The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  “And I saw you…” She shook her head, not even sure what tense to use. “I knew that there are these men, and they’re going to beat you up and throw you in the bay. I saw you, in the water. I saw it.”

  “What men? I was in the bay?”

  Amanda nodded, and the anger that had inspired her to blurt it all out like that fell apart. Her quavering voice, when she spoke, reflected her dismay. “I think you’re going to—I think they’re going to kill you.”

  Devon looked incredulous. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She suspected it was because of him being gay, but she didn’t know. She wanted to be as clear as possible.

  “You saw it—saw me—like you did Lisa Meyer?”

  He leaned closer and spoke in his serious voice. “Amanda, this isn’t a joke, or a, a fucked-up goth fantasy or something, is it?”

  She felt her eyes well up anew. “No, it’s not.”

  She saw confusion and fear and anger cross his face, imagined she could feel his internal struggle—had his best friend cracked up, or was she turning psychic, or was she a selfish, crazy pothead bitch? She waited, and when he finally spoke, his voice trembled almost as badly as hers had. To her almost infinite relief, in spite of what they were talking about, because it meant they were still friends. “Smoke break?”

  “Oh, fuck yes,” she said, and meant it so fiercely that it was funny, and they both laughed a little as they stood up. But the good feeling didn’t last, and by the time they lit up, standing in the narrow shade of Devon’s back porch next to a butt-filled coffee can, Amanda’s stomach hurt again, and she didn’t know what she the fuck she was going to do.

  Thanks to a surprise “family” getaway, Eric had been stuck on a fucking sailboat for three days, listening to Dad fuck Miss Big Tits, and the whole boring, annoying time, he’d been thinking about Amanda. Soft-skinned, green-eyed Amanda. It was almost weird, how much he was thinking about her, and the second Dad docked late Thursday morning, Eric started looking. She said she hung out by the pier, but he thought she meant the old one down on the crappier part of the waterfront, not the marina. He headed that direction and spent a couple of hours sitting on a bench, smoking and watching boats far out across the bay, rereading his battered copy of The Basketball Diaries. He texted some of his friends back home and heard from one of his crew that a chick they knew had OD’d, so that was something, but no news otherwise. Eventually he got hungry and decided to head home, swinging by the coffee shop on the way for a hopeful look inside, but no luck. There were news vans parked all over the place, which was mildly interesting, but not enough to actually pursue. He got himself an iced coffee and a poppy-seed muffin and started up the hill…and fate put her in his path. He was just over halfway home when he glanced down one of the side streets and saw Amanda walking into a house, leaning on some guy’s arm. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like the same guy who’d been with her at the picnic, who Eric assumed was gay—he dressed totally gay and did that kind of pose thing that gay guys did when they were standing around, a hip thrust out, an angled wrist. Not that Eric had anything against fags. The way he saw it, just because he wasn’t into dick didn’t mean no one else should be. Live and let live.

  They disappeared inside the house, and Eric parked himself on the curb at the corner, where he could see her when she came out. He had smokes and sustenance and a book to read, and partial shade from a stone fence; he would wait. What he wanted, what he always looked for in a girl, was an adventure, a crazy adventure he could fall in love with for a while. Amanda was his type, and she was built like Marilyn Monroe to boot, which kicked ass over some of the skin-and-bone Emos he’d fucked back home.

  About two hours later, she walked back outside by herself. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt and a plain gray shirt and had black jungle boots on. She put on sunglasses and started in his direction, and he felt his heart thud happily in his chest. He liked looking at her, watching her move. He liked knowing that she was totally unaware that he was watching her or that they were about to meet again.

  “Hey,” he called out when she neared the corner opposite where he was sitting. The shade had totally enveloped him, and she lowered her head and took off her sunglasses as she walked across to meet him.

  “Amanda, right?” he said, and stood up, pocketing the book.

