“Your date’s here,” I said, pointing. Wendy saw me and waved, and I waved back. Warren, on the other hand, just stared, his mouth opening and closing a few times.
“Go,” I said, poking him in the back. “Breathe.”
“Right,” Warren said in a voice that indicated he wasn’t doing much of that, but he did start walking toward the entrance. Wanting to give him a little bit of privacy, I scanned the beach again.
It wasn’t like I was looking for Henry specifically. However, he’d come to the last one, and I’d given him the poster, so I knew he knew about this one, so it wouldn’t have been unexpected to see him there or anything. But my eyes moved from blanket to blanket with no sign of him.
I looked back to the snack bar to see Elliot tapping his watch and Lucy giving me a thumbs-up. I knew that the moment had arrived. I signaled to Leland, who gave me a nod, and then walked in front of the screen and took a deep breath. “Good evening,” I started, and must have been loud enough, because most people looked up at me. I could feel how damp my palms were, and I twisted my hands together behind my back, hoping nobody else would pick up on this. “Welcome to Movies Under the Stars, and tonight’s screening of Casablanca.” For some reason, this caused some people to burst into applause, which gave me a second to collect myself. What did I normally do with my hands? I had no idea, and I was going to keep them behind my back until I remembered.
“The, um, concession stand will be open for the first twenty minutes. So… that’s how long.” I could feel that I was babbling, but at least it was better than the never-ending silences of the last time. I looked up, and my eyes traveled right across to my family’s blanket. My mother was wearing a rather fixed smile, and Gelsey was frowning as if she wasn’t sure what I was doing. But when I met my father’s eye, and saw his steady, encouraging expression, I felt myself let out a long breath. Suddenly, I knew exactly what to say. “Casablanca has been called, by some film scholars, a perfect movie, from first frame to last,” I said, seeing an expression of happy surprise come over my dad’s face as I said this. “I hope you agree. Enjoy the show!” There was another smattering of applause as I scurried away from the projector and toward the safety of the snack bar just as the movie started, the old-fashioned Warner Brothers logo, in black and white, taking over the screen.
Twenty minutes later, we closed down the snack bar as quietly as possible. I’d been watching what I could of the movie in between serving up sodas, ice cream, and popcorn, and I thought I’d gotten the general gist of it.
“You staying?” Lucy asked me after we’d locked up the snack bar.
I nodded, looking back to my family’s blanket. “I am. You?”
She shook her head and yawned. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll give it a miss this time.”
“Me too,” Elliot interjected, stepping in between us. “So are you heading home, Luce? Want a ride?”
“No, thanks,” Lucy said. “I biked here.”
“Great,” Elliot enthused. “Want some company biking home?”
“But didn’t you drive?” I asked, feeling that Elliot’s crush was wreaking havoc on his logic.
Elliot’s face fell as he seemed to realize this as well. “Technically, yes,” he murmured. “But… um…”
“You’re a nut,” Lucy said, shoving his arm good-naturedly. “See you tomorrow!” she called as she headed to the parking lot. I watched Elliot literally slump when she passed out of view.
“I think you’re going to have to tell her how you feel,” I told him. “I don’t think she’s getting your signs.”
Elliot blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He also turned to leave, which seemed like a good idea. From what I’d been able to grasp about the movie so far, it seemed to be about a guy pining for a girl, so it was maybe not the best thing for him to see in his current state.
I picked up the Diet Coke I’d poured for myself before we turned off the soda machine and tiptoed across the sand, ducking until I reached our blanket.
“Nicely done,” my father stage-whispered to me. I looked across the blanket and saw that he was giving me small, silent claps.
“Thanks,” I whispered back. “I was just quoting the experts.” I looked for my brother and saw that, a few rows back, he’d set up his own blanket and was sitting next to Wendy. I noticed that every few seconds he would look away from the screen and glance at her, and I couldn’t help but be glad that I’d chosen a first date for them that would make it impossible for Warren to inundate her with facts if he got really nervous.
I settled in and tried to pay attention to what was happening. I was shocked by how many lines I recognized even though I’d never seen the movie before. They were either things I’d heard my father quote, or lines that seemed to be part of the zeitgeist, references I’d known without even realizing it. I was getting caught up in the movie, the thwarted love story, when I became aware of something to my right. I turned away from Rick and Ilsa and saw Henry sitting next to me.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” I whispered back, surprised, and feeling myself start to smile. “What are you doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, which I made myself look away from. “Seeing a movie,” he said, as though this should have been obvious.
I could feel my cheeks get hot, and was glad for the cover of relative darkness. “I got that,” I whispered back to him. “I just thought, when I didn’t see you earlier…”
“Oh, so you were looking for me?” Henry asked, settling himself in next to me and leaning back on his hands. I shook my head, looking back at the screen for a second, where Humphrey Bogart was lighting what had to be his fortieth cigarette of the movie so far. “I had to help my dad with some of the prep for tomorrow,” he explained after a minute.
