Children of Paranoia (6 page)

After watching the water for a few moments, I began to scan the beach for my friends. This is where we met every time—this beach. Either I'd see them or I'd lie down in the sand and wait for them to show up. I didn't see either of them at first. The beach was still relatively crowded, with a towel or blanket every five feet or so. The image looked like it came right out of a 1950s postcard. I took the towel out of my backpack and walked down toward the water. I dropped my towel in the sand about twenty feet from the waterline and lay down. The air was warm. I think I may have fallen asleep. If I did, I just dreamed of other sandy beaches, because I don't remember anything else. Not until Michael came up and kicked sand into my face, anyway.

“You bastard,” I said without opening my eyes, blissfully unaware of the children around me. I sprang to my feet and ran. It took me about half the beach before I caught up to Michael and tackled him into the sand. He tried to avoid it by bobbing and weaving but knew that I had more endurance than he did. Finally, I dove down toward his legs and knocked him over. Then I climbed on his back and pushed his face into the sand. “I was having a perfectly good time until you showed up,” I said to him.

“Get off me, fat-ass,” he managed to mumble through a mouthful of sand. Then I let him up and he tried to dust as much of the sand off his body as he could. The process was endless. Each wipe left a white residue. “You really know how to say hello to a guy,” he complained as he tried to get the sand off his back.

“You started it.” I felt like I was twelve years old again.

“All right, fine,” Michael replied. “Give me some love.” Then he pulled me into a big hug. I could smell the coconut odor from his suntan lotion. “Glad you could make it, Joey. We've come here every day for like three days now.”

“Yeah, sorry I couldn't get here sooner,” I said. “I guess we're not at this beach.”

“Nope. I found us a choice place on the beach down about fifteen blocks.”

“Where's Jared?”

“He's back at the house, making drinks, waiting for you to show your lazy ass up.” Michael took one long look at me. I stared back. All I saw was my seventeen-year-old friend, even though nearly a decade had passed since we were that age. It was like looking through a time machine. When I looked at Michael, all I saw was an innocent, happy kid—even though he definitely wasn't innocent anymore. “So what'd you want to do?” he finally asked.

“I just want to go home,” I replied.

 

 

We walked the fifteen blocks on the beach. We were in no rush. That's all I wanted out of the week, no rush. We walked close to the water's edge and each time a wave rushed in, I could feel the coolness engulf my ankles. Michael ogled the women as we walked. He stared at every single woman on that beach. Neither age nor weight held him back. “Don't you have any standards?” I asked him as he stared at a woman who must have been in her late forties as she took off her shorts and lay down on a blanket.

Michael took a step toward me and put his arm around me as we walked. “I see beauty everywhere,” he said to me with a grin.

“Right,” I replied.

“Come on, man. You have to loosen up a little. What do you think beaches are for, anyway? Ogling and being ogled—that's the whole show, Joe.”

“That's it, huh?”

“That's it.” Michael laughed. “This is nothing, Joe. Wait until we get to Saint Martin. Those beaches, they're like a three-dimensional porn magazine.” This time I laughed. “Paradise,” he finished, “Like the garden of Eden, except you don't get booted out because your dick gets hard.” He nodded as he spoke. It sounded pretty nice.

We approached the house after about a forty-five-minute walk. I could already feel my skin sizzling beneath the sun and was ready to find some shade. Michael had gotten us a little house right on the beach. It was the top floor of a duplex. As we began to walk up the hill toward the house, I could make out Jared sitting in a chair on the porch reading, his feet up on the table in front of him. “Look what I found,” Michael shouted as soon as we were close enough for Jared to hear. Jared waved to us, using his whole arm. I waved back and watched as he put his book down and trekked inside the house.

“Place looks great,” I said to Michael.

“I'm glad you think so,” Michael replied, “because you owe me seven hundred bucks for the week.”

When we made it up to the house, Jared was back outside on the deck. He'd gone inside to grab a blender and some cocktails so that he could mix drinks. The deck was nice. From it, you could see over the sand dunes and watch the waves crash against the sand. Those waves were the only sound that made it up from the beach. The crash. Then silence. Then the slow build toward another crash.

