The Summer Guest

“You mean it?”

He seemed about to laugh. “You want the job or not?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“You won’t get rich in here. I know you know that, but I’m just saying. We only pay the minimum, a buck forty an hour. That and tips, of course. And I can’t give you the di

“Anything is fine. Really.”

He took a peppermint from a wicker basket on the hostess station and popped it into his mouth. Then he leveled his gaze at me. “Listen,” he said quietly, sucking on the candy, “I’ve got to ask. There isn’t anything I should know about you, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong. But not many girls come in and say they’re down to their last thirty dollars, or whatever it was. There wouldn’t be… anyone looking for you, would there? Like, say, a husband or boyfriend, something like that? You can tell me if there is.”

“No, sir. I just want to work.”

He looked at me another moment, deciding what to believe, and finally ended our negotiation with a crisp nod. “Okay, then. But it’s Deck, all right? Like the deck of a boat.”

“Deck. Got it.”

“Ten thirty sharp, tomorrow. Black pants if you have ’em, or else you can pick up a cheap pair at the army-navy down the street. The white shirt you have on should do fine.”

I felt myself smiling. “You won’t be sorry.”

“I’m guessing not.” He turned on his heel to go. “Sorry. Stupid of me, but I forgot to ask your name.”

“ Alice.” I’d said it without thinking. It was my mother’s middle name. He was being so nice, I felt a little bad about the lie. But I also liked the sound of it, the new taste of it on my tongue: Alice. Who was Alice?

“Okay, Alice,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

As easy as that, I got my wish, stepped through the door from my old life and into another. I was no longer Lucy, but Alice: Alice, the waitress from Portland. I started work the next day, as promised, ten thirty on the dot with a smile on my face and pants so crisply new they rustled when I walked; a week later I was working the di

It wasn’t until the next day that I finally wrote my parents a letter. I didn’t want to lie, but the truth was too hard to explain-I didn’t even have words for it myself-so I simply told them that I had decided I needed to set out on my own for a bit, that I was safe and well, and where they could reach me if they needed to and that they should not tell Joe where I was if he called. I tucked a twenty-dollar bill in the envelope, and explained that it was money I had pla

My new life felt simple, clean, uncluttered, like a child’s dollhouse, or the pages of an empty book. I worked the di

If it’s true that I was sometimes homesick-a sudden ache, nearly physical, which always took me by surprise-it was also the case that I was happy, and that this happiness felt sweeter for my loneliness. The world seemed to have forgotten me, forgotten Lucy, and when I thought about the people and places of my old life, the love I felt for them was tinged with nostalgia, as if I were recalling them across a span of many years. The sensation was so new to me I wondered if it could possibly last, until one deep, cold night in the first week of March, when I awakened to the feeling that someone was watching me. It was late, after three A.M. Not someone, I thought: something. I rose quickly in my icy apartment, and when I went to my window I was so startled by what I found that I forgot all about the fear that had pulled me from bed. A great, billowing apparition of blue-green light, like pool water, but shot with flecks of gold, hung over the sleeping city, folded like a drape. It moved back and forth, pushed by an invisible wind-a wind of light and stars. I knew what I was looking at; I had seen the aurora borealis before, of course; yet at that moment, standing by my window, I felt as if I were witnessing something far more: the purest light of angels in their heaven, remembering the world.

The next day, a Saturday, I rose early, did a load of laundry in the basement, swam my usual mile. It was just before five when I arrived at the Lobster Tank. Only a few customers were eating, mostly older folks in for the early bird four-dollar special. I took a clean apron and a tray from the pile by the dishwasher and got to work. By six the place was packed. I was putting up an order on the clips when I turned and saw Deck watching me.

“What? Is there something in my teeth?”

“Somebody’s in a good mood.”

The bell rang behind me: my order. I dressed the plates up with little custard cups of tartar sauce, a piece of lettuce, and lemon wedges, then hoisted the tray onto my shoulder.

“Deck, what?”

“You. Smiling like that.”

I laughed, embarrassed. But it was true. “Okay, I’ll cut it out.”

“No need. One thing I know, a woman only smiles like that when she’s in love. Or so May tells me.”

May was Deck’s wife. She always picked Deck up at the end of the night, waiting outside in her little orange Pinto while we reset the tables; I’d met her in the parking lot my first week on the job. Twice they’d had me out to their house for di