And She Was (18 page)

We started kissing again. Tom pulled my sweater over my head, and the wind licked at my black-brassiered chest, leaving streaks of cool that Tom’s hands smoothed warm with each caress. I lay back on the concrete, the rough cold contrasting with Tom’s smooth heat. He murmured in my ear, words that quieted indecision. I was beautiful, sexy, hot. I relaxed into the comfort of a man’s hands stroking, gripping. Tom unbuttoned my jeans, and I gave up deciding how far I’d let this go.

As he moved faster, I closed my eyes and concentrated on getting to my orgasm, which can be tough when you’re as drunk as I was.

He was still inside me when I heard the whine of a motor. The teensy orgasm I’d been working on melted. I tilted my head away from Tom’s thick breath and listened. It grew louder. Maybe I thought that if I didn’t come, I wouldn’t have to think of myself as such a slut, so much like them. Maybe I was just tired of working so hard for what would undoubtedly be a less than earth-shattering orgasm. The minute Tom stopped shuddering, I slid from under him and sat up. I turned toward the sound coming up the gravel road from Dutch.

“Doesn’t sound like a truck,” I said.

Tom pulled up his jeans, which had only made it down to his hips. He listened. “Three wheelers. Two, I think.”

How do men know these things? I’ve heard countless men rattle off not only the model of an airplane flying overhead or a vehicle approaching but the engine size and year. I suspect men’s ears are specially made to pick up infinitesimal variations in sound vibrations that can quickly be transferred into certainty that this particular motor is a Blah-Blah 1500 with a turbine blah-blah. Or that there are two three-wheelers headed our way.

I hopped off the pillbox and stepped into my jeans just as the first gust of a new wind hit.

“Where ya going?”

“To see.”

Tom shrugged and dug rolling papers and weed from his pocket.

I walked downhill to a line of taller shrubs and looked back to see white paper swirling under his fingers in the moonlight.

The whine grew louder until it neared the pull-off for the beach. I still couldn’t see anything, but then the motors wound high, and I saw the headlights of two three-wheelers bouncing along a trail below me. I followed their progress around the curve of the mountain.

The three-wheelers stopped where the path between the hills turned back toward the sea. I moved down the slope to get closer. Don’t ask me why. I suppose it made for a convenient diversion. The engines cut out, and I could make out four figures climbing off. One of the passengers needed a hand. The passenger moved to the front of the machine and used the headlight to look into a bag. I was only about
fifty yards away now. I could see her face. It was the old Aleut woman. She turned on a flashlight, and one of the others cut the headlight. Before the lights went out, I saw two other faces I knew, Anna and Little Liz, whose face looked almost menacing now in its sobriety. I didn’t get a look at the fourth.

I crouched, mostly to get out of the wind, which numbed my bare arms and stomach. I slipped, just a shuffle’s worth of noise.

Ida straightened.

I watched her shoulders, then her face turn toward me. She raised the flashlight. And although I knew she could not see me, in the dark, crouched among brush, high above her, I felt she did. I felt an arching slice of fear as the flashlight moved across the brush shielding my pale skin.

And then they were gone. The single point of light moved slowly off to the east, following the backs of the mountains.

What were these old women doing riding three-wheelers around at night? Let alone taking off into the mountains by themselves with a flashlight? Something about the place, the stars, my unrealized orgasm, and my bare skin skating with wind made it all surreal. And I guess, looking back without the benefit of booze and weed, I can say that it was.

I hopped the rest of the way down to their three-wheelers, wishing I had grabbed my sweater first. I didn’t have a light, but I ran my hands over the three-wheelers. I thought about following the old women, but my faith in the uniformity of gravity had returned. I climbed back up and found my sweater and Tom. We shared a joint; he whispered fishing stories. But the women didn’t return in the next hour.

We eventually picked our way back down to the beach, where we found everyone in confusion. Apparently, Jill had had a fight with her guy and stumbled off in a huff to drive back to town. That left twelve of us with two pickup trucks.

The mood had definitely changed. The sweet swaying intoxication had dissolved into a staccato of logistics, fringed with disappointment. All wasn’t right with the world; we just hadn’t noticed for a time. Someone doused the fire. Someone piled booze into a truck bed. No one picked up the trash.

