But I am curious.
“Okay, yeah, sure, whatever, Uncle Claude.”
“You realize that’s not a sentence, don’t you?” Henry responds, dire.
“Great, kids! I’ll just go get some piping hot, and wheels up in half an hour! How’s that sound?”
“Uh, sure, yeah. Wheels up in thirty minutes!”
“Piping hot?” Henry squints at me.
“I think he means coffee,” I whisper back.
“Should I invite Terri?”
“NO!” We say this simultaneously.
Claude chuckles. “Well, all right then. Just us.”
“Poke, you owe me a Coke,” I whisper, poking Henry, who rolls his eyes.
“Do you know that you are, like, a professional eye-roller?” I ask.
Now the footsteps disappear down the hall. They’re not really footsteps as much as whole-house-shaking steps. Claude is a big man. And he carries himself like a big man. He definitely needs to work on his core. It’s stomp city over here.
“Do you think he picked up on our Terri-dislike?”
Henry thinks.
“It’s hard to say. On the one hand, he seems completely oblivious. On the other hand, it would require a certain amount of sensitivity, which Uncle Claude seems to lack.”
“Do you think he likes Terri?”
“On a scale of one to ten . . . one being apathy and ten being obsession . . . I would say he’s about a . . . six.”
“I was gonna say six!” Somehow this makes me proud. “In any case, if memory serves, I believe there’s a little item of interest to our mutual cause nearly adjacent to the office tower of a certain Uncle Claude ‘the Clod’ Billings.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Gee, maybe I’ll make you wait to find out. You love a riddle. And right now, I need to get dressed. And take a shower. And possibly wash my hair.”
“You never wash your hair.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“You just never do. Unless it’s an emergency.”
“Well, my arms get tired. But that’s not the point. This time I get to gloat. Unless you guess.”
“What? No.”
“Guess.”
“No.”
“Guess!”
“No!”
“Okay, fine.”
“What is it?!”
“It, my dear brother, is a marina. A marina named Breakwater Cove. The selfsame marina where Mom and Dad kept . . .”
We say the last part together.
“. . . the boat.”
6
UNCLE CLAUDE’S PLACE is head-to-toe glass. It’s everywhere. I mean, you practically expect the floors to be glass, too. There is even an atrium in the middle of all four stories, with a giant eucalyptus tree growing out of it, creating the feeling of being in a forest and, also, the smell of being in the bathtub.
There’s no other way to say it. It’s beautiful. And modern. And open. And airy. Renzo Piano, the architect, was not phoning it in. I find myself shocked, nay, bewildered, that this place could have been built under the watchful eye of its CEO, Claude Shaw Billings, aka our uncle, aka someone who wears sports jerseys.
“See, kids, over there, you can see all the way out on the ocean. Here, I have some binoculars up here in my office. Sometimes you can even see the whales out there. I’m not sure what kind of whales—”
“Humpback whales. Or possibly the California gray whale. Between November and April. In their annual migration to Mexico.”
These words are coming out of Henry’s mouth but his mind is elsewhere, looking at each nook, bolt, beam of this sparkling glass office building, to analyze exactly how it’s constructed.
“How is this retrofitted?” It’s a question to Claude, whose answer is a blank stare.
“There’s ice cream in the kitchen, kids!” This is, also, an appropriate answer.
I was expecting the kitchen to be tucked away in a little corner with someone’s frozen Smart Choice Sweet & Sour Teriyaki Chicken hidden away with a proprietary note on it. (Why was I expecting this? The magic of film! Whenever you see an office in a film it always looks like a total depression zone. Papers everywhere. Files. Charcoal-colored cubicles with the odd family picture clipped somewhere. Someone’s name always tacked to the fridge food.)
But this is not that kind of office.
Even the kitchen is a consciously lit affair with a juice bar, vegan tacos, and sushi.
Sushi! With a man behind a counter fashioning said sushi.
