When she looked up, it was with that smile, and I felt something squeeze my chest.
#
Pamela's smile.
I used to babysit my little cousin when he was four or five. A good kid, but he got into stuff. One time, I found him in his parents room. He'd gotten hold of my aunt's lighter, and was holding the lace curtains in one hand and the Bic in the other, the pale flame just inches away. He had a look of intense concentration, like he was doing math problems in his head.
I shouted, and he dropped the lighter and looked up, caught between the joy of his private world and the panic of the real one. He explained, without a hint of guilt, that he was trying to make more lace—he thought the intricate holes must be made by fire, and he wanted to poke some more.
Pamela's smile is like that. Like she sees a secret the rest of us don't, a dangerous, wondrous secret. And every time she smiles, you think this time it might break free.
Only it never does.
#
The dying sun made the river sparkle like blood, warmed the metal of the wheelchair.
"Our place." Pamela turned to look at me. "Do you remember?"
Do I remember.
#
After the gomae, after the pad khee mao and the red curry, after the bottle of wine and the sweet Thai coffee, Pamela wanted ice cream.
"I know this shop," she said. "They have gelato, the real stuff like you get in Italy."
I raised my eyebrows and the collar of my jacket. "It's fifteen degrees out."
"Have you ever had real gelato?"
The place was out on Division, a twenty-minute ride. I kept glancing at her just in time to catch her glancing at me. The third time it happened, we both broke into laughter, and then she reached over and took my hand, our fingers interlacing as though we'd done it a hundred times.
Gelato is smoother than ice cream, and comes in more flavors. I had a scoop of white chocolate and one of pistachio. Pamela ordered espresso, sour cherry, and pumpkin.
"You're kidding, right?"
"Why?"
"That's the weirdest mix I ever heard."
"I want them all. Why choose?" She worked her cone like a project, licking in small, steady strokes to maintain the shape, rolling it around her lips.
It was a little distracting, yes.
Afterwards, we went for a walk. A walk, in the middle of January, the streets buried in dirty sludge, the concrete icy, the wind cutting. We went for a walk and I put my arm around her and she fit her body into mine and neither of us shivered. She told me about her writing, how she'd sold one book, a mystery novel, and had a second almost finished. Told me about childhood, her parents splitting up when she was young. How that had never made sense to her, the idea that they changed their minds. If she ever got married, that was it, all or nothing, till death parted. She told me that she danced ballet when she was a teenager, and that her favorite color was avocado, and that her first kiss was with a ten-year-old girlfriend, and I held her and could have listened all night.
But it would have been better if I didn't.
#
My apartment was too small and hers was too far from my job, so we found a new place, a bungalow pulled back from the street, large and private, the ceilings at Wonderland angles. Pamela turned the second bedroom into a writing den, hanging photographs of crime scenes and a dry-erase board that traced the unhappy fate of her protagonists.
We played house. On the weekend, we built a nation of two and ruled it from the king-size bed. Dirty breakfast plates piled on the floor beside paperback thrillers and the New York Times. We'd watch the Spanish channel and make up our own stories. Once we spent all day pretending I was a pilot down behind enemy lines, and she was the naughty interrogator trying to make me talk. She giggled while we shopped for shiny boots and leather gloves, but didn't break character after she put them on.
It was spring when we found the bridge, and by then, Pamela was all I wanted.
We were taking a walk. Funny, a lot of the milestones in our relationship involved walking. Sometimes irony is so neat you just want to shoot yourself.
The park was one of those pleasantly fake spots where the paths wander but the trees are well-disciplined. We must have been through it a hundred times. But that morning was the first we spotted the trail. Pamela took one look at it, smiled, and then bet me I couldn't catch her.
It was a thin dirt track that wound under branches and around bushes, the kind with something always snapping out to catch your face. She ran like a little girl, a doe, light on her feet and quick, and it was all I could do to keep her in sight, much less catch her. But every time I heard her laugh, I pushed a little faster through the tangle of woods.
Then, suddenly, sunlight. I slowed as I stepped from the line of trees. A ridge of gravel ballast crested in front of me, dull steel railroad tracks running along it. I shaded my eyes against the sudden brilliance.