"I went to boarding school in New Hampshire," Graham said, with what she would come to recognize as the false confidence of a man who had gone to boarding school in New Hampshire and spent the winters in the library. "Everyone skates."
"Uh-huh," said Gina, who had grown up on the rink at McGuane Park, playing hockey in the boys' league until a Sister of Mercy noticed and put a stop to it. "Seven o'clock?"
"Seven o'clock."
"Wear a helmet," she said, and hung up.
The lagoon was frozen hard and swept clean, and somebody had strung lights along the bridge and around the little wooded island in the middle so that the ice glowed gold and green under the black sky. It was cold in the way only Chicago is cold, a cold that came off the lake and went through your coat and your sweater and your skin and settled in your bones like it was paying rent. Gina wore white figure skates, a red knit hat with a pompom, the burgundy coat, and the black leather gloves. Graham arrived in a pair of hockey skates so new they still had the price tag on one lace, and when he stepped out onto the ice he took one glide, wobbled, windmilled both arms, and sat down very suddenly and completely, like a deck chair folding.
Gina skated a slow circle around him.
"Everyone skates," she said.
"I said everyone skates. I didn't say everyone skates well." He looked up at her from the ice, his glasses fogged, his gray scarf trailing. "I was on the crew team. Rowing. You sit down to row. I'm excellent at sitting down."