I’m not kidding, I think that he is now rolling an actual sushi burrito. Yes. It exists. A sushi burrito. Greatest thing to sweep the coast since the Korean taco. Don’t be jealous.
The seating area is playful, with slumping, comfortable sofas and chairs everywhere, little semicircles, ready for invigorating conversations between people who have not yet arrived. Constructive lunch talk! Inspired juice bar musing! Sushi burrito brainstorming!
“How awkward is the conversation, generally, between the people who work here?”
Henry’s question may seem tangential but it’s essentially because he’s picturing himself in this environment and ascertaining whether he would like it.
“What? Oh, um. It’s . . . nice, I guess.” Claude has clearly never thought of this before.
Henry contemplates for a second. “I guess if you’re the CEO it doesn’t matter because people have to like you. So it would be difficult to analyze without a control in the experiment. Like a fake boss. Or a CEO masquerading in some sort of disguise—”
I elbow Henry. Claude just pretends not to hear.
“Uncle Claude, what Henry is saying is that it’s a beautiful space.”
“What? No, that’s not what I was—”
Again, I elbow him, accompanied by a look.
It’s not Henry’s fault, you know. He just has a slightly different way of thinking and, therefore, communicating. And no edit button.
“Well, that’s nice, kids. And up here is . . . my office!”
He pauses, in order to let us take in the magic.
No need for snark here. This is just straight-up amazing with views 360 degrees around, including oceans and cliffs and, possibly, humpback whales in the distance. They might as well be swimming in a circle and singing.
“See, it’s the whole floor!” Claude boasts. “That way I can run laps if I don’t have time to go to the gym.” He winks.
Henry is in the corner now, looking up at the crossbeams.
“Ah, I see! It’s a facade retrofit.”
This revelation seems to temporarily elate Henry, before he begins looking at the crossbeams in the ceiling and then continuing the mumbled conversation he’s been having with himself and the ten different engineers in his head.
Claude just looks at me.
“He’s very curious,” I assure him.
There are a lot of questions I have for Claude right now. Questions like . . . Why are you being so nice to us? What are we doing here? Who are you and what have you done with our actual uncle? But Claude doesn’t seem to be the kind of guy who actually responds to or acknowledges the human reality on the ground, so . . . I stick to small talk.
“So, um, how long did it take to build this?”
“Oh, heck, I think it’s been about . . . five years now, maybe six. Time flies so fast I just never know these days!”
A voice comes over the intercom. “Mr. Billings, I have Redwood Global Capital on the line.”
“Oh, jeez! Can you kids give me a sec—”
Before he finishes his sentence, he’s out of the room.
And before I begin my next sentence, Henry starts his.
“Look. Look down there. Do you see it?”
He points to a room, made of glass, the next floor down.
“I can’t really tell what you’re pointing at.”
“That . . . that diorama.”
I squint, looking around. Everything just seems like a mass of industri
ousness, movement, and glass.
“Here, I’ll show you.”
Henry goes flying down the see-through staircase, down the see-through hallway, and into a see-through room, which, although it is totally transparent, somehow seems like a secret.
“There.”
There, indeed. There, over on the other side of the room, is a diorama of a behemoth white condo complex, perched ominously over the sea, set high up on a cliff.
“Wait a minute. Are you kidding me right now?” I say, taking it in.
“I’m afraid the joke is on us.”
We both stare down at the enormous, high ivory towers, dwarfing everything around them. Could it really be that Uncle Claude is planning on building this monstrosity on the side of a cliff, overlooking the ocean? And, more important, could it really be that he’s planning on building this monstrosity on the side of our cliff? Because this . . . this sure looks like our cliff. The one where our house sits. You know, the one that’s been in the family since 1850?
Why would he do that? Would he do that? Who would do that?
As if on cue, Claude pops his head in.
“Hey, you crazy kids, what are you up to in—”
But he is stopped when he sees the diorama. Actually, he is stopped seeing Henry’s sunken face looking at the diorama.