I turned my head slightly to look at him, the shadows from the screen flickering across his face. I realized, now that he’d said it, that he smelled sweet—a mixture of cake flour and something like cinnamon. When I realized that I was staring, I looked away fast, back to the screen and the world of Rick’s Café that I had, until just a few moments ago, been utterly absorbed in. I could feel my heart beat fast and was thinking that it would just take a few inches for me to extend my hand and have it touch his. Which was why I made myself keep looking at the screen as I asked, trying to keep my voice light, “So where’s your girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” Henry sounded so genuinely confused that I turned to look at him again.
“Yeah,” I said. “The girl who was with you at Jane’s? And I’ve seen her at your house….” My voice trailed off, as Henry shook his head.
“That’s Davy’s babysitter,” he said. “He really doesn’t need one, but my dad gets worried.”
“So you’re not… dating her?” I asked, thinking of the way she’d looked at him at the ice-cream parlor, at how their fingers had brushed.
“No,” Henry said quietly. “There was a moment when maybe that was going to happen, but…” He trailed off, running his hand across the sand for a second, as though smoothing it out, and I held my breath, waiting for whatever would come next. “But I changed my mind,” he finally said, looking back at me.
“Oh,” I murmured. Oh. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was pretty sure about what I wanted it to mean. It suddenly hit me that Henry, single Henry, was sitting next to me in the darkness, as we watched a movie. And just like that, those butterflies I’d first felt at twelve made a reappearance.
“So what’d I miss?” Henry whispered after a few moments. I glanced over at him, fully aware of how close together we were, how close he’d sat next to me, even though there was ample room on the blanket.
“I thought you’d seen this,” I whispered, looking back fixedly at the screen.
“I have,” he said, and I could hear that there was smile in his voice. “I just wanted a refresher.”
“Well,” I
said, turning my head to face him a little. “Rick’s really mad because Ilsa just left, without a real explanation.” As soon as I’d said this, I realized that the statement might apply to more than just the movie. I think Henry realized this as well; when he spoke again his voice was a little more serious.
“She probably had a good reason for that, though, right?” He wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but right at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the blanket and both our legs extended, just a hand’s width between them. “I think she was just really scared, and ran away when things got hard.” This was no longer about the movie at all, because we’d just learned that Ilsa did have an actual reason for leaving Rick behind in the rain, whereas I had only my own cowardice to blame.
“And then what happens?” he asked. I looked at him and saw that he was still looking at me.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling my heart start to pound again, certain that we had stopped talking about the movie entirely now. “You tell me.”
He smiled and then glanced back at the screen. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
I looked back at the screen as well. “I guess we will,” I said. I watched the movie, trying my best to pay attention to what was happening—Nazis, French resistance, everyone trying to find some letters of transit—but after a few minutes, I gave up even trying to follow the plot. The movie was unfolding before me, but all I was really aware of was Henry’s presence next to me, how close to me he was sitting, how I noticed every time he moved or turned his head slightly. I was so aware of his presence that by the time the famous last line was uttered—the one about the beginning of a beautiful friendship—our breath was rising and falling in the same rhythm.
chapter twenty-nine
“AND THEN WHAT?” LUCY DEMANDED, EYES WIDE.
I took a sip of my soda, and shook my head, smiling at her. “And then nothing,” I said. “Seriously.” Lucy groaned and I looked out to the nearly deserted beach, wondering if at some point we could just admit that nobody was coming to the snack bar and go home early.
I was telling her the truth—nothing had happened at the movie. That is, nothing had happened between me and Henry. We had simply watched the rest of the movie in silence, and when it ended, I’d hustled to the front of the now-blank screen, thanked everyone for coming, and told them that the next movie night would be in a month, and I’d managed to do it without babbling or taking too-long pauses, which seemed to me like some kind of progress. When I’d returned to the blanket, Gelsey and Nora were engaged in some kind of complicated hand-clap game, and my mother was folding up our blanket and talking to the Gardners, who were going on about how the movie had one of cinema’s most perfectly structured screenplays. In the midst of this, my father was struggling up out of the beach chair. He had moved to sit in it during the movie’s second half, the sight of which had made me lose track of the plot altogether for a while, as I kept glancing back at my dad, looking somehow diminished in the beach chair that he had always sworn he’d never use.
Henry was already walking toward the parking lot, but he met my eye and raised his hand in a wave. I waved back, and felt myself watching, out of the corner of my eye, until he passed out of sight. Because I was facing the parking lot, I saw Warren and Wendy heading out, not holding hands, but walking awfully close together. I caught Warren’s eye for a moment, and he gave me a wide, happy smile, the kind that I’d never seen on my brother, who before this had seemed to specialize in the sardonic smirk.
I’d locked up the projector and screen and thanked Leland, who was yawning so enormously that I was just grateful he hadn’t fallen asleep during the movie. Gelsey ended up riding home with the Gardners, as my father’s back was hurting again, and he needed to stretch out across the backseat. I’d buckled myself into the passenger seat and turned around to look at him. In the fading light—my mother’s car lights would flare when a door was opened but then slowly dim, as though transitioning you to darkness—I saw how thin my father was, how his skin was stretched over his cheekbones.
