Summer Hours

by Amy Mason Doan

  The Tonga Room

  We were slightly disappointed in the mechanical thunderstorms. There was no rain over the tables. Only a faint mist.

  “Now that I think about it, I guess people don’t want soggy food,” Eric said when we were seated.

  “And rain would extinguish the flaming drinks.”

  But the cracks of thunder made us jump, and the lagoon next to our table had real water. Inside a thatched hut in the center, a woman plucked a ukulele.

  “Aren’t you going to say it’s South Pacific? Or...some other movie set on an island that no one else but you has watched in fifty years?”

  “Not everything is a movie reference, Rebecca Reardon,” Eric said. “I will say only that this place is undeniably cool.”

  “‘Undeniably cool.’ I’d like to be undeniably cool.”

  “You are. To me, you are. Except when you wear those giant sunglasses from the thrift store, and you look undeniably like a fly.”

  “How gallant. And you are...what? We need a slogan for you. Eric Logan is...”

  “Irresistibly hot? Magically delicious?”

  “You are most definitely both of those. But how do you like Eric Logan: beautifully himself.” I leaned close to the centerpiece, a candle surrounded by a low ring of tropical flowers. Orchids or gardenias. “These are real. Smell.”

  He inhaled. “Glad we came?”

  “Yes.”

  I ordered a Cobra’s Fang, something sweet and deadly in a pineapple husk. Eric got a mai tai with passion fruit juice subbing for the rum, served in his longed-for coconut shell.

  I relaxed. It was physically impossible not to.

  If Eric and I ever moved to San Francisco, no matter how soul-crushing our jobs, we would drop by the Tonga after work every night. Smell sweet flowers, watch lightning bounce off water, listen to ukuleles and steel guitar. And every worry would disappear into the man-made mist.

  We held hands, our knees touching under the table. We made two trips each to the buffet, loading our plates with crab rangoon and poi fritters and shrimp-and-scallion egg rolls. My ice-room lady had been a fool, passing up this feast.

  “To my ice-machine lady,” I said. “May the swelling in her husband’s knee go down promptly.”

  “To ice lady and knee man. May they be having kinky sex right now.”

  “With the ice?”

  “Oh, it has to involve the ice.”

  By drink two I was floating. “Maybe we shouldn’t go back tomorrow. Maybe we can live here.”

  “Hell, yes. On that island where the singer is.”

  “It’s not an island. It’s an issmus. Ithmus. Issmus. E, why can’t I say it?” My tongue had gone numb, temporarily paralyzed by Cobra’s Fang venom; but with great effort, wiping tears from my eyes, I got the word out: “Isthmus.”

  “Just because you beat me in geography bee freshman year, you don’t have to rub it in.”

  “Wait! It’s not an isthmus, it’s a peninsula.” And that seemed funniest of all. “Let’s toast to our peninsula. Our future home.”

  After drink three we constructed a boat. A miniature boat, made from a paper Tonga Room, Enchanting Lovers since 1945 coaster and a drink umbrella. We both worked on the miniature craft, bending the coaster just so, poking holes for the toothpick keel with the skewer that had held our kalua pig. I reached between the faux-sugarcane bars, set it on the water, and launched it. It sailed a foot then circled back, clinging to the shore next to our table.

  Eric pushed it with his fork. “Sail away, little thing.”

  “Be free.”

  We watched it float off, rooting for it to cross the small, man-made ocean.

  “I lost it, did it sink?” Eric scanned the water.

  “No, it’s over there. By the bachelorettes.” I pointed across the water toward a group of girls in matching purple T-shirts and feather boas. The bride-to-be’s tiara sparkled as she danced.

  A flaming drink passed our table.

  The candle in our gardenia centerpiece flickered.

  Light bounced off the singer’s silver necklace.

  His blond hair shone.

  He stood near the bar, twenty feet behind Eric, a drink in his hand.

  I didn’t feel surprised. I didn’t panic.

