The tree tops below our feet look like baby broccoli heads. I ask, “Did you pack sandwiches in there?” We haven’t had dinner yet.

Stan sets his brown bag down. He says, “I’m not hungry. But we can get food on the way back.” He flicks his cigarette butt. When I kick it the red ashes spray.

He says, “What d’ya know, those are practically fluorescent in the moonlight.”

Phoebe says, “Her dad polishes her sneakers. And guess who did her hair?”

I say, “It’s just because I can’t reach the back by myself.”

Phoebe says, “Dad, you’ve never helped me curl my hair.”

“You’ve never asked.”

“No,” she says, “it’s because when Kristen was around I wasn’t allowed more than fifteen minutes in the bathroom.”

The first night Stan met Phoebe’s soon-to-be step mom, he came home craving his deceased mother’s puttanesca. It didn’t matter that it was around midnight and he had to wake us up. I chopped tomatoes. Phoebe diced onions. And while Stan minced the anchovy fillets this was the story he told.

He’d been in Sausalito at his regular Saturday night gig at a place everyone called the No Name because it literally had no name. “There’s no sign, just a door,” he said. You push through a heavy wooden block and then you’re in an open air bar like an old-fashioned Spanish courtyard. “I’ve never really dug blondes before,” he said, “but…” But maybe it was how the bar had white Christmas lights hanging from the trees and she looked like a little angel with her platinum hair framing her face in wisps. Or maybe it was how she drank Shirley Temples one after another. Or how even from the stage he could see that she was shivering. He said to me, “She’s practically your size.”

During the break he grabbed his jacket and offered it to her. Up close she had the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. They were “bewitching.” He said her name, “Kristen,” and then repeated it again in a reverent whisper. I promised on the spot that one day a man would say my name with that much awe. “That one’s gonna break my heart,” he said, “but I don’t care.”

We played Sinatra records and rolled up the rug and Phoebe and I took turns letting Stan spin us on the hardwood floors and out to the deck and then down to the grass where the dew was sticky between my toes. In the lilac hours of daylight, the sheets pulled up to my chin, I dreamt about the shimmy and women who looked like angels, and the promise of flight.

Tonight Stan denies Kristen’s spell. He’s pretending things didn’t change when she came around. “That’s hogwash,” he says, “Baloney!”