The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  The girl went into the coffee shop, a generic-looking place called Coffee Klatch. Eric followed her inside. Into a heavy coffee smell hanging over shelves with mugs and coffeepots and assorted random shit for sale, and the high-pitched squeal of the espresso machine’s steamer frothing milk. There were half a dozen small tables inside, the type that seated two uncomfortably. He’d been in the exact same shop on both coasts.

  She went straight to the bar in the back, where someone else was ordering…he joined her, the two of them making up the line. She was tall for a girl, like five seven or eight, even. As close as he was, he could see the roots of her dyed hair, an ashy brown against the burgundy-black of the dye. She smelled like cigarettes and baby powder.

  “Double iced espresso,” she said, her voice low and a little husky. She rummaged in her bag, dragged out a battered black wallet, and waited while the woman turned to the machine and scooped up a plastic cup. Eric reached for his own wallet and saw he had, like, eighty bucks on him. Dad left a twenty on the counter every other day, usually with a note explaining that he and Jeannie were sightseeing (read: out fucking on the boat) and would be back with dinner later, takeout seafood from some ritzy place by the pier; Jeannie didn’t cook, of course. All he’d bought since coming to Port Dullsville were smokes and some yellowing paperbacks, so he was relatively flush.

  The girl got her drink, doctored it heavily at an extension to the counter, and sat at one of the tables while Eric ordered his coffee. He’d already decided that he’d try the direct approach. It usually worked.

  He walked to her table, stood next to her chair. She was digging through her bag again, but she looked up when she realized she had company, her expression careful, ready to be defiant. Her eyes were green.

  “Hey,” he said. “Is your name Chloe?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Huh. You kind of look like a Chloe. I’m Eric. Would you mind if I sat with you, just for a couple of minutes? I mean, if you’re not meeting anyone.”

  She hesitated, but then nodded. “Yeah, I’m not. Meeting anyone.”

  Eric sat, leaning back in the spindly chair. “So…not Chloe?”

  She smiled, a little twitch of a thing. “Amanda.”

  Eric nodded. “That’s a good name.”

  “I’ll thank my mother for you,” she said. “You here for the summer?”

  He nodded. “You too?”

  Her smile curved, a sardonic thing. “Nope. I call this shithole home, thank you for reminding me.”

  Nice. She was funny. This close to her, he could see how flawless her complexion was, pale and creamy. She had a baby face, but her gaze was sharp. Her mouth was a little too wide.

  “So…you’ll be around?” he asked. “Is this where you hang?”

  She raised her eyebrows. Her tone was slightly derisive. “Where I hang?”

  “Not the local lingo?” he asked, and hit her with his best smile. “So, now I look like a total dickhead or something? Dickhead, that’s the shiz, right?”

  She smiled back at him, and he decided he had to know her better. Something about her eyes, when she smiled…he could see her vulnerability, beneath her punk-rock front. He could see that she was slightly damaged.

  “No, you’re fine,” she said. “Yeah, I come down here a lot. Can’t smoke, though, so I usually end up on one of the benches by the pier. If it’s nice.”

  “If it’s not?”

  “Library,” she said. “Under the overhang, front steps.”

  “Home’s no good?”

  She leaned back a little, matching his posture. The glimmer of openness was gone, just like that. “You a therapist or something?”

  Time to leave her wanting more. He stood up, picked up his coffee, and gave her another patented Eric Hess grin. Didn’t want to look like an asshole, either…

  “Just interested,” he said, sincerely. “I gotta run. I’ll see you.”

  “Chances are good,” she said, her tone dismissive; she was already busy rummaging through her bag again. Good. She was interested, he could tell, so she was hiding a little bit. He understood the need, appreciated her as another fucked-up person in the universe, just making her way…and knew that she’d likely spend the next week hanging around the places she’d mentioned, hoping to run into him again.

