Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

She said, “What’s new, Nate?”

I had never once thought of calling him Nate, and was immediately filled with jealously for the level of intimacy Nathan Two Foot obviously had with this small woman, glistening there in a shaft of beach light.

Nathan looked up from his book and asked how much.

“Sixteen miles,” she said. “Give or take.”

He said, “There is something wrong with you. Who works themselves like this on a weekend?”

“You’re working,” she said.

“This isn’t work.” He looked back at his book and turned a page.

I must have looked ridiculous. My mouth open like in a cartoon, that tremendous book in my hands.

She walked over, ducked beneath the cover some, looked back up, and said, “If that’s a King James: terrible translation.” Her hair was a bit knotted up and back in a wet feathery bunch. Some frizzy wisps were dancing.

“My hair.” She pointed at it. “Is it ridiculous? I was running and the wind is crazy.”

I said, “A little bit. Yeah.”

“Who buys a Bible?”

“I like to look at it.” Her hair was in the hinge of her glasses. “Your hair.” I put my hand near it.

“What.”

“It’s in the hinge.”

“The hinge .”

I laughed at how she said it.

She carefully took off her glasses and freed the red tangle. She looked at me and I could see she was straining. I moved in closer. Her eyes were hard at first, and then I swear we didn’t speak for a long time. She just looked at me, trying to see me without any help.

She finally said, “For a second or two I can see you clearly without my glasses. Then you go blurry again.”

I said, “I can see you clearly. Very clearly.”

“Well, you got strange kind of quickly.”

I said, “I don’t feel so strange.”

“Me neither. Maybe.”

“What did you mean about the translation?”

She laughed. “Ah, you broke the spell.”

She looked toward the front of the store, like she was waiting for someone. “It’s beautiful, I’m kidding. Bad joke,” she said. “I’m a translator, Hebrew,” gesturing Blah, blah, it’s boring.

We were still standing there.

I said, “And you’re here for…”

“Catching my breath.” She looked back to the front of the store again.

“You’re waiting for someone.”

“I get a little restless some places. But I like it here. And I like Nathan. You’re waiting for someone?”

“Nope,” I said. “Me neither.”

“And I come here to run, a good path. Isn’t that heavy?”

I put the book back on the shelf.

She walked toward the rear of the store. And I followed.

The door was wide open, and she was in the narrow restroom, washing her face. She threw water on her face and on her hair, and every time she lifted her arms the T-shirt lifted, too. Just enough. And, my God, is there anything in this world as intoxicating as that pink rise of hip skin all crimped from the elastic band on a pair of running shorts — has to be shorts — and peeking out from where you shouldn’t see, like a rosy and puckered sun; I wanted to press my face against the skin of her hip—

“You’re following me.”

“What can I say, I think you’re cute,” I said. “And you’re not waiting for anyone. And I’m not waiting for anyone.…”

She turned away from the mirror smoothing back her hair, smirking just barely. She was softening. “You think you’re charming. When really you’re just a weirdo who hangs out in a bookstore.”

I laughed. “No, no, no. I run a store down the street. I just come in sometimes. At lunch.” I cleared my throat. “You know, I actually have four stores.” I showed four fingers, wiggled them. She laughed.

And then she tripped, walking out of the restroom.

I should’ve caught her, but I didn’t, and she went flailing into the aisle. She stopped herself just short of smashing her chin on the floor. I rushed to help her up, and she let me.

Really I wanted to laugh, because people falling down always make me laugh, but she seemed so put together and maybe a little bit hard and serious. I decided in a split second that whether or not she laughed would determine everything else from now on. And then she cried out. Laughing like a shameless little kid, showing me her palms, scratched all bloody and littered with dust and grit and sand. She laughed and really she couldn’t stop laughing. She covered her mouth and I fell for her, hard. Now I was also undeniably staring at her mouth, how her laugh was total and vulnerable and how she was fine with that, I’d never laughed like that, and how she bit her lip because she was starting to get nervous, and then I realized that I was the one making her nervous because I was also obviously imagining what she looked like in not so many clothes — but not in some lascivious or creepy way, but because I was totally overtaken by her skin and her hair and the small belly rise just above her shorts, and, my God, that glorious little crescent swath of skin—

“You’re just staring at me like it’s normal.”

She studied me. She took her glasses back off and looked at me, her eyes scrunched and then open wide, trying to see more clearly. Then she grinned. It was a half grin, like I know exactly what you’re thinking, mister. There we were beside the extraordinarily narrow restroom in the back of the store, beside the art books and the coffee-table books (where I first met Blake and his angels), and I wanted to put my mouth on the salty rise of her so slight belly.

“You work on this street?” She walked away from the restroom.

“I do.”

“Prove it.”

We walked over. I introduced her to Amad, and I think she was impressed, this also thanks to Amad who has never failed to make a good showing for me.

I offered to buy her lunch.

“Look at me,” she said. “I’m a sweaty mess.”

“Or a coffee.”

We all walked outside.

“I do have a change of clothes in the car.” She looked at Amad like, Can I trust this guy or what? He shrugged his shoulders.

“I can get us a seat outside.” I pointed to the diner at the end of the street, across from the pier. “They have a mean breakfast burrito, and it might not be too late.”

She looked at her watch and then walked away, yelling, “What about your store?”

I didn’t answer.

She turned around and saw me watching her, laughed, and shook her head.

She changed in the diner restroom and then we sat outside on the deck, facing the water, where she relished every last bite of her burrito, which I found exhilarating. And watching this made me enjoy my omelette like no omelette I’d ever had before or have ever had since. She stretched back and yawned, reaching for the sun, and said, “I have nothing to do all day.” Then she ordered a Bloody Mary and asked for a bottle of hot sauce.

I joined her.

And then we had another Bloody Mary.

And then we had a few petite margaritas each, and before you know it we were drunk in the middle of the day, fully alive in our liquor-dumb bodies. Just for the hell of it, we started acting like a couple very much in love, like we’d known each other for years. And then it kind of stuck and started to feel real, even though all the while our afternoon was abundant with the most wonderful of surprises, like her name, who she was, and where she came from, her parents, my parents, and at one point I apparently launched into a sermonic diatribe about God, the Devil, and the World and Everything in It. I’m told I instructed an entire deck full of people on the finer points of Armageddon and Y2K. We walked on the beach in the late afternoon, smashed on tequila and falling on each other, acknowledging that what we were doing was ridiculous and we’d have to face the consequences in the morning. I begged her, Please, just let me just kiss that pretty little ribbon of skin on your hips, and she said What on earth are you talking about?