by Yvonne Prinz
Six
A noisy pickup truck pulled up alongside me. I walked a few steps before I stopped and turned around. I already knew it was Fin. The truck looked old and it had Oregon plates. Fin waved from behind the wheel and I walked around to the driver’s side.
“You can’t be lost.”
“I’m not.” He grinned. “You need a ride home?”
“No. Not really. I live right up this hill.” I pointed.
“How about just a ride then?”
“Where to?” I asked. Who cares? I thought.
“I don’t know. Come on. Hop in.”
So I did. I think I might have jumped in even if he said he was driving back to Oregon. There was just something about him. Maybe it was that same ease that Lucky had in the world. I was always happiest driving next to Lucky, even if we weren’t going anywhere in particular.
Fin turned right on the Coast Highway and we headed north.
I showed him how to get to my own private beach about five miles down the road. Hardly anyone ever went there. It was hard to find if you didn’t know your way. Fin parked the truck on a gravel pullout and we hiked down the steep path of switchbacks to a small sandy cove surrounded on two sides by sheer rocky cliffs.
I kicked off my shoes, but Fin kept his boots on as we walked across the smooth, dark sand. The beach was windy and the sand was damp but we sat down next to each other and looked out at the waves. I hugged my knees. I hated that I was wearing my work clothes. I smelled like food.
“Technically, this is Lucky’s beach. He found it first,” I said.
“You must really miss him.” He looked at me.
I didn’t say anything.
“I know I do. But I can almost feel him here. It’s almost like he’s still alive when I’m here, you know?”
“Is that why you came?”
“No.” He looked up at the fog hanging off the coast. “I came for the weather.”
I smiled. “Very funny. I forget, did you tell me how you met Lucky?”
“We didn’t really meet. We just ended up in all the same places and we got to talking. Before long we were like brothers. I’m sure he must have mentioned me to you.”
“He may have. We hardly ever talked on the phone. Mostly he sent me e-mails that he wrote late at night after he’d had a few beers. His life was so . . . populated, you know? I lost track of all his friends’ names.”
“Yeah, that was Lucky, all right. Everyone was in love with him.”
I thought about how true that was.
“He never told me much about you. Were you very close?”
“We were and then . . . I don’t know.” I changed the subject. “Hey, where are you from, anyway?”
He chuckled. “Here and there.”
“Sounds like a nice place. Is it near Oregon?”
He didn’t respond. “Do you want my jacket? You’re shivering.”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
But he took it off anyway and draped it over my shoulders. The silk lining was still warm from his body and it smelled like old leather and cloves.
He put his arm around my shoulders. Maybe it was just to keep me warm, I don’t know. We stayed like that for a minute, looking out at the water. I shifted over, even closer to him. I felt reckless. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. He looked at me like he was deciding what to do. I tilted my chin up toward him. I wanted him to know it was okay. He leaned in like he was going to kiss me but he kissed my forehead like you would a child you were comforting. I looked away. I was embarrassed.
“Is it because of something Lucky told you about me?” I picked up a handful of sand and sifted it through my fingers.
“No. Lucky didn’t tell me anything. What about you?”
“Nothing.”
He put his hand under my chin and turned my head toward him. “Hey, I’m sorry. Tell me about you.” He said softly, “Please.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t afraid to tell him. I knew he would hear things about me soon enough anyway. Better he hear my version.
“I’m not normal,” I said.
“Who is?”
“Well, I mean, I’m not dangerous or anything and I’m on meds now so I’m really okay but . . .” I paused.
“What?” He touched my shoulder. “You can tell me.”
“I’ve done some crazy things.”
“Like what?”
“Like I burned down the school.”
He started to smile and then he stopped himself when he saw my grim expression. “How’d it happen?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Yes.”
I swept a strand of hair behind my ear. “I was thirteen. I was having problems at school. Big problems. I’d always hated going. I couldn’t focus. My teachers singled me out. They’d had Lucky in their classes and they constantly compared me to him. It made me crazy. Lucky didn’t have problems like I did. Lucky didn’t have problems at all, actually.”
Fin leaned back in the sand and settled his weight on his elbows.
“Anyway, I was in science class. I don’t remember what we were supposed to be doing, but whatever it was, I wasn’t doing it. Miss Pearson, my teacher, went off on me for the thousandth time and I finally snapped. I started screaming and then I threw a globe at her. I didn’t even come close to hitting her. Globes go all wonky when you throw them, but it scared her. She sent me to the principal’s office but there was no way I was going there. I wandered the halls for a while and then I noticed that the door on Mr. Filipovich’s storage closet was ajar.”
“Who’s Mr. Filipovich?”
“The school janitor. He was a total drunk.”