  Mission accomplished. He took his time walking back out into the dying day, pleased that he’d decided to follow the girl. Amanda. Amanda. He set his still-full coffee on the curb in front of the shop—what the fuck was a klatch, anyway?—as a good-bye gift, so she could see why he’d really come in, and started back up the hill.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sadie came hard, felt herself fluttering around Josh’s thickness as he pulled his magic fingers away. He gave a few final pumps, gasped, and buried his head against her collarbone. Pulsing, pulsing…and they slumped together, Sadie’s bare ass against the damp, icy-cold wall of the walk-in, her skirt hiked around her waist, Josh supporting himself against one of the wire shelves.

  “Mmm.” Sadie smiled, laughed a little as she caught her breath. His skin was so young and tight, lightly tanned and smooth over long, lean bones. A flop of thick, shining goldbrown hair hung over his eyes, his head down as he breathed deeply, radiating warmth in the humid cold. He was all she could have asked for in a summer fling. Pretty to look at, smart enough not to be embarrassing, too young to take seriously.

  She pulled herself away from the moment long enough to glance at her watch. Ten to four. Shit. Randy would be in soon. He was cooking Monday through Thursday for the season. The restaurant opened at five. And Rick had said something about coming in to do inventory, probably right around then…there was still another hour of prep to do, at least, and she didn’t want Rick wondering why it wasn’t done. Wednesdays were tricky, since it was her night to work in the kitchen. He was always dropping in. Keeping you out of trouble, he’d chortle, pecking at her cheek. He had no idea.

  “We gotta get moving,” she said, carefully edging herself toward him, making him pull out. She immediately clenched her vaginal muscles; no panties today in anticipation of their rendezvous, and she didn’t want essence of Josh running down her thighs while she put together the cassoulet. She’d want to get to the bathroom, pronto.

  Josh reached down, pulled up his pants by the belt, the soft clink of the metal pieces half-buried in the heavy, constant thrum of the refrigeration system. She smoothed down her skirt, watching him.

  “You still want me to do the salads?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Randy’ll do the filet when he comes in, and the bisque’s already on.”

  Josh nodded and started to turn away.

  “Hey,” she said, catching him around the waist. “That was nice.”

  He grinned, leaned in to kiss her. “Sexy Sadie,” he whispered, and though the nickname was tired, she smiled in turn. At least he knew the reference.

  Together, they walked to the door of the cooler, brushing at their clothes, Sadie running her fingers through her hair. If either had turned, they might have seen Rick on the other side of one of the narrow glass doors that fronted the walk-in, where the chilled side dishes and desserts would be set out for the waitstaff to reach in and grab. Rick with his hands tightened to fists, an expression of near wonder on his face.

  In spite of her day—the sheriff had been in a mood, they’d had twice the usual number of crank calls, and there were rumors of a statewide benefits cut—Annie was full of energy when she went off duty, psyched for her date with John. She signed out at six and hurried home to shower and change for their date at seven o’clock at Le Poisson. She chose a sleeveless summer dress, nice but casual, opting for the big, lacy shawl thing over her shoulders, her last birthday gift from her brother and his wife. She had nice shoulders, she thought, drooping the shawl low, looking in the mirror on the back of her closet door. Of course, John had seen them already—along with a few more private areas—but she saw no harm in accentuating her better attributes. Saturday ni
ght with John had been really good for her, had lifted her spirits after that long, miserable almost-affair with her college prof, and she wanted their first “date” to go just as well.

  I feel pretty, oh so pretty, her mind hummed as she locked up the apartment and got into her well-used Toyota, the old blue car starting with barely a sputter. She’d be right on time.

