Backcast

by Ann McMan

  Mickey stared at me in silence. Then she raised an index finger. “Let’s go back to that red dress thing.”

  I was surprised. “What about it?”

  She was giving me an odd look. “Say more about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It was just a red dress. No big deal. I didn’t attach any particular significance to it.”

  “Say more about your reaction to the woman wearing the red dress.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Just what are you getting at, here?”

  She looked at me over the top of her glasses.

  “Oh, come on, you cannot be serious.” I thought about it. Was she serious? What had I felt? Whatever it was, it wasn’t—sisterly. No. It was far from sisterly. In fact, it was downright predatory. I raised a hand to my face. This was not happening. Not to me. And not this fucking easily.

  I peered at Mickey between my spread fingers. “Are you kidding me with this?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? How the hell should I know? If I knew what to think, I wouldn’t be sitting here on this couch in an office that looks like it got ripped from the pages of Metropolitan Life.”

  She said nothing. That was probably my biggest clue that an epiphany was at hand. She was always silent during the big ones. I sank further into the cushions on the sofa. Yep. This one had all the earmarks of being a big one.

  “Oh, good god.” I looked at her. “Is this it? Is this all there is to it?” I shook my head. “I’m gay? That’s what this lifetime of puking has been about?” I held out my palm to stop her before she could ask me what I thought. Again. “You mean there’s nothing wrong with me? I just don’t want to date men because I like women better? Is that it? Is that all there is?”

  Suddenly, I felt like Peggy Lee. All the mysteries of life had finally been laid bare before me, and they were—unremarkable.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus. I’m gay.”

  Mickey leaned forward in her chair. “How do you feel?”

  I noted that she wasn’t asking, “Are you sure?”

  I sighed. “The truth?”

  She nodded.

  “I feel relieved.”

  She just nodded again, like that answer made sense. I guess, in a way, it did. It was a relief to understand, finally, that I wasn’t sick or twisted because the idea of having sex with men always made my insides churn. I wasn’t limping through life with some festering wound that turned me into an emotional mutant. I was just gay.

  “Holy shit.” I sat there shaking my head. Then I looked at her. “So I guess this means our work here is finished?”

  “Yeah.” She picked up her inevitable mug of tea. “Not so much.”

  I sighed.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was. I smiled at her.

  She knew me well enough to be suspicious. “What is it?”

  “I can’t wait to tell my mother.”

  Throughout all the years I continued to work with Mickey, I never again heard her laugh quite that hard.

  4

  Bologna Sandwiches

  “I can appreciate that you all prefer a more delineated process. But, please? Can we acknowledge the reality that we’ve only got ten more days together to work on this project?”

  Barb was beginning to lose patience with The Outliners.

  They’d met every day now, and were making next to no progress on their essays. Linda Evans had even unearthed an old white board that had been stashed upstairs in the attic over the restaurant, and they were using it to create flow charts for their various narratives.

  Barb made an oblique gesture toward some scribbling on the board. “Seriously. This looks like a schematic for the F-18 fighter jet.”

  “That’s V. Jay-Jay’s,” Linda explained. “So it probably has a lot of similarities.”

  Kate rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t even try to scoff, Miss Thing.” Linda chided her. “Yours is just about as prolix.”

  “I know.” Kate shook her head. “I’m rethinking the whole stream of consciousness approach.”

  Barb thought that sounded hopeful. “Because you realize it might enhance the spontaneity of the narratives?”

  “No.” Kate looked at her. “More because I’d like to get out of here before my womb drops.”

  V. Jay-Jay choked on her glass of water.

  “I hear you.” Montana clapped V. Jay-Jay on the back between her shoulder blades. “But if it does drop, I think V. Jay-Jay here can hook you up with a special workout regimen to get everything right as rain.”

  Linda waved a hand. “Who needs a womb, anyway? I dropped mine someplace between Broadway and 7th Avenue in New York City, and I’ve never missed it for a second.”

  “You mean it fell out?”

  Linda shrugged. “Mostly.”

  “Gross.” Montana stared at her. “That’s gross.”

  “It was right in front of H&M. ‘Gross’ is a relative term.”

  Barb ran a hand over her face. She already had a headache and this exchange wasn’t helping.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Montana asked. “You look kind of—puny.”

  “I’m fine.” Barb noticed that V. Jay-Jay was looking at her curiously, too. “Just didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “You probably ate too much of that aspic.”

  “Yeah.” Linda refilled her glass. The straw-colored sauvignon blanc was one of her favorites. She called it her breakfast wine. “Can’t you use your connection to the owners of this joint to get that shit off the menu?”

  Barb sighed. Again. “I don’t mind it.”

  “That’s gross.” Montana looked at Linda. “Isn’t that gross?”

  Linda shook her head. “Do yourself a favor, kid. Get a thesaurus.”

  “What’s that crack supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’ve used the word ‘gross’ four times in the last two minutes.” Kate stood up and collected her notebooks and pens.

  “So?” Montana looked offended.

