They sat at the small built-in dining table, Beatrice sipping her wine, Adam devouring his food. Pasta in a red vodka sauce with garlic and black olives, lightly steamed broccoli with lemon juice and olive oil, crusty French bread, and a butter lettuce salad with fennel and orange—it was, Beatrice said, simple fare, but for Adam it was a feast fit for the gods.
“This is delicious. Is this spaghetti?” Adam said between mouthfuls.
“Pappardelle,” Beatrice corrected.
“I love pappardelle.” Adam inhaled another bite, completely unaware of the sauce that had splashed onto his nose. “I can’t tell you how tired I am of health shakes and protein bars and tofu and kale.”
“Why eat those things if you hate them so much?”
“To stay healthy. Since I sit at a desk all the time. I’ve got a lot of stomach issues too. My wife, Jane, is really into nutrition.”
“It’s nice she takes care of you like that,” Beatrice said, buttering a piece of baguette.
“Yeah. But every week some new study comes out saying that what used to be good is now bad for you and whatever used to kill you will now make you live forever. Drives me nuts.”
“Maybe those studies are looking too much in one direction.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe they should take into account how a person feels while they’re eating the food, not just the food itself.”
Adam, puzzled, looked at Beatrice. “What do my feelings have to do with a food’s nutritional value?”
“You’re half the equation, aren’t you?”
“Sure, to a certain extent. But, I mean, a carrot is still a carrot and a pepperoni pizza is still a pepperoni pizza, no matter how I feel about it.”
“Does that mean that a protein bar made by some computer program, tossed down while you’re racing to work, is better for you than pasta, salad, and a slice of buttered French bread eaten while relaxing on a sailboat in a scenic harbor with an attractive woman?” Beatrice batted her eyelids comically.
Adam conceded the point with a smile as he bit into his bread.
Beatrice served the salad. Adam wasn’t sure why the salad came last, but he was enjoying himself too much to ask any questions. Before he could dig in, Beatrice disappeared momentarily and returned with a small, dried purple flower, crumbled it in her hands and then sprinkled it over Adam’s salad.
“What’s that?”
“You mentioned that your stomach was bothering you, and this will help.” Beatrice held out her hand. “Smell.”
Adam did. Instantaneously the scent transported him back to his grandmother’s house, to racing down the field to meet Beatrice.
“That smell—” Adam couldn’t finish his sentence.
“It’s called horsemint. It grows wild around here.”
Adam didn’t have words to describe how it made him feel. Was it simply nostalgia? Or something much deeper?
“Horsemint?”
Beatrice nodded. She was looking at Adam in that strange way again, the way she had done back in his car in the rain, as if trying to reach him on a frequency that he did not yet know how to tune into.
What Adam did next was so impulsive and unlike him that he was as shocked by it as Beatrice. Without thinking, Adam sniffed Beatrice’s hand again and then let out a remarkably accurate sounding horse whinny. The brief silence that followed was broken when Beatrice burst into laughter. Relieved, Adam laughed as well.
Outside, a thick mist crept in off the ocean, blanketing Noyo Harbor. Off in the distance, a foghorn sounded. Frogs along the riverbank croaked, boats creaked at their moorings, and from a green- and-white sailboat in the next-to-last slip, faint laughter could be heard.
Adam took another sip of wine and then readjusted the throw pillow he was leaning against. Beatrice was lounging comfortably on the cushion next to him. After dinner they had slipped into an easy banter: sharing stories, teasing each other, arguing points back and forth, but with no need to win. Perhaps it was the gentle rocking of the boat on the water, or maybe just the effects of the wine, but Adam felt relaxed in a way that he had not known in years. He was, at last, “engaging with the present moment.” Dr. M. would be proud, Adam thought with a smile.
