Copyright © 2022 by Elle Andrews Patt

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Points of Light

The first time she saw him, Emma snapped a quick frame. All dark hair and dark eyes, he was staring out over the Hudson. Not following the swoop of the sailboats threading between the commuter ferries, not scanning the horizon, or watching the water. Raw energy in blue jeans and polo, he filled the camera’s lens, thrumming in his stillness.

The girl came from nowhere, wild on runaway roller blades. She crashed into him headlong. He turned smoothly as his knees buckled, gathered her to him as they fell, keeping her from the concrete and the inward curving river rail. She was eight or nine, unembarrassed in her awkwardness, all arms and legs and loveliness. He smiled and Emma's heart stopped. He was luminous, his face transformed from mere ruggedness to something...more.

“Hey, Doll,” he said. “Where'd you come from?”

“Mommy brought me.” She hugged his neck, glancing back the way she’d come.

Unable to resist, Emma stepped toward them. “Are you okay?”

She was rewarded by another grin from him, this time aimed at her. “We're fine, aren't we, Doll?”

The girl giggled as the man scrambled up, still holding her. He set her down with great care on her treacherous skates and examined his elbow. “Mostly, anyway. Thanks.”

After that, Emma often found him prowling the river park alone. Rarely, the girl joined him, with her pink roller blades and pig tails.  Emma developed a nod and wave relationship with him. She did the waving. He did the nodding.

In late September, on a brilliant night with a full moon, Emma spotted him hanging over the rail near the Yacht Club. The water was quiet that night, with little traffic. Emma reached down a little for her boldness and then stopped a breath away from him.

“Not prowling?”

He glanced over at her and smiled in recognition. “Not lurking?”

“I don't lurk.”

He laughed. “I've seen you. It looks like you're taking pictures of the boats, but really it's the people.”

The heat of a creeping blush crawled across Emma’s cheeks. “Okay. So, I lurk. A little.”

He nodded. “And I guess prowl is a pretty good word.” He turned back to the marina.

“Which boat do you like?”

“I’m watching the moonlight.”

Oh, Emma thought. “Would you like to get a drink?” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

He laughed again, a real laugh this time, rich and full. “Startle yourself?” He spun slowly on his heel.

They headed for the lights of a nearby restaurant, its tables inviting under lit trees, open to the river breeze. It had been easy, so easy, to sit half-hidden in the dappled dark and talk to him. His name was David. She discovered his penchant for odd bits of trivia, that he had a talent for older homes and the work that comes with them, that he loved studying, but hated school. He had burned out on college in a year and a half, holing up instead in the library, designing his own crash course in higher learning.

She laughed at him. “Arrogant, much?”

David shrugged. “Better to find out now, right?” He winked at her and her stomach dipped.

Josh Evans had winked at her just that way in high school. The varsity linebacker with a heart had noticed her, a mere freshman sporting mousy-brown hair and attitude. She collected winks and grins with every outrageous and outspoken comment she made, but nothing more. Josh Evans encouraged her, in unspoken splendor. She'd had arrogance in spades in high school.

It faded with every passing year as the other side of life steamrolled her. At least the other side gave her a living.

She dropped her eyes and shook the ice in her glass.

David noticed the change in her mood. “Wanta walk?”

They both dropped cash on the table. The brush of his hand sent a tingle all the way to her elbow.

He asked which way, and she steered them back towards her apartment. She’d never taken anyone like him home before. She didn’t know what would happen if she did.

They talked and kissed and danced.

***

Waking to his absence made her breath catch in her throat and tears rise in her eyes. She got up and started coffee then meandered through the sunlight dropping through the floor to ceiling windows. She swung the door to her studio open.

Photos plastered the walls and leaned in stacks against the walls. They all featured haunting images of wispy ghosts, some small detail catching the eye. A turn of the hand there, the hint of a child on pink roller skates there. Each sold for thousands at a gallery in Soho.

She loaded her camera’s memory card into her laptop.

Like some trick of the rising fog, an apparition of white tendrils and shadows, David stood, hip cocked and elbows on the rail, barely there in the fall of moonlight across the moored boats.

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