The next morning, I sat at the small round table on the patio, so I could see the pool where we met. I forced myself not to look up every time someone came through the door.
He had walked me to my door last night. He had bent over my hand but hadn't kissed it. He'd said, solemnly, "Thank you for the dance." He had handed me my wet shoes, the shoes he had fished out of the pool with a net he'd found by the lifeguard chair. He'd never asked my name. Instead, he'd called me pussycat.
"Good night, pussycat," he'd said. The usual people came to breakfast, the same guests I saw every day. Crabby Couple always ordered poached eggs, and I had to look away because, really, the sight of that runny yolk and the way they dipped their toast and didn't talk to each other made me feel so sad. Honeymoon Husband always ate alone. Nice Fat Man was on his way to Miami, he kept saying, but he still hadn't left. If you got up early for breakfast in this hotel, it could be the loneliest place in the world.
I looked at myself in my spoon. I felt like the girl I saw, upside down and fun-house looking, all stretched out of shape and foolish, just from holding so much want inside.
Then the door opened and he walked in.
He stood next to my table and smiled down at me. He was wearing light-colored trousers and a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up.
Forearms. Who knew they could be so beautiful? I looked at the worn leather of his watch strap. Everything else faded away but the blond hair on his arm against that strap.
"I was hoping you'd be here," he said. "I forgot to ask your name."
If only, if only, if only, I had a pair of sunglasses. Then I could have tilted my head back and looked at him, and he wouldn't have been able to see my eyes. I could have pretended to be mysterious — something I couldn't do with my naked, freckled face.
"Evelyn," I told him. "Evie."
"Good morning, Evie. How are your eggs?"
"Cold."
"Well, at least something's cold here. May I join you?"
He was sliding into a chair even as I was nodding. He picked up a napkin and shook it out. "Peter Coleridge. Glad to meet you." He signaled the waiter. "Bring another plate of eggs for my companion —"
"No, really—"
"Toast and coffee for me, as hot as you've got, and orange juice, cold as you can make it," he said. Once again, I admired how he talked, not ordering the waiter, exactly, but there was an undertone that made the waiter say "Yes, sir" very snappily and hurry off.
Top drawer. That's what my mother would call it.
"I drove in last night," he said. "I couldn't sleep, it was too hot. So I went outside. I was feeling melancholy. Then I danced with a beautiful girl, and I felt better. What's your story?"
He looked at me expectantly, as if I was the kind of girl who had a story.
What would Barbara Stanwyck say? She always played a tough-talking dame. "It's no fairy tale, mister," she'd shoot back, and Dana Andrews or Ray Milland would say "That's okay, baby, 'cause I'm no prince."
"I don't have a story," I said. "I'm still waiting for one."
"Well," he said, "that can be a very interesting place to be." His long fingers reached out for his coffee cup, which the waiter had just filled. "I'm thinking of going down to Delray for lunch today," he said.
Delray. The offhand way he said it made it sound like the nightclub El Morocco in Manhattan. I was sure that it had to be the most stylish place in Florida.
"Where is that?" I asked.
"Just a bit south of here. It's a town where people actually live, as opposed to here. People only live here in the winter. So Delray is a bit more lively."
"Oh."
"My point being, would you like to join me?"
I had two thoughts, and they didn't match. The first was how green his eyes were. That was a good thought. The second was, I must have heard wrong.
Of course it was a no-go. My parents would never let me go off with a strange man — because Peter (the name! perfect!) was a man, not a boy — and if he knew I was only fifteen he would take back the invitation, pronto. But didn't I look fifteen, sitting there in my blue skirt and brown sandals?
I was saved from answering when the waiter put a plate of eggs in front of me and brought him toast and juice. The juice glass sat in a little metal dish surrounded by ice. The steam clouded up from my eggs. I took a bite and burned my mouth.
He took a sip of coffee. He looked at me over the rim. "Any girl who throws her shoes into a pool is someone I'd like to get to know."
I was sure that if he knew me better, I'd bore him. Girls like me bored young men. I'd been known to bore twelve-year-old Tommy Heckleman, from down the block.
"I can't," I said. "I'm fifteen."
He took his spoon and scooped out marmalade onto his toast. "Don't fifteen-year-olds eat lunch?”
“I'd have to ask my parents.”
“Then ask them.”
“They'll say no."
"Then don't ask them. It's an old army trick."
A page turned in my mind. It had never occurred to me before that I could do something without permission. "May I" was a way of life for a girl like me.
"Think fast!" Tommy Heckleman would yell as he'd fire a baseball at my head.
But I didn't have to make a decision, because right at that moment my mother walked out onto the patio. I didn't have time to prepare; she saw us immediately and headed over. She had her dark glasses on, and her blond hair was still a little tangled from sleep, as if she'd just barely passed a brush over it. Just my luck — she was never up this early.
Peter stood. He said good morning. She said good morning and arched an eyebrow at me. "This is Peter Coleridge," I said. "Peter, this is my mom."
This was wrong, somehow, and I knew it. This was the way I introduced friends to my mom in Queens. Surely there was a more polite way to do it now, a way I'd never learned.
She sank into the empty chair at our table.
"Pleased to meet you," Peter said. Then he explained, "I met Evie last night," as he sat down.
Mom twisted around, looking for the waiter. "I came down for coffee," she said. Her voice sounded thick, as if she wasn't quite awake.
He was all business then, raising a hand for the waiter, who instantly appeared. "Another cup," he said, "and make it hot." Then he turned back to Mom and said, "I come here in the winter. This is the first time I've been in the fall. They weren't open during the war."
"Nothing was open during the war," Mom replied. The waiter brought her coffee and she dunked three cubes of sugar in it. Sugar rationing had just ended that summer and we still weren't used to having as much as we wanted. She stirred it, her spoon clanking, and then took a long sip. She closed her eyes briefly, then regarded Peter again. "You look too young to have served."
"Should I be pleased or insulted?”
“Take your pick."
"I'm twenty-three. I was just telling Evie that there's more to see down here than Palm Beach."
"I've been to West Palm." Mom shrugged her tanned shoulders. "We bought a pineapple."
"There's a place down in Delray that will cure what ails you."
"What makes you think you know what ails me?"
"I can only guess. I was just telling Evie about Delray, about taking a run down there. Why don't you join us?"
The conversation swiveled back to me. Mom regarded me for a moment, as if she'd just noticed I was there. "Where?" she asked.
"A place called the Tap Room. Ever been there?"
"The world is full of places I haven't been," Mom said.
"Gets a good crowd. Locals, the airmen from the base. Though I warn you — if you do come, you just might start a rumor that Lana Turner came in."
"Lana Turner ..." Mom rolled her eyes, but you could tell she was sucking that compliment down with her coffee. Lana Turner was every man's dream, sultry and blond. It was Lana filling out a sweater at a drugstore that got her a Hollywood contract.