Les, Tom, and I ended up in the back of one truck together. Tom
made a valiant effort to neck a bit more as we headed back to Dutch. But this was a teeth-knocking, head-butting experience that did nothing for my disappointed nether regions. And I couldn’t stop thinking about those women.

I guess the best way to describe how I felt that night is haunted. These old Aleut women had settled into my life without provocation or invitation. They kept appearing, doing odd things right in front of me. Ida was giving me the eye. Anna was testing me with reading material. The ghost of a younger Liz was walking around my cabana late at night. I really didn’t believe that they were watching me, but that’s how it felt, like I’d come to their attention and had better figure out just what that meant. As we bounced along the beach road under a sheer cast of moonlight, I decided to go on the offensive—I decided to start stalking them.

AUGUST 5, 1986

I
’d woken up several times during the night, sure that Liz was in the cabana. I thought I heard her washing the dishes I’d left in the sink. I heard her light a candle on the table. I felt her leaning against the window, staring out at the dark valley. When morning finally came, I shook off the comforter and peeked over the loft edge. The dishes were still in the sink, an unlit candle on the table. I had to figure out what those women were up to before I lost my mind.

I studied what I had come to think of as Little Liz’s outhouse confession when I took my morning hike behind the cabana. The daylight didn’t help me decipher anything more. I’d only frequented two bathrooms in Dutch—the Elbow and my outhouse—and Liz had written in both. Odds were on that she’d left evidence elsewhere. If I could find it, I’d get closer to the truth, closer to ransoming back my sanity. And, of course, I’d prowled through public restrooms before without even this much rationale.

I had the next three days off. So at 10
A.M.
I stuffed my latest graffiti notebook and a pen into my saddlebag and set out to recon Dutch’s public bathrooms.

Oddly enough, Romans instigated the whole graffiti craze, as well as the bleached blonde phenomena, and the bar thing. We know this largely because of Pompeii’s ashy fate.

One of Pompeii’s brothels, a line of spare cells along a corridor, had drawings on the wall beside each woman’s place of business. The paintings showed variations of the sex act. Next to them, customers would scribble their comments, advertising their virility along with their companion’s skill set. These must have been similar to what you can see in any raunchy men’s room today.
Nancy gives head right here in the head. For an easy lay call Debbie.

Rome was dripping with graffiti. On building walls people scribbled everything from political endorsements to boasts about how many steps it took to walk the length of their patios. One political candidate had so many graffiti endorsements that some punks began making fun of him with graffiti messages that declared support from groups like the Sleepyheads en masse and the Drunken Stay-Out-Lates en masse. Graffiti was so common Romans started writing graffiti about graffiti:
I marvel you don’t collapse, O walls, beneath the burden of so many scrawls.

I didn’t need to hit the Elbow Room. I’d been checking that bathroom three nights a week when I did my Little Liz closing-up chores. I decided to start with the grocery store. Dutch had only one. Anywhere else it would just be a well-stocked convenience store; here it was the superstore. I found mostly kid-writing. Plenty of
Todd is soooo cute
and
Puffins Rule
. A girl with a sense of justice had scribbled the name of her nemesis with instructions to call her for a blow job.

I bought two cans of sardines, Ritz crackers, and a block of cheddar, stuffed them into my bike bag and headed over the bridge, along a road flanked with towers of crab pots and to the docks. The dock lounge had a rec room with vending machines, arcade games, laundry, and showers. I think you’re supposed to have a boat tied up to use the place, but nobody cared. The women’s bathrooms here were rarely used and thus rarely cleaned. I checked the toilet paper rolls. Nothing. On the walls most of the messages warned about boats and their crews.

Cooks on the
Brigadier
work on their backs
.

Watch out for Joe Finkle
.

And my favorite,
Smell my ass!
I imagined some woman sitting on the can here and pulling a pen from her pocket. Um, she thinks, what
should I write? Then it comes to her, “Smell my ass.” But something is missing, that period on the end doesn’t capture her passion. I added
Smell my ass!
to the notebook.

The HiTide was next on my list, but I wasn’t eager to drop by simply because I didn’t want to run into anyone from last night—especially Tom, who I knew was staying there. The bar, however, was strangely empty. Only Jill and the fixings for the Bloody Mary I was craving.

“Hey,” Jill said when I leaned up to the bar.

“Bloody Mary, make it strong,” I ordered. “I’ve got to use the head.”

