‘Go explore, Meg’
‘Don’t follow her; she’s my neighbour,’ José jokes to another man in the parking lot as I pass. ‘¡Hola José! ¿Qué tal?’ I call back to him, not really waiting to hear his answer. His attempt at a joke belies the fact that he is probably thinking about following me. José means well—I think—and genuinely offers help and support. And chocolates. At least he hasn’t offered me any more chocolates recently. It’s interesting to me to think that he thinks this is what women want. Maybe some women do want it, but I think most of us would rather just feel safe.
I am a little lonely on my walk, I’ll admit. I think about whether I want to call anyone, and I don’t, necessarily. I talked with Catherine yesterday. I text Ryan, idly, and he says he can call me later, but it’ll be after 10. That will work well; I’m planning to be back by 8 so that Peter and I can finish some co-working together, and 10 would be a nice boundary for bedtime.
I wander farther into Peacock Park than I have in the past, up a slight rise and past a forsaken beach volleyball court. There is a tree with a serpentine trunk, undulating up and then down towards the ground before turning up and then down once again. Of course I climb it, but it’s more like a walk, with it sideways like this. A tree traverse.
I start out on my usual long walk, looping around the field where once again soccer practice is ongoing. When I walk out onto the boardwalk, I chat with a couple men, friends, one just arriving, maybe they’re fly-fishing. They invite me to join them, and while I like the idea of sipping a 40 from a paper bag because it could make for a better story, it’s still too early for those sorts of shenanigans. Maybe I’ll catch them at the end of my walk. They’ll be waiting, they tell me.
Past the park and across the piers, I do happen to witness a fly-fishing catch. At least I think that’s what it is, but it isn’t like what you see on rivers. Maybe it’s just fishing, no rod or reel but all line. ‘Mira mira mira,’ he says excitedly, calling his son to him. I smile and cheer them on.
I stop at the next turn to stare out at the blush of the sunset on the clouds.
‘Isn’t the pink just beautiful?’ a woman walking the opposite directions stops to ask me.
‘I’ve been taking pictures; it’s really magical.’
‘ I’ve been coming here for years,’ she reminisces, ‘I live here!’ she clarifies. ‘The Grove is a special place.’
The Grove is a special place.
‘I don’t live here, but the Grove is a special place,’ I agree.
She asks where I do live, what I do for a living that brings me to the Grove. I tell her, broadly. I live in Boston. I work in tech. I have the privilege of being able to work from anywhere, and what brings me to the Grove is the sun. I had to get out of the dark of Boston this month. When she asks what in tech I do—possibly trying to discern the extent to which I am in crypto or not, Miami having been a hotbed of crypto activity recently—I explain.
‘Ohhh, like ChatGPT?’ she asks.
‘You have no idea how close that is, yes. Like ChatGPT. Everyone is talking about ChatGPT.’ Work emails flash through my mind.
Her son is 18. He’s in college—well, no, he’s not in college yet, but he’s taking college-level finance courses. He’s interested in finance. He attends a finance magnet for these courses. He’s way ahead of his time, had an Oculus since forever apparently. He sees a future for the metaverse. Maybe her son will some day find a way to work in both finance and the metaverse. Certainly crazier ideas have found funding.
She interrupts our conversation to greet passersby by name, this whole community surrounding me in motion.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jennifer, what’s yours?’
‘Meg.’
‘I love that name! Meg,’ she repeats, A good, strong nickname repeating in my head. ‘Get over there before the pink fades!’ she exhorts me, and I want to. We go to part ways, pausing for a moment to consider how we’ll do so. We both go in for a hug.
The pink is fading fast, so I hurry around another marina to catch the glow. As it dissipates, I continue, picking my way through the part of the walkway that’s still under construction, watching my step, to emerge across the parking lot from Monty’s. As I glance at the people walking the opposite direction I see a familiar face.
‘Alan?’ and he looks up at me.
‘Meg!’
‘What’re you up to?’
‘I’ve just finished a shift. My eighth shift this week…’ he starts, and I tally. It’s only Thursday. There are only 7 days in a week. ‘It’s why I haven’t texted you back.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I wave. ‘It’s only Thursday. I’m sorry you’ve been that busy.’
‘Work work work,’ he says, and then adds, ‘You know who I ran into who was very intrigued by you?’ I have an idea. ‘Andrew! Can you believe he’s 50!? What a handsome man. How does he look that good at that age? And you have a date?’
‘Dinner,’ I correct him, slightly. ‘Just dinner. And he knows that. I was very clear.’
