Afterparty(3)

My dad sighs, “You’d probably have to drive a car.”

The prospect of spinning out down the beachfront highway, behind the wheel, windows down, completely free, makes me almost die of longing. I start wondering if there are GPS bracelets you can clamp on your kid’s ankle, but I’m pretty sure that if you could buy them, I’d have one already.

I say, “I wouldn’t mind driving.”

My dad, who generally manages to walk the fine line between oppressive dictator and overprotective good guy, smiles. He says, “I thought you might have that reaction.”

It’s getting dark, and after hours of observation, I want to go sit with the kids. A lot. Even though I am wearing a polka-dotted dress with a circular skirt that falls three inches below my knees and they’re wearing almost nothing. Even if I end up next to the girls who came up onto the deck to moan about something to their mothers and gave me a who-are-you-and-what-are-you-doing-here once-over on their way back to the sand.

Not a chance.

We have reservations in the dining room, where the waiter hovers over us, keeping our water glasses perfectly full and whisking away the appetizers like a magician before bringing even more food. Of course, Mrs. Karp has long since given up on trying to maneuver me across the sand to meet other kids. She has practically given up talking to me altogether, ever since she kept trying to shove surf ’n’ turf down my throat over my (extremely polite) protests. Then she clammed up, horrified that maybe she was trying to force lobster on a kosher person who can’t actually eat shellfish.

I am not a kosher person. It isn’t even clear if I’m a Jewish person. My dad claims he wants me to make spiritual decisions when I hit adulthood. I just don’t like lobsters. They’re like giant bugs that stare up at you from the plate. I keep telling her that it’s okay, but Mrs. Karp looks stricken, even when my dad reassures her that we left all that (kosher food? religion? all vestiges of our past life?) behind in Montreal.

I am starting to feel as if I’m a walking, talking motherless-girl vacuum that nice women who so much as spot me across the room are inexplicably drawn to fill with helpfulness and insects of the sea.

I wander off in search of the ladies’ room, in search of five unsupervised minutes during which I plan to chew some contraband gum, which my dad thinks is a disgusting and therefore unacceptable habit. I am visualizing a moving truck carting our stuff across the Rocky Mountains.

When I see him.

The guy is in a gray Latimer Country Day football tee, worn almost to transparency, and tight but not disgustingly tight jeans, ocean-soaked around the ankles. I am at a dead end in the maze of hallways and unlabeled doors where the ladies’ room is supposed to be.

The guy has a corkscrew and two wineglasses dangling from his fingers. He has a face you could draw from memory a second after you first see it, a line drawing of hard-edged, witty symmetry. He looks like an underwear model who also attends Yale, and is deeply amused by the world but not so much so that you’re distracted from the cheekbones, or the eyelashes, or the long upper lip, or the mouth.

The mouth.

There is a bit of toasted marshmallow at the corner of his mouth. Which he licks off.

He says, “So. Were you looking for me?”

I watch his tongue trace his lower lip, possibly in search of remnants of marshmallow and possibly flirting.

He has the best hair. Light brown, shiny, slightly spiky from having been in the ocean recently enough to still be damp and only just shaken dry.

He says, “Did I miss something?”

“What?” I am leaning against one of the unmarked doors, which is cold and slippery, as if it’s sucked up all the air-conditioned air and left the hallway balmy.

He says, “You’re looking at my mouth.”

I am.

I say, “Marshmallow.”

He tilts his head. He is bemused, and also gorgeous.

I say, “I’m trapped up here in the dining room with surf ’n’ turf, and I want marshmallows.”

He says, “Poor you. Avoid the clams. Unless you like rubber. You could stick them together and use them for handball.”

I say, “Not my game.”

He rests the back of his head against the wall opposite, but it’s a very narrow hall. “What is your game?”

Oh God, a line! I’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours, I’m just wandering around looking for a quiet place to chew a stick of gum, and I’m two feet away from a tan guy who is feeding me a line.

The guy leans forward. He smells like salt water and smoke from the bonfire down by the lagoon. He slips the hand that isn’t holding the corkscrew and the glasses into the small of my back and then he pauses, and I smile, and he’s kissing me.

Welcome to California.

I do not hook up with random guys in prep-school tees, and I don’t flirt, and I don’t kiss them back—not that I’ve ever had the opportunity to kiss them back—and I don’t put my hand on their shoulders in tacit acknowledgment of how much I want to be doing this strange, random, surprising thing.

There are footsteps, but he doesn’t stop until he’s finished kissing me. Doesn’t look back at the blond girl in the black bikini top and sarong who is looking at me over his shoulder. I didn’t know that people even actually wore sarongs. It might just be a really well-draped beach towel.