  I only thought—of course. Of course he’s here. That shadow over my heart.

  He tilted his head, bit his lip, fluttered his fingers at me—a discreet, graceful little wave—and left.

  I could have stayed at the table, faked my way through the rest of the night, pretending everything was as loopy and sweet as it had been moments before. I could have waited to confront him.

  So why did I murmur, “Ladies’ room,” and stand?

  Impatience, I guess. The simple need to know, even if the truth would hurt. I couldn’t wait for my punishment any longer. It had chased me halfway up the state of California despite my best efforts, and I needed to know why he was there, and what other unwelcome surprises waited for me. In my mailbox, at work, at Francine Haggermaker’s gracious old home on Orchard Hill.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Whoa,” Eric said, as I bumped the table so hard my drink tipped. I blotted up the small spill. “You okay, lightweight?”

  “Right back.” My feet felt distant, stubbornly disobedient as I navigated the dark, red-carpeted hall, the too-bright lobby.

  He almost got away.

  If he hadn’t paused at the door, he would have disappeared into the fog. I might have written him off as a ghost conjured by guilt and alcohol. But he stopped for a few seconds to say something friendly to the doorman.

  Cal was always courteous.

  We were outside when I caught up with him and reached for his shoulder. I was rushing and off balance; my grasp became a shove, though that wasn’t what I intended. “Did you do it?”

  He turned. Looked past me, at the front of the hotel. He still had his drink in his hand and I’d made him slosh it. He set the glass on a planter, scissored his fingers rapidly to dry them, flicking lamp-lit gold drops on the ground. “It’s good to—”

  “Did you do it? Snoop in my computer files somehow and tell Schwinn about Serra’s group and my pretend graffiti article, to get back at me?”

  I was inches from him. So close I could smell his English shaving cream, the scotch on his breath.

  “Are you okay, miss?” The doorman approached, abandoning his post at the door.

  I nodded and he left us alone, but I felt him watching just in case.

  “You did. You dug it up and gave it to him to hurt me.”

  “To hurt—”

  “The pretend article on my computer. About the graffiti thing, Serra’s Berkeley graffiti thing. You gave it to Schwinn to get back at me.”

  “Pretend article?”

  “Yes. It was never supposed to get out. But since Schwinn got his hands on it he was able to twist everything around. Wasn’t that what you two cooked up?”

  He sighed. “Shit. No, I didn’t know it was pretend... What’s a pretend article? I thought... Okay, yes, I was poking around in your files one night, a few weeks ago. The file was on your ghost drive and it was called Memory so I thought...”

  “You thought it was about us.”

  “Yes. I thought maybe it was about us. Silly me.”

  I didn’t want to, but I believed him. I’d laughed when I changed the file name from Hiss to Memory. Not knowing that this small alteration, a joke meant only for myself, would someday haunt me.

  “But then I read it. And I figured it was a draft of an article you’d been working on that would come out anyway. You always made fun of the graffiti, and I didn’t think it was a big deal. Swear to god.”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  “You haven’t answered my emails in ages, Rebecca.”
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  “But you told that...that sleaze who was behind the graffiti as a favor.”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “So he’d do you a favor. What’d you get in return? He bought you out of the incubator?”

  “Yes, but at the time I didn’t think it was such a big deal—”

  “Stop saying that! I know you didn’t, because you don’t think anything’s a big deal. Schwinn was just useful to you, basically harmless—”

  “I can see now that I hurt you, and I—”

  “Not just me. You have to see it’s bigger than that. And now...what, you’re following me?”

  “No. I was here signing some papers with the guy who bought my apartment. I just sold the boat to him, too. He’s going to keep it at the Olympic Club.” He pointed downhill toward the Bay.

  As if it mattered whether the Summer Hours was moored east or west of the city, as if either of us cared.

  “And you’re with... It is him, isn’t it? You’re with him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Sort of. Yes.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “I guess it was my good luck to see you two.”

