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Show 110 dirty crowded bus that had crept along the Costa Blanca and delivered him to Calpe, the adobe all baked and cracked under the late summer sun, this half-asleep village he could never have imagined from Cleveland. Remembers looking out the dirty window of the stopped bus, peering through the heat and dust rising from the pavement, to see his old friend Nick leaning against a whitewashed wall, red handkerchief around his neck, girl around his waist. She's so small, Steven had thought then, though he knows now that it was mostly Nick's large and lanky frame that made her seem so. And remembers the big damp kiss she had placed on his cheek when he climbed down from the bus, a kiss he had found sexy and strange as the Spaniards yelled at each other about the luggage and Nick slapped him on the back to say, "Good to see you, Stevieboy, it's been too goddamn long, nearly two years isn't it, these goddamn Spanish buses are always late." And Sara gave him a big hug to go with the kiss, said, "Any friend of Nicko's . . . ." Any friend of Nick's what? Steven's eyes wander over the Scrabble board, looking for the answer-but if it is here it is not in English or Spanish but some other language, it is hidden. His own last word tonight had been shift. "You blew it," Nick had said. "What do you mean?" "Well, if you'd left the f_ out of shift then you would have had room to play your s_ off of ball over there and you'd have |
