“It’s a Dutch door.” The top half was open while the bottom was closed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A Dutch door.”
“Yes, I heard you. That ‘I beg your pardon?’ was not, like, ‘Repeat what you literally said,’ more like, ‘What is it for?’”
“I don’t really know. Maybe the Dutch like to walk around their houses with no pants on.”
“Ha ha, funny, but probably there is some clever function we just can’t think of because we aren’t as smart or efficient as the Dutch.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “I can tell you”—here was another memory—“that Allie and I used it to play store.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of us would be the storekeeper and the other the customer. The customer queued up outside. Mind you, there was only ever one customer, so the queue was very short. When the store opened, the customer would use currency—usually leaves—to buy products. Usually books.”
“Aww!”
Another memory was coming. “But sometimes pop.”
“Pop!”
“My dad did not countenance pop.”
“No, of course not.”
He wondered how she could say that with such certainty.
“This was back when we were young enough that we didn’t have our own ways to procure contraband. Allie’s dad used to go to town every Saturday to do his laundry. He was a devoted collector of quarters for this purpose, because the laundromat didn’t have a change machine. It did have a vending machine, though, and pop was seventy-five cents. So if you put a dollar bill in, you got a quarter back. He used to bring home two cans every Saturday afternoon, one for me and one for Allie. He would say that our pop raised the last two quarters he needed for the dryer.”
“Aww. I bet buying you guys pop was actually the point.”
He hadn’t thought that at the time, but he suspected she was right. “So he would bring the pop home and—”
“What kind?”
“Of pop?”
“Yeah. It’s hard for me to imagine you, even a young you, imbibing a mass-produced product from an evil corporate overlord such as Coca-Cola.”
He had to think, but only for a minute. “Sprite for Allie and orange Crush for me.”
“Orange Crush!”
“What’s wrong with orange Crush?”
“Nothing. I just haven’t thought about orange Crush in like twenty years. Also, if I was going to assign you a pop to like, it would be something a lot less cloying. Dr Pepper, maybe. But anyway, let’s hear the rest of the story.”
“Whoever was playing shopkeeper would take the two cans and open the store. The customer would come and make a point of examining the options, but of course if I was the customer, I’d ‘buy’ my orange Crush, and if she was, she’d ‘buy’ her Sprite.”
“And then what?”
He had to think, but again, only momentarily; the memories were coming with more ease now, and they didn’t feel so discombobulating. “We’d go over here.” He led her around the side of the house where the hammock was and lined himself up and sat. The hammock was wide and made of rope, so there had been plenty of room for both of them. “We’d lie perpendicular like this so we could push off the ground with our feet.” He demonstrated. “The point wasn’t relaxation but making it into almost a carnival ride. We’d get going as high and fast as we could and then we’d wait until it stopped on its own before we were ‘allowed’ to open the pops. It was a self-inflicted exercise in delayed gratification, though for what purpose, I’m not sure.” He shrugged as he used one foot to stop the swinging. “It was just part of the game.”
Blair was standing over the hammock, and the sun filtering through the trees had a stippling effect on her skin and hair and clothing. Little bits of sunshine shimmered all over her.
Before he could overthink it, he pulled her down to join him. He wasn’t sure what his aim was. Well, that wasn’t true. But it wasn’t as if he thought they would get it on right here on the hammock.