  “It was the Whirling Win Wheel.”

  “The—”

  “Whirling Win Wheel. On Pier 39. We won a free dinner.”

  “Ah.”

  I felt sick. Too many Cobra’s Fangs and too much of this conversation. Confirmation of what I’d guessed, fleeing LA: that Cal was the reason Schwinn’s lies had overwritten the collective’s honesty. The terrible fact that I’d helped.

  Eric sitting inside, clueless, happy, trusting me. Everyone trusting me.

  “Everything’s messed up,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.” He touched my shoulder. “I would never have done anything to hurt you on purpose, please—”

  His expression changed, and I knew before I turned.

  I’d been gone, at most, five minutes.

  I wasn’t sure how long Eric had been watching, how much he’d heard.

  But the details hardly mattered. When two people have a conversation like the one Cal and I were having, there’s a kind of circle around them that’s visible to anyone with an emotional IQ above 70.

  Eric’s focus jumped from point to point in this circle, not venturing inside it to where I stood with Cal, whose hand was still resting gently on my shoulder.

  “Eric,” I said. And if Cal’s hand on my shoulder didn’t tell Eric everything, the anguished note in my voice did.

  “I was worried.” He stared at a point a foot above my head. “You looked like you needed help. Guess you found it.”

  “Eric,” Cal said.

  But Eric didn’t look at him, either. He looked at the red carpet below his feet, the doorman, the fleet of gold luggage trolleys.

  Then he walked past us, darting across the busy street before I remembered to run.

  * * *

  For blocks I was unaware of anyone following me.

  San Francisco was only forty-nine square miles, and I was still fast, but they were steep, foggy miles, with a hundred opportunities to hide or double back and confuse a pursuer. Dark alleyways, souvenir shops with T-shirt racks out front, switchbacks and tunnels. Maybe I was too influenced by Eric’s beloved old movies, imagining he needed any of these to elude me. Maybe he simply hopped in a cab.

  For blocks after I’d lost sight of him, I still ran.

  When I finally gave up I found myself at the bottom of the hill, near the eastern edge of the city. No coat, no purse, no cash, surrounded by the gray boxes of the Embarcadero Center parking complex—not the place for strolling in the dark.

  Cal was there, right behind me. Panting, forehead slick with sweat.

  “Just go,” I said, sitting on asphalt, leaning against a cold granite wall.

  He sat. Took my hand and caressed the skin on my wrist with one slow finger. It was hypnotic. It always was. But I yanked my hand away.

  We sat in silence. His body next to mine was still, undemanding.

  When he did speak, his voice was gentle. “I’m so sorry, Rebecca. Please, let me walk you back to the hotel.”

  We trudged back through spitting fog without another word.

  But at my car he said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk until you’re okay to drive. Only talk.”

  Here he was. Wrong, broken, boatless. But here.

  “Or we can sit in some coffee shop and I won’t say a word. Just until your hair’s dry.”

  I touched my hair and it was, in fact, nearly soaked through from the fog. San Francisco in the summer.

  “Just until you warm up,” he said softly.

  I knew he would stick to his word in this one small way. If I asked, he would sit quietly across from me in a café as I warmed up.

  I’d been wrong about him at every turn. I’d thought he was different from the drones in The Heights.

  The truth was worse.

  He hadn’t done this to hurt me. But he hadn’t cared about what kind of man he’d protected. Which meant he was no better.

  What did that say about me, that I hadn’t seen him? Had I been willing to overlook what he was in exchange for something he gave me?

  I stared at the sidewalk, balling my fists so I wouldn’t reach for him. Then I let him go. “Goodbye, Cal.”

  52

  Where I’m Supposed to Be

  2008

  Saturday, 6:00 a.m.

  I climb Nob Hill as the sun rises. The gray, dank world I’ve marched through all night is now a riot of color. The thinning fog is shot through with iridescent light, and it’s bright enough for me to make out paint on the Victorians. Purple and lime green. Robin’s egg blue and custard yellow.

