by Drury, Tom
“Who is singing?”
“It’s a radio.”
Albert and Lyris returned to their camp, where they kept the fire burning all night. They didn’t talk a lot but only passed the brandy back and forth or got up to fetch wood. They made love on the ground, gold and warm by the fire.
A park ranger arrived toward morning. He stepped into the clearing with uniform pants tucked into hiking boots in the old style. He had a broad neck and red face and brushy gray hair and mustache. The light was coming up over the bluff.
“I don’t make a big deal of it,” he said, “but you’re supposed to camp in the numbered sites.”
“We didn’t know.”
“It’s posted.”
“There was a woman here last night.”
“What woman is that?”
“Do you know who Sandra Zulma is?”
“Everyone does,” he said. “People see her sometimes. Think they do anyway. She’s not here. She have anything to say?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Sometimes she’s just quiet.”
“Look in the cave across the river,” said Lyris.
The ranger laughed. “There ain’t no cave across the river. That’s just a story. You go in about ten feet and you hit solid rock.”
“We were in it,” said Albert.
The brandy bottle lay empty on the ground and the ranger shoved it with the side of his boot. “So you say.”
“What the hell,” Lyris said.
“This is a strange place,” said the ranger. “I see lights sometimes, and they ain’t campfires. My grandma used to talk about this fella had a cabin round here in the thirties. Baker. He would have parties in Prohibition and they’d hear the railroad men laughing in the trees. So then one day his friends come up to see what old Baker was up to and the cabin was gone and him with it. Like there hadn’t been nothing there.”
Louise put on black rubber boots with terra-cotta soles and walked the dog at dusk. They’d named her Pogo after a comic strip character Mary used to like. Louise and Pogo ambled past the barn, the dog swinging the bones of her shoulders and wagging her tail like a switch.
She hadn’t turned out to be slow, though she did not like to be alone. The first nights they had her she would cry until Louise got up and lifted her into bed, where she burrowed slowly into the covers, exploring. She had slept at their feet ever since.
The path between the fields ran long and grassy under jet trails crossing and breaking in the sky. Louise threw a tennis ball for the Lab, who sat rigid waiting for hands to clap before sprinting off and trotting back with the yellow ball in her grinning teeth. When they got tired of throwing and chasing the ball, they would walk side by side. The lane ended at a T intersection, where sometimes they went east, sometimes west, sometimes home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE VOLLEYBALL players drank in a beach bar late at night. It was a dim tavern with a bicycle and mannequin and Christmas lights in a loft. One night Micah got drunk on tequila. You can have too much tequila and still seem all right for a while. Micah caught himself falling in the bar and borrowed a cell phone and went out in the night.
The road was empty and the asphalt seemed to turn around him. Safe on sand, he felt steadier and made his way to a lifeguard hut on pilings, and there he called Lyris.
“Hello?” she said.
“Sister,” said Micah.
“Boy?”
“Yeah, hi.”
“Where are you?”
“The Pacific Ocean.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
Micah looked at his wrist. “I lost my watch. How is Albert?”
“He’s good. Asleep.”
“I’m going to find you. You’re around here somewhere. Hold on. I’m checking.”
“Micah, I’m home. Where is Joan?”
“On the seventeenth floor.”
“Did she leave you?”
Micah climbed the ramp to the walkway that bordered the hut. He went all the way around looking for Lyris. “I live at the beach now. Listen. That’s the ocean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was staying with Mark and Beth. These friends of mine. I’ve made so many friends, Lyris, you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’m glad.”
“They have no idea who I am. But one night we were playing music and Mark didn’t like the way Beth and I were dancing and he said I should leave. We were getting into it. The dancing, I mean. You can’t blame Mark. So I’ve been sleeping on the beach and in the morning I go swimming and then I go back to sleep and then I play volleyball and that’s what I do. Why aren’t you here?”
“I’m in Stone City, Micah. You know that.”
Micah descended the ramp and ducked through the piers. It was dark and cool under the stand. “I thought I could bring you here,” he said. “By thinking of you. . . . I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll come. Okay? Just give me a few days.”
Micah crawled out and lay down in the sand and looked at the stars. The sand was good. “I’m kind of fucked up, Sister.”
A vacuum cleaner followed Joan around the apartment, banging into her heels like a little red dog. She sprayed the surfaces with specialized cleaners that she suspected were all the same thing. Housekeeping was not her strong suit.
She put on sunglasses and took the elevator down to the lobby. The doorman stood in the shade of the awning in a forest-green coat with red epaulets.
“I’m going to run to the flower shop, Alexei,” said Joan. “My daughter Lyris will be arriving any minute.”
