“So you’ll come to Palm Springs when you get back?” he asks as town, and again the hulking ship, come into view. “Check out the gallery, I can show you around?”
Straight from the airport, I want to say. For the first time since I came to the island the prospect of a return to California titillates instead of terrifies. Palm Springs is hot, and there’s no ocean, and I don’t golf or have a particular passion for modern furniture shopping; any plan I might be hatching to seek my new job there is too far-fetched and embarrassing to even mention, even as I’m wishing I’d printed up a stack of resumes to send home with him. So I say, “Definitely. And any time you want to come to San Diego…”
“I love it there. Maybe in February?”
My heart tightens as if he’d said, Maybe in our next lifetime, but
