by Mike Wehner
“Magic.”
I didn’t like Tommy, but we needed him. Boats need oarsman.
The rail cleared and the kitchen cleaned, Erin followed me out back to take the trash out. She wrapped herself around me while I tossed each bag into the open dumpster.
“I’m so exhausted,” Erin said rocking me back and forth, her feet dug underneath my heels.
“Sunday will be here soon.”
“Yeah, we’re going to get up early and go to Sausalito, I never got my eggs.”
My nose even with the top of the garbage can she rocked me from foul to fragrant. Back and forth.
With and Without You
PAGE 44
I’ve never been very good at talking to boys, not even the ones I liked. It not that I’m self-conscious, I hate the boilerplate nature of it. I don’t care about your calculator job or where you grew up. Pull up your shirt and show me the scar on your stomach. Show me the spot on your head where your oldest cousin baited you into a mailbox with a Frisbee and he swears they had to pry you off of it like a hatchet stuck in a log. I don’t want to hear about your loft or your car, wins mean nothing. Show me your losses. Show me you’re human and be funny about it.
John did it in his own way. When we met I was sitting at the end of the stamped concrete bar of my restaurant, enjoying a French Martini. John glanced at me a few times, but when I finally caught his eye he didn’t look away. He stared me down. “This tastes awful, I don’t know why I’m eating it,” he said.
I laughed one loud, alarming cackle. He looked panicked, I could see his brain working as fast as it could to try and figure out what was funny. It was Monday night and I wasn’t working, but a chef is always working and I had to put eyes on a new cook. John sat squinting at me, mouth filled with scallop crudo, next to him a tumbler of gin, neat.
“Maybe it isn’t the food,” he said. He knew from the sound I made that there was some irony happening but he didn’t make the leap all the way to chef. In his mind I began as a waitress. I swiveled towards him to hear more about our mistakes, my mistakes. “It’s the bartender, this crudo has blue cheese, so why would he let me order it when he knows I’m drinking gin?”
“At least you aren’t drinking Cabernet,” I said, “besides, people get blue cheese olives in their martinis all the time.”
“You’re too pretty to know anything about wine,” he said.
It would have been a weak come-on if I’d been a waitress and had that sort of thing happen to me. If I hadn’t been so determined and so educated I would have been a whole lot smarter. What he said should have been offensive but he said it slow and earnest. He moved slowly too, methodical, like he thought about everything before he did it. He was the one who was too pretty to know anything about wine. But he knew all about wine, the food not-so-much. There are many terrible things I can and will say about John Bray, but he was no dummy.
I should’ve known a man that handsome and that intelligent had hang-ups somewhere. We all have them but most of us are lucky enough to have our mars on the outside. But how could I have known anything about boys or love? I was a woman but in love I’d only ever been a girl. I’d only experienced temporary love, love you drive away from at the end of a semester or love you never tell anyone about because it happened in a bathroom at a party. Nothing substantial, not before John.
I found love because I was looking for it in that moment. If it hadn’t been John it would have been some other boy, but he walked into my life right when I was ready. I was done with school, done with stages in kitchens near and far. I was back in my hometown, leading a great team in what could have been a great restaurant one day. I remember taking a deep breath on the way home from work one night and thinking how it was time to share my life with someone, really share it. It’s funny how a little thing like having a drink can change your life. That small thing that felt so good because I’d never had the privilege of doing it anywhere I’ve ever worked. It felt so good to finally have a bit of rest and it ended up ruining my life.
I liked John right away, how straight he sat and that he listened to me when I spoke. But most of all I liked that he spit out some blue cheese when I told him it was my food he found revolting. At our beginning I had the upper hand. His face went flush and he stammered with his napkin up to his mouth. John was always concerned with his appearance, this embarrassment was genuine. He spent so much time and effort on his hair and clothes that his insides went to rot. The soul needs maintenance too but there are only so many hours in the day.
I say that, but without all the floss and shine maybe I wouldn’t have been interested in him. After all, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about parading him around and sticking him in my sister’s face. She’s thrown away more decent men than I’ve ever met. And if I met them, would I even like them? It’s like we are born attracted to a certain type of person. This is something I think about a lot, on the surface I am in perfect working order but what if my great fault isn’t in how I think, it’s in what I feel. That’s what makes me so afraid to love again, that I only want that which will betray me.
Twenty-four
The next night had a bite in the air, a little hint that summer was coming to an end. Erin and I walked the back alley to her car and she peered into the back seat before getting in.
“You drive,” she said.
She smelled the way I looked after a long day of work. It was exciting and horrible to be with her, like sifting through a dog’s shit if you knew it had eaten a six-carat diamond.
A cricket sounded off in the garage when we pulled in. I turned the engine off but the headlamps stayed on and crashed into the wall. Cases of beer and soda were to the left, a dusty refrigerator to the right.
“Is life in the kitchen what you expected?” Erin said.
“No, but nothing ever is,” I set my hand on her lap and made a weird face.
The cricket droned on as we walked inside. Emily was at the kitchen island with a bowl of cereal tipped to her face. She swiped the milk off her lips and gave me a skeptical glare.
