The Six Rules of Maybe (6 page)

By the end of the afternoon, there was a small stack of job applications on the seat between us. We’d gathered one for the Hotel Delgado, the old ivy-covered building by the marina where Teddy Roosevelt supposedly had once stayed; one for Johnny’s Market; one for the ferry terminal. The Franciscan nuns used to run the terminal, guiding the ferries into port wearing orange vests over their long brown habits, but they had gotten too old. One day they themselves had just slipped quietly away on a ferry, moving to the Franciscan Center in Bridal Veil, Oregon. Now Joe and Jim Nevins ushered the cars on and off the boats, and they were always looking for extra hands.

Hayden didn’t want to “sit idle” all summer. That’s what he said.
Sitting idle
made me think of that car in front of Buddy Wilkes’s house, his El Camino. Practically anytime you drove past his street, you could see its hood up and the back of Buddy in his baggy-ass Levi’s as he leaned into the open hood, a beer bottle sitting on the curb. Juliet used to sit there too, on the curb, watching him. I saw her there many times, and later her breath would smell the sour yellow tang of Coronas.

I’d liked riding in that truck in Hayden’s passenger seat. I’d liked standing beside him, both of us making reassuring sounds to Zeus as Big Bill held Zeus firmly and clipped his nails. We’d gotten back into the car and imitated Big Bill’s drawl, laughing at a dog groomer with a cowboy hat and big cowboy buckle that said
USA
on it.

I’d liked hearing Hayden talk about school, too—graduate school, architecture. He wanted to make beautiful buildings with steel curves and angles of light. I’d also liked waiting outside the Hotel Delgado on that bench by the roses that looked out over the marina. I’d waited with Zeus sitting at my feet and my camera in my lap until Hayden came back out, the application in his hand.
Front desk or waiter?
he’d said. He had a big grin and his tousled hair was going all directions like it was up for anything.
Front desk
, I’d said.
King-size bed, no smoking room, here’s your key
, he’d said, shaking his car key at me, and we strode happily back to the car with Zeus running ahead, and it felt like we’d done it every day for years.

There was so much liking that I convinced Hayden to buy Juliet some chocolates. It was probably one of those furtive moves your guilty conscience makes, even if you’ve been as innocent as everyone knows you to always be. Still, if Juliet didn’t really love Hayden, and if her love was what he wanted, chocolates were a smart move on his part. Juliet liked presents. Daniel Chris had given her that necklace one time and she hadn’t taken it off even after she had dumped him and moved on to Harrison-something, who had given her roses and more roses. Our house looked like the funeral parlor where Kevin Frink’s mom worked. But Buddy Wilkes had given chocolates at first, before he had given necklaces and roses and butterfly candleholders and everything all the other boys had given but more. Some people get adoration mixed up with love, and Juliet was one of them.

I brought Hayden into Sweet Violet’s, across the street from Randall and Stein Booksellers and Mom’s store, Quill. Sweet Violet’s wrapped their boxes in thick purple paper and gold ribbon, and even Buddy Wilkes, who reeked of sweat and foul language, understood the importance of this.

“I don’t even know if Juliet likes chocolates,” Hayden said. We stood in the chilled store air, which smelled thick and rich with dark cocoa and sugar. Hayden peered through the shiny glass cases at the truffles set gently in gold ruffled paper. “She’s always talking about her weight.”

I could tell he might not understand the first thing about Juliet. Getting chocolates wasn’t about
chocolates
—it was about unwrapping the box and lifting up the lid and seeing what was inside. Chocolates were an invitation, a selection of possibilities,
hope
, the chance for something great, same as a letter, same as Christmas, same as car keys dangling from a finger or a passport with your picture inside. Maybe
expensive
chocolates meant too that someone was willing to sacrifice for you, and sacrifice seemed somehow tied to devotion. But it was too complicated to explain to Hayden, who pulled out dollar bills from his wallet; crumpled, jammed-in dollar bills which meant he didn’t have a lot of money. People with money—like Dean Neuhaus and Mom’s boss, Allen—they kept their bills flat and orderly. It wasn’t necessary to fluff and stuff in some act of monetary self-deception.

