Page 123 of What We Brave
Laine
it IS a problem when you've already reorganized everything twice
pick you up in 30?
Laine
She wants to come. She actually wants to spend her day off digging through flea markets with me.
Don't read too much into it. She's bored. You're available. That's it.
Except it's not just that and I know it. She could call anyone. Jamila. A friend from work. She could enjoy her day off alone like a normal person.
Instead, she picked me.
Don't screw this up.
The Portland Flea Market sprawls across three city blocks of covered stalls and open-air tables. Vintage furniture. Old records. Jewelry. Weird taxidermy. Rusted tools nobody's touched in fifty years.
My kind of place.
Laine bounces on her heels next to me, eyes wide. "This is amazing."
"You've never been?"
"I've driven past. Never stopped." She grabs my hand, tugging me toward the nearest row of stalls. "Where do we start?"
Her hand is warm in mine. Small. She threads her fingers through like it's nothing, like it's something she's done a thousand times, like she doesn't notice my pulse hammering against her palm.
Relax. It's a hand. People hold hands. This is normal.
It doesn't feel normal. It feels like I'm getting away with something. Like a just robbed a bank and the cops are going to pull up any second.
"I usually do a full lap first," I say. "Get a sense of what's here. Then circle back to anything interesting."
"That's very strategic."
"It's efficient."
"It's veryyou." She grins up at me. "Come on, strategic man. Show me how it's done."
We walk through the first aisle together, Laine's attention jumping from table to table. She picks up a brass telescope, squints through it, declares it "probably haunted." Moves on to a stack of old Life magazines. Flips through a box of vintage postcards, gasping at the weird ones.
I should be scanning the stalls. Looking for project material. That's why I'm here.
Instead I'm watching her. The way her face lights up at every new discovery. The way she narrates her own reactions like she's hosting a nature documentary about flea markets.
You're staring again. Cut it out.
"Blake. Blake, look at this."
She holds up a postcard of a jackalope. The taxidermy kind — rabbit with antlers glued on.
"People really believed in these," she says. "Or pretended to. Can you imagine being the guy who made the first one? Just sitting there gluing antlers on a bunny?"
"Probably thought it was hilarious."
"It IS hilarious." She tucks the postcard back in the box. "I want to meet that guy's ghost. I have questions."
