Pass It On

by J. Minter

  Immediately, Arno and Mickey clambered aboard The Oldest Profession, the Flood family’s yacht. The thing was big, and it was bone-white with mahogany details. It looked clean and well cared for, and more expensive than a space capsule. I eyed it, figuring it was less than fifty feet long, which suddenly put this whole two-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht thing in perspective.

  “Come on,” they yelled.

  Mickey, who’s dad had crashed more than a few sailboats out at Montauk, immediately disappeared below and came up with a bunch of yellow life preservers and several six-packs of Heineken. He threw a beer at me. “Think of me as the party guy. You can always count on me make a boat ride fun.” He wagged his eyebrows at me.

  “Key’s in the ignition,” Arno yelled. “Let’s motor out of the cove.” He leaped onto the dock and unfurled the ropes that were keeping the big boat steady.

  I said, “I feel like this is very stupid,” but mostly I was speaking to myself. The boat began to rock back and forth. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure about this or any other boat, no matter how big.

  “Remember what happened last time,” David said as he leaped back on board.

  “When Jonathan got too high,” Mickey snickered. As I jumped on, I thought back on last time, when I’d done mushrooms and run around the boat for our whole trip, making sure everyone was safe and wearing life preservers and repeatedly calling the coast guard to check on the weather.

  But we were already motoring out of the tiny cove, with Mickey clambering around the fore or bow or front of the boat like he was Lord Jim’s apprentice and Arno behind the wheel, both of them trying to look more comfortable on the boat than I suspected they actually were. David and sat I tight. Our families weren’t sailing types.

  And then, when we got to the bay and we could see the Long Island Sound in the distance, Mickey unfurled the huge sail. The wind was definitely strong and it was cooler out there.

  “Drag the jib,” he screamed, and, “Hazard the wickets!” Or at least that’s what it sounded like. The light was incredible, low and strong and right in our eyes so we were squinting since we’d all spaced bringing sunglasses. People in other boats waved at us and we waved back and for a moment I believed we basically knew what we were doing. I won’t say I felt relaxed because I didn’t at all. But I did sit down to watch Arno and Mickey act like show-offs, which I knew was for my sake and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sort of enjoying it.

  We shot out to the middle of the bay, “doing a good clip,” if that’s what going a little too fast is called. And that’s when Mickey got out some pot. He clambered down below and smoked up, and passed around what he had, which was a gigantic joint. I felt what can only be described as peer pressure so I smoked, too. I thought maybe it would calm me down and not make me start counting life preservers like last time. So I sat back and tried to feel the wind in my hair and the sun through my eyelids and tried to override the paranoia I sometimes get when I smoke with some other feeling, of trusting these guys, and getting comfortable with the feeling of water all around me. I opened my eyes.

  “Careful!” I screamed.

  We blew by a little fishing boat and it rocked in our wake. All the old fishermen on it gave us the finger. I felt bad for them and their families and how they weren’t going to eat any fish tonight and they’d have Corn Flakes instead and it was all because of us … if they were fishermen. Maybe they were cops? Or marine patrol. I felt afraid for us, and bad in general for all the sins of humanity.

  “Jonathan? We want to talk to you.”

  Arno was standing in front of me, and Mickey and David were on either side of him.

  “Wha—?” I scrambled over the white seat cushions and toward the back of the boat. But of course, beyond the seats and the little wooden step we used to use to dive off, there was nothing at all. Nothing but cold water.

  “There’s some stuff we can’t figure out,” Arno said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I have to make some decisions.”

  “It’s not just that,” said Mickey.

  This was it. I felt the paranoia leave, replaced by a terrible, frigid, reality. My friends know everything and they are going to kill me and bury me at sea.

  “Let’s not do this here,” David said. “It’s going to get cold soon.”

  “There’s an island.” Mickey pointed to one of those little islands that just looks like a bunch of trees growing together in a clump.

  “Let’s check it out,” Mickey said.

  I figured that they were going to take me to the island and kill me there. My best friends are going to kill me and bury me on an island because of the sins of my father.

  “Let’s just go home instead,” I said quickly. I was too desperate though, and they could feel it.

  “No, let’s go to the island. This will be fun.” Arno smiled, and wound one of the ropes around his arm. Of all of us, he could definitely sound the most menacing.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Please,” I said. “You can’t blame me for what my dad did.”

  Mickey scratched his head. He’d climbed as far up the main mast he could, but he wasn’t looking around—instead he was looking directly down at me.

  “What did he do?” he asked. “And why haven’t you told us about it?”

  “I’m confused too,” Arno said.

  “Jonathan doesn’t have to tell us everything about his life,” David said.

  “I think he kind of does,” Arno said. “We tell him everything about our lives.”

  “That’s true,” David nodded.

  “What are you going to use?” I asked.

  “What?” Mickey clambered down from the mast.

  “To kill me?” I was backed up against the fore or aft—the back of the boat, whatever it’s called.

  “What? We just want—” Arno came forward. He had a big hook at the end of a length of rope. Dragged through the water by a hook till I tell them everything and it still won’t be enough.

