by John Everson
“You started it,” he pointed out, before coming over to kneel privately at the edge of Evan’s desk.
“So…how was it?” he asked more quietly. “Is Sarah…?”
“She’s good,” Evan acknowledged. “She had a really great time, and we talked a lot. Way more than we have in the past six months combined probably. I think we made some real progress.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“This weekend we’re going to start packing Josh’s room.”
“You’ve been saying that for months.”
“I know,” Evan said. “But this time, we both mean it. We’ve been living in a circle—doing the same thing every day, not letting it go, not moving forward. It’s killing both of us in different ways.”
“So…packing Josh’s room is going to change all that?”
“Well, that, and other stuff. She’s going to stop going to O’Flaherty’s, and I’m going to stop spending hours on the beach.”
Bill looked unconvinced. “Oh really?” he said.
“I’m serious,” Evan said. “We have to change how we’re living, or we’re going to both self-destruct.”
“And you’re going to give up your time on the beach…”
Evan nodded. “I’m going to take a last walk tonight.”
“That could be the most dangerous walk you ever take,” Bill said, and then pushed himself up from a crouch to stand. He pursed his lips, shook his head slowly, and then walked back to his desk and bent over to fish something out from underneath. He stood back up with a copy of the Daily Delilah in his hand. He opened the front page, and then turned another. Finally, he smiled, and nodded again before bringing the paper over to Evan’s desk. He threw it down on the desk and pointed to the article at the top of page five.
“Another one,” he said. “You might want to read this before you take your walk tonight.”
The headline read: BEACH MURDER INTERRUPTED TOO LATE
Evan skimmed the article beneath.
Terry Brill, thirty-four, was found early Saturday morning on the beach near the point. Brill, an auto mechanic who worked for the Under Your Hood shop on Bay Street, was reportedly working a late shift Friday night when he was last seen alive.
Police report that at approximately 12:15 A.M., Brill’s body was discovered by a local man walking the beach.
“I had just gotten out of band practice, so I took a walk along the beach,” David Benton told the Daily Delilah. “I saw this woman lying down on the sand ahead of me. I thought she was making out with a guy and I was going to steer clear of them. But she looked up at me all of a sudden, and I realized two things. Number one, she was completely naked, and number two, her mouth was dripping with what looked like blood. She looked like a ghoul. That’s when I got kind of nervous.”
Benton, who plays bass in a local hard rock band, says that when the woman saw him approaching, she stood up and fled, diving into the ocean. He said she disappeared under the water and he did not see her return to the beach. When he reached the woman’s partner, he found the man dead, apparently of blood loss from multiple wounds in the shoulder and throat area.
“The sand was covered in blood,” Benton said. “The guy looked like someone had chewed his throat to gristle. There wasn’t much left between his head and his chest.”
Police reports state that Brill’s corpse appeared to have been mauled by wild dogs or wolves.
“We are looking for any evidence that would lead us to find the woman reportedly seen with the body by Mr. Benton,” Police Chief William Gaglisaid. “Her connection to the deceased is unknown. At this time, Mr. Benton is not a suspect in the case.”
According to Ralph Maggiano, Terry Brill was working the late shift alone on Friday, finishing an engine job.
“He always took his smoke breaks on the beach,” Maggiano said. “I always told him those things were going to kill him one day. This is a tragedy for Terry’s family, as well as for our shop,” Maggiano said.
Evan looked up with a smile. “I know that Maggiano guy,” he said. “Had my car fixed there last year. I can just hear the rest of this quote: ‘This is a tragedy, yep. We’re really sad. By the way, does anybody know where I can find me a new mechanic? We got work to do here!’”
Bill grinned, but only slightly. “I showed you that for a reason, Evan.”
“Because you’re obsessed with deaths on the beach?”
“No.” Bill rolled his eyes. Then he whispered, “Because I’m obsessed with the concern that you are going to be another one of these deaths on the beach if you don’t stop walking it at night. Capisce?”
