The Carlton Club (19 page)

“Why what?”

“Why are we going?” She had made that decision. Whatever it was, she was going. With James.

“Because it’s February and the sky is blue and the mountains look like ice cream cones and you cannot waste a day like this. Not in Seattle.”

It was a beautiful day. A sunny oasis in a mild but gray and drizzly winter.

“When do we leave?”

“Three-ten. I keep my bike in the parking lot near the gym.”

“Bike?”

“Motorcycle.”

“Three-ten,” Leslie said as she left, her mind reeling, to deal with the repercussions.

As usual, Alan met Leslie at her locker after school.

“I’m not going to practice tonight,” Leslie said, looking into her locker instead of at Alan.

“What? Leslie, why?”

“I just,” Leslie paused, searching for something that was technically the truth, “don’t feel like it.”

“Are you ill?”

“No.”

“Cramps?” he asked softly.

“Alan!” That was too personal.

“Leslie I am trying to understand. We have a meet tomorrow, you know.”

“Of course I know. I’ll be there. My performance won’t be worse if I skip this one practice. In fact it will probably be better.”

“OK. I’ll call tonight to see if you’re all right.”

“No, don’t. I’m all right, really,” she said, feeling guilty, unable to look at him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said. He kissed her briefly on the cheek.

Leslie smiled weakly. As soon as Alan left, she grabbed her books and dashed toward the parking lot near the gym.

James was already there.

“I forgot that you always wear a skirt,” he said, looking at Leslie’s tartan plaid kilt. “I guess you can ride that way. Your legs may get cold.”

“It’s OK,” Leslie said. I’ll press them against yours to keep warm.

“What are these?” he asked, gesturing toward her armful of books.

“Homework!”

“Can’t you leave them here?”

“For the weekend? James, you and I have a test on Monday in English lit,” she said. Then she noticed that James had no books.

“Give them here, then,” he said. He took her stack of books and balanced them in front of him on the motorcycle. Then he looked at her, handed her his helmet and said, “Hop on.”

Leslie tucked the free folds of her skirt around her thighs, then wrapped her arms around James’s chest.

James didn’t take them in the direction of the ferry terminal in downtown Seattle. Instead he drove along side streets, finally stopping in front of a small dilapidated house with an untended garden and sagging roof. James turned off the engine.

“Home,” he said simply. “I’ll be right back.”

James took Leslie’s books and disappeared into the house. While she waited, Leslie studied James’s neighborhood. The street was narrow, and the sidewalks and road were crisscrossed with grass-filled cracks. A battered car without a left front tire was parked across the street. The houses looked old and sad and forgotten. Leslie was deciding what it would take to fix up James’s house—not that much, really, a little paint, a weekend of gardening, some weed-killer—when he returned. Her books were gone, and he carried a motorcycle helmet for himself.

Without speaking they got back onto the motorcycle and sped off. It was almost rush hour. James avoided the freeway, selecting the more scenic route over University Bridge and along the shore of Lake Union on Eastlake Avenue. They traveled on Denny Way past the Space Needle to Elliot Way and the Puget Sound waterfront.

They drove past the wharf, the aquarium, Pike Place Market and several commercial piers before arriving at the ferry terminal. Their waterside route was lined by fishermen casting lines off the piers and by native Seattleites drawn to the typically summertime tourist attractions by the beauty of the February day. Kites floated above the blue waters of Elliot Bay, Ivar’s sold more iced tea than clam chowder and the air was filled with sounds of laughing children and frolicking seagulls.

The ferry between downtown Seattle and Bainbridge Island arrived just as James and Leslie did. James pulled into the commuter parking lot which was mostly empty at that time of day on the Seattle side of the commuter route. He chained his motorcycle and the helmets to a metal post.

“Two round-trip tickets on the Bainbridge line,” he told the ticket seller.

After the ticket taker collected two of the four orange-colored tickets from James as they walked onto the ferry, James handed the return-trip tickets to Leslie.

“Here. You can keep these as a souvenir. I bought them for you.”

“We don’t need them?”

“Not if we don’t get off the ferry.”

“Oh. So you’re allowed to do that? Just ride back and forth on the ferry? Like sitting through multiple showings of the same movie at a theater. I’ve always wondered if that was allowed.”

James looked at her with amazement and slowly shook his head.

“Allowed in a movie theater means that you can out-glower the sixteen year old usher assigned to check the theater between showings. In my case, it’s usually someone I’ve gone to school with since kindergarten. I don’t suppose any of your friends would ever work in a movie theater.”

Leslie shrugged, embarrassed. Her naiveté was showing.

“In the case of ferries you are supposed to get off. Most people take ferries to get to the other side anyway, but there are plenty of places to hide during the check between runs.”

“Hide?”

“If you want to get off and hand the ticket taker those two tickets, you may.”

“No. I want to hide,” Leslie said, thinking, We have paid for the return trip. If anyone caught us, it would be OK. “If I hadn’t been with you, you just would have bought a one-way ticket, wouldn’t you?”

He simply smiled.

Nice, James. Nice James.