  The last time I was here, I didn’t wait for sunrise. I got in my car to chase after Eric, but it was too late.

  During that first raw, miserable month after he left, his mom invited me to coffee. A chic outdoor café in Laguna, against the seawall. I almost didn’t go but then arrived first, bracing for her to sit in perfectly coiffed judgment across the zinc table. I expected coldness and accusation, words chosen to infect my wounds.

  But when she appeared she was windblown, a good inch of dark roots showing. She threw her Gucci sunglasses down carelessly and clasped my hands. “I could kill him.”

  And I knew she did not mean her son.

  Neither of us had seen Cal.

  Someone heard he lost all of his money in the market last year and moved to Huatulco, where he lived cheaply, working around boats. Someone else heard he made a killing, and that was why he left.

  But we weren’t sure what’s true.

  Donna felt responsible for my time with Cal, though I told her of course she wasn’t. She’s still bitter about the wreckage he left in his wake, which is helpful. It means I haven’t had to be.

  Though the affair has shadowed me since. Apparently, Cal and I weren’t as discreet as we thought.

  I ran into Stephen Liu from CommPlanet at an LA coffee cart years ago, before a magazine job interview. A position I really wanted. He asked if I was still with the blond bombshell. Startled, I feigned ignorance, and he smiled to himself, sipped his espresso as I changed the subject. But I’d blown the interview that day, wondering who else knew. How it colored their view of me.

  Even though I was only twenty, even though it was less than twelve months, my time with Cal will always be an unwritten part of my résumé. I will never be able to erase it.

  While he sailed away.

  I’ve dealt with it; I’ve accepted it. I’ve been okay.

  Until now.

  The sadness over losing Eric, the guilt over how I’d hurt him—I thought I’d confronted it years ago. But now I see all I’d done was simply tuck it away.

  * * *

  Back at the Fairmont I smile at the night conc
ierge, the cleaning crew polishing picture frames and mirrors.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Good morning.”

  If I’m going to drive today, I desperately need a coffee, but the Diplomat restaurant won’t open for another two hours, the sign on the door says.

  So I walk down a different hall.

  I know, as I head slowly toward the sound of a vacuum cleaner, remembering the soft trickle of fountains and the hypnotic, harp-like plunks of steel guitar, that this is where I wanted to go all along.

  The door to the Tonga is open.

  “Ma’am?” says the petite, graying woman on the cleaning staff.

  “Sorry. I don’t want to interrupt you. I just... Do you mind if I look around for a sec? I’m a hotel guest, I—”

  “Sure! They’re testing the storm system. But you really should come back later and see it right.”

  I step into the room slowly.

  The caned chairs are different and the tables have been rearranged. They seem bigger. I remember that ours was so small we didn’t need to lean forward to hold hands.

  The Tonga looks crude in daytime, too exposed in the bright overhead light. It needs darkness for its magic to work; its secrets are laid bare right now. I can see the sprinkler heads that deliver fake rain, the seams on the bottom of the lagoon.

  I choose a table by the shallow water, as close as I can get to where Eric and I sat ten years ago. Where we were last happy together, plotting our next escape.

  I stare at the dark, vacant thatched hut, where no band is playing.

  Our future home, I called the hut, laughing. Seconds before my past showed up and made any future with Eric impossible.

  When a thunderstorm starts, flashing and drizzling across the lagoon, I wait for a deluge of tears.

  But the only drops come from the ceiling. I could make a coaster boat, name it something maudlin like True Love, after the sailboat in The Philadelphia Story. Eric and I watched that in his closet in tenth grade, lying back on a mound of pillows.

  Maybe that would bring on the fresh burst of grief I expected.

  But I feel only an immense fondness for the person I used to be, how she needed to decide who she was on her own time, in places like this. Not where she was supposed to be.