  She’d pushed the sunglasses back in place, and he couldn’t see her eyes, but he could see that her nose was red and she wasn’t wearing makeup. She wasn’t smiling, either.

  “Where you going?”

  “Home,” she said.

  “Can I walk with you?”

  She hesitated, tilting her head slightly as though studying him. “Ah, yeah, I guess.”

  He smiled, but she still didn’t smile back. As they started walking, he registered her body language, tense and closed off, the way she held her shoulders. He’d gotten the impression that she’d dug his line at the coffee place, but maybe he’d read it wrong.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “Actually, I’m not,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What isn’t,” she snorted, but added a minute later, “I’m probably losing my mind, is all.”

  “I like that in a girl,” he said, sincerely.

  She sighed but seemed in slightly better humor when she answered, “You’ve got crazy bad timing, you know that? Where’ve you been, anyway?”

  Eric scoffed. “My dad’s boat. A surprise sail to the San Juans, so he could take his new bride to her first wine tasting. We just got back this morning.”

  “Sounds swell,” she said.

  “Sucked.”

  “You missed the big news. A guy went nuts and chopped up his wife and fed her to a bunch of people at his restaurant,” she said.

  “No shit?” That explained the news vans.

  “Nadas shittus,” she said.

  “Is that Latin?”

  She finally looked at him, a slight smile on her face. “You hassling me? Because I’ve already had a fucker of a day, and I don’t need to be hassled.”

  He couldn’t quite tell if she was kidding, which he liked. They walked for a minute in silence, and he tried again.

  “So, you’re losing your mind? How’s that going?”

  “Sucks cock,” she said.

  “Voices telling you what to do? Obsessive hand washing? Paranoia?”

  Her smile was gone. “Psychic flashes, of all things. I always thought they were total bullshit, and then I had a real one—seriously, with witnesses and everything—and now I may be having more of them, or I may just be so freaked-out from the first one that I only think I’m having more.”

  He didn’t think she was kidding, now, but played it cool in case she was yanking him. “That’s really interesting,” he said. “So, like, mind-reading, or seeing into the future…?”

  She stopped walking for a beat, stared at him, her expression defensive. Whatever she saw in his face, she apparently realized that he wasn’t trying to be an asshole. “Both, I guess. The first one, I saw a girl get killed. And like two days later, she was dead. Now, though…”

  He waited, watching the way she bit at her lower lip, like she was deciding what to say. She was sexy cute.

  “Now I don’t know,” she finished, and they started walking again. “I saw a bunch of stuff today, and I don’t know if it’s true or just, like, my brain fucking with itself.”

  “What did you see?”

  She frowned behind her dark glasses. “Bad shit,” she said. “My friend, Devon? He thinks maybe I blew a fuse when I saw Lisa getting killed, and now I’m getting all these signals that seem like the same thing but aren’t.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She hesitated before answering. “I think it was real,” she said, her voice soft. “But if I’m losing it, I would think that, wouldn’t I?”

  The conversation was weird but engaging. She wasn’t all simpery or dumb about it, and if she wa
s staging some psycho fantasy play, she should go into acting, because he totally bought it. “Is there any way to, like, test it? I mean, the things you saw or whatever, is it stuff you could check into, to see if it’s true?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and sighed. “Maybe some of it. Nothing was really specific, and the stuff that was—I mean, I thought that this one girl has a cat, and I thought of the cat’s name—I could check on that, but even if it turns out to be true, maybe I knew it before, you know, and just forgot. The other stuff…a guy I know might enlist in the marines. An old man who lives on Eleanor might kill himself. If that happens, I guess…I guess it could all be true.”

  She seemed unhappy, and confused, and he suddenly felt really good, really happy that he’d found her, that she was sharing this with him. That she was turning to him for support. It was like they already knew each other.

  “Or, you’re crazy,” he said, and smiled at her. “Look at the bright side, right?”