“Look,” Evan said. “You had me going before and actually had me believing for a little while that she caused a shipwreck! But I’ve been with her since then. She may be a little strange, but she’s not a killer. You worry too much. And you believe in mythological creatures. These are not two qualities that serve you well together.”
Bill presented him with the middle finger and stepped back to his desk. “Just trying to help, man. But…do what you’re gonna do. Just don’t come crying to me when you wash up all bloody on the sand tomorrow. Oh…wait a minute, that’s right. Most of the victims just disappear without a trace. Good luck with that.”
“If I’m washed back up on the beach, I don’t imagine I’ll be crying anymore. And anyway, I have no intention of disappearing,” Evan said.
“I’m sure that’s what Terry Brill said when he went out for a smoke break.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Evan’s stomach flip-flopped as he walked along the cold night sand. He was nervous about this conversation. Maybe more so than of any conversation he’d ever dreaded having. He’d never been good at breaking up with girls before he’d met Sarah, and this was not going to be easy. How do you tell a sex goddess that you’re not interested in indulging in her charms any longer?
Especially when you really were still interested.
Evan couldn’t lie to himself. He wanted Ligeia as much as ever. And he certainly didn’t want to give up his nightly walks by the surf—they’d been his tonic to wash away the stress of the day for years now. But…if he had any hope of saving his marriage—of saving Sarah, really—he had to stop this. He had to be true again to his wife, and he had to be there for her at night, when she was at her most vulnerable. His absence every evening had helped her climb into the bottle. Evan knew, in that sense, he’d failed her on the most critical level. He hadn’t been there when she really needed him.
When they had run around in San Francisco, he’d seen his old Sarah come back. The Sarah he’d fallen in love with. And while making love to her would never compare to the strangely powerful eroticism of Ligeia, it was what he wanted. He couldn’t deny the power of Ligeia, but he wanted to be with his wife every night, comfortable (some would say boring) in their bed. He wanted to hear that familiar slap of his body against hers, in a rhythm only they could devise together. He wanted to smell the sweetness of her breath as she drifted off to sleep each night, and cuddle in to the warmth of her at two A.M. when he woke from a dream.
Ligeia brought him more ecstasy than he had ever imagined possible, but Evan couldn’t imagine living with her night after night. Hell, he didn’t even know where she lived. He didn’t know anything about her, except that she sang like an angel and screwed like a demon. Just thinking about her body touching his gave him an instant erection. Damn, he murmured to himself. How am I going to do this!
But Evan knew he had to end this, and work on breaking the negative cycle of depression he and Sarah had fallen into over the past year. Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have Sarah to wake up to anymore at two A.M.
They couldn’t go on forever the way they’d been. Something bad was going to happen. Hell, less than a month ago he’d been planning to throw himself into the waves to ensure that something bad did happen to him. Something permanent.
But Ligeia had shown him that there was still hope to be had, pleasure t
o be derived from his life. Of course, her assumption was that he’d continue to derive that pleasure with her, but for Evan…as good as Ligeia was, he still felt allegiance to Sarah. She needed him more than she ever had, right now. And so tonight, Evan was determined to change their downward spiral. Step one was to say good-bye to the hottest girl he’d ever kissed. Step two was to walk away, never to return.
His stomach lurched again as he thought that sentence. His body wanted to feel her touch again. Breaking up was not on the program there. And how he would hold himself back when she turned up naked and beautiful, dripping with saltwater and reeking of pure lust…he had no idea. Nevertheless…
Evan reached the first boulders near the point and scooped a handful of stones from the high tide line. Then he sat down and flung them one by one into the water, granting the waves a smile of pleasure each time a stone managed to survive more than three skips before sinking many yards off the shore.
“Let me touch you now, forever,” he murmured, side-arming rock after rock with a fatalistic precision. “Just this one last time…” he rasped, dragging out the last words in a melancholy prayer.
