I remembered. I caught the whiff of some lemony fragrance as she leaned toward me.
“That’s all I am? Some girl?” she asked. She sounded both playful and serious, and for an instant, I fantasized about wrapping my arms around her right then and there.
“Oh,” I said, feigning surprise. “It’s you.”
The two guys on the couch glanced toward us, then returend to the screen.
“You ready to go?” I asked.
“I’ve just got to get my purse,” she said. She retrieved it from the kitchen counter, and we started for the door. “And where are we going, by the way?”
When I told her, she lifted an eyebrow.
“You’re taking me to eat at a place with the word shack in the name?”
“I’m just an underpaid grunt in the army. It’s all I can afford.”
She bumped against me as we walked. “See, this is why I usually don’t date strangers.”
The Shrimp Shack is in downtown Wilmington, in the historic area that borders the Cape Fear River. At one end of the historic area are your typical tourist destinations: souvenir stores, a couple of places specializing in antiques, a few upscale restaurants, coffee shops, and various real estate offices. At the other end, however, Wilmington displayed its character as a working port city: large warehouses, more than one of which stood abandoned, and a few other dated office buildings only half-occupied. I doubted that the tourists who flocked here in the summer ever ventured toward this other end. This was the direction I turned. Little by little, the crowds faded away until no one was left on the sidewalk as the area grew more dilapidated.
“Where is this place?” Savannah asked.
“Just a little farther,” I said. “Up there, at the end.”
“It’s kind of out of the way, isn’t it?”
“It’s kind of a local institution,” I said. “The owner doesn’t care if tourists come or not. He never has.”
A minute later, I slowed the car and turned into a small parking lot bordering one of the warehouses. A few dozen cars were parked in front of the Shrimp Shack, as they always were, and the place hadn’t changed. As long as I’d known it, it had looked run-down, with a broad, cluttered porch, peeling paint, and a crooked roofline that made it appear as if the place were about to fall over, despite the fact that it had been weathering hurricanes since the 1940s. The exterior was decorated with nets, hubcaps, license plates, an old anchor, oars, and a few rusty chains. A broken rowboat sat near the door.
The sky was beginning its lazy fade to black as we walked to the entrance. I wondered whether I should reach for Savannah’s hand, but in the end I did nothing. While I may have had some version of hormone-induced success with women, I had very little experience when it came to girls I cared about. Despite the fact that only a day had passed since we’d met, I already knew I was in new territory.
We stepped onto the sagging porch, and Savannah pointed to the rowboat. “Maybe that’s why he opened a restaurant. Because his boat sank.”
“Could be. Or maybe someone just left it there and he never bothered to remove it. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she said, and I pushed open the door.
I don’t know what she expected, but she wore a satisfied expression as she stepped inside. There was a long bar off on one side, windows that overlooked the river, and, in the main seating area, wooden picnic benches. A couple of waitresses with big hair—they hadn’t seemed to change any more than the decor—were moving among the tables, carrying platters of food. The air held the greasy smell of fried food and cigarette smoke, but somehow it seemed just right. Most of the tables were filled, but I motioned toward one near the jukebox. It was playing a country-western song, though I couldn’t have told you who the singer was. I’m more of a classic-rock fan.
We wove our way among the tables. Most of the customers looked as if they worked hard for a living: construction workers, landscapers, truckers, and the like. I hadn’t seen so many NASCAR baseball hats since . . . well, I’d never seen that many. A few guys in my squad were fans, but I never got the appeal of watching a bunch of guys drive in circles all day or figured out why they didn’t post the articles in the automotive section of the paper instead of the