Cape Disappointment (13 page)

We had officiated our differences in the rainy stop-and-go traffic between Seattle and Olympia, the state capital. For my part I did a long riff on why I felt the need to fulfill my pledge to Maddox, even though I was planning to vote for Sheffield. Kathy pretended the discussion mollified her, although I could tell it hadn't. She spent fifteen minutes outlining her irritation with the way I'd been fending off her pleas to jettison Maddox, and I dutifully apologized. I didn't like to be pushed and it had shown. She acknowledged she'd been pushing, and I acknowledged I'd been recalcitrant and, worse, sarcastic. We both promised to be more thoughtful in the future.

We both agreed to turn off our cellphones for the rest of the night, even though Kathy would have to regularly check for messages as promised. The room had no radio or TV, no computer hookup, and we weren't carrying any newspapers, so local and national news would be out of our purview. I'd packed a thick historical novel I'd been wading through, and Kathy had brought a draft of her first solo attempt at ghostwriting a speech for Senator Sheffield. I'd read part of it and it was pretty damn good.

“Did he mention the asteroid?” I asked after we'd ordered our meals.

“Of course he mentioned it. It's one of his favorite metaphors.”

“I'm not sure it was a metaphor. I think he may actually believe an asteroid will come screeching out of the sky and land on Jane Sheffield just like that house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East.”

“He's really very sweet and a lot more sensitive than you give him credit for.”

“Sweet? Bert could go into a library to check out a copy of
Vegetarian Times,
and the next thing you know the Army Rangers would have the place surrounded.”

“He does have an uncanny knack for irritating authority figures. It's part of his southwestern cockeyed charm.”

“I didn't think he had any charm, cockeyed or otherwise.”

“I worry about him.”

“You should. All your clients … well, most of them … are screwballs, but he's the worst.”

“I'm worried that one of these days he's going to get into real trouble and never see daylight again.”

“Maybe daylight should be reserved for people who are sane.”

“He can't keep himself on track long enough to make anything good happen in his life. I've often thought Snake had bipolar disorder. Do you think if one twin had it the other would, too?”

“I'm not sure either has it. Bert's a drunk, is what he is.”

“There's more to it. He has issues that go way back. Serious issues. And it's not just his childhood. I'm convinced something happened in the army, or around the time he was in the army, that he hasn't recovered from. I want to try to get an appointment for him with Cindy.”

“Who's going to pay for it?”

“I might be able to talk her into doing it pro bono.”

Cynthia Darwell was a friend of Kathy's from college who did grief and marriage counseling in a chic clinic on the east side of the lake, treating broken marriages and emotionally wounded children of the fabulously wealthy, mostly dot-com millionaires.

Our meal arrived: pad thai, pad ga pow with basil, sesame beef with broccoli, and a side dish of steaming jasmine rice. After we'd traveled the rainy highway through Aberdeen, a small city that had once been sustained by logging and was now struggling, I said, “We're almost there. Going to be too tired to fool around?”

Kathy looked at me, and for a split second an oncoming truck's headlights made her eyes seem like gems. It was one of those moments driving in the rain late at night on a two-lane highway when you thought the truck was headed right for you, except it wasn't. “Have I ever been too tired, big fella?”

WE'D ARRIVED AN HOUR EARLIER,
checked in, unpacked, and, lacking any plans more virtuous, made love while basking in the artificial light filtering through the blinds on our patio slider from a spotlight over the beach. The light had beguiled hordes of moths, which in turn had drawn a congregation of wildly zigzagging bats in a feeding frenzy. Remaining in a stuporous, postcoital haze, I watched the bats from the bed, what I could see of them through the blinds, wondering at their ability to navigate in the darkness, as well as their uncanny knack for changing directions with alarming dispatch and unerring accuracy. Funny. All they were doing was eating dinner.

