The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  “I’ll call over to Arnie, get him to phone something in to your pharmacy,” Phillip said.

  “I got a call from him just the other day,” John said, remembering with a pang that he’d been telling Annie about it, over their dinner. “Last week. He asked me to start sending referrals over to the new guy in Kingston.”

  “Actually, I’ve been overbooked myself,” Phillip said. “Mostly people from Isley.”

  “Me too,” John said, and sighed. “Though a few of my regulars are taking breaks, so it’s not too bad.” He was thinking of his last appointment on Wednesday, his incest survivor. Marianne. Marianne was divorced, middle-aged, and overweight and had struggled mightily with unipolar depression and a variety of dysfunctional behaviors throughout her adult life, mostly thanks to an uncle who’d repeatedly molested her when she’d been in her early teens. John had been seeing her five times a month for better than three years, since she’d moved to Port Isley, and had only caught glimpses of the sturdy, confident woman she was, beneath her little-girl voice and constant stream of self-deprecating jokes…except in their last few sessions, she’d been…better. Stronger. And Wednesday, she’d told him that she was tired of letting her past dictate her future, in a clear, grown-up tone that told him just how much better she really was. They’d agreed to move their sessions to once every two weeks, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she went to a call-as-needed by the end of the summer. Maybe sooner. He wished he could take credit for the change, but as far as he could tell, she’d just decided to get better.

  People do recover, he thought. They move on. I will, too.

  “Leave him alone!” Rick screamed, as he was pushing the knife into her belly, gutting her…

  “Give yourself the same advice you’d give to a client in your situation,” Phillip said. “Take care of yourself. Let yourself heal a little. We can start some cognitive work when you’re ready. It is going to get better.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  Phillip smiled his gentle smile. “Don’t forget that you’ve got resources, you’ve got friends. Use your support system. And I’ll make time, whenever you need it. Just call.”

  John looked at the clock on the wall, saw that his fifty was almost up. He knew he could push it; Phillip staggered his appointments to allow for certain situations, but he wanted to get home, wanted to spend his last day off getting himself together. He was eager to go back to work. When he was with a client, he was the observer, the advocate; he’d learned how to leave his own baggage at the door of his office, a carefully practiced skill that had allowed him brief periods of relief when things had been at their worst with Lauren, and he believed—hoped desperately—that work would save him again.

  Phillip stood up with him and walked him to the door. Usually, they chatted for few minutes about work-related stuff, articles of interest they’d read, colleagues they had in common, but John couldn’t think of anything to say. That made him feel like crying again, which made him think of the EMT who had shaken his head over Annie’s bloody corpse. Not gonna happen, that head shake had said. Don’t bother.

  “Take care, OK?” Phillip asked.

  John nodded and let himself be embraced. Phillip thumped him on the back and let him go. John hunched his shoulders and headed for the lot, squinting as he stepped out into the day, the sunlight an assault. He was as tired as he could ever remember being.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Independence Day was a holiday that Miranda Greene-Moreland had mixed feelings about. There were a few—Thanksgiving (because of the oppression of the Native Americans), Christmas (because she didn’t believe in the Western interpretation of God), and Easter (same reason)—that were probably her most troublesome, ideologically. She preferred to celebrate the solstices and made a point of telling everyone so when she handed out gifts every year. The Fourth didn’t have any unpleasant political or religious connotations for her…but it was their day, and every year they made a point of reminding her. That made Independence Day the worst, hands down.

  Another explosion boomed through the woods, and Miranda and Terrence, one of the retreat’s yearlong participants, both jumped. They were in the kitchen, making sandwiches for the firework excursion; the entire retreat was heading for the lighthouse at dusk, to see what they could of Port Angeles’s show—and to get away from their crazy neighbors for a little while, who spent every Fourth of July getting ridiculously drunk and blowing things up from morning until well after midnight. Every year, she ended up calling the police. They always promised to send someone over there, but she had no idea if they ever did. One year, she’d gotten so mad that a few of her artists and she had driven over there at two in the morning (on the fifth!), ready to give Cole Jessup what for…only they’d pulled up to the compound’s security gate and honked and no one had come, even though they’d heard drunken laughter in the woods. Someone had fired a bottle rocket in their direction, they’d had to leave for fear of bodily harm, and Chief Vincent had as much as shrugged when she’d complained, saying that it could have been an accident.

