Summer Hours

by Amy Mason Doan

  “I’m going to run meet her at Café Diavolo.” Everyone hated Diavolo. It was overpriced and served burned espresso; there was no chance they’d want to come. “What were you saying before, Serr?”

  “Oh. I was going to suggest Chocolate Margs.”

  “Excellent idea,” Maggie said.

  When I stepped onto the porch, they were in the kitchen, laughing over the blender’s roar.

  It hit me with awful clarity as their happy sounds faded behind me: I didn’t want to go.

  * * *

  It was a ten-minute walk across campus from Plato House to the café. I could do it in half that if I rushed.

  But I dawdled. I waved at a boy from my Shakespeare section and chatted. When I passed the econ building, I spotted new cat graffiti on a door and took out my notebook, carefully logging the details of the sighting as I always did—date, location—so I could note it on my map and enter it in the Hiss file on my laptop later.

  I didn’t get a charge out of the Fe|Co symbol tonight, and I wasn’t eager to get to the café to tell Cal so we could joke about it. “Co” probably did just stand for company like he’d said; it was a depressing marketing scheme.

  Serra still asked me the occasional polite question about what she called your multiplying kitties, but everyone else thought I was wasting my time. Maybe I was.

  I glanced up at the hands on the clock tower. 7:30. I should have been at the café half an hour ago.

  In Sproul Plaza, a woman was playing the marimba, a sweet, echoing tune. I dropped a dollar in her bucket and lingered on a sunny patch of grass to listen.

  Five minutes, ten.

  He’d be checking his watch, wondering where I was.

  I was supposed to be happy, eager for a few stolen minutes. My lover hadn’t bailed on me like Maggie’s. He’d changed his plans to see me. But instead of anticipation I felt only resentment.

  It’s over, I whispered, testing the words.

  I couldn’t hear them over the marimba. Island music, a sound that belonged to beaches, sailboats. The thought made me so sad, picturing last summer, that I almost went home. If only I could tell my roommates, cry with them and let them console me, ply me with drinks, like everyone else going through a breakup.

  But I’d reached for him in secret, and this was my punishment; I had to let him go in secret, too.

  I would do it tonight. I would be direct, like the magazines advised. I would be mature, direct. We would part as friends.

  * * *

  I spotted him in the café before he noticed me. At a shadowy, indoor table like he’d promised. Shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened. Working on his laptop, his navy suit jacket folded crisply over his briefcase on the table. He was surrounded by summer-session kids. No one I knew, thank god. They were hunched over their textbooks, tinny music escaping from their headphones, shabby backpacks thrown on the dirty floor.

  Compared with them, he looked so...complete.

  A pretty redhead at the next table was eyeing him, had no doubt been neglecting her textbooks for the last hour, distracted by this beautiful, older, completely out-of-place man. But he wasn’t looking at her.

  I wished he was. If I caught him flirting back, it would make it easier.

  He saw me and beamed.

  “Trouble getting away?” he asked when I sat down.

  “Yeah, sorry. My roommates were on me.”

  “Are you glad I switched my flight?”

  “Of course!”

  “So. Big first day tomorrow,” he said. “I still wish you’d let me—”

  “Don’t, please, I—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  He’d offered to find me a better summer job. But much as I dreaded the real estate newsletter gig, at least I’d gotten it myself. “They’re letting me work my schedule around my Tuesday-Thursday class, it’s perfect.”

  “Got it. Everything good?” he asked, a flicker of worry in his eyes. “You seem...”

  “Just nervous about my first day of work tomorrow, I guess.” I made my voice light. “Should I buy you my favorite drink from here? Coconut Italian soda.”

  He made a face and I laughed, trying to dredge up our old playfulness.

  “I wish I could stay,” he said.

  “Me, too.” We held hands under the table. Talked. Joked about my upcoming job, his. He pulled my foot onto his lap, slipped off my shoe, massaged my instep.

  But surely he had to feel that things between us were not the same. That he didn’t belong here on campus.

  When it was time for him to call a cab, he said, “See you Friday, human.” He stood, brushed his lips on my bare shoulder, hiding the kiss behind his briefcase.

  “Wait.”

  He turned. “Ah, now she wants me to stay.”

  I couldn’t do it. Not yet, not here.

  Whoever said just be direct hadn’t looked into blue eyes as bright as this, eyes that went from serious to laughing so quickly you wanted to watch them, try to pinpoint exactly when they changed. “Just. Have a safe flight.”

  I’d do it next week when we were alone. So I could plan exactly what to say.

  Later that night

  Serra and Maggie were out when I came back, so I booted up my laptop to note the graffiti marking I’d seen on the econ department door.

  I had to keep busy.

  Waiting for my computer to groan to life, I stared down at Serra’s transparencies. She’d drawn a fake hobo marking for Frustrated Woman, as requested. A cartoon version of Maggie, shaggy hair and smoking blunt in her hand. Normally it would make me smile, but I was too sad tonight. I stared down at the picture and it started to blur.

