“Anyone sitting here?” asked a red headed man, pointing
to the facing seat across the table from hers, on which she had strewn
her purse, purple hooded sweatshirt, and water bottle.
“Feel free,” she said, still looking out the window toward
the sign posted in the mud by the terminal, now receding across the
expanse of blue green water.
She half hoped he would talk with her, and half hoped he wouldn’t.
She wasn’t in the mood for a ferry conversation—one half
hour of small talk, or intense personal confession, but something
real would be nice.
“Work or pleasure?” He asked.
“Neither,” she answered. Then, in what she would later
reflect on as a small but pivotal moment, she launched into a reply.
Something about him enticed her out to play.
“It’s my day off. I was going to go for a hike, or call
up some friends to come over for dinner, but I just felt like doing
something different.”
“Spontaneity is a good thing.”
“I guess so. I like seeing it in other people, but it’s
kind of out of character for me.”
She watched him while they talked. He veered neither toward small
talk, nor into confession. He was attentive. He had that red hair
and the complexion that goes with it; no matter how he controlled
the expression of his eyes and mouth, his skin had a vocabulary of
its own which revealed all in varying shades of red.
She talked past Tiburon, and Angel Island. As the ferry started to
pass Alcatraz, she stopped herself.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m a monologue hog.
I don’t usually talk so much. In fact, I spend a lot of time
listening,” she said, laughing and turning almost as red as
his hair.
“It’s okay. It was kind of, well, charming. You were
so, well, unself-conscious”
“Not right now. I mean, the unself-conscious part.”
They both laughed, and looked up as the ferry slowed to dock in San
Francisco.
“This has been fun. But then I did all the talking. Enough
about me… Want to have lunch? Or maybe you have work, or are
meeting someone,” she said, beginning the question with exuberance,
and fading into uncertainty.
He paused for just a second too long, the color rising in his cheeks.
She
noticed she was chewing her lower lip, a nervous habit she thought
she had finally overcome.
“Married?” she asked.
“Yes. And happily…I enjoyed the ride.”
“Me too,” she said, quickly and comfortably changing
gears. They walked off the ferry together, neither speaking, both
smiling, his face a shade of pink in the continuum that she would
never have a chance to learn.