  Terrence fluttered a hand to his chest. “I wish they’d stop doing that,” he said.

  Miranda shook her head, her mouth a grim line as she spread aioli on the sandwich bread. “If wishes were horses,” she said, which had been a favorite saying of her mother’s, and automatically hated that she’d said it. The vague feeling of irritation that came with the reminder that she was, in fact, turning into her mother added to her already high stress level. Shots and whistling bombs and chains of firecrackers had been going off in the woods since early morning, disrupting the community’s spirit, making work impossible.

  Except for Darrin, of course. She had no doubt he was in the studio today. Her intense young artist from the East Coast could work through anything, it seemed, and had proved to be her most prolific summer guest, as well as the most popular. He liked to talk about art and the creative process sometimes while he was working, and several of the community members had taken to gathering around while he spoke, listening to his thoughts about the flow of the universe as he sketched or colored one of his brilliant pieces. Miranda had taken her needlepoint and sat in on a few of his sessions and found him to be absolutely inspiring, if a bit…dark, she supposed.

  “Which salads are we doing?” Terrence asked, heading back to the fridge with an armful of condiments. “Potato, pasta, and…?”

  “Berry melon,” Miranda said promptly. She’d just bought fresh, organic blueberries and raspberries from the farmer’s market in Port Angeles, and the cantaloupe left from breakfast would fill them out nicely. “If you’ll rinse the berries, I’ll—”

  Boom! Miranda instinctively ducked as the roar of an explosion echoed around the camp, much too loud to be all the way over on Jessup’s land unless they’d bought a cannon. Probably did, bomb shelter crazies—

  Terrence screeched and dropped his armful, mustard, onion, and a packet of sliced provolone hitting the floor. The mustard jar broke, spicy brown goop splattering across the kitchen floor, decorating Miranda’s bare ankles beneath her long, embroidered skirt.

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!” Terrence hurried to the sink and grabbed the dishcloth, hurried back to kneel and wipe at the floor. Miranda sighed and went to help him.

  “I’m such a klutz, I’m so jumpy, and that was so loud, it didn’t even sound like a firecracker…” He dabbed at the splayed strings of mustard, while Miranda carefully picked up the larger pieces of broken glass, the vinegar-mustard smell making her want to sneeze. “That was, like, an MX missile or something. They’re never this bad. Do you think they’re on our side of the line?”

  “Oh, I have no doubt,” Miranda said, dropping the glass into a paper bag.

  “Do you want me to call the police?”

  “Why bother?” Miranda said, grabbing a handful of paper towels. “By the time they get here, those crazies will be back on their side, saying they’d never trespass, the trees are clearly marked, Officer.”
She ran the towels under the sink and started wiping her ankles, tsking with annoyance when she saw an oily speckle of mustard on the hem of her skirt.

  Terrence went to the sink to rinse out the dishcloth. He turned back to her, a slight smile on his face. “You know, last night I was telling some of the new people about the whole history with Jessup, about the cats and everything? And Darrin was throwing out these ideas about things we could do. You know, to mess with the A-team over there.”

  Miranda stood up from cleaning her skirt, frowning, imagining slashed tires or broken windows. “I don’t think that’s appropriate, Terrence. We’re…” She searched for an analogy and found an appropriate one. “We’re not rival summer camps, are we?”

  “Some of the ideas were funny, though,” Terrence said. He finished wiping up the mustard, putting the rest of the things back in the refrigerator as he spoke. “Like, tie-dying their laundry. Or putting all these bumper stickers on their trucks, like, ‘I Heart My Pomeranian,’ or ‘The Goddess Is Alive, and Magic Is Afoot.’”

