"How is it a safety issue?"
Bryn finally looked at me. It was like being looked at by a customs officer in a country with no extradition treaty. "Last year a dad handed a lady a hot chocolate over the rope and it went on a baby."
"It's a box. It's an inch and three-quarters."
"Then it's a choking hazard."
"It's not for a baby. It's for my brother. He's thirty-eight."
From the fourth switchback, the man in the orange hat said, in a calm, carrying voice, "She's with me."
Bryn turned and looked at him. He looked back, completely serene, and held up the box.
"She's with you," Bryn repeated.
"She went to get coffee," he said. "She's been gone a while. The line at the Starbucks is terrible."
Bryn looked at my mocha. The cup said Starbucks on it. The woman with the toddler, who had been following all of this, said, "That's true, she was with him," which was a lie of breathtaking generosity, and then the man who had applauded said, "I can confirm," and Bryn closed her eyes for a moment like a woman praying for strength and unhooked the velvet rope.
"Fine," she said. "But if you're with him, you're with him. You don't go back and forth. You stay in the line. You don't leave and come back. If you leave, you're out. Both of you."
"I don't need to stay in the line. I just need my—"
"Then you weren't with him," Bryn said, and began to hook the rope again.
"I'm with him," I said, and stepped through.