“Your daughter, yes. I remember.”
“So, right, if she should get here, tell her she can go on up.”
“Very good.”
“On second thought, have her wait. The lobby’s nicer, don’t you think?”
“The lobby is a good choice.”
“Maybe she should stand by the fountain.”
“We don’t tell them where to stand.”
“Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen her?”
“Many years.”
“I’m going to Larchmont to get some flowers. What kind of flowers would a young lady like?”
“Azaleas.”
“What do they look like?”
“There are different varieties. Blue, yellow, orange. If I were a young lady an orange azalea would suit me very fine.”
Lyris had yet to arrive when Joan got back. She arranged the azaleas casually as if she and Micah lived always among flowers. Ladybugs emerged from the petals and clung sleepily to the stems, then began bobbing around the apartment. They were picturesque at first but there were a lot of them.
Joan picked up a magazine and holding it open herded the ladybugs toward the windows as if there were something in the magazine she wanted them to read.
The intercom buzzed and Joan went and held the button down. Nothing said on the intercom could be understood in the apartment.
“Send her up,” she said.
Joan opened the door and then went to the windows and pressed her thumbnails against her teeth.
“Hi, Joan,” said Lyris.
Joan took a breath and turned to the door. Lyris wore a yellow sundress and faded jean jacket with threadbare elbows and frayed cuffs that people in this town would pay a fortune to have.
Joan crossed the room and took Lyris’s hands in hers.
“You’re so beautiful,” said Joan.
“Where’s Micah?”
“At the beach. He practically lives there.”
“He told me he does live there.”
“That’s not true. He comes home sometimes.”
“Joan, he’s fifteen years
old.”
“I’ve made us lunch. You must be hungry from your plane ride.”
“I want to see Micah.”
Joan thought her knees would go out and she would fall on the floor. Lyris put her hand on her shoulder. “Okay, let’s have lunch.”
Joan went to the refrigerator and brought out sandwiches with radishes and cornichons, and they ate sitting at a table by the pullout couch where Joan slept.
“What’s up with the ladybugs?” said Lyris.
“We have a lot of them in California.”
“I knew you couldn’t keep him.”
“He’s in Redondo, Lyris.”
“I wanted to believe it would be all right.”
“I know what you think. Joan is bad, Joan is a monster. Just wait till you see him. He’s growing up.”
“I can’t reach him. I tried calling his number but it was somebody else’s phone.”
“Oh, he won’t carry a cell phone. That’s because of this club he was in at school.”
People who look like they’ll never win can be the most dangerous to play. You should ask yourself what are they doing here, what secret might they have.
Micah and a team player from Riverside were up against two brothers who sold furniture in Anaheim. In their thirties, they were not tall men but had arms and legs of particular density. They wore sand socks and Oakley shades. One had won a tournament at Mission Beach some year.
Ridges of hard sand broke underfoot. It was a hot day with a fair wind off the ocean. They were playing for twenty-seven dollars apiece because that was all Micah had on him.
The furniture dealers lost the first game but seemed to have used the loss to uncover the strength and weaknesses of Micah and his partner. Micah’s sets varied in height and distance from the net. His teammate relied on a cross-court kill that could be anticipated and defended. Thus in the second and third games the brothers tried to make Micah set and his partner attack.
Plodding on in their methodical way, impassive behind their mirrored shades, the furniture brothers knew what they were doing, and their knowledge wore Micah down. He stood between points with hands on knees, breathing hard. Sand coated his arms and legs. He could feel his heart beating in the light and the trees and the water. He had never lost to anyone wearing sand socks.
The match came down to a serve that Micah hit long. It didn’t break the way it was supposed to. The stocky brothers had outplayed them in an almost unbelievable way. “Ah well,” thought Micah. He went to his sneakers and took out his last bills and paid the men from Anaheim. He could see a distorted image of himself in their glasses.
Then he heard someone call his name, and he turned to see Lyris and Joan standing in the shadow of three palm trees. He walked slowly toward them, dazed in the sun, as if they might be other people who looked like them. The lost match was all but forgotten. He hugged Lyris and lifted her off her feet, both of them laughing.
They walked down to the Pacific and she kicked off her sandals and they waded into the surf. Lyris’s yellow dress floated on the water. A gull passed overhead, wings fixed, silent. A ship lay on the horizon like a city built on water. Micah and Lyris stood hand in hand, waves breaking against their legs, never falling back.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Elisabeth Schmitz, Sarah Chalfant, Brigid Hughes, and Paul Winner.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Though the recommended pronunciation of Cúchulaina varies, Sandra and Jack go with ku-HULL-in.