So far on the junket we'd been disciplined about not answering our cellphones, though Kathy had left hers beside us on the nightstand, and several times it had made music, a mildly distracting counterpoint, I thought, to our own music making. Before heading for the shower she glanced at a short list of messages, giving the list enough of a look to identify who had called but not staying with it long enough to return calls. The mere fact that she'd checked her messages nettled me, but I wasn't going to make a point of it, especially in light of how well things were going.

The next morning the idea had been to sleep in, maybe lie around for a few hours planning for the time when our lives wouldn't be absorbed with the minutiae of phone calls, conferences, poll results, co-worker
squabbles, and a billion little concerns that had absolutely no relevance to our actual existence. The plan had been to make love again in the morning, or to play at it, depending on whim, urgency, and mutual inclination— at least that was my plan— but when I woke up at seven-thirty, Kathy was sitting up in bed sorting through cellphone messages, scanning the list for the one message that would call her back to Seattle. It was almost as if she
wanted
to cut our holiday short. Pretending I didn't know what she was doing, I reached over and pulled her close. The silky skin of her stomach was hot to my touch. Outside, we could hear the steady rattling of the halyard from a wind sock against an aluminum pole. We made love one more time and then, sheets gnarled around our limbs, dozed off, entwined in each other's arms; I thought it wouldn't be too bad if the nuclear war started now and this became my last memory. It was that perfect.

Two hours later we took a stroll on the sand, forty-five minutes out and forty-five back. The beach was deserted except for an old couple with an Irish setter chasing sandpipers in front of us. The tide was out and the sky was darkened with a high, hoary overcast. By the time we got back to the room, we'd worked up an appetite. While she sipped fresh-brewed tea, Kathy leaned to one side of the small kitchen table, enabling her to sneak a glance at her cellphone. I was determined not to be peeved, but it was getting tougher every minute. I had also been determined not to mention the fact that I wasn't sure where my cellphone was.

“Gee. Did you get a call? I'm not sure I even know where my phone is.”

“It's in the car, buster. You made a big production of locking it in.”

“I did?”

“You know you did.”

“Maybe I should go out and check. I think the president may have been calling. Maybe Angelina Jolie needs a bodyguard.”

“If Angelina calls, let me talk to her. I'll warn her.”

“Who's been phoning you?”

“I'm just checking to make sure Jane or Kalpesh haven't called. They promised not to call unless it was critical.”

“Go ahead. Check. I'll be reading my book. Maybe after lunch we'll take a nap.” I bobbled my eyebrows and smirked like an imbecile. Really— like an imbecile. If you practiced, you could get good at it.

“I'm game for a little nap after lunch.”

“As long as you're begging, okay. Maybe I'll go jogging first. Want to come?”

“I didn't bring my Adidas. Did you mean it about checking my messages? You won't pout?”

“Be my guest.”

Kathy did not return any calls. Instead, she worked on Sheffield's speech while I lost myself in a historical novel about the Civil War; a couple of blissful hours passed like that. At one o'clock I went for a jog, promising myself a shower and a nice long nap with mama afterward. Kathy elected to remain in the room. Forty-five minutes later when I returned to the room and saw the look on Kathy's face, I knew something was wrong.

“I'm sorry, Thomas. I'm so sorry. I've been having such a good time and I'm so relaxed, and this has just been the best day of my life. I'm sorry to ruin it for us.”

“I had a feeling something was going to happen.”

“Don't be upset. Kalpesh is driving down from Seattle to meet Jane at some little airstrip near the Oregon border. He wanted to swing by here and pick me up, but I convinced him we would drive ourselves. I'm sorry. They want me on the flight with Jane.”

“I thought you had permission to take a few days off. What's so urgent?”

“Kalpesh is sick. Everyone else is out of position, so I have to replace him.”

“Crap.”

“You don't mind, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“The drawback is, after you drop me off, you'll have to drive back to Seattle by yourself.”

“Double crap.”