  Miranda couldn’t help a smile at the thought…and a string of loud pops from somewhere close in the woods wiped it from her face. The clock read just after two. So, only five more hours of listening to the survivalists celebrate, before the trek out to the lighthouse.

  “It is tempting,” she said. “But if he brings it up again, tell him it’s not a good idea. That sort of thing is beneath us. Besides, I don’t think…”

  James was standing in the doorway to the back porch, and the expression he wore made her forget about firecrackers and bumper stickers. “James? What is it?”

  He swallowed, and she could see his Adam’s apple go up and down, could see the light sheen of sweat on his face. He looked as though he might vomit. He leaned against the doorframe, his body sagging against it, and took a deep breath.

  “I think I found them,” he said. “I mean—I think, they’re out past the kiln. They look like—just—I mean, the tails. I heard the explosion and started walking toward the line, and I heard at least two people, running away. And I almost stepped on them, they’re just laid out, side by side—”

  “Speak clearly, darling,” Miranda said, not unkindly.

  He swallowed again. “The cats’ tails, Miranda. Eight of them.”

  Terrence let out a muffled cry, his hand pressed to his lips, and ran out of the kitchen. Miranda only stared at James, and for the first time since forming the retreat, she thought very seriously about killing Cole Jessup.

  Amanda took an extra-long, cool shower in the late afternoon, carefully shaving her armpits and legs, washing her hair twice and using her mother’s good lotion once she got out, rubbing it everywhere she could reach. Eric was going to come by the apartment around six, and they would walk up to the lighthouse together to see the fireworks. After having a little private time.

  Boyfriend, got a boyfriend, her mind sang happily, as she wrapped herself in a towel and crossed the narrow hall to her bedroom, to the drowsing fan of hot, tired air blowing around her room. Her mother was at the bar, and Peter hadn’t been around for a couple of days, so she and Eric would have the place to themselves. She still felt a little weird about Eric seeing the apartment—they’d hung out almost every night for the last week, all their “dates” at his house, which was practically a mansion—but he’d seen the apartment’s outside, and she’d already explained how it was with her mom and Peter. Eric came from money, but he wasn’t a snob. He was…he was so cool, about everything. He liked a lot of the same music she did (Nirvana, duh, but also Jack White and Franz Ferdinand), and some of the same movies. He was really into uberviolent video games, which she didn’t get so much, but he read, too; he had a literary streak—he liked pulp fiction, Jim Thompson–type stuff. He was intense and thoughtful and totally hot. The first couple of times they’d had sex it had kind of sucked, on his double bed in the plush basement of his father’s empty house; they were both fumbling and nervous even if he’d played it off all smooth, but the third and fourth times she’d had orgasms, once on top, and once when he went down on her. She smiled just thinking about it, about how he’d told her she was beautiful, afterward, looking right into her eyes…

  She dropped her towel, looked down at her soft body, at the white bulge of her tummy, and sighed. At least she had big boobs. And Eric said she looked like Marilyn Monroe, and that he thought skinny girls were all sharp and angled. She worried he was just being nice, but he acted sincere enough.

  She glanced at the clock, saw she still had an hour to get ready, and felt a little thrill of anticipation. Only an hour, and then he’d be climbing into bed with her, her rumpled, narrow bed with sheets she’d just changed, the late-day sun streaming in and over their bodies. She gave her room a careful look as she pulled a bra and panties out of her top drawer—black, of course, and her nicest ones—and it looked the same as always, a little cleaner than usual, but still her same dumb room with its buzzing fan and taped-up posters.

