing songs. I don’t need much.”

She gave this a minute.

Then she says, “Brown’s or Rainbows.”

I said, “Browns. If they were Rainbows it would bring the weekend fishermen like flies. They don’t seem to gather as much for the Browns. But they taste just as good.”

So what does she say? She says, “My Daddy likes to fish.”

Now this is real trouble. Her daddy is a cook. Her daddy likes to fish. It’s like a total set up. And right here I start getting worried. You know something is going to go wrong if you’ve been rooting for the Red Sox for more than a couple of years. There is something I don’t know. I start thinking. She’s married. She’s got a kid. Two kids. She’s a congenital liar like the woman I knew in Florida. I’m telling myself to stay cool. But I don’t listen to myself often enough. Like you’ve said a few times–I have too many rules and forget which ones I should be paying attention to.

I say, “Does your mother like to fish?”

I actually said that.

She laughs. I see that she likes to laugh. She says, “No. Mom sits near the fire and reads. She has an old beach chair she brings along that she likes better than the couch in the living room.”

When she laughs I can see she has good teeth.

Now that’s something a lot of guys won’t mention, but it ought to be one of the rules. Avoid women with bad teeth. It might mean they don’t take care of other stuff. That’s serious business.

I said, “A good chair is hard to find.” I meant it to be funny, but obviously it wasn’t. My mind was still reeling with my worries over what might be the problem with this woman that I couldn’t see.

She said, “Are you married?”

Bam. Like that. Out of the blue. And I told her, “No. Never did.” That’s all that came out.

I was looking for a little wit somewhere in the gray matter between my ears when she says, “How old are you?”

Cripes! But I told her. “32.”

She says right away, “Why aren’t you married. What’s wrong?”

I was backed right up in my seat. She was clearing a lot of trees real fast.

I said, “I made a couple of mistakes. That can use up a lot of time.”

She said, “That’s for sure…California?”

She could see through to that pretty easily. I said, “Yeah. And Florida.”

Now I was working up the courage to be as bold as she’d been. I didn’t want to say anything totally stupid. I just wanted to make sure she knew I was interested. But she spoke first again.

“I was married for two years,” she says. “I married a cook. Naturally. I might as well be blond. You know? He was sweet as pie when he wasn’t drunk.”

OK. My mother used to say, ‘Now you have the can of worms open, are you going to use them to fish or put them in the garden.’ I was never sure exactly how she meant it, but the question seemed to come up a lot in my life. I could see some benefit to both uses.

I wanted to just say, ‘I don’t get drunk,’ But it reminded me a little too much of ‘You can trust me. I’m not like the others.’

So I said, “That’s rough.” Just like in an old movie. ‘That’s rough.’ Does anybody even say that anymore?

We were in Springfield then and as the bus pulled into the station I stood to check on the Piece-of-work. He was sound asleep. Or he wanted to be.

Springfield is a short stop but it’s nice to stretch your legs. The girl stood up too. I could see I had about six inches on her but at least a hundred pounds. We just stood there a moment after some of the other passengers got off. It was pretty close in the aisle, with people standing on both sides of us. For some reason she wasn’t so bold now. She didn’t seem to know what to say.

Generally, I’ve never been at a loss for words. You know that. But I was a little lost then. So I fell back on what got things going in the first place. I said, “Harry has made a lot of mistakes. He’s really just trying to make up for it. I think the girl–Jean–she understands that much, anyway.”

Now this was pretty bold for me. There is no way she didn’t see the reference for what it was.

She took a breath at that. She didn’t look up at me. She just spoke right at the front of my shirt. “Jean’s a loser. She always makes the wrong move. Harry has to see that she’s just making another mistake. Why would he want to be just another one of her mistakes?”

Whoa!

Now, I had known this girl for a little more than an hour. Not much more. And I was like a brown up on the dock, flipping my tail.

So what do I say? I say, “I wouldn’t trade gold for every pound of stupid I owned just four years ago. I earned what I know the hard way. I’m not going back.”

