Afloat (5 page)

I walk through the forest following the arrow-shaped ‘airport' signs, until the paved path turns to grass. There is a long field and one building. The two runways are inexplicably numbered ‘eight' and ‘twenty-six.' In front of the building is
Tom's bike, unlocked, as he'd described it. I suppose the airport is too far to travel for common thievery.

Because of my perfect score on the Chamber of Commerce Test for New Island Employees, I know the airport averages about sixty-five flights a day in high season, all of the planes small twin engines and expensive. About three quarters of these flights are private, usually men flying in from Chicago or Cleveland. They radio their approximate arrival time to the one airport employee, requesting a taxi when they touch down. When I serve these men at the restaurant they look at their wristwatches.
Just flew in for the day
, they say over their shrimp cocktails and tumblers of Oban.

I wonder sometimes at the luxury I am allowed to mingle with here, and if it will ever be mine.

The rest of the flights are air taxis from the mainland. Rummy took one over the other night after he missed the last ferry, and he said the floor of the plane had rusted away in spots and was covered by wooden planks. A metal folding chair was set up in the back for him to sit on. He suspected the pilot might be drunk.

‘The pretentious part of me wanted to make fun of it,' he said. ‘But I was shitting my pants the whole time.'

Twenty minutes later after a wind-buffeted landing, he resolved never to miss the last ferry ever again.

I sit on my new mode of transport with pride, marveling that while I lost an expensive mountain bike, this vintage model is like something from an old French movie where girls in long black skirts and red lipstick ride about through cobble-stoned streets, and there's even a basket. The wide seat is made of cracked white canvas, the silver fenders brown with rust. It also has a kickstand. Navy blue with solid metal bars, this bike looks like it will last forever.

I get lost trying to ride back, but taking the trails that run downhill I eventually reach the lake. Emerging from the trees about five minutes from town, I ride casually over to the Tippecanoe to look at Bryce through the window. It's not too busy and he notices my bike, giving the thumbs up. After looking over his shoulder for Velvet, he points to his crotch, then taps his watch.

We will meet at the Cock when he's done work. Nodding to show him I understand, he smiles then continues the complicated napkin fold for the swan at table eleven. I begin the ride back uphill to Tippecanoe housing, wishing my new bike had more than one gear.

I shower, shave, and lotion, debating my choice of underwear, finally deciding on a pink lacy thong. I've just discovered that bike seats and no underwear are not a pleasant combination.

I also think it is better to be naked in stages.

Brushing my teeth twice, I make sure to get the back of my tongue and the spaces between my gums and wisdom teeth. A drop of concealer covers the mole by my eyebrow that is slightly too dark.

At ten I leave my apartment door unlocked and ride into town, my hair straight and long in the wind, and the feeling of the island in my veins. I careen downhill around nervous tourists with baby carriers attached to bikes, and though my hands are on the brakes I never use them.

Main Street is busy with the sounds of Friday, and the dark road is illuminated on either side with lights from the bars. Bicycles line the curbs in a chaos of silver and color and wheels and Bryce is waiting for me inside the Cock with two brandy glasses in front of him.

The Flambouie is a ritual that newcomers to the island are initiated with, he explains. It is a shot of Drambuie liqueur
heated in a glass with a lighter, and then a second glass is placed atop the first to capture the alcohol fumes before they escape. Typically a crowd of well-wishers will gather to shout encouragement. I have two, whipping the top glass off of each shot, breathing the fumes quickly as if it's a drug, and then downing the hot liqueur in a swallow. My stomach burns and it feels like living.

John pours me another, for free.

We sit on the leather couches and this time I belong. The large television near the bar shows a gold-colored football team playing a blue one with the sound turned down. Someone that Bryce knows falls off her barstool, but she's okay and orders another beer. An elderly couple walk in and then out again, looking for a different, perhaps more sophisticated Mackinac experience, and I imagine the woman is looking for ‘a glass of your house chardonnay', and the man will try a local beer because he's on holiday and feeling adventurous. Beside the couch Rummy is talking to Blue who is drinking orange juice, her dark hair layered attractively around her face, the silver of her cross resting between the delicate points of her collarbone.