  I don’t know how long I cried. But when I stopped, I felt better. I’d decided. I felt emptied out, clear. Calmer than I’d felt in months.

  I wiped my eyes and surveyed the transparencies on the floor. Serra was so talented. She wasn’t frittering away her time in indecision; she was making something that mattered. She worked late into the night on her project for the invitational—at her studio, conferring with Yvonne at the museum. Returning to Plato energized and purposeful. The way I’d once felt about reporting, about fitting pages together at the Orange Park High Squeeze.

  I stared at the clear pages on the floor for a long time.

  I hopped down, grabbed some blank sheets from the box, scrambled back onto my bed. Slowly at first, I held them over the campus map on the wall and marked them, dividing the sheets into groups based on the month and year they’d appeared on campus. Then, one by one, oldest sightings first, I placed the marked-up sheets over the map to see if my hunch was right.

  After the second clear page I could see them. Circles around at least five buildings on campus. Not random. Not a joke.

  When Serra and Maggie came in I spoke in a rush. “I think the graffiti marks specific people. Surrounds them. Targets them, or says something about them, like hobo markings.”

  “What makes you think that?” Serra asked. But she had the funniest expression on her face. Like a kid who’s been caught being bad and is proud of it.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Hypothetically, what would you do if I knew something about it?”

  “You do know who’s—?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I don’t know. I just want the truth.”

  “Attached to your byline on the front page.”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  “Could someone please fill me in?” Maggie said.

  “Swear not to write about it,” Serra said to me, stern. “Not unless we say it’s okay.”

  “I swear,” I said fast. “Who’s we?”

  “I swear, too. What’m I swearing to?” Maggie flipped through my scribbled-on transparencies, baffled.

  Thwack, thwack, thwack. Glen
n was hacky sacking outside our half-open door. Serra slammed it shut. “That boy is going to drive me to the counseling center.”

  But when she turned she was smiling. She laid her right arm out across my mattress, palm up. Unsnapped the faded tan leather cuff bracelet she’d bought on Telegraph freshman year, the one that matched mine. She wore it night and day, even in the shower.

  On her wrist was a tattoo: black cat’s whiskers like the ones in the graffiti. Two delicate arrows with the tips touching:

  28

  Upgrade

  2008

  Friday, 3:40 p.m.

  Oakland

  I rise up in my seat to help Eric with directions. “We can get in the left lane of the bridge, it might be less jammed. The hotel’s way out on the west side of the city, by the Presidio.”

  For the first time, he’s driving. He insisted. Please let me help a little, he said.

  We’re approaching the Bay Bridge but stuck in gridlock on the east side. It’s rush hour on a Friday, and traffic’s as hideous as Joy Gold warned. The trip isn’t going exactly as I’d imagined. But since he showed me his Date Insurance program in Berkeley, the edges of my anger toward him have softened.

  He’s trying. At the gas station in Berkeley, when the guy at the next pump asked him what the heck was in the box, Eric answered, without missing a beat, “Dining table from IKEA. The Shwizzlefloozen?”

  “Good luck putting it together,” the man called. “Looks like a real beast!”

  When the man drove away, Eric stood by my window wringing out the dripping blue ARCO station chamois he was using to clean our windshield. His smile had fallen away. “Hey, Becc?”

  My breath caught as I asked, in the most neutral voice I could manage, “What is it?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He shook his head, lobbed the windshield rag into the tub.

  Hey, Becc?

  I want to know what he was about to say. But those two sweet, short words will do for now.

  He didn’t have to come. It’s not easy for him, but he’s here.

  I glance down at my map and go on with my directions. “Once we get across the bridge we can cut west on Fell or Geary to avoid some of the Embarcadero mess. Then Park Presidio’s probably going to be the fastest way up to the hotel. If we ever start moving!”

  No answer.

  “Eric?”

  He clenches his jaw, turns to me without a smile.

  It’s strange, because we’ve been so much more relaxed with each other since our joint confessions in Berkeley. It broke the tension a little. But now he looks uneasy, like he’s bracing himself.

  “What?” My quads and arms are getting tired from the awkward little chin-up maneuver I’m doing to keep my head above the box. “Is traffic getting to you? It’s awful, isn’t it? You probably don’t drive much in New York—”

  “About the hotel. I sort of...upgraded our lodgings last week.”

  “Upgraded?”

  He hands me a computer printout over the wall.

  I sink back down into my seat to read.

  And close my eyes.

  “I’ve been trying to get us something else since yesterday,” he says, an apologetic strain in his voice. “That’s why I was late to breakfast this morning. But I haven’t been able to book anything so last-minute yet. High season.”

  All I can focus on is the hum of the idling motors around us, the wind whooshing overhead.

  He didn’t.

  “Becc?”

  Except the words in my hand prove he did.

  “I booked that one on impulse when I got your itinerary. I did it late at night when I wasn’t thinking straight and I’ve been trying like crazy to undo it.”

  I don’t answer him.

  “I didn’t realize at the time... I mean, can’t we...make the best of it? Let’s stop at a restaurant and make some calls. There’ll be more cancellations by now, maybe we’ll find something else.”