  The smile she gave back made his heart thump again, and Eric suddenly felt quite sure that they really had been fated to meet, that there were forces in play, or whatever. If she was a nutjob, that was cool. If she was psychic, even better. Either way, he won. There was no question they’d be fucking within the week, and the summer wouldn’t be boring anymore, and she was beautiful, a beautiful, strange adventure just waiting to happen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Phillip’s office was small but comfortable, blond bookshelves and soothingly neutral artwork. John slouched in the leather armchair next to the window, exhausted by their session, exhausted by the retelling of Annie’s murder.

  “Do I need to remind you that it’s a process, what you’re going through?” Phillip asked.

  John stared out at the windswept car lot. Sun flashed off metal. “Yeah. Remind me.”

  “Shock. Traumatic stress. Stages of grief, guilt, regret…I’ve known you for a while, John. You liked this woman. There had to be something there, for you to be so taken.”

  John nodded, his throat hitching. “Yeah.”

  “That’s a lot of work ahead,” Phillip said. “You tired yet?”

  “I was tired before,” John said. “I was planning to call you, anyway. I’ve been thinking about Lauren, a lot. And women in general. Then this thing with Annie…”

  He’d told Phillip about seeing Annie at the picnic, about spending the night with her, about her death…but he didn’t know how to convey the experience of her, or how hopeful he’d felt, being with her. He thought about her half smile and her bright, golden-brown eyes, and how she’d looked, standing barefoot in his kitchen, drinking coffee with him. How dynamic and friendly and interesting in the bedroom, when they’d been together, when he’d been inside her and they’d locked gazes and he’d felt something pass between them, something real and possible. It had felt so good, to connect with a woman again.

  Then he thought about the blood, and that brought it on, the loop that had played again and again in his mind’s eye, that had not turned off since he’d walked into the kitchen of Le Poisson.

  When Rick had screamed, they’d all heard. A dozen diners had turned toward the kitchen, the room going still for a beat, the shouted words hanging in the sudden lull like some mad riddle. “Leave him alone!”

  John hadn’t paused to see the expressions of his fellow diners, although his imagination had since provided his little mental movie with worried frowns, with shared glances of concern and mumbled surprise. He had been on his feet and through the swinging kitchen door as soon as he’d registered Rick’s voice—not the words but the tone, the shrill, petulant fury—and had been just in time to see Rick in the room off the back of the kitchen, mumbling something as he dropped a bloody knife, the clatter somehow muted. Rick dropped to the floor, disappearing behind the steel legs of a long counter that ran the length of the room.

  John stepped closer, saw that the room was splashed with blood; it was everywhere, and someone else was near Rick. For some reason he saw the pattern of her skirt, first, before he understood that it was Annie there on the floor, holding her stomach with folded arms, more blood spilling out from beneath their trembling hold. He saw the flowers on the dress, sodden and red, and then he was moving, fast, grasping for the compression-to-breath ratio, finding it as he fell to her side, ripping his jacket off, bundling it, looking for the wound. She shifted, her poor bloody arms falling away from her belly, and he realized how bad it was.

  He pressed his jacket against the worst of it. “Call nine one one!” he shouted. “Get over here, somebody get over here!”

  He heard someone, a woman, scream, heard more people coming in, a shocked babble of rising voices. He rolled Annie to her back and saw her eyelids flutter, and there was more blood, rolling out of her mouth in a dark stream. Less than ten feet away, Rick lay on his side, holding his knees and grinning and shaking, making small, animal sounds in the back of his throat. The expanding pool of blood unfurled long fingers toward him.

  An older woman in a light linen pantsuit knelt next to John, reached out to hold the compress against Annie’s abdomen. Her knees were immediately soaked red. “I’ve got it,” she said, her voice brisk but calm. He found out later that this woman had worked for better than twenty years as a trauma nurse in a Los Angeles hospital. “Is she breathing?”

