The sounds of slack boat sails slapping masts and chains clanking carried on the gusty breeze from the harbor to the waiters’ bench at the Body Beautiful car wash two short blocks away. A twenty-degree respite from the convection-oven heat of August had drawn me (and, by the length of the line at the vacuums, many of my fellow hundred-degree-haters) out of the house to blink in the springlike sunshine and wash summer’s grime off my car. The blue bench matched the gentle sky.

            I usually try to pair the cars, each circled by a bead bracelet of wiping, spraying Mexican men, with the waiting people, but today I tilted my iPad, trying to read Facebook’s news feed in the glare. Squirming, I arched against the slatted back, the bench flexed, and the stranger sitting at the other end glanced left. I looked right.

            “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rock us like that.”

            “It’s okay,” he smiled from behind the black aviators that ridged his buzzed temples.

            Military was written all over him:  straight back, clean shave, pressed khakis and slow-heartbeat calm. Confident. A pilot? Tan neck, arms … a gold ring on his left hand, a fast sparkle. Was that a little ruby? Perfectly clipped, clean nails, white against toast-brown fingers.

            Out among the dripping, drying cars was a woman, her back to us, standing next to a white sedan while the last rub-rub man worked on the doorjamb she pointed at. She had beautiful legs in high striped espadrilles, caramel skin stretched over her muscled calves and spurs of anklebones, a black skirt sucked by the wind against the backs of her thighs.

            Long auburn hair dropped on her shoulders and kept going, ending halfway down her back in an absent-minded curl. The wind kept trying to pick it up and roll it tighter, only succeeding in turning the ends a bright copper where they thinned to wisps before falling back and sticking with dirty–penny.

            He watched her, those legs, that hair, the dome of her ass. The wind touching her.

            His right hand held his ticket and folded tip money between thumb and fist. The left lay wrist down on his thigh, heavy, waiting.

            I could see my fingers curling over and into his palm, crooking my pinkie around his thumb, squeezing gently, his hand closing on mine. I could whisper, “I know.” 

            Looking up, I was caught by his eyes, behind that dark plastic, finding mine above my blushing cheeks.

            “I know,” they said. “I know.”

image from: www.toms.com (wedge, kenya stripe)