He scooped up another pile of pebbles, and rooted through them to find the stones with the flattest edges. In his mind, he heard Josh challenge him to a “skip-off.” His son had carefully selected five flat, rounded stones and encouraged Evan to do the same. “Whoever gets the most skips buys the ice cream,” Josh would challenge. And then they’d each throw, alternating attempts and calling out the number of skips at the end of each toss: “Three, six, four…seven!”
Age was no benefit or handicap on the stone-skipping game, and Evan won as much as Josh. Though Evan still seemed to pay for the ice cream afterward most of the time.
“You don’t give me enough of an allowance,” Josh would complain once they were inside the red- and white-striped Sweet Shoppe in downtown.
“Mmmm hmmm,” Evan would reply. “That should teach you not to make bets you can’t cover.”
“Just skip the stone.” Josh’s voice seemed to whisper now in his head, a ghost who refused to lose. Evan did, and watched as the thin rock bounced across the waves four, five, six, seven and finally eight times before disappearing into the black.
“Ha!” Evan shouted, oblivious that there was nobody else in sight. “I did it, I did it,” he laughed. “I win,” he whispered in a voice that bordered on maniacal.
Then he looked around and the sun of his daydream faded. The sound of his son was gone, and all that he could see were the endless black waves of the ocean and the dark, cold sand beneath the unforgiving night sky.
He opened his hand and the remaining rocks and sand trickled out. “Damn,” Evan whispered. As he stared out at the water, he could see his son’s hand opening and closing in the air, just before it disappeared from sight for the last time. His eyes misted over, and he choked as again he said aloud, “Damn.”
He clenched his fists and tried not to remember, tried to push that day off. He had relived it too many times and he refused to succumb again tonight. He had a difficult enough thing to do tonight without seeing his boy die, again and again, before his eyes. The chest heaves began again anyway, as they always did. Evan doubled over and choked, trying unsuccessfully to stem the tears. And finally, he just gave in, and let them all out like a slow sprinkler on the sand. “Josh, baby, I miss you,” he cried, and clenched his arms to his own chest in a mock hug. “I love you, buddy,” he whispered, though nobody was there to hear. “I love you so much.”
Once Evan had regained control, he looked at his watch and saw that it was past ten o’clock. He’d been waiting for Ligeia almost an hour. A first.
Standing up, he walked up to the narrow path that led onto the gray shale of the point. He stepped over white and green piles of gull shit and made his way to the finger’s far edge, where the black depth of the ocean merged with the sky in a claustrophobic trick of emptiness that felt ultimately close.
“Ligeia?” he called out to the ocean.
His voice was only greeted in a whooshing quiet. But Evan wasn’t content. He tried again and again, struggling to make his voice heard over the rush of the surf. Evan called until his voice cracked, and he realized the futility of what he was doing.
She wasn’t coming.
He had assumed that she would just be here, as she had every other time he’d come to the beach over the past few weeks…but…not tonight.
Evan threaded his way back to the beach and stood again on the sand, looking out at the hungry, dark water ahead. He prayed she was just busy tonight, but he worried that Ligeia was angry with him for taking Sarah on the trip. When he had told her the last time they had been together that he was going to be gone for a few days, Ligeia had not looked pleased. If anything, she looked cheated on. How ironic was that?
Dismayed, he began slowly walking back down the beach toward the road that led home. He could just stop taking this walk and the end result would be the same. He would have broken things off with his “mistress.” He laughed bitterly to himself. Mistress. The word sounded ridiculous when used by him to talk about someone related to him. He was not the kind of guy who would ever cheat on his wife, he thought. But yet he had. Many times now. He remembered again their first night together on the sand and shrugged. For the amount of sex that had been doled out over the past year of their marriage, nobody would blame him. Still…it wasn’t who he wanted to be. It wasn’t what Sarah deserved.
