“Get out of my head, kid. They’re only my favorite ever.”
I could have sat there all day doing this. It was something I’d come to see about her: that she could play to the personality of whoever she was talking to, match wits. Only later would I learn she always had you at match point. I stole a glance at her legs, brown and smooth but peppered with scratches and mosquito bites.
As I prepared to ask her name, she looked behind me and said, “Get your tinkle out, Luce?”
The friend was short, wide-hipped, her face hidden behind a big pair of sunglasses. She had her black hair buzzed. She wore a cutoff shirt over a sports bra and didn’t bother to buckle the life vest after shrugging into it. She looked strong, sturdy, and like she wanted to shove me into the lake as she slid beside Kate on the dock. Without saying anything, she leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. I heard Ghezi behind me let out a quick, sharp breath while I saw one of Damien’s bored eyebrows ratchet up in intrigue. He nodded his head once approvingly. Of course, I felt caught. This butch woman had seen me bantering with her girlfriend and wanted to demonstrate what the situation was to everyone. When their mouths parted, Kate looked amused, dazzled, invigorated. “Let’s do this, lady,” she said. They each slipped into the canoe quickly and expertly, thanked us, and with a thrust of their arms, shoved the canoe away from the dock.
“That was, uh, amazing,” said Ghezi mournfully.
“She was a cutie,” Damien admitted. “Matt, you about knocked Ghezi into the lake to get to her.”
We laughed and ragged on each other the way we would all summer, while I stole glances until she disappeared onto the sun-rippled folds of the lake.
I was up in the office running an errand when they returned. The butch girlfriend hopped out without a totter and offered Kate a hand, both of them laughing. As they came up the dock, she kept a hand on the small of Kate’s back, and then headed into the office to pay while Kate veered toward the marina’s bathrooms.
Ray called me over. He spent most of his day sitting on the tailgate of the shit-colored marina truck, surveying the docks and waiting for his moment to troubleshoot, as in the case of Snorkel and the Yamaha motor.
“What’s up, Captain?”
He tilted his cap back to scratch at the vanishing gray stubble beneath.
“Tar Heel, you might as well’ve shit your eyes outta your head. That how lovestruck you get every time you spot a pretty girl? You ain’t gonna see twenty-five years, son.”
I laughed him off. “We don’t get a lot of them out here. I gotta stare at your ugly face all day.”
Ray bobbed his head to grant me the point. “Snorkel’s about the prettiest thing out here, ain’t he?”
I laughed again. “Jesus, Ray.”
“Just don’t say I never did nothing for you, Tar Heel.” Before I understood what he meant, he called out behind me. “Hey, darling. These guys are all too stupid and chickenshit to approach you like a gentleman. But this one’s the least stupid of ’em.”
Of course, there she was, walking back from the bathroom, drying her hands on her shorts. She looked neither surprised nor offended, though I felt a flush brighten my neck and creep into my cheeks.
“Least stupid, huh?” she said. Her voice was deep and had a smoky quality that ended all her comments in a trail of vocal fry.
“They’re all some kinda stupid nowadays,” Ray muttered. He scooched off the tailgate and stalked into the garage, flicking his cigarette onto the pavement. I was left alone with her.
“This all looks very glamorous, I know, but we spend most of the day cleaning up Ray’s cigarette butts.”
“Does he help you pick up every woman who rents a canoe?”
“Yeah, Ray’s a model wingman. Have a good time?”
“Very. The view of the Tetons is better up here. I’m used to Jackson, but here you get a better look at the Skillet on Mount Moran.”
I was embarrassed to have already forgotten which peak Moran was.
“Do you live up here?” she asked.
I explained I had a one-bedroom in Jackson.
“Wow. You’re not Harrison Ford’s kid, are you?”
I felt a flare of embarrassment at the reference to Jackson’s most famous ranch owner. Graduation gifts from grandparents, parents, and family friends had accumulated into a healthy nest egg. Funding a one-bedroom hadn’t been a problem or something I’d even thought twice about.
Before I could retort, her eyes moved behind me, and she nodded. I glanced back and saw Buzzcut exiting the marina office, surely glaring at me behind the sunglasses.
“Nice meeting you.” She offered her hand and when I shook it, I could feel all the calluses. I felt a disappointment not commensurate with the moment.
“You too.”
“This is the part where you say your name.”
“Right. I’m Matt.”
“Kate,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Matt.” Our hands parted and she walked away, turning one last time. “You should come by the Cowboy sometime on a Saturday. I bartend.”
“You can’t go this Saturday,” Damien told me. “She’ll think you’re a fucking psycho.”
We sat on the life jacket bin watching the sun set behind the Teton Range. It spilled through the gaps in the mountains and appeared through my sunglasses in stark spikes of yellow. We’d gone to the woods after our dinner break for a bowl. Even after a month on the job, this was still breathtaking.
“I know, but I feel like I’m going to do it anyway. Which one’s Mount Moran again?”
“This one with the glacier shaped like an electric guitar.” He chucked his hand to the west. Damien never pointed at anything, just whipped fingertips in a direction like he was releasing a Frisbee. “As your friend for the summer, I can’t condone a Ted Bundy–style move like that. She has a girlfriend. She sees you as tip fodder. You’ll get a buzz on, she’ll flirt, pretty soon you’ll be tipping like it’s a strip club.”
“Shit, why’d you just tell me that? That could be exactly what she’s up to.”
Damien shrugged but his face remained stoner placid.
“Bad weed makes you paranoid, good weed makes you understand why you should be paranoid.”
The sun finally receded behind the mountains, leaving only a red glow that trailed purple to the heights of the sky where the first stars broke through. You could see every stage of twilight, like sediment layers in an exposed cliff face.
Damien finally said, “Wow, man. That’s something else.”
Of course I went to the Cowboy that Saturday.
The full name was actually the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, and inside it was everything that name implies. I passed under the sign, lit with hundreds of red, white, and yellow bulbs and a bucking rodeo cowboy above. Inside, paintings of the Tetons covered the walls, a stuffed grizzly roared from behind a glass case, and dozens of patrons competed for angles at the pool tables alongside murals of cowboys having firefights with bears and Indians. The bar itself was even busier, and there was Kate holding court while she abused a tumbler.
I found a saddle—in place of barstools, naturally—stuffed my thighs on either side in a dumb-looking straddle, and waited for her to notice me. Her bartending look was scrubbed, polished, and pinched, her bun now glossy and scalp-tight, her skirt and top serious tip fodder.
“Good. You can pretend like you’re my date.” She slammed a tumbler into the ice bin in front of me, scooping up a chunk. “This dude’s been nagging me all night like I’m carrying his baby.” Her head ticked to the other end of the bar where a muscle-bound guy in a tight white T-shirt and cowboy hat held a whiskey and stared blankly at the murals.
Before I could say anything, she thunked a Budweiser in front of me and was off, snatching the caps off bottles, collecting cash, doling out coasters with flips of her wrists.
Back a moment later, she asked, “How’s that treating you?”