The Geography of You and Me

He lifted his shoulders. “We’ll see what happens.”


“I guess it would probably be easier for your dad to find a job in a city,” she said, and he could almost feel her floundering under the weight of the conversation. They didn’t ever really do this sort of thing, he and Paisley. They went skiing and snowshoeing; they snuck into movies and drank frozen cans of beer behind the diner; they hiked the trails and went fishing on the Truckee River, and at night they borrowed people’s piers to laugh and joke and talk about issues that didn’t matter to either one of them in any sort of immediate way.

Being with her always made him feel light as air, which was exactly what he’d needed these past weeks. But this—this was heavy.

“It feels like you only just got here,” she continued, her gaze fixed on the lake. “There’s still so much we haven’t done.” She paused for a second, but when she turned back to him, he was relieved to see the hint of a smile. “I mean, look at all those piers out there. We’ve probably only checked off, like, three percent of them. Which means there are still thousands waiting for us to leave our mark.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

She hopped to her feet, stepping carefully away, then gestured with a little flourish at the heart-shaped patch of wood where she’d been sitting.

“Way more incriminating than fingerprints,” she said, and he couldn’t help laughing. When he stood up to join her, she doubled over in a fit of giggles at the narrow outline he’d left on the dock, and he circled his arms around her waist and pretended to throw her into the icy lake until they both lost their balance, skidding into a graceless, sprawling heap. Only after their laughter had finally subsided did he lean forward, touching his cold nose to hers, and kiss her.

“There’s a lot I’ll miss about this place,” he said later, as he helped her up, “if we end up going.”

“The lake?” she asked, brushing the snow off her jacket.

He shook his head. “You.”

Together, they left the water behind, walking back toward town on stiff legs and frozen feet. The snow had mostly stopped, but the path back up to the road was covered in at least a foot of powder, and they clasped their mittened hands together as they stumbled through it.

“So what should we see this weekend?” he asked. “Alcatraz? Pier Thirty-Nine?”

She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would. “You can’t just go to all the tourist traps. There’s this great vintage place in the Haight.…”

When they reached the diner, Owen leaned in to kiss her again. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, but she pulled away with a dizzying smile.

“Can we please stop celebrating a day where we slaughter innocent turkeys?”

“If it makes you feel any better, my dad and I had a chicken instead.”

She shook her head. “Still awful.”

“Still delicious,” Owen said, kissing her for real this time.

When they broke apart, she turned and headed up to the back door of the diner. “Have a good trip,” she called out, her voice trailing behind her, and Owen waved, though she couldn’t see him. “But not too good…”

“I’ll bring you back an Alcatraz snow globe.”

“Very funny,” she said, just before the door slammed shut behind her.

As he walked home, the snow crunching beneath his boots, Owen tried to imagine San Francisco. But the only thing he knew, the only thing he managed to call to mind, was the Golden Gate Bridge, the familiar red arches surrounded by fog. It was hard to know where the image came from, but even now, in the darkness of the mountains—the air so cold it stung his face, the snow so white it practically glowed—that was all he could see: the great red bridge against a square patch of bluish sky.

It wasn’t until he was home in bed, halfway to sleep, that he realized why he couldn’t see anything beyond the edges.

He was imagining a postcard.





12


December was already six days old, and this was the first time that Lucy had seen it in daylight. Every morning she rode the bus in the dark, the sun rising around half past eight, when she was already inside the brick school building, and then setting again around three thirty, just as she burst out the doors and into the early dusk.