Hide and Seek

I am fabulous at conversation.

"Pine Manor over in Chestnut Hill. My last year. Steven goes to

Harvard, and Kimberley's with me only a year behind, and her major's

French. Mine's Physical Anthropology. I'll do field work in another

year if I want to bother."

"Do you?"

"So far. Sure. Why not. Don't you get bored?"

"Huh?"

"Don't you get bored around here?"

"Often."

"What do you do?"

"For a living?"

"I mean to kill the tedium."

"Oh, this and that. I see the beach a lot."

"I bet you do."

The road was narrow and twisting but I knew it blind by now, sc it was

easy to keep an eye on her. There was a small patch of sane on her

shoulder. I wanted to brush it off, just for the excuse to toucf her.

She sat very low in the seat. She really was in terrific physical

condition. Just one thin line where the flesh had to buckle at the

stomach. She smelled lightly of dampness. Sweat and seawater.

"Your car?" I asked her. "It runs pretty good."

"No."

"Your dad's?"

"No."

"Whose, then?"

She shrugged, telling me it didn't matter. "Is this your town? You've

lived here all your life and all?"

"Me and my father both."

"You like it?"

"Not much."

"Then why stick around?"

"Inertia, I guess. Nothing ever came along to move me out."

"Would you like to have something come along and move you out?"

"Never thought about it. I don't know."