Davega Bicycles

There's a shy meadow the size of a football field that slants away from a quiet road down towards a cliff. The road carries on climbing along a drowsy curve toward the university and Wreck Beach. If you drove along this road you'd have trouble seeing anyone lying on a blanket in the grass of that meadow. Without trying it's very easy to get tucked away from prying eyes. At one end the cliff has a steep narrow path of dried mud to take you down, under the shade of trees and beside berry bushes, to the rocks piled up against the sea. You can hear the drone of boats combing the shore but you can't see any of them. Most of the footprints left in the muddy path lead toward rather than away from this meadow. When the sun's out it has dibs on a paint-kit all its own. All the ingredients of this place add up to something like seeing a naked woman washing her hair for the first time. Clouds spread continents of lazy shadows over the long grass, freckled with buttercups and wild flowers. The breeze more often than not floats over you and makes noise in the leaves. Sometimes it dips down and combs the grass, weaves into the feel of the sun against your skin. If you're on your back staring up at the sky water-spiders infect the blue. It feels like a very special place to bury something you want somebody to find. If you're lucky enough to have a private petting zoo of a girl along with you time stands still.

I was there a little over a week ago with a girl who might fit that description. A big thing didn't happen while I was there that I was expecting. With every girl I've ever fallen for, from Murphy (c) on down, I get asked a question from someone I haven't met yet: "Why her?" And it fucks everything up. Because I never have a good answer.

Every couple years after I was sixteen and had my first girlfriend I've written to the somebody who asks me this question in my notebook. Before too long I gathered the somebody was my kid.

The catch of being in that meadow with this girl was that I never got that question. Apparently the conversation wasn't necessary. They already knew the score. I guess one look at my face, by way of explanation, and it was pretty obvious why it was her.