Windward Passage

by Jim Nisbet

  And yes, that means I’ll be staying a while.

  Tipsy. How long has it been since we met in Thailand, and I gave you that cedar box. You still have it? I can’t remember what year that was. I can’t imagine you’ve changed as much as I have. I’m bald, for instance. You’re not bald, are you? I guess I never told you that before. Pelón is the Spanish, which also means skint, as in broke. So I’m Pelonito Doble, twice-skint, the little bald broke guy, and have been for years. And skinny. Skinnier than ever. I’m missing a couple of teeth and half a pinky finger, too. Lost the latter to a backwound sheet winch on a great damn spinnaker in a big boat race from Antigua to St. John’s. Took it off clean and I only ever thenceforward saw the bitter end. I see it now. Its absence aids the pen to trace more smoothly the paper. A grinder bound up the stub in strips of cloth torn from his own t-shirt, and we kept on racing. We figured the faster we ran that boat the faster my finger would get to a doctor. And you know what? We were third to finish and corrected out second. A doctor on the race committee sewed me up at a dockside sink usually employed for the cleaning of fish. I was at the bar with the wounded pinky in a glass of ice water and a beaker of rum in the other paw by the time our skipper had ordered the second round. The stump looks pretty good, considering. Excepting this clumsy attempt to dampen your shock at the sight of it, after all these years, I rarely think of it.

  Okay. I’ve been at sea for a day and on the hook for two, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to broach this subject and I can’t see any way around it, so here goes.

  In letting you know that I’m going to be showing up in San Francisco in a few months, I have probably fucked up. But, maybe not. It all depends. What I need from you is total discretion. Please and thank you, tell no one—no one—about my destination. In the first place, many sea miles lie between thought and deed. In the second place, well, I probably don’t need to spell it out to you, and we can talk about how stupid it all was if and when I ever get there. I’m not going to let you know I’m in town until the job’s over. Somewhere in there I’ll have a bath and a shave, then we can meet for dinner. On me. And talk all night, I imagine.

  Until then, mum’s the word. Can I rely on you in this?

  Except for the fact that we haven’t seen each other for so long, I might have waited until I got there to contact you. But, to tell you the truth, except for the fact that this job will afford me the voyage to San Francisco, I might not have taken it. Always the money. But I found myself so filled with anticipation over the idea of meeting you again after all these years that I couldn’t wait to tell you, and again, I might not get there at all.…

  Faulkner passed by the catbird seat, where Tipsy sat reading. “You want another?”

  She nodded.

  “How’s the only sibling?”

  Tipsy folded the water-stained letter. “All at sea, as usual.”

  Faulkner ploughed the mouth of a frosted glass through a sink full of ice. “When’s he getting here?”

  Tipsy looked up. “Huh? Oh. Well, now it seems … he’s not coming.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He sounds fine.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She feigned confusion. It didn’t take much.

  Faulkner considered the news. “I thought this was a big reunion happening here.”

  “It’s like I told you,” she said testily. “First it was happening, now it’s not happening.”

  “Just so,” Faulkner transited smoothly. “What’s another year after twenty-five?” He patted her hand. “Don’t let this family meshugaas get under your skin.”

  Annoyed, she moved her hand. “Does family meshugass ever get anywhere else?”

  Faulkner pursed his lips.

  Tipsy rolled an unlit cigarette between thumb and forefinger. A lot of smokers were in that DUI class, and she’d taken it up out of boredom. “May I have some matches?”

  At the opposite end of the bar a door led outside to a narrow deck above the water. Once there, Tipsy snapped a pair of matches into both hands, cupped against the afternoon westerly. Even with the bar between her and the east side of Potrero Hill, the flame blustered quite desperately. Cigarette ignited, she cued a preset on her phone.