During a lull in the conversation, Adam noticed his hand was resting on the floor only a few inches away from Beatrice’s. He began to imagine how easy it would be to just reach over and take her hand in his. Would that be too forward? She touched your hand back at the picnic table on the bluff. Building his nerve, Adam’s pinkie gave a little twitch; it was enough to cause his heart to jump up into his throat.
He glanced up to see if Beatrice was aware of the epic struggle taking place inside him. She seemed lost in thought. But then, out of nowhere, and as casually as reaching for her wine glass, she reached over and touched Adam’s hand. Adam’s pounding heart slammed back down from his throat into his chest like a falling piano. “Is this all right, Adam? That I hold your hand?” she asked.
“Of course.” Adam’s voice was unaccountably hoarse.
Beatrice scooted closer to Adam and took his hand in both of hers.
“Adam.” Her voice was low and intimate.
“Yes?”
“This has all been so wonderful.” Beatrice’s smile was a touch flirtatious, but there was also a serious note to it. “I want to talk to you about something important.”
“Something important?” Adam was trying to keep focused.
Beatrice took a moment and then asked, “What do you remember about Anne?”
“Anne . . . ” Adam’s mind went completely blank. “Who the heck is Anne?”
“Your grandmother, silly.” Beatrice gave Adam’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “You know, Anne. Do you have fond memories of her?”
“Right. Sure. I liked her a lot, even though she was a little . . .” Adam finished his sentence by rolling his eyes.
Beatrice didn’t seem to understand. “A little what?”
“Off her rocker.”
“Who told you that?”
“Well, Gloria—my stepmother—she said Anne had serious mental health issues, just like my biological mother. Things with Anne got worse as she got older, so Gloria and my dad had to put her in a facility up in Fort Bragg.”
Beatrice was very quiet. Adam could tell she was upset.
“I loved your grandmother,” Beatrice said softly. “I used to visit her even after you left, before my mother moved us away. Anne taught me many things.”
“Like what?” Adam asked.
“Adam, try your best to hear what I’m about to tell you.” Beatrice took a deep breath. “Anne was not crazy.” She watched Adam’s reaction to this and then slowly continued. “She was just open to things that other people don’t normally access. That was how she described it, anyway. Open.”
The boat lurched unexpectedly as Adam tried to follow what Beatrice was saying. But this wasn’t exactly the conversation he expected to be having, and now his hand was sweating. It was that strange burning sensation he’d felt the first time she had touched his hand.
“Your grandmother had a very strong connection to . . .” Beatrice searched for the right words. “Someplace else. A place beyond the world of appearances. Does that make sense?”
“Beatrice,” Adam broke in. “I’m sorry, but my grandmother really did have a medical condition, a chemical imbalance. In her blood, her genes or whatever. Trust me. Of all people, I should know—”
Beatrice’s voice was even. “It’s very easy to mistake people like Anne for being mentally ill or irrational or . . . ‘batty.’”
“Why are we talking about my grandmother, anyway?” Adam laughed, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Because it has to do with you, Adam, with the man I saw standing on a cliff last night.” Her voice grew even more solemn. “I think you’re in serious danger. More than you realize.”
Again the boat rocked hard in a sudden swell. Adam started to become aware of his tinnitus ringin
g in his ears. His vision had grown blurry, and the shadows were dancing wildly around the small room. How had things moved so quickly from romantic to surreal? he wondered. Beatrice seemed aware of his rising panic but she forged ahead. “What I’m trying to say is that for people like your grandmother, people more naturally open, the world can become a very unbearable place. It can force a person to bury that other, more vulnerable side of himself. And that can evolve into something very dangerous.”
“It’s hot in here; my hand is really hot,” Adam stammered.
“Why did you really come back here, Adam?”
“To get away, that’s all.”
“To kill yourself?”
“No. I told you . . . Okay, maybe the thought crossed my mind when I got here, but I wasn’t going to—”
“Did something happen recently? Something you’re afraid to talk about?”