“Got it.”

I checked under the toilet paper rolls first. Nothing but screws spreading rusty rings around themselves. The walls had been painted over the same gray several times. The heavy markers bled through at least one coat, sometimes two. You’ve seen it all before.

I was here but now I’m gone. Left my shit to carry on.

Harold Kattov has VD.

The white rabbit fell down the hole.

Screw my husband again and I’ll cut your head off—Taylor.

Class of ’85 Rules.
On this one someone had scratched out ’85 and written ’87, from which someone else had drawn an arrow and written,
Punks!

I jotted down the rabbit one, just because.

Jill was just plopping a pickled bean into my drink when I scootched up on a bar stool. I pulled it out and sucked the tomato gruel off the end. I preferred celery, but a bean was better than some of the garnish variations that can accompany a Bloody Mary—peppers, lemons. I’ve even been handed a drink with a pickle in it.

“So what did you think of the party?”

“I drank too much.”

“Looked like you hit if off with Tom pretty well.”

I downed half my drink. “Why’d you take off?”

Jill turned her head quickly and started rearranging the perfectly ordered booze bottles. She was crying. Shit. I slurped hard, trying to finish up and escape before something intimate happened. But Jill was too quick. As a professional server, she must have heard me sucking bottom and had another Bloody Mary in front of me before I’d un
crossed my legs. Jill had spent way too much time with her makeup and hair this morning. Her face and hair looked mannequin-hard, sharp edged and thick.

“That fucking asshole.” Jill’s tears started again with her words. “I really liked him. I mean, I thought he was different. He’d been talking shit about me going back to Seattle with him. He has this seven-yearold daughter and was saying how much she’d like me. He has a house….”

Jill poured herself a drink.

“I’m like making plans to go. I packed up my shit. Then last night he says he doesn’t know. This is after I balled him, you know. God, he’s not even that good. He never gets me off. He says his ex is all tweaked about him having other women around his kid. He says he better talk to her before I come down. He didn’t even stop by before catching the morning plane out. The prick.” Jill wiped her cheeks. “I turned thirty last week.” She tilted the last of her drink back. “Shit.”

Jill’s admission hit me like a jab in the throat. I had assumed she was older than me, thirty-three at least. Could she really be a year younger?

I wish I could say that I comforted Jill, commiserated at least about the shitty men in the world. Told her she was still young and attractive and there were plenty of fish in the sea. But I didn’t. I guess I couldn’t. Saying I didn’t know how to find the words isn’t true; I didn’t want to find the words. Words have too much power, especially if you listen to your own. All I could come up with were the few lame phrases I’d heard my mom say again and again: get while the getting’s good; never stay long enough to say you’re sorry; never leave empty-handed. Seemed our wisdom only covered the leaving; not the being left. None of these seemed appropriate. I felt a panic surging like vomit in my throat. And the thought repeated with the rhythm of wet shoes in a drier—
she’s younger than me; she’s younger than me
.

Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk.

I needed distance between myself and Jill the Younger. Slapping a ten on the bar, I made a lame show of having somewhere to be, and ran.

By the time I got the bike started, my quest had fizzled. What was I doing? Riding around Dutch, checking bathroom wall writing. Taking a notebook with gems like
the white rabbit fell down the hole
in it. All
because an old Aleut woman was writing nonsense messages in a bathroom. I was really too old for this crap.

I had to get my act together.

I stood there straddling my bike for a minute or two, not knowing where to go now that all the fog of importance had drifted away from my plans. I did the only sensible thing—headed for the Elbow Room.

I had a message waiting. Thad was coming in. The boat had caught its limit and would be in for a three-day break. He’d be at the docks in four hours.

Saved. I wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with myself for the next few days. I wouldn’t have to think about myself, or them. Thad, my hero who rarely showed, had come through.

“Better get your rear in gear,” Marge said, winking in slow motion with the weight of her eye shadow.

And that’s what I did. I rode like crazy up to the cabana and cleaned like crazy. I didn’t have time to wash all the bedding and figured it would be smarter to leave it until after Thad’s visit. In two hours, I was back on my bike, roaring down the hill toward the high school. I’d discovered the high school shortly after Thad left. You paid $3.50 for a swim and could use the clean, well-lit shower room all you wanted. They even supplied towels. I loved to swim, but this time I didn’t even splash around in the pool after paying the young lifeguard. I went straight to the locker room. There was absolutely no writing on the walls here. What was wrong with these high school girls? Did they really have so much school pride that they reserved their graffiti urges for the grocery store?

