There is a discombobulated end to this nice time when I notice Lulu’s phone vibrating nonstop and I sit up to find them ALL THREE ASLEEP and maybe I WAS ASLEEP TOO because the river is now blue-black and the sky is burned orange and I’m like Lulu, your phone and she jumps awake like Crap! My Mom is picking me up after her appointments in the City! and all of us scramble onto our bikes kind of groggily with Lulu worried because her Mom wanted to make the drive Upstate in Daylight and we ride very fast back to the Club which is not as far away as it seemed going the other direction. A Silver Minivan is waiting outside the Club Gates and a voice calls, “Just put your bike in back, Honey” and the rear door lifts open and Lulu puts her bike inside and climbs in the backseat and her Mom waves to us looking very normal and not like a Prisoner, and they drive away and I never get to say goodbye to Lulu or hug her which I assumed we would do after everything that happened today, it feels incomplete.
I stand with Chris and Colin feeling close to them now, but our bond is a bond of missing Lulu, without her there’s a hollow between us because even though she’s younger and lives Upstate and has strange Facts in her life she became the core of us in just one afternoon, it is miraculous. How did she do it?
I’m like When will she come back? and Colin is like Not for a while kind of gloomily and Chris is like Molly, you should play D and D with us, my Uncle Jules is the GM, he’s awesome and I hesitate because this will mean being next door to our old house from Before and maybe even seeing the Dunns its Occupiers, but I say Yes I would love that.
Colin and Chris ride away but I’m having dinner at the Club tonight with Dad and Brian and Great Aunt Francine who used to jump horses at the CCC back when it was in the actual Country rather than the Suburbs although now she has a walker and is ninety-three. I text Mom asking can she please bring me a summer dress when she drops off Brian and then I leave my bike in the Bike Lot and walk back through the big iron Gates with CCC in gold script and the temperature is ten degrees cooler beyond those Gates and the grass is wet from the sprinklers that are still on in the distance, I see their sparkling plumes and hear their pulsing noise.
There are no Kids at the club at this in-between time, even the ones coming back for dinner are home changing clothes, which means there’s nowhere I’m supposed to be and no one I’m supposed to be WITH and no way to be left out because there’s nothing to be left out OF. I am ALONE AND PEACEFUL and that combination is so unusual, it’s like meeting someone for the first time. I take off my sandals and walk barefoot over the damp grass past the Wading Pool where I wore my floaties with Mom and the Playground where I learned how to slide down a slide, all of which was Before, and I slip through a thicket of trees to the Golf Course which is off-limits for safety reasons but it’s too dim to golf now. When I emerge from that thicket everything opens up like I’ve reached another Land, it’s like going from Before to After in one second, the sand traps are pink from sunset and the Golf Course grass is warm and spongy under my feet, and I sit down on the grass and I’m like Hello Molly, it’s nice to sit with you here, actually saying the words out loud but very softly, and I hug my warm knees and look up at the sky and there is the moon Lulu pointed out earlier except it’s bigger now and still fragile-looking like it’s made out of sugar or paper and could break or tear easily, but already it’s brighter than before, and it isn’t even night.
Lulu the Spy, 2032
1
People rarely look the way you expect them to, even when you’ve seen pictures.
The first thirty seconds in a person’s presence are the most important.
If you’re having trouble perceiving and projecting, focus on projecting.
Necessary ingredients of a successful projection: giggles; bare legs; shyness.
The goal is to be both irresistible and invisible.
When you succeed, a certain sharpness will go out of his eyes.
2
Some powerful men actually call their beauties “Beauty.”