  John Hanover. Who would have thought? Until a week or so before, she’d never considered it, never considered him, mostly because of Lauren. They hadn’t been close, but fairly friendly—two professional women in a small town, both wending their way through academia. They’d met for lunch a few times. She’d liked Lauren well enough, but wasn’t surprised when she’d heard about the divorce. Just the way she’d talked about herself, her ambitions and interests…it was like she hadn’t wanted to include John in her depiction of herself, in what she presented to the world. That was pretty much what John had told her on Saturday. He’d been so…so real about it, too. Realistic and angry and sad and OK with feeling all those things. Like a grown-up. Now that she’d looked at him, really looked—

  —really fucked his brains out, she thought, smiling, downshifting her car as she came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. No reason to be coy. Now that they’d done that, she was wondering how she’d never looked at him before. She knew why she’d never looked; Annie didn’t pretend to be some pinnacle of morality, but she had a few principles, and screwing a married man wasn’t one of them.

  But how? How did I never notice him before? He was startlingly appealing in an intellectual way, like one of those actors who always played smart, deep guys. Kevin Spacey, maybe. His wit and charm made him handsome. Average body but well endowed where it counted. And the way he looked at her when she was talking, when they’d been together in bed…like he was concentrating on her, really working to see who she was, to know her.

  Thinking about it gave her a happy chill. She didn’t want to jump the gun; she knew there were men who had taken faking sincerity to an art form—God knew she’d dated her share—but she thought John was different. The connection between them on Saturday night had been so intense, so…so perfect.

  Slow down, girlie-girl. You barely know the man.

  True enough, but that didn’t stop her from feeling like a future with him was somehow inevitable. It was so strange. She was a levelheaded kind of girl; overly direct sometimes, but not impulsive. Certainly not the type to sleep with someone before the first date. And the sex had been…well, extremely satisfying. She’d been uncharacteristically assertive, in ways she’d only ever imagined, and it had paid off.

  Maybe he brings it out in me, she thought, and smiled again, turning onto Front. Le Poisson was on Front, parallel to Water. Parking would be murder on the weekend, but Wednesday was a relatively slow night; she quickly found a spot less than a block away. She took a second to check her makeup and fluff at her hair in the rearview, then got out, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. There was almost always a breeze this close to the water, and though the lowering sun was still bright, it was already starting to get cold. The salt wind ruffled her hair, and she hurried to the restaurant, concerned for her ’do; ironically, the just-tousled look didn’t stand up to actual tousling.

  Just as she reached the door, a beautifully carved mahogany affair with a massive brass handle, John caught up to her.

  “Allow me,” he said opening the door. He smiled at her, seeming slightly out of breath as she slid past him. He smelled nice, like some mild soap. Subtle.

  They only had to wait for a moment before being seated. The last time she’d been in had been a few weeks back, a Friday night, and the place had been packed. Tonight, Poisson was barely half-full, the muted conversation from the dozen or so tables low and pleasantly background. The soft lights and candles made the dark, heavy woods of the room glow, like some romantic restaurant from a movie.

  Leticia Barker seated them near the kitchen, handed them menus. Tish was a quiet young woman who lived in Port Angeles and who played weekend hostess for the restaurant and waited tables during the week. Annie noted that she seemed more subdued than usual. Her shoulders were up, too, her body language tense.

  “How are you, Tish?” Annie asked, after the girl had listed the specials—a wild rice cassoulet with herbed prawns, salmon steaks with lemon-dill pesto, pork medallions in garlic, filet mignon. Yum.

  “I’m well, thank you,” Tish said. “How are you? Can I get you something to drink?”

  Her smile seemed a bit strained, but Annie let it drop. She didn’t know her all that well. John opted for a microbrew, and Annie got a glass of the house Chardonnay. Tish said she’d be back shortly and hurried away from their table—directly to another, with an apologetic smile. Annie looked around, realized that Tish was the only waitress on. And there was no one behind the mirror-backed bar at the far wall, so she was doing the drinks, too.

  No wonder she’s tense. Annie had waited tables just after high school, a twenty-four-hour greasy spoon that had been horribly understaffed—one waiter per twelve tables, something like that. She still had panic dreams now and again from that place, that she was standing in a vast room full of diners that had all arrived at the same time and she couldn’t find the menus.

