Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (19 page)

I got dressed and headed in for food. The place was packed so I sat at the bar. My burger and rings arrived just as Jon pulled up a stool and sat down next to me with a bowl of chowder and chunk of bread in his hand. I was getting a little more consistent. I knew two men who ate soup.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“Almost human. Were you the one who covered me up?”

“Yeah, the way you were sleeping out there, you would have ended up in the hospital.”

“Thanks, you saved my vacation, if not my life.”

“Merry Christmas,” he tapped my glass with his bread.

“Merry Christmas.” A wave of sadness swelled over me. I should be home with my family. Steve was probably off dancing, badly, with his new woman. I could see Stroud stroking the skin on his wife’s belly, the new life poking out in places like my grandmother’s bird. Nose and fists through silky skin. I wiped my eyes; I was not going to do this. Jon was watching me with interest. I smiled at him. He was odd to me; he was a little like looking in a mirror.

“Sorry, lonely woman stuff. Not enough to be stupid.”

“Yeah, that’s all behind you.”

“You’re funny,” I said.

Mike came in and Jon gave him his seat. By the time lunch was over I had a pretty good handle on beer making ingredients. We made a plan to hike the Napali Coast.

I went home and Skyped Karin; she was home alone. I pulled out her gift. She enjoys watching because she never remembers what the hell she puts in the boxes she gives. She just starts buying and wrapping until it’s full. First up, a book on ikebana, one of the hobbies I was going to take up in those first haircutting days.

“That’s great,” I said. “I can try it here.”

Richard had included a hand-painted dinosaur, a raptor like in Jurassic Park. He knew those guys scared me. I hated the relentless way they moved when they hunted. He thought it would help me get over my fear, the little therapist. Callie included a pink baseball cap, something she considers a fashion necessity.

Next came a pink pearl bunny vibrator from the sex shop on Hollywood Boulevard, an old standard, the bunny and the shop.

“Obviously you have no faith in my ability to stay with the program?”

“I was thinking of it more as a diversion, until you get back on your feet, or I guess I should say your back. Did you know it comes in a bunch of colors now? I threw in batteries.”

To wind it up, she had included a set of Kama Sutra warming oils.

“That’s optimistic.”

“The Napali Coast might get interesting tomorrow.”

“I’m on hiatus. Though I will say, he’s hot and very nice. I love everything. I’ll wear the pink hat while I have Christmas with the bunny. How you doing?”

“It’s okay for now. It’s hard to deal with it with my parents right on top of us. What’s really strange is the sex. I thought I wouldn’t want him to touch me, but every time my parents take the kids on a field trip we go at it like in the beginning. We’re all the way back to the knocking over the furniture stage. We did it up against the water heater. Then I get furious all over again and throw things at him. He seems genuinely shocked that he did it. He really wants me to know he’s here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to start seeing someone as soon as my parents leave. I don’t know if I can get over it. I know people forgive. I can’t imagine I’ll forget.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s driving him crazy that we never got married. It makes his position a little unclear.”

I Skyped Eric’s house and talked to everyone briefly. I could see Binky slopping wine on Anna’s carpet from 2700 miles out. We made her drink white to reduce cleaning bills. I loved seeing all their faces, but seeing the old scene, I didn’t miss being there. I had no sense of where I belonged anymore.

I wandered out to the beach. Jon was sitting alone in a low chair, legs stretched out under a straw hat, reading. I sat down in the sand next to him.

“Perfect lunch. Mike’s so nice. We’re going to hike the Napali Coast tomorrow, unless you finally get around to telling me he’s a bar rat masquerading as a brewer. You’d tell me right? Not do some male solidarity thing?”

“I’d tell you. Be kinda stupid to warn you and then not warn you, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

He looked at me. “Well I wouldn’t, Hannah. He’s as advertised. He and his wife used to come every year and he still does. She was a rocket.”

“When did she die?”

“Three years ago, it was a tough one.”

“Is he seeing anyone?”

“Nothing serious that I know of. You want to paddle?”