Just like that. Then she looked up at me. She’s got that pair of eyes. Head on they don’t leave you any room at all.

And now, she doesn’t loose a beat. She says, “What kind of dogs do you like?”

I say, “Big ones.”

People were getting on the bus then and we sat down.

She didn’t say a thing for maybe fifteen minutes. I wanted her to speak first then. You know I can talk about me all day long because its so boring even I forget what I’ve already said and I get to repeat myself. I wanted to find out about her. It seemed like the most important topic I could think of.

Finally I said, “You have any brothers?”

Now, why did I ask that? You know why. It tells a lot about a girl if she’s had brothers. She knows a little something more about guys to begin with.

She says, “Three.”

I say, “Older?”

She says, “Two older. The younger one is in the Army. One of the older ones is a cook at another hotel in Saratoga. And one is an electrician. He works in Syracuse.”

“No sisters?”

“No.”

I say, “You’re one of a kind then.” It was lame.

But she laughed. She said, “How about you.”

I told her. “One sister. She works in real estate. Mostly up around Ipswich.”

For some reason that little bit of information caused another great silence. I waited.

She says, “What’s the best place you’ve ever been?”

Now that’s easy to say but then I’d be off talking about myself again. I had to keep that under control.

I said, “On the Cape. First week in August. Twelve years old. How about you?”

She says, “Where on the Cape?”

I said, “Eastham. On the Bay. What about you?”

She brightened a little with the thought. “Quogue. It’s on Long Island. Daddy had a job there every September with a family that lived like Croecus. It was his working vacation. He had to cook for their parties two or three times a week. They paid him twice what he got at the hotel. And we had a cottage all to ourselves on the property. I practically lived on the beach. It was the best.”

But her face lost the smile at the end. I guessed she hadn’t been back in a long time.

I said, “I was hoping to get down to the Cape again this year. I haven’t been in a long time. Twelve years. Maybe more. Have you ever gone back to Quogue?”

“No. That’s over,” she says.

I wondered, “Your dad lost the job there?”

She said, “Yes.”

I say, “Too bad.”

“No,” she says. “It was OK when I was a kid. I didn’t know what else was going on. I was free, and the world was perfect for three weeks every year. But when I got older, I saw what the deal was. It wasn’t pretty.”

I asked, “Why was that?”

“It was the way those people lived,” She said. “They didn’t respect my father. They didn’t respect themselves. He’d bite his tongue and keep his temper. Just for us. Just so we could play on the beach and have a taste of things he couldn’t afford to give us otherwise. It was tough on him. He’d start drinking before the desert was served and he could hardly walk by the time he got back to the cottage. My mother hated it.”

I thought I had a clear enough picture of that.

“I guess I was lucky then. My dad rented a cottage. Two weeks. No strings. Just fun. Dawn to midnight. Non-stop.”

She gave me one of those ‘wistful’ type smiles. “You were lucky.”

But I shook my head at the memory. “I couldn’t afford a two week rental now. It’s not the way it was then. I’m going to get a spot in the campground this year.”

She raised that eyebrow part way at me. “It’s the money. It always comes down to that.”

I shook my head again, but a little harder. “No. The money isn’t good or bad all by itself. It’s what you do with it. Anybody can get by, if they want to. You don’t have to sell your soul.”

She looks at me straight faced. She says, “What if you have kids?”

I tried to be a wise guy. I said, “I’ll stay away from Quogue.”

She comes right back at me. “You want kids?”

Now I figured we were about an hour and a half out. Maybe a couple of minutes more. In my head I hear her asking me ‘How many?’

But I said, “Yeah.”

She says, “How many?”

I looked up at that little light. But the bad part was that I actually knew. I had thought about this once before. In California.

“Three.”

She seemed at little puzzled. “Why three?”

I gave her a look. She was turned around so she could look right at me.

“I don’t know? I can’t remember. It’s just a number I’ve had in my head awhile.”

She asks, “Since California?”

