“Hey, Charles,” he said as he stepped onto the patio.
“Mr. Carter,” Charles nodded back.
“Call me Nick.” Nick figured Charles was about the same age as him.
“Nick,” said Charles, but in a quiet voice, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear him. “So how was the beach?” he asked, handing Nick a menu.
Nick looked toward the beach and heaved a sigh. “Bouncy,” he said, with a grin.
Charles chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”
Nick ordered lunch – salad and a chicken breast, dressing on the side…and Charles, get that bread basket off the table! Charles whisked the offending carbohydrates off the table with a smile. Someone was making a change in his lifestyle.
Charles wondered if Nick was trying to make another kind of change in his life. He watched the singer raise his head in anticipation every time anyone went past. He wasn’t looking for Marybeth and Lisa, Charles knew that. He’d had them…or as much of them as he wanted. And there weren’t many other people his age here. Until school got out, it was all corporate groups and middle-aged women. In fact, now that the bouncing duo from Lansing had checked out, there was only one person his age. And Charles knew that that was who Nick was looking for.
He still didn’t understand why. Lisa and Marybeth had been very pretty, a couple of good-time girls who were just looking to have fun. Yet Nick had seemed reluctant to spend time with them, preferring to hang out with the very plain Abigail Fremont. He’d gone to watch her play tennis, according to Dennis, and Marty, the concierge’s assistant, had told Charles that they’d driven off together the day before and been gone for most of the day.
Charles shrugged. None of his business, he guessed, but given a choice, he’d rather bounce around with the Bikini Babes than the matchstick who wouldn’t meet your eyes. Although, he had to admit, Miss Fremont treated him like a person, not just the hand on the end of the coffee pot, and he certainly hadn’t been more than that to the other two. Oh well, thought Charles, maybe Nick gets so much ‘pretty’ that he’s looking for a change. Charles would be happy to help out with whatever Nick wanted. Nick was a generous man. But Abby hadn’t come to the patio for lunch, so Charles couldn’t drop any hints to Nick about her whereabouts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Once Abby got her game back, she enjoyed her time on the court. Wednesday was a cross-over day. The early week guests were leaving and the end-of-the week guests were arriving. So the tennis courts weren’t busy. Abby and Dennis played until nearly noon. After a shower and a quick lunch, Abby took her book and went down to the rocks to read. She made sure she had plenty of sunscreen on. She debated wearing her new hat, but decided against it. It wasn’t really a sunhat and she would feel silly if Nick saw her in it.
She read for awhile and the warm sun and the sound of the waves lapping the shore made her drowsy. She came to with a start and realized that she had drifted off. She set the book aside and stood up stretching her arms up over her head. She climbed off the rocks…not to the sandy side of the beach, but to the other. This was the original shoreline. No one had dumped tons of sand here. Abby picked her way through the stones, stopping occasionally to pick up a particularly flat one and skip it out over the lake. She wasn’t very good at it. She never managed more than two skips and rarely even that, but she enjoyed it.
Maybe she’d become a hermit, she thought. Give up this whole ‘other people’ thing once and for all, and go live in a cave. On the water. So she could skip rocks. The sensible side of her wondered if it would be geologically possible to find both of those in the same place…a cave to live in and a beach with nice flat stones. She flicked her wrist and sent a stone out over the water. One…two…three… She jumped up and down and clapped her hands. Three! She’d finally made a ‘three’. When she lived in her cave, she’d get so much practice, that a ‘six’ would probably be standard, but today a ‘three’ was awesome. The sheer whimsy of her thoughts made her laugh out loud.
“You should do that more often.” Nick’s voice startled her.
Abby whirled around to see him standing on the rocks by her book. She put her head down, biting her lip in embarrassment. Thank goodness, she hadn’t been talking out loud. “I’m thinking of making it a career,” she said and turned back to the lake. She could feel the heat on her cheeks.
“Not the stone-skipping thing,” said Nick, climbing down to her, “the laughing thing. You have a great laugh. It’s…I don’t know…” He searched for the word. “…full…real…”
“With just the tiniest hint of insanity,” said Abby, using her thumb and index finger to indicate the soupcon of craziness.
“Yeah, well…that always helps…” said Nick, with a sigh. He bent and picked up a stone. He sailed it out over the water with a sidearm motion that looked practiced. The stone fell into the water without leaving a ripple. They both laughed. “Now, in the movies…” said Nick.
“…that stone would still be skipping,” finished Abby. “Here, try this one.” She handed over a smooth, flat stone.
Nick hefted the stone in his hand, as if he were in the finals of the World Championships. He examined the shape and gauged the weight, all with a fierce look of concentration on his face that made Abby wonder just how competitive a person he was. He turned and flashed her a grin that told her he was making fun of himself and then with a loud exhalation of breath, he skimmed the stone out over the water, where it skipped twice before sinking beneath the surface. The noise he made covered the sound of the one she made.
“Bravo,” she said heartily, and began searching the shore for more flat stones. They hunted in silence for a few minutes, dropping their discoveries into a common pile. Nick didn’t ask her how tennis went, because he didn’t want her to ask the reciprocal question. She didn’t ask how the morning at the beach went, because frankly, she didn’t want to know.
“Nick…”
“Abby…”
They both spoke at once and then fell into an awkward silence, waiting for the other to speak. And then, of course, life not being a movie, they did it again.
“Abby…”
“Nick…”
They both laughed nervously. Nick pointed at her. You first.