“Trust me,” I said, as we left the cold of the store and went back outside into the glad sun. “She likes to be given things. Presents. Compliments. To feel special.”

He looked at me and laughed a little like he thought I was joking. “Chocolate. Check,” he said. I could tell he still thought he was doing something for me, not for himself. He probably thought that ring on his left hand and on hers meant that he and Juliet would sit on some porch watching their children play on some lawn for years to come. But Juliet didn’t stick with things too long. I’d played the flute all through middle school and had been taking pictures forever, but Juliet went from flute to guitar to pottery to boys. Her speed wasn’t porch so much as highway. And a ring, anyway—a ring was
a declaration of hope, not a mission accomplished.

Zeus waited in the back of the truck parked at the curb in the shade, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth like a drunk in a bad cartoon. I swear, dog tongues doubled in length on a hot day. Zeus’s toes had their new manicure from Pet Palace, which we had found all the way out of the main part of town, next door to the Rufaro School of Marimba. Zeus had walked out of there all careful and proud as if he knew he was different and more beautiful. But now he looked as if his enthusiasm was wearing thin.

“Gotta give him some water, pronto,” Hayden said. He retrieved a large, full plastic jug behind his seat and a pale, old Tupperware bowl, used just for that purpose.

“I’m going to pop in there a sec,” I said, as he unscrewed the water bottle lid and poured. I gestured to Randall and Stein Booksellers across the street, next to Mom’s store, Quill.

“Sure.”

They knew me well in there. Bonnie Randall raised her eyebrows when I set
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
on the counter.

“For my sister,” I said.

I dashed across the street with my green bag, hopped back in the truck. We were done with our errands; probably Hayden wanted to get home. But I didn’t want the time to be over yet. The day had been the kind of comfortable good fun you just wanted more of. I didn’t know when I’d had that much comfortable good fun, maybe way back when I was a kid.

“Do you have time to see one more thing?” I said.

“I’m not in any hurry,” he said. “I’m having a great time.”

I took a big breath, and the day smelled especially good. “Remember Deception Loop that took us to the hotel? We get back
on there.” The Horseshoe Highway was the island’s inner main road, and Deception Loop circled its outer edge, giving glimpses of the Strait of Juan de Fuca between the tall firs and evergreens that lined the road. I directed Hayden around the island, toward Point Perpetua Park. There was a preschool class having lunch at the picnic tables and an old lady with one leg in the air doing tai chi on the grass, but we passed all of them and walked down the trail toward the lighthouse. Zeus ran ahead but kept running back again to make sure we weren’t far behind him. We emerged from the trail onto a wide beach, and I led Hayden over driftwood and around rocks toward my favorite huge boulder just before the lighthouse itself. It took some climbing, but the rock was high and flat and from up on top, the view over the sound went on forever. This was one of my favorite places to take my camera. I’d come out here alone, on my own, just to watch and see what might appear. It was a great big peaceful movie that was running all the time.

“Wow. This is some view.” Hayden sat right down, dangled his legs over the side. I lifted my camera, took quick aim, called his name. “Oh great, I’m sure my eyes were closed,” he said.

I sat beside him. Zeus was down below, happily sniffing seaweed and exploring the mysterious crevices between driftwood logs. It was the kind of windy that makes you feel pleased and alive. “In a few weeks, the orcas will be here. This place will be packed with people. The island gets nuts. When all the tourists leave, there’s an annual ‘Thank God They’re Gone’ celebration.”

“Invasion, huh?” Hayden said. “Well, it’s fantastic right now.” The sound gleamed, sunlight on sea, a thousand glimmery water stars. It was cool there by the water, but I knew the sun was secretly intense. I tilted my chin up, breathed the salty air that always seemed to me delicious enough to drink up.

“No great silver steel buildings, though,” I said.

“God architecture,” he said.

“He knew what he was doing.”

“And no Urban Studies final for Him either.”

“It makes you think about all the big words,” I said.

“I was just thinking that,” he said.

