The Last Night at Tremore Beach

by Mikel Santiago

  Leo’s voice from the bottom of the stairs almost made me jump. I quickly rolled the canvas back up and was about to toss it through one of the bedroom doors. But he was still downstairs.

  “Yeah, just a little ‘backup’,” I said as I slipped the painting back in its place. I walked over and poked my head out at the top of the stairs. “But nothing to worry about.”

  “Okay, no worries,” Leo said. “Tell Jip dessert is on the table.”

  “Sure, I’ll let him know. A little motivation can’t hurt.”

  I walked back up the hall with the intention of rapping on the door again when I noticed something on the floor by the bookcase. A newspaper clipping.

  I picked it up. I figured it had fallen out of one of the books I’d been perusing . . . or maybe from inside the canvas. It was half a newspaper page, carefully clipped. On one side was an ad with Asian characters. On the other, the side that was meant to be saved, was the following newspaper article:

  THE STANDARD. Hong Kong, December 14, 2004

  SAILBOAT FOUND ABANDONED, ADRIFT NEAR MAGONG

  Crew, an American couple residing in Hong Kong, feared kidnapped

  By Jim Rainsford

  HONG KONG—Tuesday afternoon rescuers discovered a missing sailboat adrift 50 miles north of Table Island, in the Magong archipelago. Authorities had been searching for the Fury since Sunday when a helicopter rescue team spotted the vessel and confirmed the boat was empty at the time it was discovered. Rescuers continue to search for the boat’s only crew, an American husband and wife who reside in Hong Kong.

  The 39-foot sailboat was presumed missing Sunday afternoon around 2 p.m., after Kowloon marina managers reported it had left the previous day “without more than a day’s worth” of provisions onboard.

  A local fisherman alerted Table Island authorities about a vessel, apparently adrift and abandoned, several miles off shore. Authorities used the vessel’s registration to confirm the port of origin and that it was, indeed, the Fury.

  Although it’s too early to know the circumstances surrounding the couple’s disappearance, Magong Police sources say clear weather in the region rules out a storm-related accident on the high seas. Police are working under the theory that the couple, whose identities have not been released, may have been boarded and kidnapped by pirates. However, police say they “still have to analyze the evidence on the sailboat. And if it is a case of piracy, we’ll have to await some kind of ransom demand from their captors. . . .”

  THE TOILET FLUSHED, and I jumped. I quickly folded up the article and stashed it behind the books, in the space where the painting was hidden, hoping that’s where it had come from. I folded my hands behind my back and waited for Jip to come out of the bathroom.

  “All set, Dad,” he said, looking relieved if not satisfied.

  I hastily patted on him on the back, still shaken by a discovery that could mean nothing and so many things all at once.

  I tried to act normal the rest of the night, but I guess it must have shown on my face. Judie tweaked my thigh under the table and asked, “Is something wrong?” I smiled and shook my head. About an hour later, the three of us started yawning and thought it was time to call it a night.

  Back at the beach house, Jip and Beatrice complained that the beds were cold. And they were right. The sheets and comforter I’d set out the week before were cold from the moist sea air. So I went downstairs to warm up a pair of hot water bottles. But the kids were so exhausted that they fell asleep before I returned with them. I put them under their feet and I sat in the room awhile, watching them sleep.

  I looked at the clock: It was after midnight. I should have been exhausted. I’d driven from Dublin that morning after a restless night, and after such a big and delicious meal, my body should be screaming for rest. But I wasn’t even sleepy.

  I walked downstairs, sat on the couch and flipped open my MacBook. I opened a browser window, went to Google and punched in the first words that came to mind: “Blanchard” +“Kogan” + “Hong Kong.”

  What was I looking for, exactly? Some kind of connection? Confirmation of some half-baked theory?

  . . . an American couple residing in Hong Kong . . .

  What if there was a simple answer? Maybe that was another American couple, friends of theirs, perhaps. Did Leo ever mention Hong Kong in one of his stories . . . ?

