The Fiction of Owen Thomas

Shoreline Drive

A Novella

Excerpt C

“Hey Nik,” Diane lilted, waving two of the fingers holding the towel that was wrapping her hair. Nicollet smiled, returning the greeting with a schoolgirl wave that was simple and exuberantly wholesome.

Peter was taken aback at the familiarity, as though these two women had been pleasantly acquainted for years.  Not Nicollet; not even on the first meeting. Not even Nico or Nikki.  It was Nik; one syllable was enough. 

There was an intimacy in sharing shortcuts, he thought. Diane and Spencer shared a lot of shortcuts. Like when Spencer would say, shaking his head to himself,  that reminds of the asparagus joke, and Diane would start laughing because she knew the punch line. Or when Diane would look up from her plate and glance confusedly around the table and Spencer would instantly be up and pushing back his chair and moving away from the table for the kitchen because he knows what she needs; the salt, or the wine or the bread.

Nik. Intimacy lived in the nooks and crannies of normal discourse; spaces only large enough for a glance, a snicker, a thing not said. Intimacy, so often, was found in the act of trimming words; breaking language itself into little pieces that will fit into those secret irregular alcoves where people meet, down there, beneath the roaring traffic of conversation.  Nik, Peter knew, was Spencer’s intimate name for Nicollet, just as he knew that Diane was now making a casual bid to share in that intimacy. The rest of her name was to be uttered only by those on the outside looking in, wanting what was not theirs.