The Last Afternoon
The beach café is closing for winter. The chairs are stacked. Catalina offers Prince Freddie the last ice cream of the season, a tradition for the last customer who ventures in.
Prince Freddie noticed the chairs first.
They were stacked, four high, on top of the tables outside the beach café.
He sat down on the sand and looked at them.
Further along, two teenagers were attempting to take down the volleyball net. One held the pole, the other pulled at the cord, and they were clearly disagreeing about the correct method. Freddie watched for a moment. They stuffed it all into the bag. About two minutes later.
The beach was nearly empty. It had been thinning all week, the tourists drifting away day by day as the air cooled. Now there were only a handful. A man reading at the water’s edge. Two older women with their shoes in their hands. A child collecting stones.
Summer was finished.
Catalina appeared in the café doorway with a cloth in her hand. Her look was the kind of thoughtful that comes before a good rest. The way you feel after a full day, ready to pause.
“Prince Freddie,” she said. “Good. You’re here. Come in.”
He followed her inside. Machines were covered in cloth. Chairs were turned upside down on the inside tables. A few last things lined up on the counter, waiting to be packed. Catalina went behind the counter and opened the ice cream cabinet.
“Last scoop of the year,” she said. “It’s a tradition. The last customer of the season gets whatever flavour they like, no charge.” She looked at him. “You are not technically a customer. You cannot state a preference. But I choose to overlook both things.”
She gave him a small cup of whipped cream, the kind she kept for dogs who wandered in looking hopeful. This happened more often than people assumed. He accepted it with the dignity appropriate to the occasion.
She came around the counter with a coffee and sat on the step in the doorway, looking out at the beach. Freddie sat beside her.
They watched the man finish his book, fold it under his arm, and wade into the sea up to his knees. He stood there with his trousers getting wet, apparently fine with this. The two women with their shoes had reached the far end of the beach and were turning back. The child had moved from collecting stones to digging, as children at beaches eventually always do.
“The same next year,” Catalina said. “More or less. Different tourists, same beach. The net goes back up in April.”
“Do you mind?” Freddie said. “The closing.”
She thought about this in the way she thought about most things: without hurrying.
“No,” she said. “I look forward to missing it. That sounds strange. But there is something good about putting a thing down for a while. When you pick it back up in spring, you can feel how much you like it.” She drank her coffee. “If it were always open, it would just be the café. Closing it for winter means it becomes something you return to.”
Freddie thought of Señor Tiempo, whose clock stopped at three-fifteen every afternoon.
He walked toward home along the beach.
“Hasta la primavera,“ he said.
Catalina looked at him with some surprise. Then she smiled, the kind that takes a moment to arrive. “Hasta la primavera, Prince Freddie.”
He left her closing up. Things went into boxes. Shutters came across the windows. Each one closed behind him.
The beach was quiet. The light had shifted into evening. He walked slowly. The sand was cold under his paws.
The particular sweetness of this hour. The quality of the day exhaling. Not a smell exactly. More like lingering heat. He stopped at the gate.
His human had made soup. The smell of it was in every room.
After dinner, Freddie went to the bed. His human was already there. He circled once, twice, three times. The afternoon’s weight was in his back legs. He let them go first. Sitting down mid-circle. Then slowly, he let the front follow down. The covers were around him. The soup-warm air of the cottage was all there was.
His human’s hand moved along his back, from shoulders to tail.
His eyes closed.
Outside, the beach was quiet. The lighthouse swept its arc across the dark.
The End
Rest well, Prince Freddie. The ice cream cart is covered now. The paint beneath will be bright in spring.