I tell her, “Yes. And what about you.”

She raised both of those eyebrows up in great arches and turned her head a little to the side. “Well! I’ve never had a number in my head. I just thought I’d like to have kids until I couldn’t have them anymore. Something like that…Does that sound crazy?”

I had to tell her, “Yeah.”

She sighed. She says, “Yeah. Well. I guess it does. I’ll have to give it some serious thought.” Then she laughed again. “Right. Well, I think I’ve decided. Three would be just fine.”

I said, “Good.” Just like that.

She says, “Where would you like to live?”

I said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t. I hadn’t thought about that. I had thought about going places, but not where I was going to go from.

She said, “I like North Carolina. I like the mountains. I worked as a bartender there for a year when I left Saratoga Springs. That was after the divorce. I hated the job, but I loved the place. Asheville.”

So I had to ask, “How warm is it.”

She laughed. “It’s fine. It snows in the winter. Cool in the fall and spring. You’d like it.”

I said, “Fine. Something new. Something different.”

She nodded. “Change is good. And you can drive to the beach in two and a half hours. The biggest beach you’ve ever seen.”

I said, “Sounds good.”

Then the conversation stopped again. She was just sort of staring at the back of the seat in front of her. I think she was feeling a little shell shocked. I was. I know that. I wasn’t sure just then how all this had come about. I was going over it in my head, piece by piece, just like I’m doing now. And then a thought occurred to me.

I said, “What’s your name?”

She laughed a little loudly then. She held her hand over her mouth for a minute and closed her eyes. I could see a tear at the corner of one eye.

Then she says, “Ester. What’s yours?”

I told her the whole thing, “John Francis Kiernan.”

She says right away, “J.F.K.”

I said, “Unfortunately.”

She reached her hand over. “Ester Marie Hansen. Glad to meet you.”

I took her hand. I actually didn’t shake it at first. I just held it for a second. I don’t know if I could have shaken it.

Look. You have to realize that this was the first time I actually touched her. I could feel the muscles in my arm go soft. My brain went soft too.

She took her hand back. Her hand was warm and I still felt it after she took it away. She didn’t look happy.

She said, “This is serious.”

I said, “Yeah. I think so.”

She says, “You better be sure.”

I said, “I’m sure. It’s just that my brain has short circuited. I’m not real clear on what’s going on. But it’s serious.”

She sat back. I had maybe five minutes to get my head together. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I could only guess what she was thinking.

Then she says, “My Grandfather came over from Norway in the 1920’s. He got a job in New York. I don’t remember what. Something dirty. Day labor, at first. Then he got a job carrying bricks and mortar. He became a mason. He even worked on the Empire State building for awhile. He lived in a room with four other guys on the Lower East Side. He saved his money. When he thought he had enough—about 1930–he went back to Norway. Just for two weeks. That’s all. He went there looking for a wife. And he found her. In two weeks. And they came back and lived on Staten Island. They had six kids. Right through the Depression. He died when I was a little girl so I never got to know him. And Grandma died just last year. But she told me about it. She said he walked the streets of Bergen for a week just looking. He saw her for the very first time with her mother at the fish market. Then he walked right up and told my great grandmother that he was looking for a wife. Just like that.”

“What did your great grandmother say to that?”

“I don’t know. Grandma never told me. But my great grandmother invited him over for tea. I know that. And my grandmother agreed to marry him the very next day.”

I said, “That’s amazing. They were different back then.”

Ester look at me with both eyebrows up again but this time it was not the same as before.

She says, “Yeah. Different.”

I noticed she can put a nice sarcastic edge on her voice. Yeah. At least her grandparents had thought about it overnight. But I didn’t say that.

I thought about telling her about my uncle John. He’d been married six times. He usually got married less than a month after he met the girl. But I didn’t tell her about John either. I told her about my parents. That’s a harder story to tell. It took a bit.

The bus was at the Boston station about eleven. She had a reservation at the YWCA, she said, so we just walked over to Berkeley Street. She had two bags and I carried one because I just had my knapsack with me.