  I spent the next two hours searching the Web with every pertinent word combination I could imagine: “Blanchard” +“Kogan”; “Hong Kong” + “Fury” + “Kogan”; “sailboat” + “Kogan”; “missing sailboat” + “Hong Kong” + “Leo Kogan” + “Marie Kogan” . . . But the Internet just spit out unrelated results. There was a Richard Kogan in Newport Beach, California, who ran a sailing website. There was a couple (Celine and Dario Blanchard) living in Martinique—an overweight man and a younger woman sailing throughout the Caribbean’s crystal blue seas on their boat. But they didn’t look anything like Leo and Marie. The search engine returned several entries about people named Leo Kogan, but none of them was my neighbor. There was a Leo Kogan who was a painter in Lyon. A Leo Kogan who was an attorney in New York. I searched for profile pictures on Facebook and LinkedIn. I clicked through image galleries for any references to a Leo Kogan. But none of them (at least not the two hundred or so I searched through) looked anything like the Leo Kogan I knew. Same thing with Marie. At first, I didn’t think it was strange. There are plenty of people who have managed to keep their personal information out of the black hole that is the Internet.

  I finished up that boring and most unproductive investigation by searching my name in Google: “Peter Harper accepts BAFTA for best musical score” two years ago . . . “Peter Harper on the cover of MOJO,” two years ago . . . “Peter Harper in a documentary of contemporary composers” two goddamn years ago. And finally, I stumbled upon Clem, who, to my surprise, had opened a Facebook account and posted pictures of a brilliant new life with Niels, something she’d never done with me. What, had she been embarrassed of me?

  I clicked on a photo of the two of them kissing while sharing fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them on some idyllic tropical beach. I luxuriated in letting the rancor, hate, envy, and my bruised ego roil in my stomach for a while. Then I turned off the computer and went upstairs. I peeked into the kids’ room. I brushed my teeth and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I considered talking with Leo about everything. The painting, the newspaper clipping. I could say I found it by accident. (It was true, wasn’t it?) But then I gave it up as a stupid idea. They’d been so well-hidden it might as well have had a “do not disturb” sign attached. And I’d looked anyway. No, I might as well admit I’d rifled through his wife’s panty drawer. There was no way to bring it up without ruining our friendship. It was best to keep quiet. Maybe there was another way to broach the topic. Maybe it wasn’t even important, at all.

  I fell asleep eventually and had a dream.

  In the dream, I had the window open on a clear, starry night, and I played the piano in the living room as the sound of the ocean added an accompaniment to the music.

  It was a happy little tune. I’m not sure where it might have come from, but it was my best idea in long time. My hands floated over the piano keys, confidently, as if I’d been playing this unknown piece for years. The music poured out of my heart the way some of my best work had, and I thought, I’ve got it back! I thought about rushing off to write it all down before I forgot it, but I was so sure of myself and the piece felt so much a part of me that I was not afraid of losing it to the ether.

  I’d call Pat that very night, even if I woke him. He wouldn’t care, he’d be so happy for me. I’d tell him that I finally had it. That Peter Harper was back. My hands had reunited with my head, old friends. The hits would start rolling out. No more depressing afternoons, hopelessly struggling with chords. The fountain of ideas was bubbling again.

  But then, as I played deeper into the melody, one of the piano keys stopped working. I pressed down, and the
re was a muted thud, like a hammer striking an errant finger. It was the F-sharp of the fourth octave.

  And then I lost middle C. Then an E.

  THUMPTHUMPTHUMP

  I looked down at the keyboard and was horrified to discover it was covered in blood.

  The keys were covered in my sticky fingerprints. Bloody fingerprints. I turned my hands over and saw my palms were covered in blood. But there was no wound. . . . Where was all this blood coming from? I pressed one of the keys and watched it produce a small red bubble. The red liquid oozed, dripped over the smooth, white ivory and viscously onto the floor.

  I jumped back, frightened. The stool fell over, hitting the floor like a sledgehammer.

  The piano lid was closed. I always left it open but apparently not on that night. I inched toward it, grabbed it with both hands and opened it carefully, like a mechanic opening a car hood. Instantly, I knew something was wrong. Where was the golden frame? Inside, there was only a deep, dark cavity. I reached in with one hand, trying to feel for the strings. Instead, I felt my hand dip into something wet and warm. The piano case was filled with . . .