  There are many reasonable responses to the pages he’s handed me.

  You know, I put a lot of thought into where we were staying tonight.

  This might make bringing the box inside a little tricky. I didn’t want to deal with elevators.

  You could have let me know earlier, at least.

  Yes, let’s go to a restaurant and call triple-A until we find a different place.

  But what he’s done is awful. And even if he says he tried to undo it, the impulse is so unbelievably twisted.

  I open my eyes. “For the record, I reserved two cottages.” My voice is ice.

  He lifts himself above the box and stares at me. “What?”

  “Tonight’s reservation. I know it showed up as only one address on the itinerary, but it was for two separate cottages. They’re converted officers’ quarters. I wasn’t going to climb into your bed while you were sleeping.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “That’s obviously what you were afraid of, booking this place instead. It’s okay. It was my oversight. I should have made it more clear. That I wasn’t going to bother you.”

  He shakes his head. Huffs through his nose, a rapid yeah-right snort.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “What, you obviously thought I’d booked one room, and you did this because you were afraid I was going to—”

  “Believe me, I wasn’t thinking anything close to that, Miss Let’s Erect an Actual Fucking Wall in the Car!”

  He’s looming over the box, stretching his seat belt to the limit.

  My voice is small, shocked. “What? It was the only way the present would fit, the two pieces are stuck together and I—”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I told you, it only came this week because the preschool lady was on vacation, and I spent all Wednesday night trying to find a better way—”

  “Sure. You keep telling yourself that. But this...” he slaps the box “...is some repressed Freudian-level shit, Becc. You could’ve rented another car. A van, whatever. You wanted it here, your little barricade. Admit it!”

  It’s horrible to see Eric’s sweet brown eyes flash, to hear the anguished tremor in his voice. To feel his anger, hot waves coming off his body in the cool San Francisco air.

  “You want everything on your terms, Becc. Same as always. You say you want my help, but you plan every goddamned mile. You figured out the whole four-day trip before I had a chance to weigh in on one fucking minute of it.”

  Someone’s honking behind us but he ignores them. “You decided where we should stay. Stop. Eat. Admit it!”

  I’m the one who should be furious after what he’s done.

  But all I feel is stunned.

  We’d been doing okay. I thought we were over the hard part after Berkeley. No more Date Insurance, no more scone pelting. Shwizzlefloozen.

  Admit it!

  He doesn’t mean admit you dominated the planning for the trip.

  Or admit you’re still a control freak.

  I know exactly what he means. And I know he’s not mad because I worked on the itinerary without consulting him.

  We stare at each other for a minute.

  “I admit it,” I say quietly. “I screwed up.”

  He’s breathing hard. Waiting for me to surrender in this awful game of chicken we’re playing while the disgusted drivers around us honk and edge past.

  “Let’s just stay there,” I say. “We’ll go with your plans tonight.”

  He hesitates a minute.

  Please say no.

  I shrug. “It’s fine. It’s just a building, and we’re grownups. It’s no big deal.”

  Please, please don’t make us go there. Stay in this lane.

  “Perfect,” he finally says.

  He disappears.

  Flicks on the t
urn signal. Tick, tick, tick, tick...

  And at the first gap, he lurches into the right lane. The one that will take us to the last place on earth I want to go.

  29

  Scoop

  June 15, 1997

  Fe|Co was not a dull marketing initiative for a cat food company.

  It stood for Feline Collective. It had started in the ’80s, when a lit professor, one of the top five living experts on T. S. Eliot, had an affair with an art grad student. He’d been married with three kids and a nice wife in another department.

  “Some people say the wife was in history and some say poli sci, but that part doesn’t really matter,” Serra explained.

  “Go on,” I said. “The student started it.”

  “Yes. She broke it off with the professor. Fell in love with someone else.”

  “And the professor murdered her? And your feline gang is out to get justice...”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Becc, but nobody killed anybody. She dumped him. But...” She paused for effect.

  “Come on, what?” I asked.

  “Stop milking it,” Maggie said, laughing.

  “But then she lost a fellowship, and a teaching job she was supposed to get after graduation. He went around smearing her, quietly making her life hell. While his career was totally unscathed.”

  “Was her art any good?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’ve seen it.” Serra waited for me to catch up.

  “Yvonne.”

  She nodded. “After she got her life back together, she got the tattoo. To remember, she says. To remind herself... Oh. It’s like that Eliot line you wouldn’t stop quoting sophomore year, Becc. When you made the T. S. Eliot connection so you were positive some disgruntled theater geek was behind it? Because they didn’t get a part in Cats?”

  I recited: “My ineffable, effable name.”

  I’d repeated the line in my head, pounding the clay stadium track, trying to puzzle out why the graffiti had such a hold on me. Ineffable, effable. Effinaneffable. It perfectly matched my running stride.

  Serra went on. “Yes. The cat knows its real name, it knows itself, the good, the bad. And nobody else’s words can take it away. That’s the general idea.