The Art of Floating (23 page)

Gumper pressed his fat, furry nose to Jackson's
Field Guide to Fish in America's Southwest
. The book was in terrible shape. Tattered. Torn in places and almost coverless. Stinky like a dead trout.

Using his chin, he pulled the book to the edge of the table, then picked it up in his mouth. He caterwauled and snorted, and after dancing in circles, he dropped it to the floor, a long waggle of drool connecting the two of them. Then he plopped down on top of it so it was hidden beneath his monstrous girth. Finally he sighed.

Clearly the book smelled of more than just fish.

“Gump,” Sia said. “Go easy, bud. I need to use that.” She wrestled it from him and ordered him back to Toad. Then she pressed the book to her own nose, and through the stench of fish blood and scales, she, too, smelled Jack. His sweaty skin. His deodorant. His limey shaving gel.

“I think I can,” she whispered. “I think I can.”

When she set the book on the table, it fell open to Jack's all-time favorite fish: the Rio Grande cutthroat trout.

It was a beautiful thing with crimsony stripes under its mouth. Sia studied the gills, walked over to Toad, and held the book near his head. She glanced again and again from the wound behind his ear to the photograph of the fish.

Compare.

Contrast.

“They can't be,” she said, but they could be.

Jack had circled three words on the page:
catch and release
.

“Are you going to talk to me today?”

Silence.

“Toad?”

Silence.

“Toad, are you going to talk to me today?”

Silence.

“Toad.” Sia leaned down. “I need you to talk to me today.”

Silence.

“Please, just a word. A sound. A breath.”

Silence.

“A grunt?”

Silence.

“A fart?”

“A burp?”

“A sigh?”

“A sniffle?”

“A ‘piss off'?”

•  •  •

“The beacon was reset,” Jilly said.

“What?”

“Toad's beacon. Somebody or something reset the sequence. It used to go: blue, green, red, red. Blue, green, red, red, red.”

“And now?” Sia asked.

“Blue, blue, green, red. Blue, blue, blue, green, red.”

“And you think . . .”

“I think Toad's people are trying to make contact.”

“I think someone's messing with you.”

“Just get in the car,” M said.

“Where are we going?”

“Out to lunch.”

“With Toad?”

“Of course with Toad. We're not going to leave him at home.”

“Oh, Mom, I'm not sure this is a good idea.”

“You cannot sit in this house day after day with a silent man. You're going to go crazy.”

“It hasn't been that many days yet, and lots of people say I'm crazy already.”

“Bull puckies.”

•  •  •

“What does he eat?” M asked, looking at the menu.

Sia glanced at Toad. He was sitting in the chair closest to the railing doing what he did best—staring. Though M had wanted to sit on the river side of the deck, any time Toad disappeared from sight, Gumper—who was lying next to the car in a spot of shade under a tree—barked and wailed. They settled for the parking lot side.

“He eats anything.”

“No preferences?”

“Nope.”

M looked up at the waitress, an older woman with jowly hips. The woman was staring at Toad as intently as he was staring at nothing. “Excuuuuussse me,” M said. “Hello? Hello?”

The waitress finally turned to face her. “Yes?”

“We're ready to order.”

“He's going to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good.” And the waitress whipped out her order pad and pen. “What'll you have?”

•  •  •

And then?

Fourteen reporters (including the gangly geek). Seven cameramen. Twenty, then thirty, then forty, then who-knows-how-many tourists. Handfuls of local folk. A bunch of kids from a day camp. And a couple of the jump-jump-jump-ropers looking for new material.

All gathered in the parking lot—staring, pointing, gawking, waving, and snapping pictures.

Of Toad eating his lobster roll.

Of Sia spooning clam chowder into her mouth.

Of M shaking her finger at them.

Of the waitress shaking her jowly hips, leaning close to Toad, smiling and posing as if they were on a date.

Of Sia knocking over her glass of water.

Of Jillian flouncing in and pulling up a chair next to Toad.

Of Toad with a smear of butter on his beautifully crafted chin.

Of . . .

Of . . .

Of . . .

“Enough,” Sia said, and she popped up out of her seat, grabbed Toad by the shoulder, steered him to the car, opened the door for Gumper, and drove off, leaving M and Jillian sitting openmouthed at the table.

•  •  •

“Raise your hand if you think Toad is a visitor from another planet,” Jilly called out to the crowd.