Suddenly Adam had had enough. He sat up, wrenching his hand free from Beatrice. This was not the romantic conversation they were supposed to be having. Then it dawned on him. “You just feel bad for me. Is that what this is all about?” he said incredulously. “Why did you say there was a reason we met? You want to try and save me or something? Is that it?”
“No, Adam, that is not what I meant.”
“Am I a quick charity case before you set off on your next big adventure? Is that what I am to you?”
“No. I care about you.”
“You care about me, or you feel sorry for me?” The pause that followed was enough to convince Adam that he had nailed it.
“Adam, look at me.” Beatrice calmly reached for his hand again, but he wouldn’t give it to her. “I am just trying to talk to you, that’s all.”
“Okay. Fine.” He shrugged. “So I don’t really know what to say then. I’m sorry. Okay? I’m just—sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing, Adam? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Obviously I did, and now I am sorry. Okay?”
“Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?”
“I’m sorry for . . . I don’t know . . . for everything! So yes, you’re right; I haven’t done anything—and that’s the point, I haven’t done anything. I haven’t lived. Everything, my whole life since I last saw you thirty-whatever years ago, it has all been one gigantic lie.”
Beatrice said nothing.
“I mean, that’s what you want to hear, right? You said I was a liar, and guess what? You were right. While you’ve been out there sailing around the world, I’ve been wasting my life staring at computer screens all day long. I make video games! I make fake fucking worlds for a world that’s already fake! The whole point of my job is to trick other idiots into becoming just as stuck and isolated and detached and lonely as I am!
“I have lived my entire life through a screen. I work on a screen, I communicate with other people through a screen, I look at all the places I’d like to visit on a screen, I even watch other people having sex on a screen.”
Adam was sure this would trigger a reaction, but Beatrice’s face remained composed, her eyes fully focused on him. “There is an endless army of me’s out there—all chained to our screens, and I just can’t accept that this is my life, that this is who I am, that this is what I was born for. To just . . . to just—what? To . . . to what?” Adam bowed his head and fell silent.
“Adam?” Beatrice’s voice was soft and without judgment. “It’s all right—”
But Adam had nothing more to say. He felt like he might get physically sick. Beatrice reached over and touched his arm, but Adam was already staggering to his feet.
Adam stood alone at the boat’s railing, looking down at the water. He wasn’t sure if he might throw up or not. His hands were shaking, and he could hear his teeth chattering, even though he wasn’t cold. Just empty. There was a hollow silence in the misty harbor.
“I came very close to dying once.”
Adam glanced over his shoulder and saw Beatrice seated in her deck chair behind him, wrapped in a giant comforter. Adam wasn’t sure how long she had been there; he hadn’t heard her come up from below deck. She lit a cigarette, and the smell of burning tobacco was strangely comforting.
“About ten years ago,” she went on, her voice soft and intimate. “I was sailing off the coast of Chile. Things had gotten pretty bad; I had been on my own for a while—drifting. Just as I was hitting bottom, I decided to open this packet of mail that had been forwarded to my last port of call by a friend in France. And it contained a postcard from my father. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since I was a child. I didn’t even know he was alive, but he was, and he had found me, and we reconnected. And from that point, everything in my life shifted.”
She paused for a moment. “But it was that first postcard, postmarked a full year before I had received it, that somehow came to me exactly when I needed it. And I’ll always remember this quote he’d written on it. ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.’”
Somewhere in the distance a foghorn cried out. “Whatever’s in me is already dead,” Adam said quietly.
“No. You wouldn’t have come back to Mendocino if that were true.” Beatrice snubbed out her cigarette, and a brief shower of sparks flew past Adam’s shoulder. “You’ve just grown a very thick suit of armor.”