‘I hear people from Canada say “hoser” a lot?' she asks him.

Rummy smiles, and I can tell he's making allowances for her.

‘Lots of rumors about us Canadians,' he says. ‘Whatever you've heard it's all true.'

He leers at her, and she laughs nervously, poking her orange-juice straw around her glass. When she is done he gets her another one.

The jukebox is loud and continuous, the sound of the Pac-Man video game bleeps in the background and Bryce wants to know where my adorable mole went, the one by my eyebrow. I laugh and rub away the concealer. Sober I might
have been mortified, but instead feel only mild embarrassment. Bryce leans over and licks it.

When I stumble up to the bar for another drink I notice Trainer, sitting by himself.

‘You lucky bitch,' he says, and I smile.

At the end of the night Bryce pays our tab and helps me out the door, telling me to follow him. There is a trail he says, a not so short cut that he wants to show me. He makes sure I am steady on my bike before retrieving his.

‘It's too hard to stay straight,' I say, feeling that I could probably stay straight just fine.

‘Once you start pedaling,' he says, ‘you'll be perfect. You see this?'

He points to a thin sliver of line on the left side of his chin.

‘The tequila did me in last summer, went right off the street and into a lamppost.'

‘That's not comforting me.'

‘But it's because I forgot to pedal. So just remember to keep pedaling and you'll be fine. I promise.'

‘I really like my new bike,' I say.

We leave the town behind. Instead of continuing up the paved road to the Pine Suites, he veers to the right across some gravel and behind the massive barn owned by the carriage company. The noise of the horses echoes off the high wooden rafters, the sound mournful and loud. Then we are past the barn and the silence encompasses us again as we pedal up an incline towards the trees. I cannot see the path anymore as we enter the forest. If I look up I can see where the trees meet the sky, though just barely, and in the darkness the oak and pine are all one massive wall. There are no streetlights, no sounds, and my entire world is this. We are hurtling too fast through the darkness together and I am afraid of not being
fast enough to keep up. I pedal furiously to stay right behind his back tire. As our bikes glide around the curves of the trail he looks back to see if I am keeping up. He keeps looking back and I want to yell:

I can do it!

I'm here!

I won't be left behind!

I want to laugh and say, ‘I'm not a girl that you need to take care of, Bryce.'

But I don't say it because I wouldn't mean it. I don't say it because he is looking after me and I never asked him to. He gives a shit whether or not I am behind him and he is checking to make sure. I trust him because I have to and he is not fucking off and riding too fast and I am almost crying because it is such a relief to have this.

Pedaling into infinity, this island feels more real than any other place I have lived. I work every day and drink every night and excess is expected and encouraged and
there is not enough time
, but that's exactly the point. My friendships here are lively and spontaneous compared to the girls at St. Kat's now far away and boring with too much education, and there is a man in front of me, a quick ghostly form turned solid and safe in the darkness, and I am beginning to think of him as mine.

With my chocolate-covered nightgown in the garbage, Anna helped choose my outfit this morning. The decision of what to wear was difficult. If the storm arrived as predicted I would need to be warm, which meant unflattering woolen socks, full cotton underwear and a long-sleeved shirt, which in turn meant unearthing the large Tupperware container marked
WINTER CLOTHING
from the basement. If the storm veered or dissipated, as they often did, the temperature would stay relatively the same. Rapid Weather Patterns, the government calls them. Appearing fully formed on radar and disappearing as quickly, they are exact, perfect storms with a disciplined set of precipitation rings that destroy everything underneath. I've experienced only one, though there have been many warnings.

