Laura Anderson - Song of Summer

“Company?” I write. I slide my helmet down the table and pat the place opposite me, where it used to sit. She turns pink, like the first day we met, and glances back at the kitchen. Then she holds up a finger, saying “wait,” and trots back to the counter to talk to the other waitress—a tired-looking, pear-shaped woman with a limp ponytail and big doe eyes. The older waitress looks at me, wide eyed, and I flash a hopeful smile. She turns red and looks back at Robin, who is still talking.

I zigzag ketchup across my fries, and when I look up, Robin’s there. She smiles, a little self-consciously, and slides in across from me, tucking one foot under her. “Sorry,” she writes. “Had to ask if she would take any tables.”

I look around the restaurant. It’s just me and the couple who was here when I got here. “I don’t know if she’ll be able to handle them all,” I write.

She reads it with her mouth open in a slight smile, then laughs and shakes her head.

“You’re right. It’s dead,” she writes.

I take a bite of my sandwich, and she looks out the window. We sit like that for a while until I hold a fry out to her, tempting her to take it.

She smiles and takes it, biting delicately as steam escapes. I gesture to the plate and she shakes her head halfheartedly. I give her a look and gesture again, and she laughs and takes a second fry.

We sit, eating fries for a while. I’m trying to think of something to say but conversation escapes me, so I watch out the window with her.

“Nice bike,” she writes. Again, a few curls are desperately trying to escape from her ponytail. I wish they would.

“Thanks,” I write. “It’s my baby. Got it a year ago, for my seventeenth birthday.”

“It’s pretty,” she writes.

“So are you,” I write back before I realize what I’m doing. She reads it and turns pink again. She smiles but looks away, like she doesn’t know what to say.

Idiot, idiot, idiot. Who says stuff like that? I reach for the pen and glance at her, hoping she stays long enough for me to write an apology.

She’s already looking at me with a shy smile. Once she catches my eye, her hand touches her chin. She arcs it down gracefully.

“Thank you,” she signs.

She’s speaking my language.

I could kiss her.

Robin

I hope I got it right.

I swallow nervously. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. Ta-da! I probably got it wrong! And right after he called me pretty! I mean, he called me pretty! Me!

“I’m sorry,” I write hastily. No time to make my writing look good. “I hope I got it right. I didn’t mean to offend—” and he takes the pen right out of my hand.

“Don’t be sorry,” he writes. His fingers are strong and long and lean and about four shades darker than mine. His nails are short and neat. “You got it right,” he finishes. He looks at me and gives me a smile that is more than distracting. My heart is racing and my breath is shallow. I nod, hoping I’m still the color of a person and not the color of, say, a cartoon character.

“It means a lot,” he writes, and looks up to gauge my reaction.

He is so intense. Are all deaf people this intense? And gorgeous. Are they all this gorgeous? I’ve never met one before. I shrug off the compliment. I grab the pen out of his hand. “No biggie,” I write. He flexes his fingers once, like a cat stretching out its claws, as he watches.

“Robin!” Elsie’s shrill voice is about two seconds too late to interrupt the moment. “A little help?”

Ah yes, two tables came in at once. Call in the Coast Guard. I write as much on the paper and Carter laughs silently. “I’ll be back,” I promise.

He nods but I feel his eyes on me as I grab menus and head to my new table—an older couple who keeps changing their minds and asking for more rolls. Another table walks in and I take that one, too. At this rate I’ll never get back.

Sometimes when I glance over, Carter’s looking out the window. Sometimes he’s canoodling around on his phone. Sometimes he’s even looking at me. But from a distance, all we can do is wave, which feels a little silly after the third or fourth time.

He sits back and pushes his plate to the middle of his table, finished. I dig his check out from my apron pocket and unrumple it. He signs, “Thank you,” touching his fingertips to his chin, and I wave like it’s no big deal.

“You want anything else?” I write on my paper.

In answer, he pushes the pad of paper to the edge of the table. “When do you get off work?” it says in his neat, effortless handwriting.

My heart skips a beat. He did not just ask me out. Did he? “Four,” I write on his paper.

His face brightens and he begins to write something, but I keep writing. “But I have plans…”

A frown creases his eyebrows.

“What about tomorrow?” he writes. I have to practice. My free night is for Jenni, and the rest are for piano and guitar, or even pennywhistle. I want to find and perfect a new fingerpicking pattern for the church performance. I glance at his hopeful puppy dog face.

With a gulp, I pick up the pen and circle “Four,” and write, “again.”

“Much better,” he writes. “Unless… if you don’t want to hang out or…”

Screw practicing. This time I grab the pen out of his hand. He looks up at me through those eyelashes, and my breath catches in my throat.

I nod. “Sounds good,” I write. I put a smiley face next to it and immediately regret the decision. It looks silly. Plus, I’m standing right here. If he wants to see me smile, he just has to look up.

But he laughs, and I turn into a big pile of Robin mush.

He folds the paper, pushing it into his pocket as he stands up. He slides his helmet to the edge of the table and tucks it under his arm.

He’s tall, like on the “ROBIN’S PERFECT MAN” list. My head would rest perfectly on his chest, I think, and then I shake the thought out of my head and whisper, “Shut up, Robin,” under my breath.

He looks down at me quizzically.

Uh-oh. “Nothing,” I say clearly to him. “It was nothing.”

He nods, unsure. “Okay,” he mouths, still a little question behind his eyes.