  After one ring a computer answered and told her that the number she had dialed, which the machine then recited with rote courtesy, had been disconnected, helpfully suggested that she check the directory listing, and hung up. Tipsy snapped the phone shut and placed it on top of the book of matches, which quivered in the breeze as if it meant to take flight from the weathered and unpainted 2x8 which capped the pier railing. The breeze smoked her cigarette faster than she could. She didn’t like the taste anyway. She adjusted the location of one of three dilapidated barstools and perched on it.

  She hadn’t seen Quentin in five weeks. His phone had been disconnected for three. It was a land line. Once quit of his high-flying real estate business, about two years ago, Quentin had dropped his cellular service. She’d gone by the cottage he shared with China—China Jones, on stage in his own mind, as she never failed to think—but there’d been no sign of either of them. The Datsun was parked on the little concrete pad, halfway up the stairs amid windrows of leaves, but that didn’t mean anything. It had been parked there for close to a year, awaiting repairs China would never afford it. No sign of the Mercedes.

  She found it hard to believe that Quentin Asche, who had all the money a man could reasonably need, was now reduced to letting his phone be disconnected. It seemed more like a symptom of self-administered ostracism, rather than a slide into penury. Penury it wasn’t. That much she knew. But didn’t he realize that in one week life could pass a girl by entirely, let alone five?

  Yes, she ruminated. Of course he did.

  The thought occurred to her that Quentin might have died. She brusquely dismissed it.

  Tipsy had always enjoyed Quentin as a drinking companion, even after his health forced him to quit drinking, but now she really needed to talk to him. The warning in her brother’s letter was clear. Tell no one. It was like a dare. How can you possibly ask a gossip as consummate as herself, not to mention Quentin Asche, to tell no one about anything, let alone the prospect of a second meeting in a generation with your only surviving kin? Let alone the apparent prospect, only hinted at in this most recent letter, that he might chicken out altogether?

  Oh my god, she suddenly admitted, I have to talk to somebody about this.

  The wind had smoked her cigarette down to the filter. She flipped the butt into the bay and was considering sharing another with the elements when Faulkner called her name.

  She turned for a look. Behind the bar, Faulkner held up the receiver of the in-house telephone.

  She looked at her own phone. Then her heart skipped a beat. With a shaking hand she retrieved Charley’s letter from beneath the phone and squinted at the Bahamian postmark: nearly three months before. She gathered her things and hurried inside.

  “Hello?”

  “Tipsy …”

  She caught her breath. “Quentin! Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Oh. I—. Oh.”

  “Try not to sound disappointed.”

  After a moment she found her voice. “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded sternly. “Your phone’s disconnected, I’ve been by your place, you haven’t come around for drink or … or companionship—what gives? Did the meds quit working?”

  “So he couldn’t even keep the phone going,” Quentin said thoughtfully.

  “Who couldn’t? You mean China?”

  “I left China,” Quentin stated unequivocally. “Left him for good. If the phone’s not working, it’s because he didn’t pay the bill. And maybe he’s gone, too.”

  Tipsy welcomed this development; as a sensitive friend, however, she needed to react appropriately without lying.

  “At fucking last,” she said frankly.

  Quentin ignored the remark. “A month ago. The day we last saw eac
h other.”

  “That’s five weeks ago.”

  “Okay, five weeks. I went home and took stock. Not much to take. I sorted my worldly goods and walked away.” After a pause he added, “I sold all my books, and the house is for sale, too.”

  Tipsy exhaled loudly. This, all of this, was a big deal for Quentin. He’d been letting that kid torture him from day one, starting some 750 days ago. One of the many ways China had been tormenting him was by selling off Quentin’s books by the half-dozen behind his back. So, in a couple of deft blows, Quentin had deprived China of his supplemental income and his free place to live. Cold. Nice and cold.

  “It’s about time.”

  “Oh, Tipsy,” Quentin said bitterly, “you always know what to say.”

  “What do you expect me to say? I’ve never seen you so happy? How about, Oh, Quentin, what could possibly have gone wrong? Was it the sex? You were never happy, everything was wrong, and what sex?”

  “Yeah,” a guy standing next to her turned to say, “What sex?”