  “So,” Linda replied. “I think you’re spending too much time with Quinn on that damn boat.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “My point, precisely.”

  “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to spend a little more time on the water.”

  Linda drained her glass with a flourish. “I have all the liquid I need right here.”

  “Ladies, really?” Barb regarded them all. “I’m beginning to think that putting you four together was a bad idea.”

  “I’ve never worked well in groups.” V. Jay-Jay stood up. “Are you leaving?” she asked Kate.

  Kate nodded.

  “I’ll walk out with you.”

  “Wait a minute.” Barb held up a hand to stop them. “We need to make some progress here.”

  Linda looked at her watch. “It’s time for a break, anyway. We’ve been at this for nearly two hours now.”

  Two hours? Barb sighed and stared at the scribbling on the marker board.

  This whole thing was starting to unravel. Mavis was still refusing to participate, and she wasn’t making any progress on her own essay, either. And now these damn Outliners were approaching the whole exercise like they were being asked to redraft the Magna Carta.

  She wondered if she could get the show to work with eleven sculptures instead of thirteen?

  It could work. Eleven and thirteen were both prime numbers.

  Barb liked prime numbers. To her, prime numbers made sense. Prime numbers imitated life. A prime number was perfect because it couldn’t be divided by anything but one.

  Or itself.

  This year, she’d turn fifty-nine.

  Perfect.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Barb looked at Linda with a guilty expression. “It’s nothing.” She addressed the group. “Linda’s right. Let’s take a break.”

  Setting up a s
plit mojo-Carolina rig was a bitch.

  Junior was teaching her how to tie her own lures and sinkers, and Quinn found the work to be dull and tedious. It reminded her of vacation Bible school, when old Mrs. Firth made her weave calico-colored hot pads on one of those tiny metal looms. Quinn didn’t care much for Bible school and she really didn’t give a shit about hot pads. The endless stories about Jesus were too ridiculous to take seriously, and nobody at her house cooked enough to need protection. Not from the stove, anyway.

  But these lures were something else. Putting one together wasn’t at all like rebuilding an engine. The tools were too small. The pieces were too delicate. And her fingers were too fat and clumsy to handle the tiny steel beads and spinners with any kind of dexterity. In fact, the whole process was sort of like making jewelry.

  No. Not sort of like making jewelry—exactly like making jewelry. Junior said color was important. So was movement. He explained that the lures needed to float just above the bottom of the lake, which meant the sinkers would drag along beneath them as you slowly pulled in the line. The jerky motions and the flashes of bright color from the day-glow lures were supposed to attract the fish. As smart as these fish were reputed to be, Quinn doubted that they would fall for such an obvious ploy. But she really had no idea what alternative approach would work better. The whole process was like one giant science experiment.

  Driving the boat was an experiment, too, but at least she was getting the hang of it. And it was a lot of fun on days like today when the lake was calm. She liked calm. Calm meant she could concentrate on other things and not have to worry so much about the parts of this enterprise that usually landed her in hot water.

  Like mooring the boat.

  It wasn’t her fault that when she came in last night, the dock at the inn was like a Walmart parking lot on the day after Christmas. Page Archer really had no right to speak to her that way. She was a paying guest, after all—and so what if she came in a little hot?

  Well. Maybe more than a little hot. But hitting the throttle had been an accident. She’d been too preoccupied watching Montana squatting and bending over to ready the deck lines. Quinn didn’t realize that she was leaning on the throttle as she strained forward to get a better view.

  Montana had great legs.

  And great lungs, as it turned out. If Montana hadn’t started screaming at her, they’d surely have taken out that big sailboat. Why didn’t anybody give her any credit for managing to miss that? It wasn’t fair.

  But today was different. Today was like a fresh start. Today she was going to practice casting from the boat with her new lures—without an audience. So she was out here alone, slowly drifting along the back of Knight Island. She had another agenda, too. She was hoping for a second look at the great fish.

  Phoebe.

  Quinn knew she was out here. She could feel it. Even though Junior told her they’d probably never see her again in the same place.

  Phoebe liked to move around. Quinn understood that. She didn’t much care for staying in the same place either. She’d been in Batavia for five years now, and she was starting to get restless. Her Harley franchise was doing great and she was making tons of money. But it wasn’t enough. Something was still missing. She didn’t have any roots there, and it wasn’t looking like she was going to be putting any down. She guessed that after she got Junior’s bike squared away she’d think about selling out to those Chicago guys and heading further west. Maybe Minnesota? Or Montana.

  She wondered if Montana would help her scout out a new place to set up shop? All that wide-open space would be like heaven for Harley riders. Heaven. That’s what she called all her shops. Maybe one day, she’d find it.

  Damn. The knot on this thing was still not right. She’d retied it six or seven times now, and the line was so crimped that she was going to have to give up and cut it off.

  She looked down at the discarded pieces of fishing line that were piled up around her feet. They looked like broken strands of vermicelli.

