window announcing WINTER HOURS : BY APPOINTMENT ONLY .
And for all its bustle, even on Main Street there were gaps. One large vacant property still bore a faded wooden sign identifying it as Tartan Tunes. In the big window was a board offering the shop for sale or lease. A former jeweler’s had closed, and an Indian restaurant, and she saw three other shop fronts that gave no hint about what they’d once housed.
Eventually she tired of wandering and looked for somewhere to have lunch. The word “botulism” sprang alliteratively to mind when she glanced into the grimy little storefront burger bar, so she followed her nose to the Syracusa Fish Bar. It was obviously popular, with a line of customers snaking out the door and along the front of the shop beneath the blue-and-white sign with its image of a happy, cartoon fish leaping out of the waves. She stepped around the line to peer through the front window, and saw no tables inside, just a counter with two men working furiously behind it. One man was elderly, with white hair and tattooed arms; the other was a good-looking, olive-skinned boy with eyelashes to die for. She watched for a moment as the boy wrapped steaming fried fish and fat golden french fries in pale brown paper, and her mouth watered. He looked up and, very briefly, their eyes met through the glass. She smiled. When he did not respond she turned away, watching a couple of teenagers come out of the shop, already eating their take-away fries. It might have been fun with a friend, she thought, to picnic on a grassy spot overlooking the sea, but it made her too sad to think of doing it alone.
Every table in Chat ’n’ Chew was full, so she headed down to the harbor at last. Past the pier she came to a broad avenue bisected by a strip of green where palm trees grew. They were few and puny by comparison with the ones she remembered in Galveston, but she supposed the very fact of their survival this far north said something about the mildness of the winters. Across the street, on a corner, with big bay windows to fulfill the promise of its name, was the Harbour View Café.
“Sit anywhere you like,” said the woman engaged in fitting a new roll of paper into the cash register, so she headed for one of the empty tables at the front beside the window, passing a couple of family groups and one man seated by himself, reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. Looking again, she recognized him as the man she’d seen from the bus.
She felt it like a blow to her chest but managed to keep moving past him, toward her table. By the time she’d seated herself she knew, from the heat in her face, that she must be bright red. Facing the window, she couldn’t see him at all, and if he ever looked up from his newspaper, he’d just see the back of her head. He couldn’t recognize her from that. Had he noticed her passing? Did he remember? Had the look that had passed between them on the road affected him at all?
“Are you ready to order?”
She’d been so obsessed by her thoughts about
him
that she hadn’t even glanced at the laminated menu resting in a stand on the table in front of her. She decided abruptly that she wouldn’t. Phemie had never looked at menus; it had been her custom to ask for whatever she felt like eating, wherever she happened to be, and usually she got what she wanted. Taking the same approach, Ashley asked for a tuna sandwich and a diet cola.
Left alone again, she stared out the window at the people strolling along the waterfront. There was a family like a picture from an old-fashioned children’s book, balanced in the traditional way: attractive, youngish mother and father, little girl carrying a doll, little boy with a blue-and-white ball tucked under one arm. They stopped to look at the boats, the father pointing something out to the children, then they moved on, passing out of her view. She hadn’t brought anything with her to read, but her sketch pad and pencils were in her
And for all its bustle, even on Main Street there were gaps. One large vacant property still bore a faded wooden sign identifying it as Tartan Tunes. In the big window was a board offering the shop for sale or lease. A former jeweler’s had closed, and an Indian restaurant, and she saw three other shop fronts that gave no hint about what they’d once housed.
Eventually she tired of wandering and looked for somewhere to have lunch. The word “botulism” sprang alliteratively to mind when she glanced into the grimy little storefront burger bar, so she followed her nose to the Syracusa Fish Bar. It was obviously popular, with a line of customers snaking out the door and along the front of the shop beneath the blue-and-white sign with its image of a happy, cartoon fish leaping out of the waves. She stepped around the line to peer through the front window, and saw no tables inside, just a counter with two men working furiously behind it. One man was elderly, with white hair and tattooed arms; the other was a good-looking, olive-skinned boy with eyelashes to die for. She watched for a moment as the boy wrapped steaming fried fish and fat golden french fries in pale brown paper, and her mouth watered. He looked up and, very briefly, their eyes met through the glass. She smiled. When he did not respond she turned away, watching a couple of teenagers come out of the shop, already eating their take-away fries. It might have been fun with a friend, she thought, to picnic on a grassy spot overlooking the sea, but it made her too sad to think of doing it alone.
Every table in Chat ’n’ Chew was full, so she headed down to the harbor at last. Past the pier she came to a broad avenue bisected by a strip of green where palm trees grew. They were few and puny by comparison with the ones she remembered in Galveston, but she supposed the very fact of their survival this far north said something about the mildness of the winters. Across the street, on a corner, with big bay windows to fulfill the promise of its name, was the Harbour View Café.
“Sit anywhere you like,” said the woman engaged in fitting a new roll of paper into the cash register, so she headed for one of the empty tables at the front beside the window, passing a couple of family groups and one man seated by himself, reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. Looking again, she recognized him as the man she’d seen from the bus.
She felt it like a blow to her chest but managed to keep moving past him, toward her table. By the time she’d seated herself she knew, from the heat in her face, that she must be bright red. Facing the window, she couldn’t see him at all, and if he ever looked up from his newspaper, he’d just see the back of her head. He couldn’t recognize her from that. Had he noticed her passing? Did he remember? Had the look that had passed between them on the road affected him at all?
“Are you ready to order?”
She’d been so obsessed by her thoughts about
him
that she hadn’t even glanced at the laminated menu resting in a stand on the table in front of her. She decided abruptly that she wouldn’t. Phemie had never looked at menus; it had been her custom to ask for whatever she felt like eating, wherever she happened to be, and usually she got what she wanted. Taking the same approach, Ashley asked for a tuna sandwich and a diet cola.
Left alone again, she stared out the window at the people strolling along the waterfront. There was a family like a picture from an old-fashioned children’s book, balanced in the traditional way: attractive, youngish mother and father, little girl carrying a doll, little boy with a blue-and-white ball tucked under one arm. They stopped to look at the boats, the father pointing something out to the children, then they moved on, passing out of her view. She hadn’t brought anything with her to read, but her sketch pad and pencils were in her
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