  John bent over Annie’s face, over her half-open eyes, touching his fingers to her neck—but there was nothing, nothing at all, and the gurgling, spluttering cough that erupted from her relaxing throat, that misted warmth across his face, was the part of the memory loop that became slow-motion. That was when it had finally occurred to him that there might be no hope.

  He’d started CPR and known within a minute that she was gone. Besides the terrible mess beneath his locked hands, the salty-slick taste of blood when he’d breathed for her, he just knew. The nurse had probably known too, but they’d done what they could, they’d kept it going. A few people ventured to their end of the kitchen, and someone had started shouting that there was another victim, and someone else had screamed, and a man had stumbled past them, vomiting, his dress shoe sliding in Annie’s blood, leaving a red, broken skid mark. John didn’t look up, only kept up the compressions, thirteen-fourteen-fifteen, tip, pinch, BREATHE, lock, one-two-three, kept counting, his shoulders aching, telling himself that there were miracles, that people survived terrible traumas every day, surely worse than this. He was still telling himself that when a pair of EMTs pushed him out of the way. He stumbled to his feet, watching them work, watching Annie’s slack face bob and tremble as they pumped and prodded. He wiped wet hands on his brow, looked and saw that his hands were bloody. He realized how he must look, and turned, wondering where the woman in the pantsuit had gone, where Rick had gone, his numb gaze taking in what was in the kitchen’s back corner, although he wouldn’t really see it until later, in the dark and silence of his lonely bedroom. A cop he didn’t know had led him from the kitchen to an office in the back, away from the two men bent over Annie’s still body. Before they’d turned the corner, John had seen one of the techs shake his head.

  There’d been questions and more questions, and a quick exam by another EMT, a brisk, masculine woman with leathery skin and cold eyes, and finally they let him wash his hands and face, let him go…but the mind’s-eye movie really ended when that EMT shook his head, confirming beyond doubt that she was gone—and then promptly looped back to Rick’s angry, terrible shout. There was no one image that stood out, that seemed more or less important than any other, but his mind couldn’t let it rest. Like if he just went over it again, and again, some detail would stand out. Something would explain what had happened, how it had happened…

  Phillip was watching, waiting for him. He was a good therapist, a colleague John had known for better than a decade, and John respected his opinion. Trusted it. John dragged himself back.

  “I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” John said.

  “It’s only been what, four,
five days.”

  “I know, but…” John closed his eyes for just a second and saw Annie in his kitchen, smiling over the rim of her cup. Saw Rick, dropping the knife. When he spoke, he barely recognized the anguish in his voice. “How do I get through this?”

  “You got anything in the house?” Phillip asked. “Ativan, Xanax? Klonopin?”

  John blinked. “You telling me to get high?”

  Phillip leaned forward in his own chair. “I’m telling you to cut yourself a break,” he said. “This is a terrible thing, what’s happened. Stop me if this doesn’t ring true, but it sounds like you were finally taking some steps away from what you were with Lauren. Opening yourself up, letting your guard down.”

  John felt his eyes well up again. “Yeah.”

  “And lightning struck,” Phillip continued. “Of course you’re going to think about it. You’re going to remember it and replay it and analyze it, probably for the rest of your life, so give yourself a chance to, to acclimate. You and I both know that you’re strong enough to get through this, but you don’t have to do it all today, or this week, or this month. You can’t, anyway. It’s a process. I said it before, I’ll say it again if you want, but you know that. You bury it and suffer later, or you let it happen.”

  John nodded, still struggling against tears. He wasn’t ashamed of crying, he was just goddamn tired of it; his eyes hurt. His heart hurt.

  “So, you do what you can,” Phillip said. “Take a vacation, if you need it. Get sleep. Eat decent food. Go for walks. And if you want to turn your brain off for a little while, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  John nodded again, feeling like a child, grateful to be told what to do. “Lauren might have left something in the medicine cabinet…” Right before they’d split, she’d gotten herself a scrip for Xanax.