The first three appeared in rapid succession over a period of two days in California, and the images were fantastic. Buildings covered in ice, flooded with three feet of water, everything glistening in the quiet aftermath, holes punched through cars and roofs by hailstones. The property values for the homes left standing dropped so quickly, those who weren't displaced simply left. Santa Fe and Salt Lake took most of the influx – the first city by choice, the second by charity.

I was in Monterey for the opening of the Sun Palms, the first of the big resorts the government built to bring in revenue for the rebuilding effort. Meredith and I went in expensive bikinis, drank too much, and met a military man. He'd been from the bay area, which was still underwater, and when the cannonballs of hail hit he'd been walking his dog Mobius – a
real pretty beagle, the man told us. When the hail stopped there was nothing left on the end of his leash but pulp, and he was barely conscious anyway, floating down his own neighborhood street in thirteen hours' worth of rain, hail, and snow. I wanted to know what happened next, and he said a family in Bountiful had taken him in, their ward helping him through
his journey
. A Mormon family, and I nodded. We all looked out over the water together. What I wouldn't give for a boiled egg, he told us. But all the chickens had died years ago from the flu.

When I left California, its border rendered as arbitrary as I guess it ever was, I brought a T-shirt for Alan that said,
I survived California's RWPs and all I got was this lousy T-shirt
. But he wouldn't wear it, and I suppose he was right. He usually kept my poor taste in check.

My optimism about the likelihood of the storm veering off course, and also because I was too tired to retrieve my winter clothes from the basement, led me to choose a short-sleeve knitted pullover in a solid wine color, dark and flattering against my pale skin.

‘This color really takes the years off,' said Anna, plucking approvingly at the material.

I decided to wear jeans because they made me feel younger.

What's missing is a flat abdomen and suntanned arms, though I never tanned very well, and now there's no sweat on the backs of my legs or low-slung pants to barely conceal my pubic hair. What's gone is the feeling of everything years and years ahead, and here I am counting down the hours to an evening.

I'll take what I can get.

My tea's gone cold.

I have all of my old journals, two from that Mackinac
summer, although I don't know how I ever found the time to write. The seventy-five books are on a shelf in the hall closet, and will remain there until I die. I wonder what will happen to them when I am gone. If Anna will find them and throw them away, or if she will sit and read, taking an afternoon, then an evening, a weekend, to know me better.

One Saturday, years ago, while Anna and her father were at the Tomahawk Ropes Course in Mankato, I did a meticulous search of her bedroom and found her journal, feeling embarrassed I was so curious and disappointed there seemed to be nothing else to find. My daughter was a mysterious woman, and what I did not know about her seemed suddenly astounding that afternoon; it was irresponsible to be so ignorant. In the drawer of her bedside table, where I found one green apple-flavored condom, was a clean white book with a quotation on the cover –
The Past and Future are Illusions. They Exist in the Present. Which is What there is and All there is
. The beginning of her interest in Zen; she was just fourteen. Sitting on her bed and locking the door, I decided to start at the end. I still remember the words exactly, written in anger and outlining her opinion of me. I snapped the book shut, humiliated. In the bathroom I ran a hot shower and cried, while afterwards, standing naked in front of the steamed-up mirror I turned and strained to see the soft blue mark of the tattoo from so long ago. I rubbed moisturizer into my face with an upward motion, careful not to tug the skin. I was snippy with Alan for a week.

Would I have been upset if it weren't true?

I imagine with a delicious horror the skeletons that might jump out from the pages of my own past, an army waving words like knives and stabbing everyone that's left – although recently too many of these skeletons have been aired, their bones brittle but hard in the sunlight.

Journal number 18, the year after the island:

Test negative
. This entry was followed by a drawing of a bare-breasted woman with angry pubic hair.

Journal number 36, right after we slept together:

Alan's penis is marginally better than Dan's. A bit longer. Great Lakes birthmark, nice hands
.

Journal number 46, right after I started at the office:

Russ took me to 22 Musgrave. Drink Drink. Roast Chicken.
Government Amex
.* Remember to ask Patty about his lazy eye*