“Uhh . . . isn’t she a beaut?” he says, nodding to the miniature white condo towers. “They say it’s gonna fetch a pretty penny. I mean, once it’s built, of course.”
“Uncle Claude, where, exactly, is this going . . . ?” I can’t help myself.
“Where? Well, it’s going . . . um, it’s going . . . down the coast somewhere. El Cajon.”
“El Cajon is in a valley surrounded by mountains,” Henry corrects him.
Leave it to Henry to know everything about every inland community in the state of California.
“Right! But this is West El Cajon . . . which is, I guess, well, in fact . . . San Diego.”
“West El Cajon?”
“Yes, West El Cajon.”
Henry and I share a look of disbelief.
“Why? Where did you think it was going?” Claude asks, still smiling.
Henry shakes his head at me. He wants me to drop it.
“Nowhere! It’s just, um, we were curious. That’s all.” I smile.
“Huh. Okay, kids, we should probably get going, so—”
“Oh, I forgot! We have a summer camp science class! In marine biology!” Henry blurts out. “We signed up for it last April. It was pretty expensive. So . . . do you think you can just drop us off at the marina?”
“The marina?”
“Yes, Breakwater Cove, sir. We have a marine mammal class. It’s part of this whole summer camp fun thing they do,” he adds.
“Well, I don’t remember anybody mentioning anything about—” Claude seems befuddled.
“Oh, it’s just some dumb thing we signed up for, like, a year ago. No biggie. It’s just a one-day camp. Like a workshop. We’ll be home by dinner even. We could bring home dinner, if you want! There’s a great fish place right there . . .” I continue the charade.
“Neptune’s Net. It’s named after the god of the sea. The Roman god, of course. The Greek god is Poseidon, obviously.” Henry can’t help himself.
“Right. Well, I’ll have my assistant, Moira, drop you off then. I have a few more phone calls . . .” Claude steps out of the room.
“Great!” I say with unnatural enthusiasm.
And this would all work perfectly well and fine and peachy except, halfway to Moira’s vehicle, Claude comes running out of the glass building, huffing and puffing as if this may be the first time he’s run in ten years, and announces, “Wait! Did you say you were going to Breakwater Cove?”
“Um . . . yes.” Henry and I both look at each other.
“Well, I really don’t think that’s a good idea for you to go alone. It’s . . . not safe.”
“We won’t be alone, it’s, like, a day camp.”
Claude peers at us . . . This is a look I remember coming from my mother.
“So, you’re telling me you kids are randomly taking an ocean class where you have to just show up at a dock by yourselves and nobody told me about it?”
“Kind of.” It’s all I can muster. “We just didn’t really think you’d care that much.”
Henry is looking at an ant trail in the parking lot, trying to figure out where it starts. There are a lot of ants involved. A row stretching out over the curb and into the grass.
“Sorry, kids. But something seems fishy here.”
“Literally.” Henry can’t help himself.
“Look, I don’t know what you kids have planned, but I didn’t just fall off the cabbage truck,” Claude asserts.
“Look, Uncle Claude. We just forgot to tell you. It’s a day camp. Involving sea creatures. It’s no big deal! And we really have been looking forward to it . . .” I give him my world-patented puppy eyes. “Mom signed us up for it before . . . well, you know.”
Uncle Claude stands there, contemplating. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll go get my keys. But I’m the one dropping you off. Just to be sure. You are my responsibility, you know.” He marches back toward the glass-diamond building. When he’s inside, Henry turns to me—
“Cabbage truck?”
“I think it means we’re not fooling him.”
“So, there was a time when people were riding around on cabbage trucks and, apparently, the ones who fell off weren’t that intelligent.”
“I guess.” I shrug.
“Why cabbage?”
“Maybe it just didn’t sound as good to say ‘fell off the cucumber truck.’”
“Do you think there was such a thing as a cucumber truck?”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t make sense to just have one vegetable per truck. They should diversify,” Henry points out.