The most important thing that happened then was that I kissed her. Probably not the best kiss. We had been in a bus for almost three hours and talking. But it was late and there was no place to pick up any gum on the way. And I wasn’t about to leave without kissing her. So I did. Right there on the steps with a night watchman standing three feet away smoking a cigarette. I wrote my name and address on the back of the bus ticket stub. I didn’t have a phone at the time. But I told her I would call her in the morning.

And then I left. I wasn’t really walking. More like flying. Gliding. A little Gene Kelly. I was drunk on the moment. I was totaled.

I got half way home before I stopped. I already knew I was a fool. But I had walked away without saying the most important thing. Maybe because the watchman was standing there. Might have made me self-conscious. I don’t know. But I hadn’t actually said it.

Now, you understand, I’d only said it to three women in my life and one of them is my mother.

I practically ran back to the YWCA. I jumped the steps and stood at front desk and waited for the woman there to finish with some piece of paper she was working on and then she gave me a pretty cold stare.

I asked her if I could call Ester in her room. She asked me for the full name. I told her a second time. Then she told me they had no one by that name staying there. I spelled it out-loud a couple of different ways. The woman asked me when Ester had checked in. I told her about fifteen minutes ago. She gave me another cold stare. She said no one had checked in for the last hour. Then I asked her to check the reservations. She checked. There was no reservation. Then I looked over and saw the night watchman. He was sitting in a chair near the elevators, looking at me. I asked him. He smiled. He let me stand there for maybe a full minute before he told me.

“She went back out the door the minute you were gone.”

So there I was. On the street. The total fool. On a Sunday night.

I walked home again. I tried to walk. I felt numb.

There was a bar there on the way that was open. I decided I needed a drink. At least a beer. I needed something. I needed to think things through. Rule number eight, or ten, or whatever. A bar is not a place to think things through.

And there was the Piece-of-work. He’s with another guy. I didn’t even see him until I sat down at the bar. He taps me on the shoulder.

Funny thing. I knew exactly who it was before I turned around. He had this way of punching his fingers. Not a nice tap.

My hand went into my pocket without even thinking twice.

He says, “You wanted to talk to me outside?”

I said, “Sure.”

The Piece-of-work was a couple of inches shorter than me. But his friend had me eye to eye and maybe twenty pounds more.

The friend held the door. I went out, knowing he was going to hit me from behind, so I went sideways with my back to the building. The big guy barrels right after me and I hit him with everything I had, right in the ribs. He had no breath. He just doubled over right there and sat down. But my quarters shot out all over the side walk.

I figure the Piece-of-work had given the big guy a Benjamin to cut me down to size. He would have gotten his kicks in when I was down. But he looks at me for just an instant. Looks at all the shiny quarters on the ground. And then he dances away, but not like Gene Kelly.

I walked on home. Like I said, there was more dark in my head than there was on the street. And I’m practically there before I notice anything. I see the shadow on the steps. It’s that same shape, with her legs pulled up under her chin and her arms holding tight.

I stopped in my tracks.

She hardly moves. It’s just those great big eyes over the tops of her knees. She says, “Where’d you go? I tried to follow you. But you were gone.”

I didn’t have any words. I just took in about as much air as my lungs would hold.

She still hasn’t moved. I haven’t moved.

I had to take another breath just to speak. I said, “I went back. But you weren’t there.”

She said, “I tried to follow you. I didn’t know the way.”

I say, “But they didn’t have a reservation.”

She says, “Sure, they did!” Then she let go of her legs, and stood up with a real scare on her face. She said, “Oh, Lord. I used my married name. That’s what’s on my license. I never had the chance to get a new one. I had to use my married name.”

I said something smart like, “Oh.”

She says, “I am blond, you know. This is just black out of a bottle. I really am blond. Like a piece of pine wood.”

And I said, “That’s fine with me. Just so long as you like to fish.”

And that’s the story. Don’t let her tell you any different.