He couldn’t break it off with someone by simply not showing up. He needed to close this chapter of his life. He needed to say good-bye to Ligeia. He owed it to her, and needed it for himself.
When Evan got home, Sarah was waiting, sitting in the easy chair, sipping a cup of Earl Grey. She looked up at him as he closed the sliding glass door and said simply, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered, and knelt by her chair. On TV, the weatherman was calling for rain tomorrow afternoon.
“Gonna be a slow day for you tomorrow, I think,” she said. Her voice was warm with the threat of sleep.
“Doubt it,” he said. “Big shipment from Oregon due in tomorrow. Rain or shine, we’re on the dock.”
“Ugh,” she murmured. Then she put a cool finger to his face. “You’ve been crying,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” Evan said. “Sometimes you just have to let it out.”
“I know,” she said, and set down her tea. Then she held her arms out. “But you’re supposed to let it out with me,” she said.
He shifted into her embrace and laid his head on her chest. She smelled warm and sweet, of lavender and honey. He felt his eyes well up for the third time tonight, and let go again.
“I love you,” he whispered, and felt his heart choke beneath the words.
Her hand stroked his hair. “I know, baby. And I love you too.”
Ligeia didn’t come the next night. Or the next.
Evan started to wonder if he was really whacked—maybe she had simply been a fever dream, a warped hallucination to force him to refocus his priorities and fix things with his wife before it was too late.
He had promised Sarah in San Francisco that he would stop hanging out half the night on the beach, and so far he’d not kept it. He had to stop going there, but he couldn’t without saying good-bye. Unless she had already gone. Moved on to some other guy while he’d been in San Francisco, assuming if he was taking an anniversary trip, that he’d be rekindling with his wife and would have no need of a mistress anymore.
That had turned out to be true, in the end, and perhaps she had seen the writing on the wall.
On Wednesday night, he tossed a hundred stones into the ocean and vowed that he would stop coming after one more night.
On Thursday night, Ligeia was waiting for him.
“I was beginning to think you were nothing but a dream,” Evan said, as he walked up to her. She stood like a sentinel on the sand. A gorgeous, nude statue. A perfect sculpture of sex incarnate. When he spoke, she smiled, and
his heart melted along with his groin.
“I’ll always be here for you,” she said. Her voice echoed in his brain, ripples of meaning spreading down his spine like a drug. The warmth of joy at seeing her spread through every pore.
“Ligeia,” he began, holding out his arms to hug her.
She pressed herself against him, and he felt the wetness of her body soak into his clothes. Her lips brushed at his ear, and he shook his head, taking her arm with his hand to pull her back.
But she stepped back on her own and smiled at him. She looked almost like a child with the grace and innocence of that smile, and she took his right hand in both of hers. She pressed her hand against the cool velvet of her belly, brushing his fingers up and down on her skin. Not childish at all.
Evan felt his resolve weakening with the tantalizing feel of her flesh against him. But no, he knew this had to stop. He tried to get himself under control, but before he could say a word, Ligeia spoke again.
“You’re going to be a daddy,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders and moving her face in close to his.
“Huh?” Evan gulped.
She ran his hand back and forth across her abdomen and said it again. “You’re going to be a daddy. I’m pregnant with your child.”
“Oh shit,” Evan said. The words fell out before he could stop them, and he saw the pain crease her forehead as he said them.
“It’s not that I—” he started.
She put a finger to his lips. “You don’t want a baby?” she asked quietly.
“I want my baby back,” he gasped, and pulled away from her. He turned his back and looked toward his house, so far down the beach.
“I don’t want to start over,” he said. “I did it once, and I don’t want to do it again. I just want my boy back.”
Ligeia’s hands wrapped around his chest, moving from under his armpits to rub his belly and reach all the way up to cup his chin. At his back, he felt the cushion of her breasts, and hated himself for how much he wanted her right now.