“Mike’s bike is in the garage isn’t it?” Erin asked.
“I think so,” Emily muttered through milk and squashed corn bits.
“Do you think he would mind if Alex used it tomorrow?”
“He’s working, he won’t know it’s gone. A vineyard ride sounds fun.”
“We’re going to bike the bridge.”
“That’s stupid, just drive over it.”
Our relationship was now at the stage where the girl made demands by assumption. A strategy that was great when you’re dating but ended marriages. I wasn’t sure which bridge she meant, but it was probably one of the big ones. Suburban dialect has a way of replacing proper nouns with their most broad and simple counterparts. Probably the orange one.
Charred meat and potato must was steamed into my clothes. Erin chomped a green apple and instructed me where to find towels and which shower I should use. I tried not to look at the spot where I’d painted the angel when I passed through the dining room. The sisters bickered about whose turn it was to put away the dishes and I trounced off to shower.
I wasn’t sure if it would be harder to sleep with her or come clean. I had begun to crave her touch rather than fear it. Emily was beneath my feet in the kitchen pleading with Erin, to not get involved. Not with someone who works for you. The help.
Erin’s pastel comforter rippled on the bed, yanked up almost square. Her rushed way to pretend the bed was made. I leafed through a book of short stories on the bedside table. The first page of The Nightingale and the Rose was creased at the top as a bookmark. There were used towels in every corner of the bathroom and the toothpaste sat on the edge of the sink with the cap off.
“I have a confession,” Erin said over the shower door. I shoved the curtain aside and she was wearing a faded black shirt with a giant paint stain.
“Me too, let me dry off and you can go first,” I said. I buckled the towel extra tight before
coming out. I pulled a pillow up onto my lap and looked around her room to make sure there wasn’t anything heavy enough for her to beat me to death. Erin sat down on the floor next to the bed with good-greasy hair. We sat in silence for a few moments.
“Don’t get me wrong, whatever this is, it’s going well. But I super-regret taking you to my meeting, it’s all I think about. All day, every day, I’m sick about it.”
“Why?”
“Because what the fuck kind of start is that? It’s like I'm trying to keep you away. I’m sure that’s what was wrong the other night, I’m so sorry, it’s my fault.”
“Do you think you deserve to be alone?” I said. She was rocking back and forth, sullen.
“In a way. I feel like I’ll never pick well, my first crush was O.J. Simpson.”
I laughed, then she laughed. Her fingers went to her nose to hold back snot.
“It’s unfair,” Erin continued, “when you’re young your mom tells you, the movies tell you, songs tell you that the heart wants what the heart wants. It’s bullshit, it’s a choice.”
I slumped towards her.
“Did you have a choice when you did what you did? Was there any other option?”
“There’s always a choice Alex, but right then it was him or me. I chose me.”
“Before things got bad did you know where they were headed?” This was the honest moment I fantasized about, going the way I could never imagine.
“Absolutely, but hope is the stickiest shit. You can’t shake it off, it’s something you have to have taken from you. What about you,” her voice thickened up, “have you ever loved the wrong woman?”
My body became hollow, I felt myself caving in.
“Yes,” I said.
“And what did you do, did you get out or did you die trying?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh god,” she wiped her eyes, “I can’t stop with the dysfunction, I used to be normal, I swear.”
A moth flapped under the lamp shade.
“You’re a mess,” I picked up an empty water bottle off the table and shook it at her, “and you’re so messy.”
“We don’t make any sense, do we Alex?”
“I don’t know, maybe we do. In spite of everything I care about you a lot, besides I’m just as fucked up. All I can do is hope that when it’s all out there, that you understand.” I was ready to tell her everything, she truly meant something to me. I couldn’t stand the thought of being with her under false pretenses. It was wrong.
My entire life was wrong, but this kind of deviousness makes a man want to kill himself. The words were ready to come out of my mouth. I set out to physically hurt someone, not be some sort sneaky, quasi-rapist. Erin was right, she was going to have to take the hope I held for her. Courage was building in the silence and I was weighing just how to deliver the message so that she wouldn’t immediately vomit. As I thought she fired up from the floor and forced herself into me.
“There’s another empty bottle on your book shelf, don’t think I don’t see it,” I said avoiding her open mouth.
Her nails anchored into the tops of my shoulders.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Legs wound around mine like a grappler holding down her opponent to strike. She raked her nails across my chest.
“Seriously.”
“Shut. Up,” she said.
She took control.
I forgot what I was going to say.
I forgot how bad I felt.
I forgot what she’d done to John.
I only knew what she did to me.
I loved it, all of it.
◆◆◆
The bed was empty when I woke up save for a few mashed pillows. I turned onto my stomach and saw a picture of Erin’s family leering at me from the vanity, we see you, so will she. Emily and her mom, the blonds, on one side of the photo and Erin with her dad’s arm around her shoulder on the other. The footsteps that rushed up the stairs made the empty can of diet soda buzz on the glass night stand.
“Get your lazy ass up,” Erin said.