  My God . . .

  Blood.

  I lifted the lid farther to get a better look. Floating inside that bloodbath was a body. A naked body. Submerged in a deep, red pool.

  Hands and feet tied. Judie.

  “Help me, Pete,” she moaned. “He’ll be back any minute. He’s going to kill me. Please, help me.”

  My entire body was shaking. “I’ll get you out of there, Judie. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.” I couldn’t find the bar to hold the lid up and I couldn’t let go. . . .

  “Please. Please . . . He’s a monster. He’s only going to toy with me awhile longer and then he’ll kill me, Peter. He’ll chop me up into a thousand pieces.”

  That’s when I felt a presence behind me in the room. I closed the lid, drowning out Judie’s pleas. I turned around. In the middle of room was a shadow.

  “Time is running out, Peter,” it said.

  The figure was bald. There were horrible black spots on her skin that made her appear monstrous. Thin, like a skeleton. Just as she was in those final days, on her deathbed, when the chemotherapy had torched her from the inside out.

  “Mom?”

  She was dressed in her house gown. And despite her deathly appearance, her eyes revealed a sweetness and compassion that somehow transformed that nightmare into a good dream. I went to her but her figure became more ghostly, and she began to disappear.

  As she faded, she parted her lips and said one last thing:

  “Get out of this house, Peter.”

  THREE

  SUMMER ARRIVED and so did the tourists. No longer could you blow through the only stop sign at the center of town. The streets were alive. In came a steady stream of cars, campers, and motorcycles riding up and down the coast. Our tiny Andy’s supermarket/gasoline station stocked up on food, including a whole BBQ section. There was always a line that was three or four people deep at the register. All throughout town, there were fresh new faces and accents. Jip was obsessed with the water and waded in up to his neck until he couldn’t take it anymore and ran out covered in goose bumps. After three days of it, I caved and drove into Dungloe to buy him a wet suit. No way did I want him to miss out on his summer because of the cold. Even though the weather was warm, this northern sea remained a frigid sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. Beatrice, on the other hand, preferred to lay on a towel and read. On our first trip to Judie’s store, Judie had given her the first Twilight book, and Beatrice was hooked.

  Judie would drop by the house sometimes and we would all go for an afternoon walk together. The paths between the dunes, naturally cut between the sand and the grass, were the perfect place to get lost on warm, summer afternoons. Judie and Beatrice would walk a little ahead of Jip and me and share girl talk. They seemed to be getting along so well. Jip and I were doing our own thing: searching for bugs, picking up sticks, and collecting weird or unique rocks—and taking them all home in a bag, of course. And ever since Leo had told him the Vikings story, he’d been certain we would stumble upon the buried treasure. He would race toward any shiny thing he saw in the sand, and a couple of times I even had to take a piece of broken glass out of his hands.

  Mrs. Houllihan’s store competed with Andy’s for beach supply sales, so Judie was busy that week. On Tuesday, she asked to borrow my Volvo to pick up a big order in Dungloe: little plastic shovels, buckets and rakes; hammocks and beach umbrellas; swimsuits, sunglasses, T-shirts, and shorts. . . .

  “Wow, you really think you’ll sell all this stuff?” I asked.

  “People go crazy for summer,” she said. “And this looks like it’s going to be a good one.”

  It’s true that all the weather forecasts predicted beautiful weather for July and the first half of August. Maybe with a chance of a thunderstorm or two, but good weather overall.

  A slight chance of thunderstorms (with ominous black clouds, thunder, and lightning strikes sweeping in unexpectedly at midnight, accompanied by a side order of hallucinations), but overall good weather.

  After the trip to Dungloe and a long day unloading new inventory at the shop, Judie brought the car back, and I invited her to stay for dinner.

