Knox
“Okay.” I squint at Sylvie’s phone. “Next right.”
“This one?”
“The one after this.”
“I think we’re in kind of a crappy location. We were lucky to get anything at all”—we bump and judder over the washboard road—“this time of year.”
“Did you not reserve us the penthouse campsite?”
“Stop.”
“With a champagne bucket and a butler.”
“Stop. I don’t have a credit card. I had to reserve cash-on-arrival. Also, how is it you think it’s the ‘Errors Tour’ but you know about penthouse suites with champagne buckets and butlers? Your knowledge of the world is wildly inconsistent.”
“I think you know the answer to that by now.”
“Books, huh.”
“Books.”
“You read a real variety of stuff.”
“Any port in a storm,” I say.
“Any—?”
“Port in a storm. Haven’t heard that phrase? It just means, like, you’ll take whatever you can get in a pinch. Any book I could get my hands on, I’d read.”
“I kinda surmised that. It sounds like a very old-timey, Moby- Dick–ish phrase.”
“You know, I actually don’t think it is in Moby-Dick.”
“Which of course you’ve read. Was it in the penthouse butler book?”
“Not that one either. Not that I even remember which one it was. I read a lot of romance novels.”
A few seconds of silence as Sylvie stares down the road ahead, illuminated by headlights, dense blackness on either side. “So I’m a port in a storm for you,” she says finally. A teasing lilt to her voice.
“Well, now see, when you say it like that it sounds negative. You’ve definitely been a port in a storm. You’re not just any port in a storm. I’m saying ‘port’ and ‘storm’ so much the words are starting to lose their meaning in my head.”
“Why does that happen?”
“It’s like they’re bars of soap and they get all lathery and slippery as you handle them.”
We pass a couple of RVs. Sylvie pulls up to a numbered campsite. “I think this is us.” She cuts off the ignition, and we sit for a moment without moving while the van ticks and cools.
I open my door and step down into the summer night. The air smells clean and foggy, maybe from early dew, maybe from the proximity to the Great Lake. I set to work pitching my tent by the light of the van’s headlights. It’s hard with only one hand working very well.
“Thanks for driving,” I call to Sylvie. She’s in the van, busying herself with something.
“No worries. I mean, I was planning on flying solo this whole time. Not like I was gonna split driving duties with Winslow.”
“Because like me, he doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
“Exactly. How would we explain if we got pulled over? Except for that, no problem. Hey.”
“Hey you.”
Sylvie jumps out of the van and strides over. “Dude. What’s my actual deal? I didn’t even offer to help you set up camp.”
“Here, if you’ll just grab this end of the pole—”
“This one?”
“My pole. There you go. Stick it in that little slot there.”
“I really hope no one is overhearing this conversation.”
“I know, right? How embarrassing not to know how to pitch a tent.”
“Yeah, that’s why, Knox.”
We finish quickly. I kneel on the nylon floor and unroll my sleeping bag, wincing and sucking in breath as I accidentally put weight on my broken arm. I sit cross-legged and Sylvie kneels beside me. She smells like clean laundry.
“You okay?” Her hand rests on my good arm. I enjoy it being there even as I fight back a wave of nausea from the pain.
I swallow hard and nod. “I’ll be okay in a sec.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“Like?”
“Like I don’t know. Distract you with magic tricks?”
“You know magic tricks?”
“No, I don’t know why I said that.”
“Do you know the trick where it looks like you’re pulling your finger off?”
“I’m not good at it, but I’ll try if that would distract you.”
“Will you just keep your hand where it is? Touch takes my mind off it.”
“Then why did you suggest the pulling-off-my-finger trick?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a long day and I’m tired and we’re both saying things we don’t know why we said . . . them.”
We both laugh. Sylvie edges closer and my heartbeat accelerates. “Here. If human contact helps, maybe more will help.” She puts her arm around me. Her hair whispers on my face.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “More is helping.”