“Did you like the movie, kid?” he asked, startling me. His eyes were closed, and I’d assumed he’d fallen asleep.
“I did,” I said as I turned to face him fully. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen,” he said. “That’s how Ingrid Bergman was meant to be seen.” I laughed as my mother opened her door and my father gave me a wink. “Don’t tell your mother,” he added.
“Don’t tell me what?” my mom asked, smiling, as she started the car and pulled us out of the now mostly deserted parking lot.
“Just something about Ingrid Bergman,” my dad said, his voice sleepy, his eyes drifting closed again. I saw my mother glance back at him in the rearview mirror, her smile fading.
“Let’s go home,” she said in a voice that sounded like it was straining to be upbeat. “I think we’re all tired.” She’d pulled back out onto the road, and by the time we made it home, five minutes later, my father was totally asleep.
My parents had gone to bed as soon as we’d gotten back and my mother had collected Gelsey from next door. I’d noticed that, as they made their way up to their bedroom, my mother was now walking slightly behind my father, watching him carefully, like she was worried that he might fall backward. And as I noticed for the first time how slowly my dad was taking every step, how heavily he was leaning on the railing, it seemed like this might have actually been necessary.
I’d gotten ready for bed, but felt far too keyed-up to even try to go to sleep. When I’d heard a car pull into our driveway, I’d walked out to the porch, where I saw Warren just sitting in the Land Cruiser, the engine off, looking straight ahead. When he saw me, he got out of the car and walked up to meet me on the porch steps. Technically, he walked. But there was something about him that made it seem more like floating.
“Taylor,” Warren said, smiling at me pleasantly, like I was someone he’d known, vaguely, many years before. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and trying not to grin. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” Warren said. He smiled again—that big, genuine smile that I was still getting used to. “Thanks so much for arranging it.”
“Sure,” I said, looking at him closely. I really wanted details, but this was so outside the realm of what my brother and I normally talked about that I had no idea how to even broach this subject. “Will you need me to arrange another one?”
My brother’s expression became slightly disdainful, and therefore much more familiar. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re going out tomorrow night. Miniature golfing.”
“Sounds fun,” I said, smiling, suddenly very impressed with Wendy and her ability to get my brother to do something that I knew, only a few days before, he would have scoffed at.
Warren started to head toward the door, then stopped and looked back at me. “Did you ever have a night that just… seemed to change everything?” he asked, sounding happy but a bit bewildered. “And everything is different afterward?” I didn’t, and Warren must have seen this on my expression, because he shook his head as he opened the door. “Never mind,” he said. “Forget it. ’Night, Taylor.”
“’Night,” I called to him. And even after he’d gone inside, I stayed out on the porch for a few minutes, looking up at the stars above me and turning over Warren’s words in my mind.
But for now, I was at work. It was a cloudy, overcast, humid day—the kind that threatened rain, but never quite delivered it. It was chilly to boot, which meant that we’d had approximately three customers that morning, all of whom had either wanted coffee or hot chocolate, and all of whom had wanted to complain about the fact that this wasn’t summer weather.
Lucy looked at me closely, clearly not ready to let me off the hook that easily. “Just because something didn’t happen with Henry,” she said, “doesn’t mean that you don’t wan
t it to.”
I felt myself flush as I looked around for something to do and started straightening a stack of cups. “I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t, even though thoughts of Henry had kept me awake most of the night before. I had no idea what he wanted, and was just getting used to the idea that we could be friends. The possibility of more made my stomach clench, in a good way, but also in a real and scary way.
“Don’t know what?” Lucy asked, pushing herself up to sit on the counter, looking at me, waiting for my answer.
The cups were as straight as they were ever going to be, and I shoved the stack away. “There’s a lot going on right now,” I said. I met her eyes and saw that she knew what I was talking about. “So I’m just not sure it’s the right time….”
Lucy shook her head. “There’s no such thing as a perfect moment,” she said with great authority. “Look at me and Brett.”
Brett was a new guy she had just started going out with, despite the fact that he was only in the Poconos for a week. I pushed myself up to sit on the counter and sat cross-legged facing her, increasing the number of health-code violations we were currently in violation of, glad that the topic had shifted away from me. “Maybe,” I said, in what I hoped was an offhand manner, “there’s someone here who already likes you and is going to be around for the whole summer. Possibly someone who likes card tricks?”
I watched her closely for her reaction, but Lucy just shook her head. “I get enough of that with Elliot,” she said. “No, thanks.”
“I don’t know,” I said as casually as I was able. “I don’t think Elliot’s so bad.”
Lucy shook her head. “He’s great,” she said, offhandedly. “But not exactly someone I want to date.”
“Why not?” I asked, and Lucy frowned for a second, as though considering this. But before she could answer, her phone beeped and she pulled it out of her pocket.
“Gotta go,” she said, smiling at the screen. “Are you okay here? Brett wants to hang out.”