Beatrice stood and moved toward Adam and slowly opened the blanket, wrapping it, as well as herself, around him. Like a giant cocoon floating in the sea mist, inside the blanket, the warmth of Beatrice’s body slowly melted into Adam. What took place after that, Adam would only later recall in broken dreamlike fragments. At some point he must have turned to face her, to hold her in his own arms. He remembered her lips pressed against his cheek, inches from his ear. She had whispered something to him, the words themselves forgotten. For what felt like forever, they stood there, their bodies entwined, their faces, moist from the sea air, slowly, gently pressed into one another. Adam remembered saying at some point that he should probably go, or perhaps he just thought the words. When exactly they began to kiss was lost to him, but the next thing he knew, Beatrice was leading him by the hand below deck.
A gust of wind rippled across the tall, yellow grass on the bluff. The air was crisp, and the morning sun was already crackling over the dew-drenched land. Adam sat on an unusually high section of curb on Main Street, soaking in the morning. It was breathtakingly clear out, as if someone had Photoshopped Adam’s view. A touch of Sharpen, Adam thought, with some Dust & Scratch removal, bump Luminance, bump Gamma, +10 on Brightness, +6 Contrast. Adam realized that he was destroying the world with his thoughts, turning it into 1s and 0s. He closed his eyes to reset himself. Now all he saw was the orange-pink of the inside of his eyelids, all he felt was a warm sensation in his body, and the tiny ant that was dancing across his pinky on the sidewalk. When he opened his eyes, the picture returned to its original brilliance, with one additional component—Beatrice walking up Main Street. She was a little late, but she had come, and that was all that mattered.
They had made love several times the night before, in the dimly lit front berth of Paradiso 9. It had started slow and cautious, physical desire almost secondary to the raw emotional need they both had to hold on to one another and never let go again. Adam remembered feeling the tears on Beatrice’s cheeks at times, as she kneaded her face into his neck like a cat. Then he had drifted off to sleep for a time, only to wake and find they were making love again, this time more forcefully. Eventually he fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
He woke just after dawn. Beatrice was already up and out on deck, talking on her sat phone. It sounded as if she was negotiating a further delay before departure. Sensing her need for privacy to talk, Adam quickly suggested he’d head back to the hotel to shower and clean up. Beatrice had given him a quick kiss and had said she’d come meet him once she’d sorted through her various arrangements. Her parting words were, “At the very least,
we can spend the morning together.”
On his way back to the hotel, thoughts of Jane and his life in the Bay Area briefly drifted across his awareness like a thin layer of stratocumulus clouds high in the sky. Surprisingly he felt no anxiety or guilt for what he had done. If anything, the thought of Jane brought up feelings of fondness, as if she were a fictional character in some novel he had gotten caught up in. A story that he had briefly mistaken for his life. This may change, Adam thought, but for now there’s no reason to find conflict between my current reality and the one where Jane exists. They’re simply different worlds.
Adam jumped up from the curb, grabbing the two coffees and the bag of pastries he had brought for them, and walked down to meet Beatrice. When he reached her, she offered a cautionary smile.
“I have until four, possibly a little longer.”
Adam nodded. Less than six hours, but more than he had expected.
“There are things we should talk about.” Beatrice looked at the ground. “Important things I feel like . . . well, that I’d like to explain to you.”
“Yes, of course,” Adam said. He had the sense that she wasn’t just referring to what had taken place between them in the boat last night.
As if to confirm his suspicions, Beatrice looked at Adam, and again he felt that uncanny sensation that she was trying to speak to him without words. Then she said, “But first, let’s just play. Nothing serious. Just fun. Okay?”
The innocence in Beatrice’s expression was an invitation, as if she had once again become the girl standing outside Adam’s grandmother’s window, beckoning him outside.
“Nothing serious,” Adam replied as he held out one of the coffees.
Beatrice was about to take a sip when she looked more closely at Adam’s jacket and started to laugh.
“What?”
“Tu as attaché lundi avec mardi.”
Adam was totally confused. “You don’t like my jacket?”
“No, silly, it’s a French expression that means you buttoned it one button off.” Beatrice helped him fix his jacket before they strolled out onto the bluff.
What Lies Beyond the Stars Page 16