I look at the ceiling and silently curse my whispering compulsion. Holding up a finger, I tell him to wait. He puts on his motorcycle gloves while I write, “I do this stupid thing where I sometimes mutter to myself under my breath. I am so sorry.”

I hang my head and show him the pad of paper.

He laughs again, takes the paper, and pauses for a minute before motioning for me to give him the pen.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he writes, grinning.

I’m beginning a chuckle when “MISS!” cuts into our moment. I turn my head to look. The old lady from table one is holding up the empty basket of rolls. “Bottomless rolls!” she calls. “I can see the bottom!”

I turn back to Carter, jerk my head in the direction of the most inconveniently demanding table in the world, and roll my eyes. “Duty calls,” I say. “Bye.”

He waves and turns toward the register, check in hand. Elsie waits there, all her weight on one hip, tapping her toe. She self-consciously runs her ponytail through her fingers and smiles as Carter approaches.

“MISS!” I hear over my shoulder. I turn my smile on, approaching the table.

“Oh no!” I say. “I can see the bottom, can’t I? I’ll be right back with more.” I take the basket back to the kitchen and throw it in the pass-through window.

“Fannie? Can I please have more rolls?”

“What are these people doing? Sticking them in their pockets?” she calls back.

“Probably.” Old people are notorious for stealing rolls. And steak knives.

The door slams and Carter strides across the parking lot, fastening his helmet and sliding on his jacket. He gets on the bike and it revs to life, coasting effortlessly out of the parking lot.

“Robin!”

“Not now, Elsie. Can’t you see I’m drooling? Let me bask in this moment for just a second.”

“Robin! Look!”

She’s holding Carter’s check and a wad of cash. “The bill was only seven bucks and he paid with a twenty! Then he just left! He gave you a thirteen-dollar tip, Robin! And look at the ticket, Robin! Look at the ticket!”

I take the ticket. “For Robin,” is written on the back. Then, “573-555-2934.”

“It’s his phone number!” Elsie sounds more excited than I am, and I’m pretty excited. “He wants you to call him!” And then her eyes widen and her face drops. Her eyebrows draw together in a worried crease. “How can you call him? How can he hear you? Maybe he’s not really… you know…”

“Deaf,” I say. “He’s deaf, Elsie, not dying. You can say it. And we can text.”

I see it dawn on her. “Oh!” she says. “Texting. I’m such an idiot.”

“No you’re not.” I reach out an arm for a half hug. “You’re just excited.” I pause and give her a little squeeze. “And old.”

She pushes me away, pouty. “Robin Peters, I am not old!”

“Rolls up!” Fannie calls. I take the warm basket out of the window and back to my table, Carter’s number still in my pocket.

At four o’clock precisely, I pull out my phone and text Jenni.

“Off work!”

“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” I get back from her.

“Be there in six.”

I’m just cashing out my tips when calloused fingers cover my eyes, making me lose count. My heart dances to the tune of “Skip to My Lou.”

“Is this some hip new thing that all the kids are doing?” I say. “This whole eye-covering deal? Or have you just decided to completely weird out everybody you talk to?”

He laughs and uncovers my eyes and takes a step back, leaning on the counter. His stubble is there in all its two-day glory and he rubs it as I transfer all my money back into my left hand for a recount. Today, it’s a baseball cap that’s mashing his curls to his head. Last week it was a newsboy cap. It’s his compromise so he doesn’t have to wear a hairnet in the kitchen.

“You’re lucky I knew it was you. Anybody else would get an elbow in the gut.” I smile sweetly up at him then start to count again.

“Whoa…” He picks up Carter’s ten-dollar bill. “What’d you have to do to get that? Private lap dance?”

I snatch it out of his hand. “Ha-ha. Shut up.”

“You should see him!” Fannie calls from the kitchen, taking off her apron and her hairnet.

“I didn’t notice you there, Beautiful,” Trent calls to her, winking at me. I shake my head. He always calls Fannie “Beautiful,” and makes her blush. He was an excellent server before he became a cook: flirted his way into five-dollar tips all the time. “Who should I see?”

“The boy who left her the tip,” Fannie says.

“And it wasn’t just ten dollars,” Elsie cuts in. “It was thirteen.”

Trent’s posture stiffens and he looks down at me, the glint in his eyes a little sharper now. “A boy? Thirteen, eh? Maybe even more than a lap dance?” He pokes me in the ribs and I wiggle out of the way.

Fannie smacks him across the back of the head before getting her purse from the cubby. “Shut your filthy mouth, Trenton McGovern. That’s our Robin you’re talking about.”

“Thank you, Fannie,” I say. I turn to Trent after trading my ten and ones for a twenty. “And for your information, there was no lap dancing involved.”

“Just a phone number,” Elsie pipes up. Geez, Elsie can you keep your mouth shut once in a while?

He turns his gaze back to me. “A phone number, eh?”

“Yup!” I grab my purse and keys.

“You gonna call him?”

“Probably not.”

He smiles smugly.

“But I might text him.”

His expression turns harder and he opens his mouth to talk.

“See ya!” I bolt out the door before I hear what he has to say. Not like I should care. Not like he should care either.

I stuff the twenty in my wallet. Twenty more toward the Dread Pirate Martin.

I hop in my beautiful green Subaru station wagon. Technically, it’s my parents’ car, but I’m the one who drives it the most. I slam the door behind me and the old boat coughs and sputters as it starts. “Come on, sweet baby,” I say, rubbing the dashboard. It works. The engine roars to life and the radio blares Nickel Creek. Mandolins and violins fill the air and I roll the windows down, singing the tenor part up an octave at the top of my lungs.