There was a flight of rickety wooden steps leading down to the sand. I carried our picnic and Lorna limped by my side. The stairs were barely wide enough for the two of us, so I threw an arm around Lorna and she huddled into my chest and hopped on her good leg all the way down, laughing, out of breath when we reached the bottom.
We found a nice spot to sit on a rise. The sun was a departing orange ball, and it lovingly caught strands of Lorna’s light brown hair and burnished them into gold.
We sat on the sand, and I laid out our food on top of the brown paper bag it had come in. Not standing on ceremony, we polished off all three crustaceans in short order without saying a word. The sun had gone down while we ate, but the light from the big picture window of the restaurant cast an amber glow that allowed us a muted view of each other.
Lorna lit a cigarette as I poured us each a glass of wine. “To September 2, 1951,” I said.
“And to beginnings.” Lorna smiled and we clinked glasses. I didn’t quite know what to say. Lorna did. “Who are you?” she asked.
I gulped my wine and felt it go to my head almost immediately. “I’m Frederick Upton Underhill,” I said. “I’m twenty-seven years old, I’m an orphan, a college graduate and a cop. I know that. And I know that you’ve caught me at the most exciting time of my life.”
“Caught you?” Lorna laughed.
“No, more correctly, I caught you.”
“You haven’t caught me.”
“Yet.”
“You probably never will.”
“‘Probably’ is an equivocation, Lorna.”
“Look, Freddy, you don’t know me.”
“Yet.”
“All right, yet.”
“But in a sense, I do. I went over to your dad’s house last winter. I saw some photographs of you. I talked to Siddell about you, and she told me about the accident and your mother’s death, and I felt I knew you then, and I still feel it.”
Lorna’s eyes glittered with anger and she spoke very coldly: “You had no right to pry into my life. And if you pity me, I will never see you again. I will walk up to that restaurant and call a cab and ride out of your life. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand. I understand that I don’t know what pity is, never having felt it for myself. I pity some of the people I meet on the job, but that’s easy; I know I’m never going to see them again. No, for what it’s worth I don’t give a damn if you’ve got a bad leg, or two, or three. When I met you in February I _knew_, and I still know.”
“Know what?”
“Don’t make me say it, Lorna. It’s too early.”
“All right. Will you hold me for a while, please?”
I moved to Lorna and we embraced clumsily. She held me around the small of my back and nuzzled her head into my chest. I rested my hand on the knee of her bad leg until she took it and cupped it to her breast, holding it tightly there. We stayed that way for some time, until Lorna said in a very small voice, “Will you drive me back to my car, please?”
An hour later we were embracing again, this time standing in the parking lot on Temple Street. We kissed, alternately soft and hard. A patrol car cruised by, shined its light on us and departed, the cop shaking his head. Lorna and I laughed.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“No, but I know you.”
“All right, you know me, and I’m starting to know you.”
“Dinner tomorrow night?” I asked.
“Yes, Fred. Only I don’t want to go out, I want to cook for you myself.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“My address is 8987 Charleville, in Beverly Hills. Can you remember that?”
“Yes. What time?”
“Seven-thirty?”
“I’ll be there. Now kiss me so I can let you go.”
We kissed again, this time quickly.
“No protracted farewells,” Loma muttered as she broke from my arms and limped over to her car.