He likes everything about her. He’s tried to find a profile or some part of her he could dislike, a bump on the nose, for instance, or not find faultless, but it’s all faultless: nose, lips, eyes, hair, teeth, legs, arms, fingers, nails (no crap on them and not choppy or uneven), breasts, hips, stomach from what he can make out, waist, rear … the name, though: Sage. Not faultless. Speaks well, big bright smile, pleasant personality, chipper, friendly, though no fake, doesn’t give them the bum’s rush, as his dad used to say — she has other tables, is obviously busy, yet stops to talk, listen, suggest, answer the kids’ questions generously, laughs a lot but not heehaw-like … it would be nice, moonlight, cool night, the whole works, just a comfortable unsticky night, the air — smell of it, he means; sounds of the insects — not the biting of insects, though; so you slap on some repellent — even the scent of that on her; especially that scent, perhaps — walking with her, that’s what he’s saying would be nice: after work, around the grounds, in town for a movie, whatever the town: Southwest or Northeast or Bar Harbor, or for pizza and beers anywhere, back to the rooms they stay at on the property, but now he remembers that server last year saying the staff quarters were a short walk off; sneaking into her room if you have to sneak to do it — the restaurant management might have some proscriptions about this. Doubts it, or not enforced; keep the help happy and wanting to stay past Labor Day. Holding her hand outside, kissing her outside, furtively brushing against her at work: “Need any help filling those water pitchers?” Holding and kissing and with no constraint brushing and touching every part of her inside the room or at some hidden spot in the woods. Falling in love, swimming at Long Pond or Echo Lake or some other warmwater place he doesn’t now know of on the island here. Just imagine her in a bathing suit: lying on her stomach on the sand reading, turning to the sun or him with her top off in a cove it seems only they go to, running into the cold water with him at Sand Beach on their day off if they get them on the same day. Forgot to ask the server last year if they get days off, but it’s probably a law that a full-time worker has to, once a week at least, and after a while he bets you can switch around your days off to where you and your girlfriend get them together.
“What are you looking at?” his wife says, and he knows she’s caught him staring at Sage passing their table and means, Why are you looking at that girl so openly? and he says, “Oh, our waitress? It’s just she reminds me of someone and I can’t figure out who,” and she says, “The girl of your dreams,” and he says, “You’re that girl, or were when I first saw you, and still are the woman of my dreams, day and night and during catnaps, now that we’re married and so on … but yes, sure, if I were younger? Oh, boy, you bet. I’m saying if I were working here when I was twenty or so, still in college, feet free and fool loose, hormones up to my ears, and you were working here too … that’s what I was mainly thinking of before: how come I didn’t meet you when I most urgently needed to and not so much when — no, this isn’t true, but I’ll say it all the same — my companionable and genital exigencies, we’ll say, didn’t have to be so imperially attended to? No, that didn’t come out right,” and she says, “If you were twenty, I’d be nine, and I think that sort of behavior’s not only prohibited here but may even be frowned upon,” and he says, “But you know what I mean,” and she says, “I think I do, and I think I appreciate some of your thoughts too, but I also think you are”—and this very low—“a liar,” and he says, “Me? Mr. Honesty?” and his older daughter says, “What are you talking of, you two, and why are you calling Daddy a liar?” and he says, “Your mother whispered that, which means even if you heard you’re not supposed to give any sign you did and certainly no words,” and his daughter says, “But why did she?” and he says, “Youth, youth, wunderbar youth, don’t lose it, enjoy it, employ it, but don’t destroy it — something.” “What’s that mean?” his daughter says, and he says, “Nothing, everything, some of what’s in the in-between … I’m in my confusing Confucian period right now”—stroking an imaginary long wisp of chin beard—“and also don’t flaunt it, I should’ve added,” and his wife says to her, “First of all, don’t mistake Confucianism with confusion, indirectness, and unintelligibility. Your father was only admiring our waitress, Sage. Or not admiring her as much as trying to recall a young woman he knew many years ago who looked like her,” and his daughter says to him, “Do you think she’s pretty? I do,” and he says, “Very pretty, and she’s very nice. One day, you know, you could get a job here … in who knows how long, nine years? Eight? Then I could come here and be reminded of another very pretty girl I once knew: you at eleven,” and she says, “I wouldn’t want to work all day waitressing,” and he says, “Why not? You’d earn money for college, travel, and clothes, and you’d make lots of friends and have this entire national park to live in,” and she says, “They live here?” and he says, “Yeah, I learned this from one of our waitresses last year: in dorms or their own rooms or ones they might have to share with another girl,” and she says, “Then I’d like it. I love it here, so clean and fresh and everything. But I’d hate getting sick of popovers. And if it’s the same thing that happened to you with ice cream, then for life,” and he says, “Ice cream’s different from popovers. And I’m sure, in a place like this, so fresh and clean as you said, customers don’t stick cigarette butts in them.”