Michael ran to the bathroom as soon as we got back, leaving me and Jared alone on the deck. I hadn't been alone with my oldest friend in a while. “So what's the plan?” I asked.

“Right now? Drink a little. Sit. Watch the water.” Jared smiled and picked up a shaker. He had an assortment of liquors and juices in front of him.

“And tonight?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Michael's been waiting all week for you to show up so that we can hit the bars together. You better not let him down.” It was a toss-away line at the time. There was no way that Jared or I could know how badly I would wind up letting Michael down.

“Well, let's pick a mellow place tonight,” I replied. “I could use a little rest before things get crazy.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Jared said. The sun was beginning to drop toward the bay on the other side of the island, creating a glare. Even through the glare, I could see Jared smiling.

“What are you making?” I asked, watching Jared measure and poor and shake.

“Been making 'em for the past two days. If we can't get Michael to the islands, I figured the least we could do is bring a little bit of the islands to Michael.”

“What's in it?”

“A little rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and some coconut cream. Big drink in the islands. You want one?” Jared started pouring the frothy drink into a cup.

“Sounds a little girlie to me. What's it called?”

“A painkiller.”

“All right, then,” I answered. “Make mine a double.”

 

 

We drank painkillers and grilled burgers on the deck that night as the sky grew darker above us. Michael gave in and agreed to a relaxed evening after I promised that he would get to pick everything we did the following night. So, on the first night, we picked a small bar on the bay that we knew wouldn't get crowded. When we got to the bar, it was nearly empty. They were playing Jimmy Buffet music, trying to make people forget that they were at a dumpy little bar in New Jersey. We walked in and went straight for the bar. Michael tried ordering a painkiller. The old man behind the bar looked at him like he was from another planet. He settled on a beer.

I grabbed a barstool and sat down. I didn't plan on getting up again until we left. Michael and Jared decided to explore the place before sitting down. They didn't make it back. Instead, they discovered an old bar game tucked away in the back. I knew Jared and Michael well enough to know that, once they found that game, they weren't leaving it until one of them declared himself the champion of the bar. The game seemed simple enough. There was a small golden ring hanging from the ceiling by a string. The ring hung about chest high. About five feet away there was a hook screwed into a post. The object of the game was to hold the ring, place your feet behind the line taped to the floor, and try to swing the ring so that it would catch itself on the hook. It looked easy until you watched people try it. I sat there, with my drink in my hand, and watched as my two friends took turns standing behind the line and swinging the ring. It was unbelievably frustrating and I wasn't even playing. If you aimed the ring right for the hook, it would bounce off the hook and swing back to you. Instead, you had to swing the ring to one side, so that it would pass the hook on the way up and encircle it as it began to swing back toward you.

Frustration has never been a quiet emotion for my friends. Jared and Michael's competition started quietly enough but it didn't take long before the two of them were louder than the music coming over the bar's speakers. I divided my time between watching them and watching the bubbles rise up through my beer. I was perfectly happy just sitting there, continuing down my path toward debilitating drunkenness. I just wanted to let my worries melt away from me. I let my guard down. When I was on my third or fourth drink a woman sat down next to me at the bar. She looked like she was alone. She glanced over at Michael and Jared. They were tough to ignore. They'd always been tough to ignore. She looked at them and laughed and then turned toward me. “Friends of yours?” she asked.

It took me a moment to realize that she was talking to me. When I finally caught on, I tried to play it cool. “What makes you think that?” I asked. The woman was wearing a thin white tank top and a long island-print skirt. She was Asian, probably in her late twenties. She was in fantastic shape. She didn't look like your typical Jersey girl. She didn't look like your typical anything.

“Don't worry. I think they're cute,” she said to me, staring at my friends berating each other. “They're not going to kill each other, are they?” I looked over at Jared and Michael. It was nothing I hadn't seen before. I figured my best strategy was to try to ignore them. It was a strategy I'd used plenty of times over the past ten years.

“You here alone?” I asked. It was the alcohol talking, pumping me full of courage that I normally didn't have.

“Maybe,” she replied. She had a strange accent. “What would you think of a woman who went to a bar alone?”

