Don't I Know You? by Marni Jackson Page B

We had made it up and down the Andes in Ecuador, but we couldn’t make it through dinner in a restaurant. The only problem with breaking up was that the trip, both the hardship and the beautiful strangeness of it, had fused us. Five months in a tent is a micromarriage.
    Roberto was a decent, kind man—a keeper, really. Although I had run away from him at first, now I was utterly confounded by our falling apart. I had decided that it showed a deficiency in me, an inability to love someone who really cared for me, and was deserving of my love.
    So I was waiting for something to happen when Bill Murray turned up, live from New York.
    The next day, after my shift, I stood with my bike at the corner of Princess and George feeling silly and mildly felonious. A vintage roadster pulled up beside me. It was an eye-catching cream-colored convertible, some rare model I couldn’t identify. Aykroyd was at the wheel with his TV pal beside him.
    â€œHop in,” said Bill Murray. He had a faint constellation of acne pits on his cheeks and lots of wayward brown hair.
    â€œI thought we were going for drinks,” I said.
    â€œWe are,” he said. “Hop in.”
    â€œWhat about my bike?”
    â€œNot a problem,” said Aykroyd, who was quite tall, with a sturdy farm-boy build. He stepped out and slung the bike into the back of the car. I got in beside it and they began to drive out of town.
    â€œI thought we were going for a drink,” I said again after a while.
    â€œWe are,” Bill said. “A country drink.” We were now moving through the outskirts of Kingston, where all the boarding kennels, storage places, and car dealerships were.
    â€œI can’t be too long,” I said nervously.
    â€œDon’t worry, it’s not far.”
    We drove north into stony, rolling farmland. Late-afternoon light slanting over cornfields. Perhaps I’m being kidnapped, I thought placidly. It seemed uncool to ask. It was also, I noticed, a fine day in late August, with goldenrod nodding in the ditches. It felt good to be out of the kitchen and the omelet-y smell of the restaurant. This is an adventure, I told myself, just go with it. Lighten up and live a little. (Years later, this sentiment would be recognized by others who have been similarly hijacked as the Bill Murray Effect.)
    A half an hour later we turned onto a gravel road that took us to a cottage—a white frame house with a sun porch, and a separate smaller bunkhouse. Nothing fancy, just a typical Ontario family cottage on a lawn that slanted down to a broad, shallow-looking lake. Close to shore, reeds poked through the surface of the water like a five o’clock shadow.
    â€œI’ll start dinner,” said Aykroyd, heading over to a charcoal barbecue. “Make yourself at home.”
    â€œBut I’m expected home for dinner,” I said.
    â€œWe’ll get you back, no problem,” said Aykroyd, scraping black gunk off the grill. “Why don’t you guys go for a dip while I put the chicken on.”
    Bill Murray changed into swimming trunks—roomy ones, probably borrowed. I didn’t have my bathing suit with me, but I was wearing a Danskin body stocking, dark-green, under my summer dress, and I figured I could swim in that. I also had on a pair of candy-cane-striped red-and-white platform sandals; it was the first generation of platform sandals (unless you count ancient geisha-girl, bound-feet versions). I wouldn’t normally wear heels with a bathing suit, but in this case I had no choice.
    We walked down to the lake, waded in, and paddled around, orbiting each other and talking. The lake was a little weedy but the water felt cool and welcome after the drive. I like being in the water and I’m a good swimmer; I did a dolphin dive to impress Bill Murray. There’s a kind of amusing shark-fin thing I can do with my elbow too. Being in a lake felt less datelike, and safe. I told him about a