At the intersection, I saw a crowd of tourists from the cruise ship. Around forty of them packed together like fish in a net, spanning the street and sidewalk. They were coming down Bryant Street, headed back to the boat after a tour of the salmon creeks. I let myself be absorbed by the crowd. Threaded my way in and amongst them, keeping my head low. I dropped down as if to tie my shoe, screened by geriatric vacationers. It only took a couple of gestures and a shrug to pull off my backpack and jacket. I had a ball cap in the bag. I turned the jacket inside out and wrapped it around the backpack. When I stood up again, I wasn’t a bareheaded guy wearing a forest green Gore-Tex jacket and a backpack, I was a guy wearing a t-shirt and a black cap and holding a tan package under my arm.

I reversed direction to join the flow of tourists as the group shuffled downhill toward the dock. I smiled at an older lady pulling on the arm of her partner. I said, “Are you with the boat?” She nodded and I turned away. From the hill I could see the cruise ship below. In fact, it was visible from almost anywhere in town. I moved down the street, going with the flow. Like a paper boat in a rain-swollen gutter. I didn’t see the first guy from the diner. He was probably still searching for me further up the hill.

A minute later we passed the guy with the Oxford shirt. He was walking uphill, looking like a kid who had lost his teddy bear. I broke out of the crowd below him and stepped into the shadow of a chartered trips office.

I was now a few buildings up from the diner where I’d had that burger, like a full circle. I stayed there for a minute, observing. My baseball cap was pulled low and I figured with the beard I looked just like any other fisherman in Port Morris. Mid-thirties, tall, and jacked from pulling on ropes all season. I hadn’t been in shape like that since pararescue indoctrination.

I recognized the girl standing on the other side of the road. She hadn’t made me. She was blonde, wearing a tourist bucket hat with a Port Morris logo, and carrying a bag from the souvenir store. Like she was just another tourist. But I was pretty sure that she wasn’t just a tourist.

I had met her the night before.

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