More than half raised their hands.

“Jillian!” M said.

•  •  •

Behind the trees, the Dogcatcher raised her hand. Then lowered it. Then raised it. Then lowered it. Then she raised the right and lowered the left. Best to keep all options open.

I
n Googleland,
missing
and
lost
were neatly synonymous. Many churches, Sia discovered, were concerned that they were missing men in their congregations, or as they so hiply put it, “were running low on testosterone.” Colleges, except for the Ivy League schools, were suffering the same dilemma in their student populations, and men—in all their pumped-up glory—were suspiciously absent from the education field as well. A few more clicks and Sia learned that San Francisco was known as the Port o' Missing Men, a place where—nudge, nudge, wink, wink—men could lose themselves if they really wanted to, and that in 1958, Philip Latham had published a science fiction novel called
Missing Men from Saturn
.

Can't let Jilly see this one
, Sia thought, clicking quickly past it.

She also confirmed that men were missing from all around the world: New Delhi, the Torres Strait, North Queensland, Montreal, Tahoe, St. Louis, Paris, and so on. Fog, which she already knew, often hampered the search for missing men, as did rain, snow, and a lack of public interest. In an effort to raise money to help families of missing Civil War soldiers find their loved ones, Clara Barton—who founded the American Red Cross—had lectured extensively in the Northeast and Midwest.

Good for her, Sia thought.

Jackson's name popped up every ten entries or so, and when she couldn't avoid it any longer, Sia clicked on an article about him. While she waited for the site to open, she sucked in her breath. She'd never looked before. Not once.

A few seconds later he was on the computer screen, smiling at her from the photo taken at his family reunion, the one they had gone to the summer before he disappeared. He'd just crossed home base in the softball game and scored the winning run. He was smiling in the best way he ever smiled. Eyes soft. Dimple deep.

•  •  •

“Jackson Dane,” Sia read, “age thirty-four, disappeared on Saturday . . .” As she read, sweat streamed down her torso. Her legs shook and it felt like a million ants were crawling along her veins. She felt herself thinning from the inside out, and then
zooph!
Up she went.

When she got close to the ceiling, she ducked, momentarily forgetting that her body was still comfortably seated at her desk and that there was no bumping in “floating land.”

Instead she slipped through wooden beams, into the space between the ceiling and roof, then finally out into the open air where, relieved, she rolled into a tight ball and then stretched out long and made her way along Water Street.

When she turned onto State Street, the town opened up around her. Brick-lined sidewalks. Wrought-iron lampposts. Federal houses. Canopy oaks. Colonial mansions. It was lunchtime, and the square was filled with oodles of sandwich-eating, dog-walking, sun-happy people.

•  •  •

Sitting Sia continued to stare at the screen.

“After a thorough investigation, Jackson's wife, Odyssia Dane, has been cleared of all suspicion.” The police department had run a thorough investigation, but all the officers—especially Richard—had known in their guts that Sia hadn't had anything to do with Jackson's disappearance. Even so, they had to go through the motions. Terrible, terrible motions.

“Despite the work of local detectives,” the article continued, “many questions remain unanswered.”

“Blah-biddity-blah-blah-blah,” Sitting Sia said.

All that was fourteen months ago, and not one of those unanswered questions had been answered since. Jackson's clothes had never been found. Nor his cell phone, keys, or money clip. He hadn't left a note. There were no signs of struggle or escape. There were no footprints on the beach. No one had seen him. When the police ran a missing-person report, all leads had come up dry. There'd been no movement in his bank accounts. No money had been transferred in or out. Jackson had simply disappeared. Vanished.

•  •  •

Like Icarus, Floating Sia drifted closer and closer to the sun.
Maybe this is what happened to Jackson
, she thought.
Maybe he became one with the blistering orb. Maybe I could, too.
She floated a little bit higher.

But then she looked down and saw Toad sitting in his chair in the sunroom with Gumper, the valiant pooch, by his side.

Not so fast
, she said, and she spread out her arms like fins and leaned into a full dive. “Breathe,” she said, imagining her red-hot heart cooling to a soft white. “Breathe.” Moments later, she slipped neatly back into her body.