“So I went into the closet and pulled the door shut behind me. I started poking around in his things. I was still shaking with anger. I wanted something dangerous to happen. There was a bottle of vodka way up high on a shelf, hidden behind a jar of screws. I jumped up and grabbed for it but it smashed onto the floor. I looked around for a rag to clean it up with and then I saw a pack of camels and some matches tucked behind a radio. I opened the pack and lit up a cigarette. As I tossed the match away it occurred to me that I hadn’t blown it out first. The pool of vodka caught fire under my feet. Pretty much everything in that closet was flammable. I ran for the door. One can after another exploded into flames and then a whole bucket of oily rags went up. I yanked the door open and the fire reared up and tried to swallow me. It caught the back of my leg. I was so scared. I took off running down the hall and pulled the fire alarm on the way out the door.” My heart pounded as I told the story. It had been years since I’d talked about the fire. I looked at Fin. He was calm.
“So, most of the school burned. Everyone made it out. But I didn’t know that. I thought I’d killed everyone. They found me curled up on the ground in the woods eight hours later.”
“What were you thinking there, in the woods, I mean?”
“I wanted to die. I wanted to be ripped apart by wild animals.”
He looked at me with pity. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not a bad person.”
“Of course not. It was an accident. You know, I did some pretty terrible things when I was a kid too. One time I stole a car. It was just sitting there, outside a bakery, with the trunk open and the key in it, so I jumped in and I took off. I just kept driving till I ran out of gas. There was the bottom half of a wedding cake in the trunk. I ate it and then I took the subway back to Manhattan.”
“Manhattan? You lived in Manhattan? Did your parents find out?”
“No. My parents died in a car accident years before that. We were living in Paris at the time. My dad was driving home from a show outside the city. He was a guitar player. My mom was in the front with him and I was asleep in the backseat. My dad fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the car. He and my mom died.”
I couldn’t picture anything so horrible happening to a kid. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. It was a long time ago.”
“Still . . .” I wanted to touch him. I thought I should comfort him, maybe take his hands in mine but something told me that’s not what he wanted. We were quiet for a moment.
“So, how did you end up in New York?
“After my parents died, I was sent to live with my uncle, my dad’s brother, but he lived in Bulgaria, where my parents were from before they moved to Paris. Right after I went to live with him, my uncle emigrated to New York. His plan was to open a dry cleaners in Flushing with his cousin and I went along with him.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“Sure it was, at first, but it got easier.”
I looked into his eyes. “Really?” He seemed to know that I wasn’t just talking about him. I was talking about myself too.
“Yes. You’ll see. I’ve had some tough times but I found a way to survive. We’re tougher than you think.”
“You and I?”
“Yes. You and I, we’re a lot alike.”
I felt a kinship with him, one I hadn’t ever felt with Lucky. “It wasn’t easy, you know, growing up with someone like Lucky for a brother.”
He seemed to ponder that. “It wasn’t always easy being his friend, either,” he said slowly.
I nodded. “But he was the best. You know, I keep thinking that he’s going to come back from one of his trips? I keep thinking he’ll just show up one day.”
Fin sat up and put his arm around me again. I didn’t know what to say. He was quiet. I felt relieved and I felt elated. Somehow Fin made me feel less lonely about my past.
“Hey, I should get you home,” he said.
The last thing I wanted was to go home. I wanted a lot more of him and more of this, whatever it was, but he stood up and offered me his hand.
We made our way back up the switchbacks. In the truck he made small talk, asking me about some of the people who lived in False Bay. I chose my words carefully. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be. I wanted so much for him to like me.
He stopped at the end of my driveway. I didn’t want to get out. The last hour felt like a dream. I was so attracted to him.
I tried to play it cool as I was getting out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride home,” I said, smirking, before I shut the door.
“You bet.” He grinned. “Remember, I still owe you that coffee.”
“Right, and I’ll see you at work.”
After his truck disappeared down the hill, I stood outside my mom’s studio a moment and watched her working on a pot. It was the first time she’d been back in her studio since Lucky died. She was bent over, completely absorbed. Eventually she sensed me watching and she looked up. She waved. I was so happy to see her working again. I wanted to tell her all about Fin but now was not the time. It would have to wait.
Seven
Rocket greeted me at the kitchen door and I let him outside. He needed to be walked. The sink was filled with dishes from lunch, which meant my mom ate something. I opened the fridge and closed it again. I hadn’t had much of an appetite since Lucky died. I stared at the markings on a narrow strip of wall next to the fridge. My mom wrote Lucky’s height with a date there in blue ink every year, from when he was two until he was fifteen and wouldn’t let her measure him anymore. She didn’t start measuring me till I was four. My measurements were in red ink. She stopped when I was ten.
I went to my bedroom and closed the door. I kicked my sneakers off. It was not till I was lying on my bed that I allowed myself to think about Fin. My heart began to pound. I needed to see him again. I idly picked my laptop up off the floor and turned it on. I started scrolling through the hundreds of e-mails Lucky had sent me over the last several months. Honestly, I’d never really read them that closely and then, after he died, I just couldn’t. Every one of them, no matter how tired or jet-lagged or drunk Lucky was, overflowed with life. I went back to three weeks before he died and started there:
George,
Dead tired. It’s midnight here and I’ve been out with my mates after a good long day on the water. At the bar, we got to singing Australian drinking songs with a bunch of drunken fishermen who tried to teach us the words but we couldn’t understand them so we pretended. Things got ugly for a minute when their girls got a little flirty with us (can we help it if we’re irresistible?). We sorted it out though and it was hugs and I love you, man all around. Still bunking with Javier from Spain (producer of the world’s smelliest farts) and Mel from New York (trust fund recipient and bad ass surfer). My money’s running low, should last about another month or so and then I have to start thinking about work. Hopefully Dad will take me on again for the summer. That won’t be as bad as the chicken ranch. I almost went vegetarian over that. Don’t think I’ll ever get that smell out of my nose. I’ll take oysters over chickens any day. Be back home by early summer at the latest. Hug Mom for me, will you? And say hi to everyone. Miss everyone except you.