  “Hang on a second.” She pointed one end of the receiver at the guy and said, “Mind your own business or I’ll jam this thing so far up your ass you’ll be able to hear both ends of the conversation.”

  The guy’s eyes got big, then started to narrow.

  A man behind him put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Don’t.”

  Faulkner appeared, patting the fat end of a long-necked beer bottle against the palm his free hand. “Another round, gentlemen?”

  “Sure,” the second man said. He jerked a thumb toward Tipsy. “And one for the lady.”

  “Very civilized,” Faulkner said, dropping the empty into a bin.

  “Tequila,” Tipsy said to the first man.

  “Top shelf,” his friend quickly escalated. Letting a moment expire, he elbowed his friend.

  “Yeah,” the friend agreed sullenly. “Top shelf.”

  “Sorry,” Tipsy said into the phone.

  “Has China—by any chance—has China called you? Looking for me, I mean?”

  “That avaricious little fuck knows better than to call me. He knows how I feel. He knows how all your friends feel. This protracted infatuation has cost you damn near every one of them.”

  Quentin ignored this. “To—you know—hasn’t China been looking for me? Isn’t he worried?”

  Tipsy rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t give that little cocksucker the time of day,” she said coldly, “let alone tell him where you are. I wouldn’t even take the call.” She paused. “While we’re on the subject, where are you? Because I, yes I, have been looking for you.”

  “Oh, come on, Tipsy. He’s not such a bad kid. He—”

  “Listen to me, Quentin Thomas Asche. China Jones, if that is indeed his real name, isn’t fit to wring the rainwater out of your shoelaces.”

  “Tipsy.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wear loafers.”

  She laughed. “Of course.” Quentin was a connoisseur of colloquial expressions for queerness, and “Light in the loafers” was one of his favorites. “Yes, of course.” But, “He’s been nothing, and, I mean, nothing but poison to you,” Tipsy persisted. “I know from poison, and I know precisely what he’s done for you, it adds up to way less than zero. Nothing but grief. Not only that, but you’ve let him take a nice casual year, or more, to perform all this marvelous subtraction. You don’t even have a perspective on it. You used to laugh. You used to be witty. You never obsessed on politics. I’ve heard of slow torture, but this China guy—”

  “Oh,” Quentin protested weakly, “you just never took the trouble to get to know him. None of my friends did.”

  “Will you pull yourself together? What’s to know?” Tipsy exclaimed, so loudly that Faulkner and the two patrons renewed their attention to her. “Listen,” she said, lowering her voice. “Why aren’t you calling me on my cell phone?”

  “I …” Quentin hesitated, then resigned himself to a little bit of the truth. “I was hoping to leave you a message, to let you know I’m okay.” He paused, then added, “You’re in the bar early.”

  Tipsy glanced at the Olympia waterfall behind the bar. It twinkled gold and blue and told the time, too, a throwback to another era of beer consumption; two o’clock of an afternoon in whatever era she and it currently cohabited. “I got here about an hour early, it’s true. Faulkner called to tell me there was a letter here from Charley. I came right over.”

  “Oh.” Quentin spoke with little conviction. “Good.”

  “Plus I’ve been taking the bus to my DUI class. It’s a long haul.”

  “Oh. I … forgot about the DUI class.”

  “Tonight’s the last one.”

  “That’s … marvelous.”

  A short silence ensued.

  “That’s okay, Quentin,” Tipsy began, “you’ve got a lot on—”

  “Tipsy,” Quentin abruptly interrupted. “I’ve been so very lonely.”

  “Listen,” Tipsy said after a moment. “Call back on my cell.” No reply.

  “Quentin. Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Look. I’m … standing here in the bar with rather a large audience overhearing my end of the conversation. I can take my cellphone out on the deck. It’s colder than Dick Cheney’s titanium stent out there, but I’ll have the place all to myself. Plus, I’m wearing a sweater. Call me back and we’ll talk as long as you want. It’ll be more private. I’ll have a smoke while you tell me your troubles.”