“Jane's hired a plane to fly up the coast to Sequim, then to Port Townsend, Bellingham, and eastern Washington. There's a landing strip not far from Cape Disappointment. It was supposed to be Kalpesh, but he's come down with food poisoning and he gets queasy in a small plane at the best of times. I'm so sorry. We did have one day together. Well, almost a full day. And we're okay now, right, sweetie?”

“We always were. I know this isn't your fault. I do have one question.”

“What's that?”

“If Mr. Kalpesh has food poisoning and can't fly, why is he driving three hours to meet you guys at the airstrip?”

“It's not Mr. Kalpesh. You know that. It's Kalpesh Gupta. So if you're going to ‘mister' him, it would be Mr. Gupta.”

“Or, I could just call him Short Stuff. Mr. Short. No, wait. It would be Mr. Stuff.”

“You're right. He is ill. If he's in a rented car maybe he could drop it off and you two could drive back together in our car?”

“No way am I letting Mr. Stuff toss his cookies in our car.”

“Now that I'm thinking about it, his parents live in Portland. I bet he's staying with them.”

“It's still a long drive if he's sick.”

“Kalpesh likes to suffer. Driving all that way to deliver me and drop off papers for Jane is just the sort of martyrdom he likes.”

“You'd think a tiny little penis would be enough to satisfy anybody's martyr complex.”

Kathy gave me what she thought was a withering look, but instead of shaming me it made me laugh. “You be nice when we see him at the airport.”

“I'm nice to everybody.”

“In November after the elections, maybe, if we can scrape up a bankroll, we'll fly to Hawaii. This is so crappy. We were both so relaxed.”

“I know. We relaxed three times.”

“At least we'll have the drive together. If Kalpesh had swung by, we wouldn't have that.”

While Kathy watched, I packed hurriedly, which was fine because I always packed hurriedly. “You going to have enough clothes for a two-day flight around the state?” I asked.

“Actually, I knew this was a remote possibility when we left yesterday.”

“So you brought enough for a plane trip?”

“Right.”

“Ms. Efficiency.”

She hoisted one of her bags off the end of the bed and began dragging
it toward the door. I grabbed it and loaded up the car while she tidied the room and left a tip on the pillow.

The roads near Ocean Shores were wet from an overnight mist, but most of the drive was dry and overcast. If everything went according to schedule, Kathy and the others would be in the air around sunset, perhaps sooner. My plan was to drop her at the airstrip and skedaddle with a minimum of fuss and introductions. There was a chance I could be at Cape Disappointment by the time the plane got out over the ocean, and with luck I might see Kathy and the others cruising north over the Pacific. It wouldn't be on a par with the nap we were missing, but it would be fun.

We'd been meaning to take in the Cape on our drive home. Kathy had never seen it, while I'd visited it once with my sister when I was small. Tucked into the southwest corner of the state, it was easy to bypass. It included a lighthouse, some World War II fortifications, and a Lewis and Clark interpretive center. As we drove, Kathy fumbled in her purse and pulled out her cellphone, peered at the caller's ID, and answered. “Bert, what's going on?” She listened for a few moments. “I can't be in Seattle in an hour. I'm on my way to hook up with Sheffield.” Kathy gave me a long, pensive look. “I can't just turn around and drop everything for you. What? Okay. So tell me what's happening.” She listened for a while and then hung up.

“What's going on?”

“He wants me to call him back. He's convinced people are listening in.”

“Who would be listening?”

“Hey. This is Bert, remember?”

“The government?”

She dialed. “Bert? I'm back.”

We were on Highway 101, which wound through a sparsely populated area of western Washington along the coast, mostly two lanes, a twisting road with lots of coastal hills covered in underbrush and fir, rare glimpses of the ocean to the west. The road passed through tiny towns such as Raymond, South Bend, Naselle, towns you only read about in the papers once every ten years or so when they experience a one-hundred-year flood, or when a murderer or a world-class violinist turns out to be the unlikely denizen of one of them.