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"Yes." I said. smiling.
He stopped working. "That's not why you really came here, is it? I mean, if someone set you on us deliberately--"
"Oh, no," I protested. "I'm doing an entirely different project... it's for my sociology class."
That wall began to build again as his eyes turned cold and skeptical.
"Besides," I said, it wouldn't be an honest analysis if I snuck up on someone. It would be the worst sort of betrayal. You have to win trust in order to understand people and their problems and especially if you want to help them."
"How do you know so much about it?" he asked. "You sound like you're more than just a student."
"My father was a psychiatrist," I said.
"Oh." He looked relieved. Was he worried I had been a patient? "Poor you." he added, and returned to his work.
"Why poor me?"
"It's enough to have people analyzing you when you leave home, but to have it day in and day out like my mother had to bear, that has to be difficult."
It wasn't easy being a teenager." I admitted.
He nodded. "I'll bet it wasn't. It was hell for me.," he said.
"Why?"
Again, he gave me a look suggesting I had asked another dumb question. He didn't reply. He worked. I watched a sailboat turning to head back to wherever it had come from. The beehive sound of a motorboat made me think of Thatcher for a moment, and then I saw an airplane dragging a banner advertising a special at some restaurant.
"Take a break." he said after another ten or fifteen minutes, and opened his insulated bag to get the cold lemonade. He poured me a glass.
"Thank you."
He poured himself one and sat near me. "Have you and Thatcher become an item already?"
"What?"
He turned, and for a moment he seemed like a violin strung too tightly, ready to twang at the least careless touch.
"Why is it women have to play it so coy? You know what I mean."
"I don't think it's just women who play it coy." I snapped back at him. I held my breath. Would he
go into a tantrum at my stem tone and end it all?
He surprised me with a smile. "You're right, Men can be just as affectedly modest, or phony. I should say-- especially Thatcher."
"You don't like him?"
"I don't care about him enough to like or dislike him. I just know who he is, how he was raised, and what he does for a living."
"Didn't he help you and your mother?"
"Yes, but it wasn't for any altruistic reason. He at his fees and his notoriety being the attorney for the madwoman and her mad artist son, I'm sure."
"He doesn't seem like that sort of a person. He's quite critical of those who are like that around here, in fact. Sometimes he sounds so critical I wonder why he continues to live here."
"Have you asked him?"
'Yes.'
