Nancy wants the front because the front is what you do with a cousin and a thin spring. The pavement is pretty until it isn’t A lip of tarmac, a romantic little ridge, and the chair stops as if the Bay has a rule about who gets the rail. Kind is how a place gets away with its ridges. We laugh. We have to. If we do not laugh I will write a letter in my head to a councillor I have not yet met. “English Riviera,” Nancy says, tasting the phrase like a sweet that has gone dusty. Kind is how a place gets away with its ridges. Ed is leafleting somewhere behind the hotels. He thinks this walk is time off. I think this walk is the job, only no one has given me a clipboard for it. I push. We take the long way, the ugly way, the way that works. April is kind and I do not trust kind. Kind is how a place gets away with its ridges.
