minute hand. Across the river was Brooklyn, looking industrial, the Domino Sugar factory waiting patiently to be turned into an art gallery or housing for millionaires.
I was about to smile once more and keep on walking, but she spoke up.
"What else does it do?"
"My phone?" The list of features was on my tongue, but this was the part of the job I didn't like (which is why you will read no product placement in these pages, if I can possibly help it). I shrugged, trying not to sound like a salesman. "MP3 player, date book, texting. And the camera can shoot like ten seconds of video."
She bit her lip, gave another Nod.
"Very crappy video," I admitted. It was not my job to lie.
"Can you call people on it?"
"Sure, it - " Then I realized she had to be kidding. "Yes, you can actually call people on it."
Her smile was even better than her shoelaces.
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he imagined everybody in the country having one big party line. We'd all listen to concerts on the phone, or maybe everyone would pick up and sing the national anthem together. Of course, a somewhat more popular use of the telephone turned out to be one person talking to one other person.
The first computers were designed for naval gunnery and code breaking. And when the Internet was created, it was supposed to be for controlling the country after a nuclear war. But guess what? Most people use them for e-mailing and IM-ing. One person communicating with one other person.
See the pattern?
"My name's Hunter," I said, returning her smile.
"Jen."
I nodded. "Jennifer was the most popular girl's name in the 1970s and number two in the 1980s."
"Huh?"
"Oh, sorry." Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.
She shook her head. "No, I know what you mean. There's Jens all over the place these days. I was thinking of changing it."
"Jennifer did drop to fourteenth place in the 1990s. Possibly from overexposure." I winced when I realized I'd said this out loud. "But I think it's a nice name."
Great save, huh?
"Me too, but I get bored, you know? Same name all the time."
"Rebranding," I said, nodding. "Everyone's doing it."
She laughed, and I found that we'd started walking together. On a Thursday the park was pretty empty, mostly joggers, dog walkers, and a couple of old guys trying to catch something in the river. We ducked under their fishing lines, which flickered from invisible to brilliant in the summer sun. Behind the metal guardrail the river sloshed against concrete, agitated by a small boat motoring past.
"So, how's Hunter doing?" she asked. "The name, I mean."
"You really want to know?" I checked her smile for signs of derision. Not everyone appreciates the pleasures of socialsecurity.gov's name-ranking database.
"Absolutely."
"Well, it's no Jennifer, but it's moving up. Hunter was barely in the top four hundred when I was born, but it's a solid number thirty-two these days."
"Wow. So you were way ahead of the crowd."
"Yeah, I guess." I took a sidelong glance at her, wondering if she'd figured me out already.
Jen bounced the basketball once and let it rise into the air in front of her, ringing like a bell, before catching it with long fingers. She studied its longitude lines for a moment, spinning it before her green eyes like a globe.
"Of course, you wouldn't want your name to get too popular, would you?"
"That would suck," I agreed. "Witness the Britney epidemic of the mid-1990s."
She shuddered, and my phone rang. The theme from The Twilight Zone, right on cue.
"See?" I said, holding it up for Jen. "It's doing its phone thing."
"Impressive."
The display veadshugrrl, which meant work.
"Hi, Mandy."
"Hunter? Are you doing anything?"
"Uh, not really."
"Can you do a tasting? It's kind of an emergency."
"Right now?"
"Yes. The client wants to put an advertisement on the air over the weekend, but they're not sure about it."
Mandy Wilkins always called her employers "the client," even though she'd worked for them for two years. They were a certain athletic shoe company named after a certain Greek god. Maybe she didn't like using four-letter words.
"I'm trying to get together whoever I can," Mandy said. "The client needs to make a decision in a couple of hours."
"How much does it pay?"
"Officially, just a pair."
"I've got way too many pairs," I said. A trunk full of shoes, not counting the ones I'd given away.
"How about fifty bucks? Out of my own pocket.