Page 183 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Ships in the Night

I’ll bet JLE would have been great at that one, Eddie thought,
taking another swallow of his beer and turning his attention
once again to Cathy and the other players.

Cathy stood close to the young man playing the game.
She held a beer in her hand. With a few beers under his own
belt, Eddie got up the courage to join the crowd watching the
game. He stood behind Cathy, close enough to smell her hair.
It had the sweetness of a recent washing.

“Hi,” he said. She wheeled about.

“Oh, hi,” she said, making room for him to squeeze in next
to her.

“Want some beer?” she asked, holding out her bottle.

“Thanks, I’ve got some,” he said, proffering a toast.

* * *
Later, they sat in the back room and talked. To Eddie, she
was charming. She had just turned eighteen, graduated school
in June, was getting ready to go to college in Boston in the fall,
cleaned houses during the summer for some celebrities who
weekended in town — they paid her well, she said — she was
a vegetarian, loved to hike, and she thought Eddie was “cute”.

Eddie, who conveniently forgot to mention that he was
forty years old and had a sixteen-year-old daughter, was thor-
oughly entranced by the young woman, despite her age and
his pangs of guilt. She talked, he listened. What she said didn’t
matter. He was captivated by her youthfulness.

He reached across the table and took her hands in his.

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