Page 55 of Why Cheese?
Toma Threesome
WE WALKED FOR I don’t know how long. The goal was to put as much distance between us and the cop lights as possible. Blocks merged into long strips of buildings only broken up by the occasional patch of construction cones. They’re coming in early this year. As I stare up at a blinking yellow light, I realize I have no idea which way is our cheese shop.
“Cheddy?” I say, breaking our comfortable silence. “I’m afraid I’m lost.”
“No reason to be afraid while I’m here. Ah!” He leaps off of a bench and slices his hand through the air. Then he gives a hearty stab with his palm, disturbing a mess of gnats. “I’ll keep you safe.” He pauses in his rapid attacks at invisible enemies to look right at me. His face is so full of earnestness my legs wobble.
“I have no doubt of that,” I say. He holds out his hand and I take it, feeling like the lady in a tower awaiting her good sir knight.
Cheddy scoops me up and damn near spins me in his arms until I’m suddenly on his shoulders. Panting, I grip his forehead and try to catch my bearings. My brain is still spinning while my feet paddle through thin air.
“What do you see up there?” he asks.
“A whole lot of city,” I say. “Wait.” I cup my hand over my eyes and stare like a sailor in a crow’s nest. “I think there’s a park entrance ahead!”
“Told you.” Cheddy dips his head. My ass slides up the back of his head. Just as I dig my fingers into his hair for leverage, I fly off of him and toward the ground. When I land, arms wrap around my chest from behind in a great bear hug. “There’s nothing to worry about. Let’s go.”
There’s plenty to worry about. We’re lost. It’s dark. Cops are looking for us. If you don’t get back in time, you’ll become a tasty block of cheddar.
“What about Cam?”
He gives a little chuckle, then takes my hand and breaks into a run. I struggle to keep up with his wide gait, having to make two steps for his one. But as we slip through the open park gates, I spot a sign bolted to the concrete.Closed from dusk to dawn.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here. We should probably—?”
“I remember this place,” he cries out, his hands extended as he spins in place. In golden retriever mode, he bolts down the path and into the trees.
“Wait!” I cry, giving chase.Please don’t let the cops be here. Or park rangers.Is that a thing in cities? Maybe they have to deal with urban bears.
That’s something else entirely, Vi.
“Where are you going?” I shout, fighting to keep up with him and losing.
“We used to come here as a little getaway from the store,” Cheddy shouts. I can only make out his blond hair and a hint of his dark yellow shirt in the distance.
“You and Cam?” I ask.
“All of us.” He dives right through a stand of huge bushes and vanishes. Holding my breath, I do the same.
Please don’t be full of poisonous thorns. Ah!Something stabs my arm—!Oh, it’s a twig.
I emerge from the foliage onto a cobbled path. Old Victorian lamps circle a massive fountain resting dead center of the opening. Benches outline it, all of them built with a divider down the middle. Cheddy holds his hands out in glee. “Me, Cam, Brie, Roq. Sometimes Mateo would join us if it was his night off.”
He skids to a stop by the three-tier fountain. A copper bird turned green sits at the top, water sputtering from its beak. Not much tumbles down the cement curves, the basin only a quarter filled. Cheddy sits on the fountain wall’s edge and reaches for the water. “Your uncle would give me a pence to toss into the fountain. He…”
With a jerk, Cheddy yanks his hand back and sighs. “I don’t care what Roq says. He was good people. I miss him.”
“Me too.”
His death was a footnote in my life when I was home, but being here where he lived and breathed, it keeps hitting me at every corner. He’s really gone. “Did you know I used to spend my summers in his shop?”
“No way. How did we miss you?”
I press my knees together and sit with Cheddy on the fountain. Instead of being crystal clear, the water’s got a green sheen hiding away the tossed pennies, nickels, and dimes. “Well, I was five, so my bedtime would have been before you even…woke.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
“Every summer. I loved it, being in the city, trying all the cheeses, doodling on his chalkboards.” It should have been a drag to be so young and trapped in this city while the sidewalk sizzled bare feet, but my uncle made it fun. “One day it stopped, and I couldn’t go back anymore.”