  Doesn’t matter, she told herself. Eric wouldn’t care. He accepted her; he’d even accepted that she’d had a premonition about Lisa Meyer…

  She fastened her bra in the front, then wriggled it around so she could slip her arms through the straps, feeling that familiar knot of anxiety when she thought about Pam Roth’s party and the subsequent rape nightmare, and what she’d seen at the middle school basement, about Devon and the others. She’d talked about it with Eric, and though she hadn’t been hanging with Devon much for the last week, they’d discussed it a couple of times on the phone. The slight tension that had cropped up between them had intensified, with him acting like they hadn’t been best friends for like, three years. He’d actually suggested that she go see a doctor, to rule out something wrong with her brain, but that was stupid, there was no way her mother could afford that—and as the days had slipped by, and Eric had been there, real and absorbing and right in front of her, she’d let herself be swayed toward the idea that it was all in her head, brought on by smoking pot and stress and the fact that she really had foreseen Lisa’s murder. Eric thought so, too.

  She put in a Scissor Sisters CD that Devon had burned for her and sat on the edge of her bed with her makeup bag, still wearing just her underwear. She always did makeup, then hair, then clothes, to avoid getting smudges of product on herself, and she settled happily into the ritual, looking forward to her date. She sang along to the music, just a phrase here and there, smudging black beneath her eyes, tinting her lips a matte burgundy. She liked her face, liked the look of it all made up, feeling that the nice, even features compensated for her soft body, somewhat.

  She’d just finished her mascara when the phone rang. She grabbed an oversize men’s work shirt off the hook on the back of her door, wrapping it around her as she hurried into the living room. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Devon.”

  Amanda carried the phone back to her bedroom. “Hey,’s up?”

  “Are we going to the fairgrounds tonight?”

  Amanda sat on her bed again, reaching across to turn down the music. “What? Did we have plans?”

  There was a long pause. “Uh, yeah, we have plans,” Devon said. “Don’t you remember? After the picnic? You said we should stake out the fairgrounds, just in case anything happened.”

  “Yeah, but after last week, you said you thought it was my fucked-up brain, remember?” she shot back, her defenses snapping into place. “And Eric’s coming over. We’re going up to the lighthouse, to watch the fireworks.”

  “Sounds romantic,” Devon sneered. A couple of days after Eric had walked her home that first time, the three of them had gone out for coffee together…and while both boys had been civil, there’d been no real friendliness between them. Eric had been focused on her, and Devon had been overall unimpressed with him—commenting later that he seemed nice and was good looking, in an urban white-boy way. She’d gotten the impression that Devon didn’t think Eric was all that sm
art but was being tactful in not saying so—although his disdain was evident by what he hadn’t said, and she was a little irritated that he hadn’t at least pretended to be happy for her.

  That day at the middle school, when she’d seen him drowned and dead, she’d been so scared, so afraid for him. And he’d been scared too, and he’d believed her. But with Eric to distract her and a growing certainty that the old reporter dude had been spot-on, after all, about her brain trying to convince her that she was seeing real things, Devon’s sudden jealous-queen bit was a little tired. He’d already told her, straight up, that he thought her mind was playing tricks on her, and every conversation they’d had in the last week, he’d been a little more certain each time, a little quicker to remind her that she’d smoked some superstrong pot right before seeing what she had, about him being dead. She hadn’t even bothered to tell him about the strangely vivid and realistic dreams she’d been having, although she and Eric had talked about them a couple of times. There’d been no more nightmares, not exactly, but deep, emotional dreams, like visions from a reality her mind hadn’t created. Like…like the visions, but not as whole. She mostly couldn’t remember them when she woke up, anyway, although a few of the weirder images had remained—a little boy in a hall of mirrors, a grinning woman with blood in her hair. Others. The interesting part was that she kind of felt like those shadowy people, in her dreams. Felt the high-strung anxiety of the little boy, trying to find his way through the mirror maze, which was dark and empty for some reason. Felt a kind of self-righteousness, a grinning wildness within the bloody woman. In the dreams, she saw them and was them, all at once. She doubted the dreams were psychic or anything, but they definitely seemed like part of whatever her brain was up to, lately.

  Something I might have shared with my best friend, she thought, and sighed. “Don’t be a dick, Devon,” she said, letting her defenses down a little. “Are we fighting or something? Because I feel like you’re mad that I’ve been busy lately. And after all the weirdness about what I saw and everything, I don’t want you to be mad at me.”