To
ad's
hand slid from Sia's hip to her belly. She woke, curled on her left side, feeling his thumb just under her right breast. She'd been dreaming about a man who wrote a very long song about someone he loved. It was playing on a dream radio in her head, and because the words were measured and slow, she was convinced it was more of a love chant than a song. This seemed very important in the dream. An announcer in the background asked three judges what they thought about the new song. All agreed that at first they'd assumed it was going to be another sappy teenage love ballad, but that by the middle, they'd heard the truth of it. “The truth of it?” the announcer had asked. That's all they would say.

Rain slapped the window. Toad's thumb shifted and he began to rub the bottom curve of Sia's breast. She thought about the first time Jackson touched her breasts. They were on the beach, and she was wearing a white linen shirt. His rough, callused hand pressed and pulled, first outside the shirt, then after Sia undid two buttons, inside.

He'd said into her ear, “Don't laugh at me.”

“Laugh at you?” she asked. “Why would I laugh at you?”

“I just love these two things,” he said. “I'll love them forever.”

She laughed.

The weight of Toad's hip against the small of her back made that spot blaze hot, and she pushed against him.

Sometimes after that first time, she'd wake in the night and find Jackson suckling her nipples. He did love them. He'd suck until she woke just enough, then roll onto her and slide in. When they went out, he liked her to wear the white linen shirt and even preferred a plain white cotton bra to the silk, lacy things she'd bought especially for him. When they drove home at night, she would unbutton two buttons and he would slip his callused hand inside.

Toad's thumb rose higher on the curve of her breast and Sia silently pleaded for him to touch her nipple. She felt the plea explode in her chest and then in her throat. She pressed her lips closed so she wouldn't beg out loud, then shifted down in the bed until his thumb brushed the nipple. She bit the inside of her lip. His hand opened and wrapped around the breast. Sia stopped breathing. She drifted away, back into that song. Much more like a chant, she thought.

She hadn't worn the white linen shirt since Jackson disappeared. When she'd closed the house, she'd folded it and tucked it between the mattress and box spring. It was still there, under her every night. Under her now.

Toad's hand opened wider and pulled both breasts together. He separated them and touched the place between them with his index finger. Sia pressed into him. She pressed her lips tight. She pressed her legs together. When he pinched her nipple, she listened to the dream chant in her head.
He's touching someone else
, she told herself.
Someone else, somewhere else, sometime else.
She didn't care.

She imagined Jackson in the small house in the clearing of the woods, suckling the breast of the woman who'd saved him. She knocked on the door and went in. She crawled into the bed and squeezed between them until she felt Jackson's mouth on her. She cried out.

And
then?

A postcard from Portugal.

The coast.

Algarve.

“I've always wanted to go to Portugal,” Jilly said as she studied the postage.

“Jil, not once in your entire life have you ever mentioned wanting to go to Portugal.”

“Yes, I have.”

“No, you haven't.”

“Well, I've thought about it.”

“Jil, there is nothing that you think about that you don't say out loud, and not once have you ever said, ‘I want to go to Portugal.'”

“Oh, be quiet.”

Sia set down a couple of glasses of iced tea, then put one on the table next to Toad. “Is the card in English?” she said.

“Yes.”

“So, what's the deal? Marriage proposal?”

Jilly held up the postcard. “On the front is a picture of Praia Dona Ana, the beautiful beach that I've often dreamed about visiting.”

Sia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, get on with it.”

“On the other side is a note from a British chick named Penelope who was vacationing in Portugal a few months ago.”

“And?”

“Hang on. Her handwriting is horrendous.”

Sia sipped her tea.

“She saw Toad,” Jilly said.

Sia set down her glass. “What?”

“It's not a marriage proposal. Penelope saw Toad at Dona Ana beach. She says that one morning she was snorkeling and she . . .” Jilly paused.

“She what?”

“Oh, man, this is weird.”

“What, Jil?”

“She was snorkeling around the rocks and she saw Toad underwater swimming in his suit toward shore.”

“What?”

“Yep. She says, ‘It was very early. Dawn. He swam to shore and crawled onto the sand. A few people asked if he needed help but he didn't answer. He just lay there in his suit, drenched. Next time I looked, he was gone. I was a little hungover that morning so for a while I thought I'd dreamed the whole thing, but when I saw the newspaper article about you, I knew it had really happened. Good luck.'”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“No contact number?”

“Nope.”

“Crap.”

•  •  •

That was the thing about the letters. Some were ridiculous marriage proposals with promises of lifelong love; others, like this one, were reports about Toad. Sightings.

Sia had to read them all. There was no other way of knowing.