“If she looked like you?” I answered. “I'd think she was mysterious. A little pathetic, but definitely mysterious.”

“Great. Mysterious and pathetic.” She laughed.

“Hell,” I replied, “you can't win them all.”

We sat for a few moments in silence, watching Jared and Michael argue. “So”—the woman eventually broke the silence—“do you come here often?”

I placed my drink back on the bar. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

“Not yet,” she said, smiling. She paused, biting down on the corner of her lower lip. “I should probably get to know you first.”

“And then you'll try to pick me up?”

“Maybe, if I like what I hear.” She placed her hand on my elbow as she slid herself onto the barstool next to mine. Her skin was rougher than I'd expected but it was still warm, and my skin flared up at her touch. “So, what's your name?”

“Joseph,” I replied, and held out my hand to shake hers. It was the first time that I'd used my real name with a woman in ages, maybe since high school. It felt good.

“Catherine,” the woman volunteered, and shook my hand.

“Where you from, Catherine?” I asked. “You've got a peculiar accent.”

“Yeah, yeah, my accent. There is nowhere in the world where I can go and not have people think that I have an accent.” She looked at me, taking in my entire face, looking for something. At the time, I thought that it was good sign. “I grew up in Vietnam but I went to graduate school in London.”

“You don't see too many people with that type of pedigree at the Jersey Shore,” I offered. She laughed. I liked her laugh.

“What about you? Where are you from?” she asked.

“Right here,” I replied, not yet growing uneasy with the questions.

“Really? You're from New Jersey?”

“Well, not New Jersey. I live just outside of Philadelphia,” I lied. Lying was easier than the truth.

“So you spend a lot of time around here?” Catherine asked, leaning into me a bit, squeezing her elbows into the sides of her breasts so that they nearly erupted out of the top of her shirt. In an instant, I could feel my pulse in my head. “I'm kind of new to the area,” she added. “I just came down from New York. Do you make it up there much?”

“Now and then,” I replied. “I have to go there on business sometimes.” I knew that I was dangerously close to the truth.

“Really? What do you do?” Catherine asked, still expertly using her cleavage to hypnotize me.

“Shill for the man,” I replied, deciding to try to get the subject off of me. “What about you?”

Catherine laughed. “No, really. What do you do? If I'm going to pick you up, I need to know that you've got a stable career.” She smiled at me. I never wanted her to stop smiling.

“You don't have to worry about that,” I replied. I leaned in toward her. I was drunk and horny and out of sorts.

“I think I'll be the judge of that,” she rebuked me. I figured that if I wanted to get in her pants, I needed to come up with a job where I made some money.

“Fine. I'm a financial consultant,” I lied. We were taught, during training, to tell people that we worked in professions that wouldn't elicit much of a response. They suggested jobs like product managers for companies that made hangers or salesmen for plastic doorstops. Basically, we were taught to pick jobs that would effectively act as conversation enders. Of course, we were never taught how to do this and get laid at the same time. It really was a flaw in the curriculum.

Her smile broadened. “Is there lots of financial consulting in Philadelphia?”

“Big fish, small pond,” I responded.

“Wouldn't you be better off working in New York? That's where all the finance happens, right?” Catherine replied. I began to feel uneasy that she kept bringing up New York. “I mean, you could work downtown and live in Brooklyn. I love Brooklyn.” She held the word
Brooklyn
in her mouth for a moment before letting it out. “Have you been to Brooklyn?” That's when the alarms began to go off in my head. My memory ran to the last moments I'd spent in Brooklyn. It was only a week earlier. I saw the face of the woman I'd strangled. I heard the voices of her children. Everything that I had come to the Jersey Shore to forget came rushing back to me. Catherine just sat there, staring at me, watching as the blood began to run out of my face. “Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was cold. There was no concern in it. I felt dizzy. I needed to change the subject. I took a long swig of beer from the bottle in front of me. I tried to take a couple breaths to regain my composure. My pulse was racing. If I hadn't been drunk or if I wasn't so turned on, or if I hadn't spent the day at the beach trying to forget everything about my life, maybe I would have been able to keep my cool.
Have I been to Brooklyn?