the table. “Close your eyes.”
Why?
“Just do it.”
I did. And then I felt Zelda’s hands come to rest gently on top of mine. “Believe, Parker.”
So I thought back over everything I now “knew” about Zelda. She didn’t age. She’d been born in 1770 in Germany. She’d been married twice—and unless there were two Nathaniels in her life, one of those husbands was in the hospital just down the street.
No one had ever been fed a more unbelievable story.
Believe it, I told myself. Believe it.
I opened my eyes.
“So?” she said. “Do you?”
I nodded, and even if I only about 25 percent meant it, Zelda was so happy she leaned across the table and kissed me. It was probably only a 3 on the passion scale (with our full-on skinny-dip make-out the previous night a 9.5), but it was the first time we’d kissed that day, and thus a powerful motivator toward blind faith in the impossible—say 33 percent now.
“Glad we got that sorted out,” she said, then opened up her purse and dropped another hundred-dollar bill on the table. The wad was a little bit thinner than it had been yesterday, and I had this image of Zelda as a tree, losing her leaves one by one, until nothing but naked branches were left. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we? I think it’s high time you told some stories.”
PARKER SANTÉ’S LIFE STORY
WE AMBLED ALONG THE GRAVEL paths that crisscrossed the tea garden. Every crunch of our feet sounded like a big dog taking a bite out of something.
“I have so many things I want to ask you,” Zelda said. “But your condition being what it is, we can’t really walk and talk at once, can we?”
I shook my head. It was one of the many downsides of communicating through the written word, along with writer’s cramp and the fact that you needed a paper shredder to keep your past conversations secret.
“That’s all right. We’ll just have to alternate. I’ll ask you something, and then you can stop somewhere and write down your answer while I do a lap of the park. When I get back, I’ll sit down and read your answer while you walk a lap. Sound good?”
I nodded.
“First question: What was your first kiss like? Be as detailed as possible.”
She skipped off over one of those steep bridges, and I sat down on a stone bench. I’ve already told you about Rosie Cuevas and the game of spin the bottle, so I won’t bother copying down exactly what I wrote (I’ve still got the journal, complete but for the page Zelda threw in the stream, so it’s possible to recreate my half of our conversations word for word). It’s not much of a story, so I was finished with it long before Zelda got back to the bench. I left her there to read, walking a random path through the park, passing cuddly young couples and their slow-moving elderly counterparts. I got a little lost on the way back, and Zelda greeted me by chucking the journal at my head. I barely caught it by the front cover.
“Well, that was boring,” she said.
I put on an offended expression.
She sighed. “I suppose I should have asked a more exciting question. For example, why don’t you tell me about the first person you ever slept with.”
She started to walk away, so I had to jump up and grab her shoulder.
“What?”
I haven’t, I wrote.
“Haven’t what?”
I spread out my hands in the universal gesture for Figure it out, genius.
“Oh!” She laughed, which made me feel about four years old. “I’m sorry, Parker. I just thought all the kids were doing it these days. Another question, then. Have you ever been in love?”
I shook my head.
“My God. Who gets to seventeen without falling in or making love?”
I shrugged. What was there to say?
“Well, this romantic angle is proving entirely fruitless. Family, then. Can you tell me what happened to your father?”
That’s kinda hard for me.
“Well, I’ve told you all my secrets. It’s only fair you give me something of yours. Besides, if you’re going to be a writer, you have to be able to talk about the deep stuff.”
Fine. I’ll try.
“Take your time. I’ll walk slowly.”
I decided not to overthink it. I’d just set down the facts as I remembered them. To let too much emotional stuff in would result in a Golden-Gate-Park-size bummer of a story, and I was trying to keep things with Zelda light.
We were driving back from the East Bay