In an hour, I was showered, blow dried, made up, and dressed casual but sexy in Levi’s and one of Thad’s work shirts, barely buttoned. One hour to go. I stopped by the grocery store and filled my saddlebags with more cheese and crackers, apples, and two bottles of not-so-bad wine.

I made it to the docks to see the
Seawind
bucking the choppy waves of a wide tide rip that streaked its foamy, garbage-strewn back across the bay. The boat settled back into calm water. Thad stood on the bow, a thick line in one hand, his other stuffed in a pocket. The boat rocked
with the waves; he let his knees find the tempo. He waved, his curly hair blowing back in the boat’s wind. I watched him jump on the dock. He landed squarely and wrapped the line around a body-size cleat once, then leaned against the rope, pulling the slack past the cleat. I stepped close and watched Thad wind the line in a figure eight around the cleat and double one end back. He rose from his knees and straight into my arms. We held each other and kissed for a long, long time.

I felt the wind blowing against us, his oilskin folding itself around my body, his arms bold, his lips warm.

“Take me home,” I murmured into his ear.

He pushed me away to look at me. “You mind if we hang here for a while? Steve’s buddy is moored across the dock, and they invited us all over for some steaks.”

I pressed close to him again. “Actually, I’d rather have you to myself.”

“I really want you to meet the guys I work with,” he said, slipping his hand down to take mine. “They’re important to me, like family. Spend more time with them than I ever did my brothers.”

“That is exactly why I don’t want to meet them.” I kept a playful tone, but I was dead serious. I did not want to meet Thad’s folks; I did not want to meet his brothers; I did not want to meet his best buds.

He tugged me toward the boat. “Come on. We have plenty of time.”

The skipper was just hopping off. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, striding past Thad and me. “Make sure you get all that crap cleaned up.”

The
Seawind
was big and beautiful in a diesel-machine sort of way. I hopped across a void of gray ocean to the deck and immediately felt the rumbling engine beneath my boots. It pulsed with power that exhilarated. Power that could take you safely to places that are far from safe.

I met Bill first. From an open hatch, his thick arm protruded, attached to a meaty hand holding a wrench. His head and shoulders followed. He boosted himself topside as the engine wound down. He wore sweatpants in grease-streaked red. Sweat slathered his bare chest.

“This is Brandy. Bill,” Thad said.

Bill drained a Rainier he’d left by the open hatch and stuck his hand toward me. “Eeeow!” he yelled, throwing his head back. He reached inside a case of beer and threw us each a Rainier. I tapped the can top and pulled it open, leaning back against the boat rail before taking a
good swig. The deck was tidy. A crane boom ran down its length about six feet up. In the rear lay a gargantuan pile of thick yellow webbing, braided with orange seams. The long tube of a net dragged along the Bering Sea floor, scooping up bottom fish by the tons. Parts were arrayed near the engine hatch; a couple of orangey pink buoys lined the rail; and a waist-high stack of Rainier cases squatted beside the cabin door. The bow of the boat rose into a two-story cabin. Along each side narrow welded ladders led to the upper deck.

“Come on,” Thad said, taking my hand again, “I’ll show you around.”

And so he did. The captain’s quarters on the second deck, the three staterooms, the galley. They dined at a horseshoe booth. A large-screen TV and VCR were bolted to the ceiling at an angle to the table. A built-in stacked washer and dryer led away from the kitchen toward a tiny head, completely watertight so that the room itself was the shower.

I met the second crew member, Steve, while I was still marveling at the shower setup. He was a giant of a man with a long torso and short legs, who liked to talk about two things—his half-Aleut, half-Russian heritage and Holly. Steve and Holly had just gotten married in Seattle. Holly didn’t like him fishing. He’d promised her this would be his last trip, although it wouldn’t be. Holly was scouring Washington and Oregon for their new home. They dreamed of a quaint farmhouse surrounded by at least twenty acres of pasture. Nothing too near the ocean. She wanted to raise horses. He wanted to make her happy. The $200,000 they’d saved plus what he’d make this time out would give them a good start.