  “Looks like she’s by herself tonight,” she commented.

  John looked up from his menu. “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind.” If John hadn’t ever worked in food service, he didn’t likely notice that kind of thing. She’d often thought that everyone should be forced to serve food to the general public for at least a day at some point in their lives, to gain some measure of empathy for the waiters and waitresses of the world. It was a difficult job.

  “So, how’s life since Sunday?” John asked, sitting back in his chair. He was wearing a dark suit jacket over a handsome dress shirt, no tie, new jeans. He looked good, crisp but not overdressed.

  “Not bad,” she said. “The last of the TV crews have packed and gone, which is a relief. Other than that, same old…well, more of it, I suppose.”

  “It’s been busy?”

  She nodded. “We’ve got a few people who call in pretty regularly, with ongoing complaints about a neighbor’s dog or the volume of a stereo or wild kids or what have you…frequent flyers. Usually, we get a couple of calls a week. Maybe a couple a day in the summer. Since Monday, we’ve logged complaints on, like, eighteen or nineteen separate calls, only a handful of them from our regulars.”

  “Wow.”

  “Weirder than usual, too,” she said. “One lady called to tell us that her next-door neighbor’s cat has been spying on her. Another guy said he thinks his daughter has taken up witchcraft and wanted to know if that was against the law so we could arrest her.”

  John smiled. “No kidding? Do you have to go check them all out?”

  Annie sighed. “Usually, no. Like I said, we’ve got our regulars, mostly retirees that don’t have hobbies. Half the time they just want someone to listen; five minutes on the phone calms them down. But like I said, most of this stuff has been coming in from new people. And the sheriff has been on edge since the Billings thing, so he wants all of us out and about, actively fielding practically everything that comes up. Letting ourselves be seen, you know.”

  “So you actually had to investigate a spying cat?”

  “That one, we passed on,” Annie said. “Is paranoia like that common? It is paranoia, right?”

  “Feeling that you’re being spied on by a cat?” John asked. “Could be a lot of things, depending on what her other beliefs are. Not to mention her medical history. Does the cat talk to her? Can it read her mind?”

  Annie liked that he was taking it seriously. “I’m not sure. Ian fielded it. He did say that she called her neighbor a ‘lecherous old man.’ I guess it’s his cat she was calling about.”

  John shook his head. “Sounds like a delusional disorder—paranoid—but it could be organic, could be schizoid…there’s no way to be sure without
knowing more.”

  “Delusional disorder—sounds dangerous,” Annie said.

  John shrugged slightly. “Again, it depends. On the cause, the severity, the extent of disruption to her life, how she reacts to things in general. There’s not a lot of black-and-white when it comes to psychology.”

  “That would drive me nuts,” Annie said, then laughed at the sort-of joke. “I’m a big fan of clear-cut and simple. The law is kind of like that—for all its strange gray areas, it’s based almost entirely on precedent. And police work is definitely pretty straightforward. Not all the time, but most.”

  John was smiling. “Yeah, that’d be nice. Unfortunately, people are fairly complex creatures. Of course, that’s what makes them interesting.”

  Tish appeared, set their drinks out, and promised to return.

  “How about you?” Annie asked. “Anyone really crazy lately?”

  John’s return smile was less than amused. “Actually, I’ve also been getting more calls than usual. I came in this morning to a backlog. Clients I haven’t seen in a while, wanting to meet. And several prescription requests.”

  Annie sipped her wine. “I thought psychologists couldn’t write prescriptions.”

  “Can’t, but I make referrals. There’s a guy in Port Angeles who’s a psychopharmacologist—specializes in psychotropics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, like that. He actually called this afternoon to ask that I start steering referrals to one of his colleagues, all the way over in Kingston. He says his phone’s been ringing off the wall for more than a week now, mostly from clients in Port Isley who want their meds upped.”

  “Huh,” Annie said. Interesting. “Seems to be an increase in mental illness around here.”