  That made her hungry. But it was only ten-thirty, and if she ate her lunch now, the rest of the afternoon would drag. Still. She glanced over at the cooler. Those thick bologna sandwiches would taste great. Quinn hadn’t had bologna sandwiches since she was a kid—but when she snuck into the kitchen last night to scare up something for her lunch today, Gwen was in there making herself one. Quinn hadn’t seen much of her since they’d arrived, and that disappointed her. They’d had some fun together in California.

  “Why are you up so late?” Quinn asked her.

  She thought about their one-night stand in San Diego last year. Gwen was an early riser. Or it could just have been that Gwen wanted to leave Quinn’s hotel room before anyone else would be up to see her make the walk of shame back to her own floor.

  “I couldn’t sleep because I had the munchies,” Gwen explained. “There aren’t many options back here, but I found this big ring of sandwich meat in the walk-in cooler.”

  “What is it?”

  Gwen hacked off another big slice. “It’s Lebanon Bologna.” She handed a piece of it to Quinn. “Oddly, it’s Canadian. Really pretty good.”

  Quinn took it from her and sniffed it. “I don’t really like lunch meat.”

  “This isn’t like any Oscar Mayer stuff you’ve ever had. Try it.”

  Quinn took a small bite. It was good. Beefy. It tasted like mild salami. She looked it over. “What are all these little white flecks in it?”

  “It’s best not to ask.”

  Quinn ate the rest of it. “Why did you say it’s ‘oddly’ Canadian?”

  Gwen was now piling several rings of the mystery meat atop a thick slice of bread. “Because it’s a Pennsylvania thing. Amish, I think.”

  “Amish? They live in Canada?”

  “Who knows?” Gwen finished making her sandwich. “They keep moving further and further away to find cheaper land, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Quinn didn’t have any trouble understanding that one. She pretty much wanted to avoid civilization, too. But only in places where she could still get Harley parts.

  Gwen held up the sandwich. “Do you want one?”

  Quinn nodded. “I came in here to make something for my lunch tomorrow.”

  “Are you going fishing again?”

  Quinn nodded.

  Gwen began making the sandwich.

  “Can I have two?” Quinn asked.

  “Sure. There’s also some liverwurst back there, if you’d rather have that.”

  Quinn looked over her shoulder at the walk-in cooler. “No. I hate that stuff.”

  Gwen chuckled. “Bologna, it is. Mustard?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Brown or yellow?”

  Quinn thought about it. “One of each?”

  Gwen smiled. “That can happen.”

  Quinn watched her assemble the two sandwiches. She noticed that Gwen had a large glass of wine sitting on the cutting board beside her plate. “Where’d you get the drink?”

  “My room. I brought some of my own. Do you want some? I can get you a glass.”

  “No. It’s okay. I was hoping I could score a couple of those Backcast ales to take out with me tomorrow.”

  “You’re on your own with that one.” Gwen smiled at her. “I could, however, point you in the direction of some aspic.”

  “No thanks. That stuff tastes like shit.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me.”

  Quinn got an idea. “Where is it?”

  “In a huge vat in the cooler, right next to the salad stuff. Why?”

  “I might take a little bit of it with me tomorrow.”

  “Why? You think it might taste better out on the water?”

  “You never know.” Quinn looked around for a container. “Anything I can put it in?”

  Gwen handed her a Ziploc bag. “How about one of these?”

  “Perfect.”

  Gwen wrapped up the two sandwiches while Quinn retrieved the bowl of aspic
. She handed Quinn a spoon so she could scoop some out to fill her plastic bag. “You know, the food at this place is really first rate. I don’t understand their fascination with this nasty stuff.”

  “I guess somebody here really likes it. Maybe it’s some kind of local thing?”

  “I doubt that.” Gwen took a sip of her wine. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I want to try an experiment.”

  “On the water?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “What kind of experiment? You want to see if it floats or eats bacteria?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Talk about your red tides.”

  Quinn grinned at her. She thought Gwen looked pretty good in the soft, low light. It was mostly dark in the big kitchen. Gwen hadn’t turned on the overhead fluorescents—probably so she could avoid detection. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of Page Archer. Quinn knew that firsthand.

  She decided to take a chance.

  “Are you going back to bed?”

  Gwen studied her for a moment before answering. Quinn thought she was weighing her options.

  “No,” she finally said. “I think I’ll take another swing at my essay.”

  Quinn tried to hide her disappointment. “I thought you were finished with that?”

  “I did, too. But now I think I want to rewrite some parts of it.”

  “Why? Have you changed your mind?”

  Gwen nodded. “About a lot of things.”

  Quinn wasn’t known for being quick on the uptake, but she was smart enough to realize that they were talking about something else.

  “Going in another direction, now?” she asked.

  “Trying to. I think it works out better for me when I make different choices.”

  Quinn looked down at her bundle of sandwiches. Gwen had wrapped them up in white butcher paper with tight, sharp creases. The package resembled a freshly made bed, complete with hospital corners. It looked tidy and complete. It looked finished.