“You’re like a relentless raptor. You think a hangover has me in such a weakened state, I’ll sign on for more humiliation?”

“You’re humiliated? All you did was drink a little too much and say shit a lot. You didn’t start a food fight. The way you float around, I just think you’d like it.”

“Do people do that? Have food fights?”

“They do it all.”

“What else?”

“Oh man, where to start? They pass out in the booths. Full moons are good for that. They get very creative under the tables, they don’t know the whole dining room can see them; and then no one wants to handle their money. The bathrooms are a big draw.”

“Do they go in the stalls?”

I know, but a girl wants to know these things.

“Most people wouldn’t really care if they were in a stall.”

“What else?”

“Well, there are all the variations on the theme of how to get sick in a bathroom. They bitch out the bartenders for pulling their keys, then pass out before a cab comes and we can figure out where to ship them. They dump drinks on each other, pinch the waitresses; the waiters get their share of that too. There’s a certain amount of slapping back and forth, usually as a result of the pinching, but sometimes because people think confessing in public after too many mai tais is going to save them from a showdown. That usually involves some drink throwing. There’s lots of crying, by adults and children.”

“I don’t like crying kids,” I said.

“They can hit some ear piercing notes,” he said. “They’re their own subset. Parents drag them in overtired and fried to a crisp. They scream, cry, and pee on the furniture. They run around and ram into the waiters; they’re hard to see under a tray. They are experts at projectile vomiting chunks of cheese on the tables next to them. They litter Cheerios that get ground into the carpet and smashed down in the booth cushions. Last night one got a piece of crayon stuck in her ear. I’m going to have to rethink the coloring placemats. And that’s the paying customers. At the moment the crew seems to be having a contest to see who can get it on in the walk-in; it can’t be easy, it’s really cold in there. According to one patron, who stumbled into the kitchen by mistake, they’re doing a little warm up before they go in.”

I was lying on the sand laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.

“Does that happen every night?” I asked. “It sounds kinda wild.”

“No. We’re usually able to pull off a nice experience for people. I have great crews; they keep the show rolling. They’re usually the only ones who know what’s going on.”

“Do you get involved with the crew stuff?”

“Not if I can help it, I’d never get anything done. I’m more like a ringmaster. I don’t let anyone get slapped or pinched with impunity. And the walk-in, yeah, the health department could shut us down over that stunt.”

“You have no idea how much that sounds like being on location!”

“So you want to paddle?”

“Why not? Apparently I’m a saint.”

I told him my banged up legs and inelegant ass hoisting reservations.

He smiled while he got the board in the water. “You’re not going to have to do any ass hoisting today.”

I got so I could step on with a little help and glide around. We went a little deeper. Still okay. He said I needed to relax and just breathe. Drop my shoulders and let my legs become one with the uncertainty, Grasshopper. Something like that. He needed to get to work, but we agreed to try again tomorrow, if I could still move.

I’d never been alone on Christmas but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. It started to cloud up; the earth was spinning toward rain. Anna called to make sure I was doing okay. She was worried that I was alone. I told her I’d had a burger and rings, my first paddling lesson and was going hiking with a friend. She said Binky got worse and worse after we talked.

“She was really over-the-top this year,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Everyone says that until Ted gets on board, there’s nothing we can do,” I said.

Binky had passed out in the back of the car. None of the kids would sit on her, so Ted had to strap them all in the front seat. They were going to leave her there all night. That must be so strange for the kids on Christmas Eve. Everyone was anticipating Binky’s damage control call. She always made a damage control call the next day and everyone pretended nothing had happened. It drove me nuts.

I wandered out to the beach; it was dark and quiet in both directions. The new people in Grandma’s house were keeping to themselves. I sat on the cool sand and listened to the surf. Voices came through the opening at Jon’s. I couldn’t make out details but I recognized his voice. They walked off down the beach in the opposite direction; my eyes adjusted to long swinging black hair just as the darkness absorbed them.