Sure, they should.
And we should be hot on the heels of some answers. As soon as Claude returns with the keys to his Lexus.
7
IT’S STILL EARLY afternoon by the time we make it to Breakwater Cove. Claude seems to be obsessed with the idea that if we don’t see our completely imaginary marine mammal instructor, he’s just not dropping us off. I have no idea where this newfound paternal instinct comes from. Maybe old Clod has a heart after all . . . just a quiet one that likes to warble on about real estate and not draw attention to itself.
“There!” Henry points to a squat woman in a straw sun hat. “There she is! That’s our marine biology instructor! Her name is . . . Ruth.”
Claude sizes her up from a distance. “Ruth, huh?”
She definitely looks straight out of central casting for marine mammal science instructor. Sturdy clogs, batik ankle-length skirt in a tie-dyed wave pattern, black T-shirt, wiry gray hair. Nice one, Henry.
Claude sizes her up. “Where are the rest of the kids?”
I clear my throat. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a small class. And we’re early, so . . .”
I know. I am so fast on my feet.
“Well, okay. Fine. But be back before sunset, kids. I mean it”—he nods, keeping the noble-dad act going—“or Ruth and I are going to have words.”
As we hop out, Henry runs over to the pretend science teacher. I really have to wonder what he is planning on saying to her, considering the situation.
Claude stays, idling the car—waiting to see us make contact, making sure we’re not up to something. But what could he possibly think we’re up to?
By the time I catch up, Henry and the woman are having an honest-to-goodness conversation about shellfish.
“That’s interesting, son. I never knew that oysters change their gender at least once in their lifetime!” She looks down on Henry sweetly.
“That’s not all, ma’am. They have astounding nutritional value, including vitamins C, D, B1, B2, and B3. If you were to eat four oysters a day you would get the recommended daily value for calcium, coppe
r, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc!”
I look back to Claude idling in the car and give him a thumbs-up. He squints, still dubious, then reverses the car and drives off.
Wow. I guess we fooled him.
I have to give it to Henry, he really knows how to pick imaginary sea instructors.
“Well, thank you for your time, ma’am. I enjoyed sharing the magic of the seven seas with you.” Henry bows and walks off briskly, leaving the woman looking a bit befuddled. I guess she thought he was going to stick around spouting facts all day.
By the time I catch up with Henry, he’s already at the end of the dock, speaking with a middle-aged man with reddish-blond hair, wearing a beige polo.
“Sir, is this your boat?” Henry asks. “I see it has sonar equipment.”
And, indeed, behind the man, on the hull of the medium-size motorboat, is an array of gunmetal-gray boxes, filled with screens, knobs, and switches.
“Sure is, kid. It’s not much, but I like to pride myself on it. Took a while to put together the system. I did it myself, you know.” There’s a kind of affable quality about this ginger-haired captain.
“Do you ever rent it out, sir?”
The man’s demeanor changes. He’s a nice man, the kind you’d find trustworthy. His accent sounds almost Australian but not quite.
“I do, as a matter of fact. But it’s quite expensive. Too expensive for you kids, I’m afraid,” he laments.
“Well, how much is it?” I ask.
“Depends. On the kind of folks making the offer, mostly.” Then he whispers, “If they’re from San Francisco, I double the price.”
Henry and I nod, in cahoots.
“What are you kids looking for, eh? A little whale watching? Maybe a dolphin? Some seals, perchance?”
Henry looks up at him, pauses. “Actually, we’re looking for our parents’ boat. It fell to the bottom of the ocean.”
Of course, this stops the light little conversation in its tracks. The man’s face drops and he looks at the two of us like we are the last feral dogs left at the pound.
“They died. Our parents. At sea. Sorry to bother you,” I mutter.
Henry and I turn to walk away, both of us slumped forward, not wanting to be looked at in that way. Like things to be pitied.
Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff Page 8