She pulled the blanket off my stomach and a wave of coffee breath curled my toes. I liked the smell of coffee when it brewed but not when it breathed. Coffee made me gag. Tea the same way, my body felt patronized by the comfort of warm beverages and fought them back up.
“Why?” The blanket hung up on my heart where Erin’s nails had broken the skin. A few shallow red lines and a blood bubble were scratched near my collar bone.
“I told you I wanted eggs, so we’re going to get eggs.”
In the garage two mountain bikes were mounted on the back of the car. Both had worn tires and splatters of hardened mud kicked up on the frames. She rode a set of nearby trails with Mike on occasion, but that wasn’t what intimidated me. It was the high cross-bar on both frames.
We were both clad in purple shorts and white T-shirts, I told her I wasn’t going anywhere until she changed. She called me stupid and started the car.
“I hope you can keep up,” she said.
That’s how I felt about everything. I was a bobsled captain who hadn’t studied the course and my life felt like I was flying down an ice chute trying to anticipate an endless series of turns. I hoped the inevitable crash didn’t hurt, that I was put out of my misery quickly.
“Where are we going?” I said.
That was my other mantra. Where I am going?
“We’re killing birds,” she said and plopped a bike on the ground while I stood there like a moron. Her tiny arm muscles puffed when she grabbed the second bike underhand. We were in a marina’s parking lot and over Erin’s shoulder was the enormous orange bridge that everyone called golden.
“What?” I’d already fallen behind.
“You get to go over the Golden Gate and I get to have the best eggs Benedict in the world.”
“I hate hollandaise.” I said.
“Then have pancakes dummy, now keep up.”
She kicked her leg over the bike and took off towards the water, I followed as best as I could. She weaved in and out of wandering tourists on bikes with handlebar baskets filled with maps and sunscreen. My bike wasn’t a rental, I felt superior. I had places to be even though I didn’t know where I was. The great orange span and its step ladder supports got closer as we passed through the Presidio’s gardens and neared the old military base that led up to the bridge.
The bridge began as a little thing I could squish in my fingertips but once we were below its incredible pillars I was overcome by the mass.
Erin shifted down with rapid clicks and stood up on her heels to pump up the steep hill that led to the sidewalk. She torqued the bike back and forth and her legs alternated between slack and taut. Erin looked back with a smile and pressed forward. My legs gave out halfway up and she was waiting for me at the top, drinking water from her backpack.
Lots of people were there taking a break in the gravel alcove that overlooked the bridge. They stood arm to arm and took photos with the stringed instrument of the gods behind them.
“You’re doing good,” she said.
I put my arm around her hip and stuck my thumb into her wet waistband. We panted and stared out through the cables into the open way. The sun was halfway up the sky and created a giant cone of whitewashed water with its glare. The tip of the reflection pointed right between us, I pulled her hip a little closer daring the force of a dying star to try and rip us apart.
“It’s mostly downhill from here, watch your speed,” she said.
We had the momentum and if we could get going fast enough maybe we could keep this thing rolling.
“Be careful,” she said, “on the other side of the bridge it’s really downhill, like, you could die if you aren’t careful.”
We pedaled slowly though the interchange and followed the signs to cross on the far side of the bridge. Each side went a different direction so there was no chance some asshole on a road bike would come barreling the opposite direct
ion and eject you off the side.
As a kid my family used to go up to the northern tip of Michigan and walk all five miles of the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day. Uncle Dave hated it with a passion and cursed the whole way. He swung his arms in an indignant power walk and I kept up with him to hear him say hateful things about his wife and my other relatives.
He told me if I jumped off the bridge the water would feel like concrete and that every year they fished suicides out and couldn’t identify them because they didn’t have any skin. He said that if we had to do this again next year he was going to jump. He said this every year.
Erin and I moved underneath the great cantaloupe suspender as it climbed to the top of the first gate. Cars fired by moving the opposite direction and no matter how softly I pedaled I felt like I was traveling at the speed of light. My hair bounced in the wind and the exhaust fumes swirled around me. We dodged around the first tower and Erin pulled into an empty pop out so we could admire the open ocean, passing bikes whooshed refreshing wind up our sweaty backs.
There was a cargo ship passing below, the flat deck was full of blue and green and red rusted boxes. We stood at the edge, the farthest west we could get—the end of the world was our beginning.
Sticky and happy, I pinned down the back of Erin’s shirt which fought itself up in the breeze. I kissed her with hope and hurt and certainty. She kissed me back the same way.
On the other side of the bridge the path ringed and wound down at a dangerous angle. The bike’s chain buckled and brakes hissed. I’d let go for a second and lurch forward until fear of the water unwrapping my flesh stayed my hands back to the brakes.
It was a long ride up the canyon and then a smooth glide back down into the sloped town. It looked handmade, the way all the houses and shops were perched up on the hill and gave way at the water.
The restaurant wasn’t called Sausalito and I was glad I hadn’t mentioned it, it was the town itself. A lemming mob wandered the galleries on the shoreline and we rode on and climbed a final hill to our hidden destination. Erin got eggs Benedict and I got pancakes, the best I ever had. I don’t remember how they tasted.