“I just want to say…um…that you don’t have to…look after me,” she said, concentrating on the stone in her hand and then skipping it over the lake. It was a ‘one’. “I mean…I’m okay now…you don’t have to…spend time with me…watch out for me…”
“I’m not watching out for you,” said Nick. He skimmed a stone. A two. “I thought it was the other way around…that you were hanging with me so I wouldn’t feel like such a loser after…you know…getting dumped.”
They continued the conversation without looking at each other. They bent to the pile of stones and picked them out. They took turns skimming them over the lake in a kind of choreographed dance. First him, then her. Bend down. Pick up a stone. Send it away. But they never made eye contact.
“You, a loser! Right! Uh huh…” Abby thought he wouldn’t even make the beginner class of ‘loserdom’ whereas she was in the advanced ranks…a veritable black belt of pathetic.
“And I thought the losers could stick together.” He paused, and then said formally. “I’d like to rephrase that now, if I may, or you could just go ahead and hit me in the head with a big rock, if you’d prefer.”
“No, go ahead,” said Abby, smiling to herself. “I’d like to see just how far you can get that foot into your mouth.”
“You have no idea,” he said, with a sigh. Then he continued. “What I mean is…we both had issues…big ones…and we knew from the moment we met that we both had these issues…so, there weren’t any expectations…I mean, we both knew that…”
“…that we were a couple of losers?”
“Yes…no…losers in love, let’s put it that way. Not losers in life.” Nick was kind of proud of himself for that analogy, so he repeated it with emphasis. “NOT losers in life.”
Abby understood what he was saying. And it applied to him. She wasn’t so sure about herself.
“We’re a couple of misfits at the moment…” he said.
“Ugly ducklings,” mused Abby, half to herself.
“Yeah, whatever,” said Nick. He turned to face her and waited until she looked at him. “Abby, please don’t think that I’m spending time with you because I feel sorry for you. I’m not. I like you. We had fun yesterday, shopping, having ‘tea’…”
“Sharing self-improvement tips…” added Abby with a small smile.
“Yeah,” said Nick. “We’re good for each other. We can help each other out. Or maybe we can just shut the fu…stop doing that.”
“Yes, let’s...” said Abby. “I can get all the self-improvement tips I need from my mother, thank you very much.”
“Your mother? Hah! You should meet my mother. She’s the Queen of Let-Me-Tell-You-How-to-Do-it.”
“Your mother couldn’t hold a candle to mine,” insisted Abby. “She’s the Empress of the Subtle Putdown.”
“Yeah, well my mother…”
And for the next few minutes, they skipped stones and indulged in a game of My Mother is Worse than Your Mother Because…
Finally, Abby said definitively, “You know there is no way you can win this game. There is no way your mother could do anything to top my mother’s crowning achievement.” Your mother didn’t hire anyone to marry you…or at least try to… The thought hung between them.
“Yeah, about that…” said Nick. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” replied Abby.
“Okay, so that’s what I don’t get,” said Nick. “I don’t get why your folks felt they had to do that…you know…” He waved his hand in the air. He didn’t want to say it. “I mean, you’re not that old…you have lots of time…”
“It’s complicated,” said Abby with a sigh. “Parents!” she added in disgust.
“I guess I’m lucky in that way,” said Nick, sensing that she didn’t want to talk about the complications. “I can just go out on the road. Of course, that solves the parents problem, but it makes the other part difficult…the relationship part. It’s hard to do that over a long distance.”
“Actually, that would make you the perfect relationship for me,” laughed Abby. Nick raised his eyebrows. Abby went on, “…because you don’t live in Chicago. I could satisfy my mother that I had a relationship, but I’d never have to prove it.” She paused and then furrowed her brow. “You’re too famous, of course, I’d never be able to sustain the fiction…but this might be an idea.”
“An idea for what?” Nick wasn’t following.
“I could make up a boyfriend. I could say that I met him here, but he’s from someplace else…he travels a lot…yeah, that’s it…he’s a…” Abby paused, then looked at Nick. “Who travels a lot besides rock stars on tour?”
“I dunno,” said Nick. “Geometrists?”
“What’s that?” asked Abby.
Nick blushed. “I meant ‘geographers’…people who make maps, wouldn’t they have to travel?…ah never mind…” You are so dumb, he told himself.
“Oh, look,” said Abby, pointing out over the lake. Some clouds had moved in and the sun was shining down through them, sending shafts of light down through gaps in the clouds. The rays fanned out from the sun and danced on the water where they landed.
“God’s graces,” said Abby, half to herself.
“What?” said Nick.
“When the sun shines through the clouds like that, makes those ribbons of light…God’s graces, that’s what my Aunt Penelope calls them.”
“Good name,” said Nick. They looked at the sky for awhile, absorbing the beauty and wonder of nature.
“Abby…” Nick began. “Would you mind…um…I wrote…I…would you…?”
“What is it, Nick?”
“Would you listen to a song I wrote? I’d like your opinion.”
“Sure…I’d be happy to…but I’m not much of a musician…I mean…I don’t know how I could help.”
“You just have to tell me what you think…gut feeling, like that…”
“Sure. I could do that.” Abby turned and headed for the rocks.
“But you have to be honest,” said Nick, falling into step beside her. “You can’t say you like it if you don’t.”
“I will. I’m a pretty honest person.” She knelt to pick up her book. “Well, except for that whole making up a fantasy boyfriend thing.”
“Yeah,” laughed Nick, “except for that.”
And they headed for Rose Cottage.