L.
I skimmed the next several letters, looking for a mention of Fin. There were so many friends: a Javier, a Mel, a Caleb, a Donut (?), a Spark, a Jesse, and then I found him. Lucky didn’t say anything specific about him, he just added him to his gang. I read back a couple of months, and then a few months before that. Fin was sprinkled all through Lucky’s life, which was clear across the world, and now here he was in mine. It felt a bit strange, like I’d been given a little piece of Lucky’s life as a gift.
I heard my dad coming in the back kitchen door with Rocket.
“George? You here?”
“Right here, Dad,” I called out.
He opened my bedroom door. “Rocket just took a shit in the Swiss chard.”
“So?”
“So, did you walk him?”
“No, did you?”
He didn’t respond. I heard the back door slam and I watched out my bedroom window as my dad took a shovel from the shed and walked over to my mom’s garden. He picked up a fresh pile of dog poop and hurled it into the brush outside our property. I turned around to see Rocket staring at me from my bedroom door. He looked sheepish.
“What have you got to say for yourself?”
He turned his head to the side.
“Go get your leash, you horrible animal.” I closed my laptop.
I clipped Rocket’s leash on his collar and pulled on my boots. We walked past my dad, neither of us making eye contact for entirely different reasons.
“Dinner’s in an hour,” he called after us.
I didn’t respond.
“I’m making fish stew.”
I kept walking.
Rocket was a Christmas present from my parents to Lucky eight years ago. I got a bookcase that year. It was hand built by my dad. He’d painstakingly carved flowers into the wood along each side. It was beautiful but it couldn’t compete with Rocket, the wiggly, cuddly, adorable puppy. I mean, what nine-year-old would choose a bookcase over a puppy? I was so despondent that I locked myself in the bathroom until hunger forced me out. When Lucky started traveling, Rocket, who seemed to need to poop almost as often as his owner, became everyone’s responsibility, and then Lucky would arrive home and Rocket was his dog again. He didn’t even acknowledge any of us until Lucky took off on his next trip. But now it seemed Rocket knew that we were all he had left and he wasn’t happy about it.
Rocket scampered up the back porch steps at Sonia’s house. I knocked on the door. No one seemed to be around. I peered through the glass window on the door and tapped on it lightly. Sonia shuffled down the hallway from her room to the back door. She had sleep in her eyes and bedhead and she was wearing the same sweats she had on when I stopped by yesterday to try and pry her out of the house. She pulled open the door. Rocket jumped all over her.
“Hey.”
“Hey, we’re going down to the beach. Come with us.”
She squinted into the sunlight. “Is it warm out?”
It was five p.m. and she hadn’t set foot outdoors yet? This girl who used to fly down the sides of mountains most weekends?
“Warm enough . . . c’mon.”
“Come inside. I’ll get my jacket.”
Sonia’s kitchen looked a lot like ours. No food smells though, just the smell of wood burning. Most of us here have woodstoves in our kitchens. I looked at the sink: two empty coffee cups. Sonia’s mom wasn’t much of a cook. She worked long hours and she had a boyfriend somewhere, Petaluma, I think, so she wasn’t around that much.
Sonia pulled on a jean jacket and a wool cap. We headed downhill toward the water with Rocket tugging at the leash. We walked side by side, not saying anything for a minute.
“Hey, you remember that Fin guy from the memorial party thing?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Fin?” she said. “What about him?”
My heart started pounding again.
“Did you know he’s here in False Bay?”
She stopped walking. “Really? Are you sure you mean Fin?”
“Yup. He’s here. I just went to the secret beach with him.”
She looked at me doubtfully and then she darkened.
“He seems really nice. You know him? I mean, from when you went to Australia?”
“Uh, yeah, I met him.”
“He and Lucky were like brothers, right?”
“Uh, sure, they were friends, I guess.”
“He said they were like brothers.”
“Okay, like brothers.”
“He picked up some shifts at the Heron.”
“Waiting tables?”
“Yeah, nights.”
“What the hell? I wish I’d known they were hiring. I could use a job.”
“Really? You’re staying?” I looked at her hopefully. “Stay, okay?”
She shrugged and looked away.
“Maybe they need more help. Jeff said the summer months are filling up. You want me to ask?”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
We walked across the highway and turned into the parking lot. It bothered me, her vagueness about everything. It was out of character for her. She’d always been decisive and focused. She seemed unmoored now. I don’t know why it made me feel so uneasy. Maybe it was because I was supposed to be the hot mess in this place. Sonia always knew exactly what she wanted and then she went and got it.
