You Are Here(27)
He wondered if there was a rule that you had to love all of someone, or whether you could pick out only the best parts, like piling your plate full of desserts at a buffet table and leaving the vegetables to go cold in their little metal bins.
He frowned at her. “This stuff?”
“Gettysburg,” Emma said, waving a hand in the general direction from which they’d come. “Have you seen enough, or are we doing round two in the morning?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the reenactments tomorrow,” he said. “But we wouldn’t have to stay long.”
“What should we do about tonight, then?” she asked, sliding down off the trunk. The dog was rolling in the grass at the edge of the parking lot, and as they stood there, the bell on the door of the diner rang out, and the two men emerged. They passed by the blue convertible with a nod, then drove off in the pickup truck, the tires spraying gravel at their feet. A moment later the waitress followed, locking up the door without acknowledging them and then taking off down the shadowy road on foot.
Peter and Emma exchanged a look.
“We could stay here,” he said.
“In the car?”
He shrugged. “Got any better ideas?”
Emma regarded the convertible with some degree of doubt, but she climbed in anyway, and Peter followed, starting the engine and pulling it around to the back of the barn, where he eased the top up, the stars above disappearing bit by bit until there was only canvas left overhead. They didn’t bother with pajamas or toothbrushes, instead eating the mints they’d taken on the way out of the diner and rummaging through the trunk for articles of clothing that might double as pillows. Neither said much as Peter wedged himself uncomfortably between the steering wheel and the gearshift up front and Emma curled up in the backseat with a map of Florida for a blanket.
Outside on the grass the dog snuffled and dreamed, his three good legs giving chase to some imaginary foe, but it took Peter a long time to fall asleep. He knew that he talked in his sleep, that he had a habit —according to his dad—of reciting coordinates at night, pinpointing random spots on the globe with a sort of dreamy accuracy. And so now he blinked at the worn roof of the car and watched the stars grow brighter on the other side of the windshield, listening to Emma’s breathing even out, waiting for her to be the first to give in to sleep.
They woke in the morning to the sun peering intently through the windows, both of them stiff and sore and cranky. Peter’s cheek was stuck to the white leather seat, and he banged his knee on the steering wheel when he tried to sit up, rubbing his sore neck.
“Morning,” he said, glancing at Emma through the rearview mirror, and she gazed back at him with puffy eyes, her hair mussed and her eyes still caked with sleep.
He stepped outside to grab a clean T-shirt, sidestepping the enthusiastic greeting of the oversized dog, who pushed a wet nose into Peter’s hand, looking for food. Somewhat reluctantly, Peter left Emma with the car to herself so she could change, and headed back over to the pay phone. He let the phone ring three times this time, hung up just as he thought he heard an answer, and headed back into the diner.
There was a rack of tourist brochures just inside—pamphlets advertising everything from haunted battlefield tours to historic B&Bs—and Peter stood counting what money he still had, thumbing through the bills and pushing the change around in his palm as if the coins might be convinced to pair up and multiply. He was fairly certain he’d be facing a cash-flow problem within the next couple of days, but there was nothing to be done about it now, and so he bought three blueberry muffins from the same waitress as last night, then walked back outside and handed one to Emma and the other to the dog, who finished the whole thing in one go.
Emma had put the top down on the car, and she was now perched on the back of it, her feet planted on the seat where she’d slept. She’d never been one of those girls who worried much about her appearance—she spent most of her summers in flip-flops and a jean skirt, alternating among an assortment of faded T-shirts—but there was something even more rumpled about her this morning, her long hair uncombed and tangled, her cheek still bearing the lines from where it had been pressed against the seat last night.
“What?” she asked through a mouthful of muffin, and Peter blushed and ducked his head, realizing he’d been staring at her.
“Nothing,” he muttered, reaching for a few of the maps, then folding them into neat squares, just for something to do. “Almost ready?”
“Sure,” she said with a grin. “Wouldn’t want to miss Halloween at Gettysburg.”
“It’s not like they’re playing dress-up,” Peter pointed out. “It’s a reenactment. They recreate all the famous battles from the war.”
“O-kay,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“That came from the Civil War, actually,” he said, though he knew that now would have probably been a good time to come up with something less obviously nerdy as a follow-up.
“What did?” Emma asked, looking at him blankly.
“The word ‘okay,’” Peter said with a sigh. It was hopeless; if his conversation starters tended to stray toward unsolicited Civil War trivia while at home in upstate New York, he figured he was pretty much a lost cause in Gettysburg. “When the troops returned from battle and there were no casualties, they would post a sign that said, ‘Zero Killed.’” He traced out the letters in the dirt at his feet. “Get it?” he asked, glancing up at her. “Zero, K. OK. Okay.”