I got up early and took my coffee and a book out to the beach. Jon was already out, back in his chair reading. I waved and set up my chair. He picked up his chair and moved down the beach next to me.

“Morning,” I said. “You have a nice night?”

“It was okay. You?”

“It was fine. I started a new book. What are you reading?”

“Christmas gift from Phyllis the Physicist. Essays by a guy named Michio Kaku. Good stuff. Dark energy, parallel universes, oozing to other planets. What about you?”

“
The Wave
. The woman at the bookstore in town recommended it. Amazing really, the ocean looks different. Not quite the same as yours.”

“A lot the same.”

My phone rang; it was Mike. We made a plan to go at 10:00.

“You ready to try again?” asked Jon.

We went back in the water and started out with the shallow stuff. I managed to crawl on and stand up by myself. I was better. Breathing really helps. That should be so obvious. I needed to cut it short to meet Mike. I threw on hiking clothes just as Mike pulled up.

“You look rested,” he said.

I told him about my paddling lesson with Jon. He asked if I’d seen Jon’s latest housing project.

“A group of them build affordable housing,” he said.

“I thought you were going to say fancy condos.”

“No, the housing dovetails with his business. Affordable housing that they own and decent benefits keeps his key people around. That’s important. He still has about a fifty-percent employee turnover rate. That would kill my business. The bookwork and break-in eats up a lot of time. He ends up doing just about every job at some point during the year. He’s not as laid back as he looks. He really will make me come up with a great beer.”

We hiked for a few hours along the spectacular trail and told each other our stories, or some sanitized version. We came upon a waterfall with a group of kids skinny-dipping. We smiled at each other, stripped down and jumped in. They were on Christmas break from Arizona State. They’d tried Tom’s beer. And, big shock, they even knew Layla’s Loft. The young women had more sympathy for Vampire Chick than Layla. I didn’t ruin the ending for them. We left them and hiked to a bluff overlooking the coastline to eat lunch.

“This is so peaceful,” I said.

“Between helicopters. My wife and I used to hike this trail every year. I still do.”

He talked about his wife. They’d built the business together. They’d planned to have children, but she died of breast cancer before they had a chance. It had looked like it was in remission but it came back and she’d died in a matter of months. He’d dated a few people, but so far nothing had clicked. He said he wasn’t on hiatus, but he wasn’t in any hurry either.

“Jon said she was a rocket,” I said.

He laughed. “That’s a perfect description. I always thought they’d be a good match if anything happened to me.”

“You thought about that? That’s so generous.”

“Didn’t you ever think about what would happen to your husband if you died?”

“Never. I wouldn’t wish my ex-husband on my worst enemy.”

“That’s too bad.”

“What’s Jon’s story?”

Jon had been divorced as long as they’d known him, he guessed maybe fifteen years. He’d raised his daughter Chana. Mike had never met his ex-wife but it didn’t seem like there was any animosity there. She remarried and lived on the big island. He got the impression her new husband was uptight with Chana.

We finished lunch and made our way back down the trail. He was heading back to Portland in a few days. We decided to try kayaking the next morning, see the coastline from a different angle. He invited me to visit Portland when I got back from India, experience brewing first hand. He said I could try my hand at making up my own recipe, design a label and everything.

When I got back to the cottage, there was a message on my cell from Jon asking me to call.

“Hi,” I said. “How’d you get this number?”

“My assistant tracked it down.”

“How’d she do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a small island. Good hike?”

“It was great. I’d never been out there. It’s spectacular. We went skinny dipping at a waterfall. We’re going to take kayaks up tomorrow.”

“He still there?”

“No. You need his number?“

“I have it. I’m going to dinner at a friend’s restaurant tonight and I thought you might enjoy it if you don’t have plans.”

“I don’t have plans. Is it another party?”

“No, just us. He wants to try out some new dishes.”

“Sounds fun. What’s the dress?”

“It’s Victor’s. There are white tablecloths, but that’s about it. What you wore the other night will work. I’ll get you at 7:00.”