The Days of Summer. Jill Barnett

date.

      Just drinks, he told her when he’d come into her shop one afternoon. But tonight he came into the bar with his arms full of yellow daffodils, so drinks moved on to appetizers, and he left hours later with her home telephone number. Funny that she didn’t regret giving it to him, even now, as she set an overflowing vase on a glass table in her bedroom. His flowers were the same sunshine-warm shade as the walls. Happy colors, Evie called the paint she’d used inside the house. Daffodils were happy, like snapdragons, and pansies, and lost women who moved to small islands in the blue Pacific.

       Wilmington Pier, Los Angeles Harbor

      Laurel Peyton stood on the corner as the local bus pulled away from the wharf and headed back toward downtown LA. A slight breeze lifted her hat, so she pressed it down, picked up a large, rusty brown suede purse, and rushed toward the boat as she did almost every Friday, when she routinely made the two-hour boat trip home.

      The SS Catalina was a three-hundred-foot white steamer, a ship really, but everyone called it a boat. As always, the Catalina was docked in the last slip, where nothing but an expanse of blue-gray water stood between her huge hull and the Channel Island she serviced. On most days, you could see the island from almost anywhere along the Southern California coast. Against the western horizon, Santa Catalina Island looked like an enormous sleeping camel, sometimes shrouded in marine mist and sometimes sitting there so clearly you could almost make out the saw-toothed outline of the trees along its ridges.

      Laurel joined the long line waiting to board. The late afternoon sun was hot and shone at eye level. The sun was more intense in California, especially at the very end of land and on days like today, when no cool wind blew in off the ocean. People shifted in line and muttered impatiently, removing jackets and sweaters. Kids whined or ran about. Their mothers ignored them, fanning themselves with island pamphlets and folded-up guide maps.

      Although she hadn’t lived in California a year yet, Laurel could spot the tourists with the innate eye of a native. Men in dark shirts wore straw hats with black hatbands and socks with their sandals. Women in floral print dresses carried white patent-leather purses and wore nylons. California women were true to the golden land and wore only their tanned skin, polished with a bit of baby oil.

      Laurel glanced left at the sound of a deep male voice coming from a bank of pay phones. The young man leaned casually against the wall, his back to her. He was tall, with light brown hair and the lanky build of a movie idol. He wore khaki shorts and a polo shirt the color of fresh lemons, his skin looking darkly tanned against that light clothing. On his feet were sandals—no socks.

      The line shifted with an almost unanimous sigh of relief as two crew members came down the gangplank and unlocked its chain. He glanced over his shoulder and she forgot to breathe. Paul Newman and Ryan O’Neal rolled into one. He was too old for her, really—in his mid-twenties—but when he walked past her, he winked.

      She counted slowly to ten before she turned around, and had lost him while pretending to be so casual. The boarding line was backed up to beyond the turnstiles, four or five people wide. The Gray Line tourist buses in the parking lots still unloaded passengers, but he was tall enough to stand out in any crowd, so she systematically scanned the dock from right to left.

      “Excuse me, missy.” A man tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re holding up the line.”

      A gaping distance stood between her and the gangplank. “I’m sorry.” She rushed forward, her face red, struggling to sling her bag up her arm.

      A familiar crewman greeted her at the gangplank. “Going home again?”

      “Sure am. Looks like you have a full boat.”

      “Spring break starts today. The next couple of weekends will be pretty wild. College kids. High school kids. Heard last year was almost as wild on the island as Palm Springs. This might be the last calm crossing for a while.”

      Her frozen smile hid the truth: she had no idea what spring break on Catalina Island was like. She and her mother had lived there only since summer, after they had moved away from everyone and everything they’d ever known. Halfway up the gangplank she looked back over the crowd, searching, but the line was now just heads and hats and people milling together like spilled marbles. Once on board, she searched for that handsome face and yellow shirt, but soon gave up and went to find a seat.

      An hour and a half later the seat felt hard as a rock. The sun glowed low on a vibrant pink horizon, a golden ball magically balancing itself on top of the blue sea. Passengers shifted to the bow, where the colors of the sunset looked like fire, which meant no lines in the snack bar. Inside, she stared at the black menu board with its crooked white letters. She glanced back and Paul O’Neal himself stood three people back. He smiled. She smiled back.

      “What can I get for you?” The worker behind the snack counter waited impatiently, a plastic smile on his face.

      She glanced quickly at the board and blurted out the first thing: “A white wine.” There was complete silence for an instant, the kind where you wish the floor would swallow you up.

      “Can I see your ID, please?”

      She dug through her bag pretending she had an ID. “It’s here somewhere. I’m certain of it.” She moved her face so close she could smell the old sticks of Juicy Fruit gum in the bottom. “Give me a second.” Her cheeks felt hot. She shoved her wallet into a dark corner at the bottom and looked up. “I’m sorry. My wallet isn’t here.”

      “I can’t serve you any liquor without an ID.” Why did his voice sound like he was hollering on the ship’s loudspeaker? “Can I get you something else?”

      She glanced at the board, then at her bag. “No wallet,” she lied, then walked away without looking back. She straight-armed one of the swinging doors, and the air hit her flushed face.

      At the back of the boat, the seats were sheltered from the wind and spray. She sat down on a bench where she could lean her head back against the side of the ship and hide. Seagulls drafted alongside the boat and the mainland was a distant outline of dusky hillsides, where pinpoints of light began to sporadically wink back at her. It was still light out when the ship’s overhead lamp flickered on. The light was bright and white, so she opened her bag and pulled out her book, then reread the last page she’d read on the bus.

      Someone came around the corner and stopped—a yellow shirt. She pulled the book so close she couldn’t read a word. The change jingled in his pocket as he sat down next to her.

       How do I pretend I’m not the moron who was just carded?

      He set down a plastic glass between them and sipped a beer.

      Was she supposed to reach for it? If it wasn’t for her … well, she would just die … again. She shifted and looked down at the lonely glass.

      “Are you going to let the ice melt in that wine?”

      She lowered the book. “What?”

      He handed her the plastic glass. “This is for you.”

      “Oh. Thank you.” My God, but he was good-looking, and watching her with eyes the color of blue ice. “It’s good. Thanks.”

      “That’s heavy reading you’ve got there. Is it for an economics class?”

      “No.”

      He laughed. “What kind of girl reads Wealth of Nations for fun?”

      She closed the book and looked at the front jacket, then at him. “It’s a shame really. I had nothing else to read. I left all my Barbie comic books at home.”

      “With your wallet?” he shot back.

      “Yes.” She had to laugh, too. “With my wallet.”

      “Okay,” he said. “I deserved that Barbie comment. I didn’t say that right at all, did I?”

      “No, you didn’t.”

      “And