We were sitting close. Our legs were almost touching. I could feel Hayden’s, I don’t know, presence, self, Hayden-ness, right there next to me. His watch on his wrist, the strength of his square shoulders. I was just being myself then. This seemed shocking. Even talking to boys at school made me feel I was on some swinging rope bridge high above a raging river, where the lines just ahead looked fuzzy and frayed. Myself wasn’t something I was all that often. Not without all the inner and outer monitoring systems working, the ones that looked out on the horizon for oncoming disasters. But I was just being myself, and you wouldn’t believe what a relief it was.

“I like your places, Scarlet Ellis,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I do.”

“Everyone likes the beach,” I teased. “Who doesn’t like the beach?”

“I like
this
beach.”

We sat in that ease in the sun before a sparkling sea. It was one of those few right moments in your life that you might always remember. When something was as still and true as a blade of grass, when you wished you could hold your breath and make time stop for a good long while. On and on, it would go. On and on, and it would just keep being right.

Mrs. Martinelli barreled in our direction the second we pulled into
the driveway. She stepped over the junipers between our yards like an army recruit in a row of tires.

“Who is this young man? I’ve seen his truck,” she said, but you could tell she couldn’t care less if she got an answer. Bits of juniper now clung frantically to her white tennis shoes. She was wearing her favorite sweatshirt—the one with a pair of frogs sharing a single umbrella, sheltered from sequined raindrops.

I made an uh-oh face toward Hayden so he’d be ready. You need advanced warning for some people, and, as much as I loved her, Mrs. Martinelli was one of them.

She thrust a paper into my hands. “I’ve been waiting all day to see you. We have received a New Communication.” She was beginning to sound like the scam letters themselves—those Business Propositions written by criminals who were very fond of Capital Letters.

I’d felt a little generational responsibility for her and Mr. Martinelli, ever since she first told me about getting the e-mails. Our elders had tried to warn us about the risks of drug use, something they knew about from personal experience. Maybe we needed to return the favor about technology use, something
we
knew about. They had no idea of the dangers involved. Rose Marie and Herb Martinelli had gotten their first computer about five months ago, and somehow word had gotten out that two new suckers were driving full speed along the Information Highway without their seat belts buckled.

“This arrived via Electronic Mail,” Mrs. Martinelli said. Her eyes were big behind her glasses. “Mr. Martinelli experienced a Printer Jam. He had to dismantle the machine with a kitchen knife. You may notice a few words missing.”

God, he’d killed that printer. There were long white spaces
between some of the words, which Mrs. Martinelli had filled in with a pen, her handwriting as thin and fragile as the veins you could see all over her legs when she wore shorts.

Dearest One,

Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere Business. I am MORIN JUDE the only daughter of late Mr. and Mrs. Boni JUDE. My father was a very wealth cocoa merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory coast. My father was Poisoned to death by his business Partners on one of their outings on a business trip to France. My mother died when I was a baby and since then my father took me so special.

Before the death of my father in a private hospital here in Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has the sum of Five million, Five hundred thousand United State Dollars. USD ($5,500,000) left in one of the prime Banks here in Abidjan. He asked that I should seek for a foreign partner in a country of my choice so that they might continue his cocoa plantation….

“Mrs. Martinelli, just click the
REPORT SPAM
button on your e-mail page and don’t open up mail from people you don’t know. I told you, remember?” This was my version of the “Just Say No to Drugs” speech.

“Scarlet. This sounds like a wonderful opportunity.” Her cheeks were flushed.

“Millions of people received this same letter, Mrs. Martinelli.
Millions. Some guy with a creepy mustache and no job wrote it in his mother’s basement.”

“Mr. Martinelli and I love cocoa in the evenings,” she said.

“Trust me,” I said.

She stared hard at me with those big eyes. “The Ivory Coast,” she said. The words managed to be both wistful and full of adventure.

“His mother’s basement,” I said.

She sighed dramatically as if there were things I’d never understand. She made her way back into her own yard, but not before she snatched the letter back with a little bit of nastiness. Her butt was big and bumpy in those stretchy pants, but still she held that paper as if it were somehow breakable. The way you hold precious things, or should hold precious things.