Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,148

over there in Stuyvesant Town now.”

Once in August, Alicia came into the Lobster Roll to see me, and she told me they’d all had dinner together the previous night at the Driver’s Seat in Southampton—Mark, Rob, Rourke, Alicia, and her boyfriend, Jonathan, and some other people I didn’t know, friends of Mark’s probably. I realized they’d probably been seeing one another all along. I wanted to ask her how Mark was doing, how was his new job and apartment in Manhattan, but I didn’t want to open any closed avenues. I wondered if Mark had heard I’d been living with Rourke, and what he thought about that. For a long time I’d forgotten to remember Mark, then it all started returning to me—this knowledge that he was waiting. That’s how you know summer’s almost over, when things start returning to you.

Last time I saw Rob that summer was a Tuesday, near the end—at least it seemed near the end. Possibly there had been a previous end, another day that I hadn’t noticed.

After Rourke left that morning, I rode my bike to the beach, stopping first at Whites Drug Store for gum. The air was still, and the tide was low, so I placed my towel near the waves, and I opened my book—Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Two white-haired babies ran around a sand castle, and a boom box played Pink Floyd.

Hey you, out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old.

Can you feel me?

Hey you, out there on your own, sitting naked by the phone.

Would you touch me?

“You waltzed right past me.” It was Rob, bending for a kiss. “I’m playing volleyball.”

“What are you doing here? It’s Tuesday. Don’t you have work?”

“I came out this morning. I told everybody I had jury duty. Come on over.”

I shaded my eyes. There were a lot of people. “I’ll just wait here.”

“Come over.” He gestured with my book as we walked, slapping it twice in his palm. “Good book,” he said. “Brett Ashley, that’s you.” He spread my towel near his, by the net.

“Hey, Rob,” one of the guys called. “Sometime this century.”

“Keep your shorts on,” he barked back, then he put his cap on my head, adjusting it until it was low near the bridge of my sunglasses. “Red Sox,” he said. “Don’t lose it.”

My bike just about fit into the trunk of the Cougar, and Rob threaded his tank top through the metal coupling and tied a knot to hold it in. He had white surgical tape around his wrist. I could not see his tattoo from where I sat because it was on his left bicep and he was driving. It was a lightning bolt through the word Zeus. At the carnival that time, Rob told Laura Lasser that Zeus came down to fertilize the earth. He peered into her blushing face. “You know what I’m talking about, to fertilize, right?”

We dropped the bike at the house and left a note for Rourke to meet us, then we grabbed some pizza and ate it on the hood of the car, watching the mellow defervescence of day. In the waning heat, the village seemed a place of endless possibilities. Everyone waved like they knew us.

“That’s because they do,” Rob said. “Everybody knows you.”

On the way down Old Montauk Highway to Surfside, I was thinking that life is like being born into a prison that is you, and there comes one opportunity to escape, one second when everything coalesces into something like perfect timing, and you dash, or you don’t. Maybe everyone gets a chance to run, but not everyone goes for it. That summer I had the feeling of being on the outside, of having crossed over. I was thinking about that, and about bravery and identities that are original, about my grandparents getting on boats alone when they were fourteen and coming to America from Europe. I was thinking of opportunities my father never had because of risks taken by his own parents, and whether my mother had wanted me. If my mother hadn’t wanted me, she must have felt bad about that, over time, through the years. And I was thinking of Rourke, how he could not be possessed, how I loved him for it, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t ever let go. I wanted to ask Rob. I had the feeling Rob would have something to say about releasing things you love.

“Today’s my birthday,” he said as I reached for the door handle.

“Oh,”