‘What are you up to?’ Alan asks.
‘I’m on a walk. I’m just going down here. Walk with me.’
Alan finishes his beer in its plastic cup, and catches me eyeing it. ‘I’ve just got a walking beer,’ he starts, adding that you can walk with a beer in Coconut Grove.
‘I didn’t know that!’ I add, incredulously. Alan has failed me, and he acknowledges this too.
He joins me on my walk, and I lead us past the parking lot, towards the street and Kennedy Park.
‘So you went to Vicky’s,’ he tells me, reiterating how I met Andrew. ‘How did you end up there?’
I take a deep breath. We’re just entering the park, with its rubber walkways that feel so nice on my feet and my joints. I guide Alan around the entrance and we bounce for a second on the squishy path.
‘I accidentally…’ and I tell Alan the story. All of it. As briefly as possible. Well, not all of it. As much as fits into half a lap of Kennedy Park. I begin in the middle: feelings. And end at the end, or wherever we are now. June, September, October. December. Last Friday. Last Saturday.
He stops as I start, trying to hold himself in, but doubling over despite himself. Struck by the brazen honestly of a nearly perfect stranger. He can’t get over that I’m just telling it like it is. But it feels good, because it’s true; it’s the story.
‘That happened to me once too,’ he empathises. ‘She was polyamorous, and her lifestyle didn’t work for me at the time. Little did I know…’ he adds, and I smile and nod knowingly. How we change.
We get to the end of the path. ‘Do you want to turn, or…’ he starts.
‘I walk to the end,’ I tell him, ‘And touch the pavement, then back.’ He laughs at me as I daintily touch the asphalt on the other side of the path.
‘Perfectly executed inner child,’ he tells me, and it is. We double back on the path and continue walking, and talking. While I’m telling the story, we interrupt ourselves. I love that Alan always interjects, ‘Continue,’ when it’s time to come back to the central narrative.
We pass some pull-up bars, and Alan motions wanting to work out on them.
‘We’ll loop back around,’ I say.
‘But I want to play…’ he wheedles.
‘We will,’ I reassure him, ‘But first we’re going to walk out here.’ It’s a dark turn off the path, under the cover of mangroves.
‘I want to explore!’
‘Exactly,’ I tell him. We walk out onto the boardwalk, and suddenly he remembers that he has come here before, with Camille. He talks of her; he talks of past partners.
‘There’s this little yacht parked here that I like,’ I tell him, as we stop and stare out at it. It’s not near the marina like the other boats. It’s a little hidden, tucked away in the bay between a tiny island and the mangroves behind us holding this whole city together. Tonight the lights are on; somebody’s home.
‘Beautiful,’ he exclaims, and it is. ‘I want to swim out to it. I’m from Florida. I want to be in the water.’ I do, too, but I doubt I could swim that far. Alan says he’ll grab me and pull me by the hair. I tell him I’ll just float on my back and he can tow me.
I reassure Alan that we will loop back here, too, and we continue walking back to the pull-up bars. We do pull-ups, and then attempt chin-ups. I manage a pull-up, but I do not manage a chin-up. Without an assist. Alan manages more pull-ups and chin-ups—on the higher bar at that—but still asks how I manage to be fit. ‘Rock climbing?’ I wager a guess, even though it’s been ages since I was climbing regularly. Soon, soon, when I’m home. We attempt one more set before declaring ourselves defeated by bars.
We walk back to the boardwalk and stare out at the darkening sky over the water together. We talk about all sorts of relationships: Romantic, sexual, platonic. Toxic. We talk about boundaries, communication. I talk a lot about boundaries, comparing and contrasting. He commends me for being bold and communicating clearly, and I appreciate his validation. ‘You’re being honest with yourself and with others. You’re staying true to your feelings and what you want.’ He’s not wrong. It seems simple, but takes a lot of effort. As we start to walk again I tell him that the problem is that I don’t actually know what I want. Maybe it’s not a problem, though. Not everything has to be a problem to be solved. He uses a word I don’t know—eudaimonia—and I ask for a definition. ‘What’s best for us,’ he describes, ‘Living our best life.’ The problem therein lies in defining best.
As we continue walking, I ask him what he wants. We talk about that, the difficulties and ironies that come with being a bartender, with acting, the implied theatrics of it all. How he wants to be his best creative self. How he will.
I am still trying to be back for 8, and we should head back.