  “Smoke?” Quentin repeated, alarmed. “Do you have any idea what second-hand smoke smells like on a sweater?”

  She paused. “Then, maybe, I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Oh,” Quentin said after a moment, in his flattest voice. “Trading cigarettes for peccadilloes. That sounds divine.”

  “I didn’t say it would be divine,” Tipsy retorted. “But it might be therapeutic.”

  “You think?” Quentin replied, not quite hopefully.

  “Hang up and call me back, Quentin. Now. Promise?”

  Silence.

  “Where are you, Quentin?”

  After a moment Quentin said, “In a … hotel.”

  Tipsy narrowed her eyes. “Where is this hotel?”

  “Eddie at Taylor.”

  She cast her mind’s GPS across town until she saw a playground with a chainlink fence around it on the northwest corner, a parking lot ditto on the southeast corner, and the live porn theater on the northeast corner. Was it the Pussycat Lounge?

  “Are you upstairs over St. Anthony’s soup kitchen or the sex arcade?”

  “The sex arcade. Even four stories up, you can smell the disinfectant. The stench of that roach-and-flea-bomb stuff is equally inescapable.”

  Tipsy puffed up her cheeks and exhaled in exasperation. “Bathroom down the hall?”

  “Yes. But I won’t be here long enough to use it. Besides which, there’s way too much hair in the drain.”

  “The telephone, too? Down the hall, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “A pay telephone, then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can I call you on it?”

  “This telephone no longer accepts incoming calls,” Quentin read aloud. “It’s a hand-lettered sign.”

  “They’re trying to cut drug dealing back to less than forty percent of the Gross National Product.”

  “Oh? Since when did they get it that low?”

  “Nice hotel. Well, do you have another fifty cents?”

  “I do, as it happens.”

  “Call me back on my cell. At once.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He rang off. She handed the receiver to Faulkner. She took up her fresh Casaderos, saluted the two bravos, who returned the greeting, and headed for the smoking porch.

  “Is he okay?” Faulkner called after her.

  “He’s okay,” she answered as she backed through the door.

  She mana
ged to share another lousy-tasting cigarette with the wind and finish half her tequila, pondering the whole time, before her phone rang. Its display spelled HOTEL VERLAINE.

  “Sorry. A guy had to make a call.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Not for long. He went for change and there’s another guy waiting.”

  “Okay. Look. Before we get into you and China, I need to explain something.”

  “Sure,” Quentin said, sounding less than patient.

  “I mentioned a letter from Charley.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “That’s it. That’s exactly it. Yes. But I mean, no, he isn’t coming. I mean, he doesn’t want anybody to know about it. I shouldn’t have told you. Have you told anybody?”

  Quentin made no response.

  “He made it sound like we know what he’s doing and maybe we shouldn’t know what he’s doing. At least, you shouldn’t know what he’s doing. Have you told anybody what he’s doing? Have you told anybody Charley’s coming? To San Francisco, I mean?”

  Quentin, somewhat confused said, “Who would I tell that your brother’s coming to San Francisco?”

  “That’s a good question,” Tipsy said, somewhat prosecutorially. “Who?”

  “I mean,” Quentin continued, as if annoyed, “I don’t know your brother. I don’t know anybody that knows your brother—except you. And by now, after twenty-five years, you probably don’t know him either. You probably don’t even remember what he looks like.”

  “By now he looks like our maternal grandfather, probably. Little potbelly, a tonsure, gray and thinning, warts in the folds around his eyes, potato nose, bald for sure—the works.”

  “I was so happy for you. You are—were—going to see your only living kinfolk at long last. Every last member of my family went to their grave not speaking to me. All it took was for them to find out I was—am …”

  “Light in the loafers.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I know.”

  “I was happy for you, Tipsy. But who else would I tell?”

  “I don’t know, Quentin,” Tipsy bore in. “And I don’t know why you would, either. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not you’ve told anybody that Charley is coming to San Francisco. Have you?”