“I thought you left because it was too cold.”
“It was boring, and one of the reasons was that Shane was ignoring me and…” Ugh, I sounded as mature as thirteen-year-old me. Back then, I’d told everyone at school that I welcomed the idea of a violent death, like jumping into a volcano (we didn’t have those in Michigan). I’d believed that it would make me sound super cool and mysterious. Surprise! My plan had not worked.
“I thought he waved at me to sit with him in the bleachers but then I realized that he was only saying hello,” I said. “He ignored me and I felt really dumb and left.”
“But then he came to Walter’s to ask you out.”
“Maybe he really wants a guide. He thinks that I know my way around the area, since I have lived here for over twelve-hundred weeks. I calculated how many I’ve been alive and subtracted one for when my class went to Washington, DC,” I explained. “Sucks to be him, since I spent all that time in this exact spot, our restaurant.” I glanced back at the kitchen but my dad had already gone home.
“This is ourfamilybusiness,” she told me. “Without it, what would we have?”
I thought about that on my way over to pick up Shane Bishop the next day (I would drive, I had told him, because then I’d be in charge, and obviously my sister hadn’t cared that I’d taken our car since she was hibernating in her room). Miraculously, my brother Max was subbing for me today at Walter’s and I was glad that the Junior Woodsmen were in Mississippi to play. Max would need to go outside and smoke, and then he would need to answer a text, he would need to make a call…there was always something that pulled him away from what he was supposed to be doing at the restaurant. Even with him there “working,” my mom was always doing everything herself. But with fewer customers, that would be ok. I hoped.
As I drove, I also thought about ways in which Shane could help me. If he wasn’t willing or able to make introductions to the Woodsmen players, then maybe he could get me a job. But I had looked up the team’s organizational structure and had discovered that his position as a scout was near the bottom.
It made sense since he was young and from more reading that I’d done, it also seemed as if his job was generally considered as an entry point into the coaching world. You had opportunities for advancement, if you were good and lucky…on the other hand, it didn’t pay great. The hours were long, too, and both things were very familiar to me as someone chained to a restaurant. Of course, he got to travel and I did have those chains.
The place he lived reflected his income level, just as our residence also reflected ours. Our porch was falling off into the front yard and under the snow, that yard was only a rutted dirt patch. He lived in a little house that looked similarly decrepit,with dirty windows and two shutters that were barely hanging on. As I texted him that I was here, several men came out, also looking decrepit and pretty angry, too. Shane followed and I saw them all talking for a minute—“talking” wasn’t exactly the right word, because a short guy started yelling and waving his arms in a way that reminded me a lot of my father. Three of them stormed off to the various vehicles parked around me and Shane walked over to my car. His cheeks were flushed, maybe from the cold but maybe from anger.
“My roommates and I are having a disagreement about paying the bills,” he explained as he got in and I asked what was going on. “This situation isn’t working out. It was cheap and it was easy when I showed up in Michigan a few months ago. It’s less easy now that we’re arguing about money and the kitchen has become a health hazard.”
“We could look at apartments today,” I suggested. “Here.” I opened my phone and showed him the listings I had already saved on it. “I always know what’s available and which one I would choose. I go around to look at them and do research.”
“Why do you do that? Are you planning to move?”
“No.” I couldn’t, but maybe I would be able to someday.
“Let’s do something fun. I had a great idea,” he said.
“So did I,” I told him, and then we both voiced our plans at the same time.
“Snowshoeing.”
“Touring a lighthouse.”
We looked at each other.
“You want to go walking around in the woods for a few hours?” I asked. “I’m not really dressed for it.” I was wearing my cutest clothes, not my “tramping around outside” stuff.
Shane looked over at me. “I guess I should have discussed it with you before renting the equipment. I also had to guess your shoe size but I thought you must have big feet.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re tall,” he said. “Five-ten? Ten and a half?”
I was five-ten flat, but I usually rounded up to six feet to make myself sound more impressive. “My extremities correspond to my height,” I informed him.
“A lot of my job is visual. I look at foot size, hand size, wingspan, height, weight, and everything else,” he mentioned. Then he talked about ideal measurements in sports, but he didn’t say anything else about my big feet. Which they weren’t, not really.
While he nattered away about body fat percentages, I made the final decision about our activity and since I was driving, I set our course toward a lighthouse on the Leelanau Peninsula. I remembered going there on a field trip many, many years before.
I realized that he was done talking about football bodies when he asked, “You don’t have to be at the restaurant? I thought you might get pulled back in.”
“Why did you think that?”
“They seem to depend on you,” he noted.
“You’ve only eaten there twice,” I pointed out, but I saw him in my peripheral vision and he was shaking his head.