  It was too much. I closed my eyes and flipped over the rail. When I came up out of the water, I heard screaming, and the guys were desperately trying to turn the boat around. I bobbed along and though I felt frightened of being really cold and wet, I knew that I was at least alive. And then I guess the cold water knocked off the stupid high-on-pot feeling and I realized how pointlessly paranoid I was being—they are my friends! And wow, the water was so, so much colder than the air.

  The more they worked at getting back to me the farther away I got. And then I was around the tip of the island, and I was floating and cold. I started to wave at the few other boats that passed by. Minutes passed and I tried to recall what I knew about hypothermia, which was very little. And that’s when I saw him.

  “Patch!” I yelled. It was the oddest thing. There was Patch, on a sailboat, with Selina Trieff.

  “Patch!” I thrashed around and screamed and finally, finally, I got his attention. Patch looked around, and then, after about five times as long as it’d take a normal person to recognize his best friend, he saw me.

  “Hey, Jonathan,” Patch called out. “You’re in the water.”

  I watched him turn and talk to Selina, who had on gigantic sunglasses and a big piece of something white tied up in her hair. She looked beautiful. They kissed, and then Patch jumped into the water and swam over to me.

  “Wow, it’s freezing!” he said, and laughed. “I saw the boat a minute ago—why aren’t you on it?”

  “Where is it?”

  Patch pointed and then we swam around the tiny horn of the island to where the guys had managed to make The Oldest Profession stay still. We clambered up the ladder in the back.

  “Do you guys even have a clue what you’re doing?” Patch asked. David threw towels around us and we dried off as fast as we could. Luckily, it was still sunny.

  Meanwhile, Patch started barking orders, and Arno and Mickey kind of skulked around looking a little embarrassed that they hadn’t been such exp
ert sailors after all. David was supposed to hold the jib, and Arno had to put his weight on the left side, and Mickey was supposed to do some other thing.

  “This isn’t fun,” David said to me. Patch was making David sit exactly in the back middle of the boat. He wasn’t supposed to move except to duck his head when the sail swung by. “You know, maybe you should take one of the other guys on the trip. I’m not sure I’m up for it anyway.”

  But I could tell he didn’t entirely mean that. “The ring-buying’s off, I take it?”

  “That’s for damn sure.” David nodded to himself.

  “Where’s Selina going to go?” I asked. Patch was down to his boxers even though it was really cold, and he was scampering around fixing all the stuff we’d messed up.

  “Home?”

  “Oh,” I said. And when I looked up, beautiful Selina Trieff was sailing away. I had a dim recollection that she had a house in Oyster Bay. She waved at us, and she looked kind of sad. I wondered how long they’d been on the boat, and whether they were going out or had slept together, or anything really. Because, since I was now with Ruth, it’d be nice to have at least one of us going out with some girl so we could maybe do stuff together once we all got back to the city. And Patch was my friend, and so were the rest of these guys, and I hoped that once we got through this weird stuff with my family we could all hang out again and things would be just like they were before.

  “What an amazing girlfriend,” I said.

  “Girlfriend?” Patch was busy with some rope we’d ignored.

  “That explains why we were having such trouble with the boom,” Mickey said.

  “You guys were about to really screw up this boat,” Patch said. So then I didn’t ask him any more questions about Selina.

  “We were going to go to that island over there.” Arno pointed.

  “Why?” Patch asked.

  “Because,” Arno looked back at David and Mickey, who were looking away. “You’ve missed so much of what’s gong on.”

  Patch scratched his chin and stared at the little stand of scrub trees in the middle of the sound.

  “I don’t get it. So why aren’t we talking about it? And why was Jonathan swimming around? Anyway, you’d destroy this boat if you got it anywhere near there. No, let’s take her home. I should probably say what’s up to my mom. Is she around?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Arno nodded.

  I sat back against the cushions on the back of the boat and sipped slowly on a beer. Everybody kept glancing at me, but now that Patch was around, nobody said anything.

  “I think somebody just gave us back our moral center,” David said, and he sounded all solemn, so Mickey slapped him on the back of the neck.

  “I kept telling Selina that somebody was likely to get hurt if I left you guys alone for too long,” Patch muttered. I heard him, and my eyes widened. And I could see that everyone else’s did, too. It had never occurred to me that we needed Patch. We liked to look for him, sure, but needing him was something totally different. And suddenly I felt a little better, a little safer and a tiny bit more relaxed.

  “It’s too quiet—somebody put on some music,” Patch said. “You guys are being weird.”

  Mickey scurried below to skim through Patch’s dad’s old Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tapes. Next thing we knew we were listening to “Sympathy for the Devil.” And Arno stuck his tongue out at me, which I definitely considered not very mature.

  david helps the guys through the heart of saturday night

  Patch drove the Mercedes into the garage and everyone got out, stretched, and shivered. It was nearly dark out, and getting colder by the minute.

  “I’m up for some hot chocolate,” Patch said, as he opened the door. David smiled. That was the good thing about Patch. The only thought in his head was that he’d been out on a boat and now he was cold, so hot chocolate would taste good and definitely warm him up.

  The door opened as they all shuffled toward it, and Flan stood there.