  While the children played Frisbee in the backyard under a darkening, starry lilac sky, Judie and I cooked together and chatted. It was a sweet moment, having her and the kids with me in that house by the sea, making a delicious dinner, and a DVD ready for movie night after. I was aware that my brain was trying to replace Clem with Judie, to put a patch over the fractured family I missed so much. But whatever it was, I knew I felt good. More than good: happy. It was a sensation I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  On the other hand, since the kids had been in town, Judie and I hadn’t been intimate, much less spent the night together.

  “Mmm, a big bear hug?” she said, as I wrapped her from behind while the kids’ voices sounded in the distance. “Careful or they’ll see us.”

  “I’m having a hard time controlling myself,” I said. “Why don’t you spend the night?”

  She shook her head. “We already discussed that, Pete.”

  Yes, we had. It had sounded very reasonable then: She wouldn’t feel comfortable spending the night with the kids in the house. It wouldn’t be easy for me, either, but I guess I was more open to it. After all, Clem lived with Niels. And I’m sure my kids saw him in pajamas in the morning, brushing his teeth with his hair a mess and his face unshaven. Judie painted a much prettier picture.

  “But, I mean, at some point we’re going to have to . . .” I said, nibbling on her bare neck.

  “Have they asked you anything?”

  “No. Not yet. But I know they will. I know them. They’re rolling it around in their little heads.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “What do I know? That we’re friends with benefits . . . I don’t know,” I said. “What are we, exactly, Judie? Are you my girlfriend?”

  She turned her head back to the tomatoes on the cutting board.

  “Maybe it’s too strong a word,” I said.

  “No,” she said, “it’s okay. You can say we’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  I felt teenage butterflies at hearing her say it.

  “Unless, that’s a problem for you. . . .”

  “No, not at all,” I said quickly. “I mean, in the twenty-first century lexicon, ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ doesn’t mean we have to get married.”

  “In the twenty-first century lexicon, I like you and you like me, and we get along well, and we don’t sleep with anyone else. We don’t have to sign any document or wear a ring, we just have to be honest and open with one another. And we can call it whatever we like.”

  “Judie, that’s the most romantic thing anyone has said to me in the last two years.”

  She turned to face me, rested her hands on my shoulders, and leaned in to kiss me tenderly.

  “I’m not even try
ing to be romantic yet. Wait and see.”

  Just then, we heard Jip crying outside. Beatrice came running through the yard with the Frisbee in hand.

  “Jip’s hurt, Dad!”

  We rushed outside. Jip was sitting on the grass, next to the septic tank drain, holding his knee, and I immediately knew what had happened. He’d tripped over the goddamn drain I’d run over twice with the lawn mower.

  “I’ve been meaning to get that thing fixed for months,” I told Judie, “but I always seem to forget. It’s hidden by the grass, and it’s easy to trip over it.”

  I picked up Jip and carried him into the living room. Judie asked where the first-aid kit was, and I sent her to the hall closet. She returned with a metal box containing unopened packages of cotton, bandages, and iodine. Also in there was the headache medicine Dr. Ryan had prescribed, but which I’d not yet taken.

  I soaked a piece of cotton in iodine and started disinfecting Jip’s cut. He’d been chasing the Frisbee in midair and stepped into the open drain, tripping and banging his knee. It was an impressive battle scar, although not too deep, thank God.

  “You think he needs a tetanus shot?”

  Judie said it wasn’t necessary since the cut had come from a rock.

  “A little iodine should be more than enough,” she said.

  While I cleaned the wound, Judie asked about the beta blockers and the other pills in the first-aid kit.

  “Is this what they gave you at the hospital?”

  I said yes. “Thank goodness you decided not to take them,” she added.

  Beatrice sat down next to us and stroked her brother’s hair while I finished rinsing out his wound with hydrogen peroxide.

  Judie was standing next to us, but I noticed she’d fallen silent, studying a piece of paper she’d found inside the kit. I looked up and saw a surprised look on her face.

  “Where did you get this?”

  She reached down and showed it to me.

  “Right, Kauffman,” I said. It was the scrap of paper on which Dr. Ryan had written the name of the psychologist in Belfast. I must have tossed it in there along with the rest of the medicine and forgotten about it. “Dr. Ryan recommended him. He’s supposed to be some kind of sleep-disorder specialist. Ever heard of him?”