We leave the park and decide to get a walking beer on the way back. ‘I only have my phone, though,’ I tell Alan, before he insists on paying, and I doubly insist on making it up to him. ‘Your presence is enough,’ he says, echoing what John once told us at Idle Hands. Your company is your payment. And it’s true. I have to get comfortable with this. With people appreciating that I could be so pleasant to be around that… I don’t know. I don’t finish the thought, and instead I tell Alan about John, and Idle Hands: My living room.
Before we get to the bar, I spy a small red car I have to check out, and duck into the parking lot. ‘A Z4,’ I sigh. ‘It’s a pretty red, but no soul red…’
Alan relays how he was worried after the night I spent at the bar. ‘How am I going to flirt with her? I know nothing about cars!’ I laugh. There are so many ways one could flirt with me.
‘You’re doing just fine,’ I reassure him.
‘I called up a pilot friend of mine, who’s into cars. You should meet him,’ he starts to add, before we both do the mental math of how many more days I will be down here. Too few.
The other regular who pulled up to the bar to finish his soup and wine—whose name I already forget again… ‘He was trying to flirt with you, too,’ Alan tells me, ‘But he talked about himself too much. I was like, “Dude…”‘
‘That I can handle though,’ I assure him.
We reach the bar, me still not having figured out what beer I want. In truth, I want a Four Seam. I am missing Idle Hands. These Florida beers don’t have the right resinous pine and bitter, floral hops as a New England IPA.
Alan’s bartender friend pours some beers for me to try, and I learn that Alan does, in fact, speak Spanish. Perhaps he just doesn’t read it. Or didn’t know what gin was en Español.
‘You want a Laces,’ the bartender tells me, as I debate and argue with him. He’s right, though, and I don’t know why I was trying to go for something else. The Celtics are playing on the screen behind the bar. I take a picture to help me overcome the tiny pang of homesickness that pokes from behind my sternum. I text Peter that I am running a bit late, and that he shouldn’t rush on my account.
We take our walking beers in their plastic cups and meander on our way. Is everyone so health-conscious here that I have never seen someone with a walking beer on the path at night?
As we make our way back down the piers I find myself talking of Ryan again. ‘We like Ryan,’ Alan says, ‘Big fan.’ I laugh in spite of myself, pleased that however I have described him has enamoured him of Alan. I am telling Alan of charcuterie boards of mostly cheese, of Emily in Paris, of why Emily in Paris.
‘Ryan is very influenced by cute things,’ I explain, ‘Of which I am one.’ This makes Alan giggle.
He stops at the top of a ramp leading into the water. ‘Time for slippey-slidey?’ Alan asks, and I consent. We sit at the end of a dock next to the ramp, and I fight the urge to put my feet in. The one day I wear sneakers. We watch the water, and the boats.
‘And that’s how I ended up at Victoria’s,’ I finally finish, a short story interrupted by longer interweaving ones.
He asks me what I tried, and I relay the vermouths back to him.
I think of the quote D’Angelo left Andrew and me with that night as he rung up our respective tabs, summarising my whole best life recently, on repeat:
Sit, talk, be intimate, make friends
D’Angelo at Vicky’s
‘Ah,’ Alan says, disappointedly. ‘I would have made you try a bit of everything! And then set you on your way, slapped your ass on the way out, and said, “Go explore, Meg!”‘ Maybe it’s best for Saturday night that he didn’t. We talk some more, about being honest with ourselves, about being bold. I am leaving some parts out.
Our feet dangling, our conversation having come full circle, I realise I really should go, and stand us up to head back.
Dew has settled while we’ve sat, and I can see our footprints making marks along the dock. Strange, I’d never noticed dew on other nights. Maybe it’s because I’m out later.
‘We’ll head this way and down the path,’ I tell Alan, and he laughs at me.
‘I appreciate how you’ve directed this entire walk!’ he says, and I chuckle.
‘I have a habit of doing so. But you led us down the dock!’ I add, his contribution.
Close to my place, we pass some puppies, who stop to sniff us. ‘A vizsla!’ I exclaim, ‘Objectively the best dog.’
After we pass the sniff test, he asks me again what breed it was, and I tell him again, that they’re related to German shorthaired pointers, and weimaraners. That they are me in dog form. That they feel like the dog version of seeing my car. Right path.
Back at my building, we part ways. I point Alan back in the direction of his car, telling him how to take the shorter path close to the road as opposed to the longer one along the water we’ve walked. We say goodbye. I don’t slap his ass as he leaves, but I do hope he goes exploring.