  “You’ve come back,” Flan said, and threw herself at the feet of her brother. She was in her riding outfit, as usual, and her helmet fell off and rolled into some bushes.

  “Please,” Patch said, and he tried to drag her up. Flan was definitely getting into big emotional gestures like that. It was embarrassing to watch. Flan moaned, and then kept talking, “If Mom or Dad were around, they’d be devastatingly happy to know you’re alive. We could call them on their cell phones, but they’ve forgotten to give us the new numbers.”

  “Oh well,” Patch said. “I’m sure they’ll call to check in with you.”

  “Not likely.” Flan laughed. She punched Jonathan in the arm and he almost fell over.

  “Sorry,” Flan said. “I’m going riding. See you all later.” And she found her helmet and was gone.

  David hung back while everyone raided the kitchen.

  “I’m not that hungry,” Jonathan said, to no one in particular. He got out of a jar of gherkins and found a can of Sprite and began to eat at one corner of the kitchen island. He was happy that Patch was back, and something about that made him feel weirdly centered, but he also missed the short-lived fun of having his friends compete for his attention.

  Mickey veered off to the stereo and put on a Ghostface CD, loud.

  “Eating-music!” Mickey said, and set out to heat up some frozen churros that had been Fed Ex’d all the way from a particularly great churro stand Frederick Flood loved in downtown L.A.

  Meanwhile, Patch stood in the middle of it all. He methodically made himself a hero sandwich with roast beef, muenster cheese, assorted vegetables, coleslaw, and pieces of leftover cornish hen.

  “Dude, that is so gross,” David said to Patch.

  Patch looked up. “You want half?”

  “Yeah.” David slid his plate over.

  Meanwhile Arno and Mickey began to argue about what they should put on their churros to spice them up.

  “You okay?” David asked Jonathan, who looked a little green around the gills from eating all those gherkins.

  “I just want to go home, but of course that’s impossible.” Jonathan rubbed his belly and took a sip of Sprite, which appeared to make him feel no better.

  “I’m sorry,” David said, with his mouth full of Patch’s sandwich. “I know how you feel. But we’ve been coming here since we were eight. It’s like our second home. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I guess.”

  Once they’d stuffed themselves, they wandered into Frederick Flood’s study and watched some of his porn movies from the fifties, where all of the women were really fat and laughed a lot, and the men were short, bald, and had moustaches. Then they passed out on the leather couches and napped.

  When they awoke it was around ten at night, and everyone was in a different mood. David watched the group and the only person who still seemed the least bit hyper was Jonathan. He kept standing up and walking around the library.

  “Let’s go hang out in the great room,” Jonathan suggested. So everyone did, because there was no reason not to. Mickey went to get beers and change the music to Deathcan March.

  They all settled in on the big couches that surrounded the main fireplace, which you could literally walk into without stooping. Patch went and got some big logs and built a roaring fire with flames that were several feet high.

  “We could make s’mores,” Patch said.

  “Where’s the stuff?” Mickey asked.

  “What stuff?”

  “The chocolate and the graham crackers and all that crap.”

  Patch poked at the fire. He said, “I’ll tell you as soon as everyone clues me in about why Jonathan was thrashing around in the cold Sound when the rest of you were on the warm boat.”

  The music stopped for a moment while the system switched CDs. The gigantic logs crackled and popped, and nobody said anything. Finally, Jonathan stood up. He said, “It’s been a weird week. My dad, well—my dad is getting remarried.”

  “Right, we a
ll know that. That’s what all this is about?” Patch asked.

  Jonathan stared back at him. “Nah, there’s more.”

  “Okay. So what is it?” Patch asked. “If any one of us had something bad happen, we’d be on our cellies to you in like two seconds flat. You know that.”

  “This is different,” Jonathan said.

  “In addition to being a total snob, Liesel wanted me to have a threesome with another guy,” Arno said suddenly. Everyone straightened up. “See?” Arno asked. “I can tell you that.”

  “You broke up with her because you wouldn’t do that?” Mickey asked.

  “No, it was because she was arrogant, though I wouldn’t’ve done the threesome either. Unless you were the other guy, Mickey.” Arno threw himself back among the pillows.

  “I don’t think Liesel liked me enough to fool around with me,” Mickey said.

  “Oh, stop. What about you? Tell us a secret,” Arno said to Mickey.

  “Philippa and I,” but Mickey stopped. He looked as if he were choking on something.

  “What is it?” Arno asked. He tossed a bottle of Corona over to Mickey who just caught it and narrowly missed knocking over a marble bust of Eleanor Roosevelt that stood on a pedestal next to where he was sprawled out.

  “I think the truth is that we broke up because we’re so in love that we can hardly look at each other. And I was always disappointing her. I’m just too wild… though I don’t feel particularly wild right now.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. In the background, Mr. Flood’s old Morrison Hotel album made the dark room even spookier.

  “That’s ridiculous,” David said. “Nobody ever—”

  But Arno was pointing to David and sort of bouncing up and down, which was unusual for him since he usually kept his cool no matter what.

  “Bullshit!” Arno said. “You and Amanda started cheating on each other for the same kind of dumb reason.”