They stood on the front deck of the ferry as it crossed Elliot Bay to Bainbridge Island. Bainbridge was a fashionable residential area inhabited by people who worked in downtown Seattle. They commuted by ferry, not by car. It was a peaceful, beautiful commute. They could read the morning newspaper, drink coffee and enjoy the dramatic seasons of the land, the water, the mountains and the sky. Sometimes a ferry broke down, or the winds were too strong and the waves too high to permit passage. Then, if they were lucky, they were stranded on the island to weather the storm in their Pacific Northwest homes.

Leslie looked at the Cascade Mountains to the east, the Olympic Mountains to the west and Mount Rainier to the south. The pristine white mountains sparkled in the winter sun. The rugged treacherous peaks were softened by the pink haze that heralded the end of the day. Elliot Bay glittered a deep blue, reflecting the sky above. So many days in winter the water was gray and cloudy, but today the waters were clear and blue, crested with feathery whitecaps caused by the gentle balmy breeze.

Draw me a picture of this, James, Leslie thought. Draw me a picture of the water and the islands and the mountains and the sky. Or a picture of the graceful strength of the Space Needle. Or of the delicate white arches of the Science Center. Or of the sunny day activity on the waterfront. Or of the powerful majesty of Mount Rainier.

Even if James drew her no pictures, Leslie would remember this day always. The memories were carefully, indelibly, etched in her mind. Memories of this glorious day in the city she loved. With James. Leslie would never forget it.

James stood close beside her without speaking. He, too, was mesmerized by the spectacle of the sunny day and the blue water and the beauty that surrounded them.

Too soon they reached Bainbridge Island. The ferry bumped gently against the creosote wood pilings of the ferry dock. James and Leslie watched the dock crew pull the ferry snugly into its berth with heavy ropes. As soon as the first car left the ferry boat, James said, “We’d better go.”

Leslie looked at the deck. Except for them, it was empty. Everyone else had long since returned to their cars, eager to complete their commute and return to their homes to enjoy the sunset that was imminent and promised to be memorable.

Leslie followed him, silently, stealthily through the body of the ferry boat to the stairway at the stern. The stairway led to the car deck two flights below. At the bottom of the first landing James swung under the staircase into a storage space for life jackets.

It was dark. A few rays of natural light filtered through the slits in the staircase that formed the roof of the storage area. And it was small, just big enough for both of them to stand pressed against the stacks of orange life jackets.

Leslie started to speak, a sentence that would have flowed from a laugh, but James touched her lips with his finger.

Then she heard what he heard: footsteps. Efficient, official footsteps coming down the stairs. She held her breath. Her heart pounded. The footsteps slowed as they reached the landing. Then they sped up again, their rhythm restored as they took the second flight of stairs.

“The purser,” James whispered as the sound receded.

“Does he check for stowaways?” Leslie asked, excited by this game, this adventure, this flirtation with harmless danger.

James nodded in the darkness. Leslie’s eyes were accommodating to the dimness. She could see his face, close to hers, looking at her seriously.

“Now what do we do if they find us?” he asked sternly. “Do we give them the tickets?”

“No, Bond. And if we think we’re about to be caught, we swallow them.”

Leslie saw James’s mouth curl into a smile.

They lapsed into silence. They had to be quiet and attentive. After a few moments, they heard the sound of cars being loaded onto the ferry.

“When do we make our move?” she asked.

“As soon as we hear a car door shut near this stairway.”

Leslie nodded.

They listened. They heard doors shut in the distance, at the bow of the boat. Gradually the sounds got closer.

Then they heard the door that was their signal. Like the finely trained secret agents they pretended to be, they moved in unison out of the storage area onto the stairs and up to the deck.

When they reached the deck, Leslie said breathlessly, “That was fun!”

“Because you had the paid-for return tickets, which you never plan to use, in your pocket,” James observed mildly as he reached in his pocket for a cigarette.

Leslie started to protest but considered what he said. It was probably true. She had had her fingers on the tickets in her pocket the entire time.

“A Rosemaiden to the core, I guess,” she said with a sigh as she gestured toward his cigarette.

“It’s not all that bad. You want a cigarette? Or have you quit smoking?”

“I keep trying,” she said. They both knew that the only other cigarettes she had smoked had

been that day months before in a meadow with him. “But it’s gotten cold all of a sudden. I need a nice warm cigarette.”

In the fifteen minutes it took to reload the ferry, while James and Leslie hid beneath the stairs, all signs of summer had disappeared. The sinking sun pulled its warmth with it and left behind a bitter, cold winter evening and a spectacular sunset. The sky glowed red and pink and yellow and orange. The skyline of the city twinkled in the foreground. The buildings reflected the sunset back toward the twilight sky from their huge plate-glass windows.

“Do you want to go inside?” James asked, handing her his lighted cigarette.

Leslie shook her head vigorously. Not for anything. It was too beautiful. She inhaled deeply, her lungs filling with warmth, then irritation from the unfamiliar smoke. She coughed and laughed.

Then she felt wonderfully dizzy and giddy. And a little unsteady. She held on to the painted green railing of the boat and closed her eyes for a moment against the chilling wind that had picked up force as the boat began to move.

She began to shiver.

Without hesitation James put his arms around her.

“You’re freezing,” he whispered. His cheek touched hers.

“Not if you hold me,” she whispered into the wind, wondering if he would hear.

“I’ll hold you,” he whispered back. He released her for a moment to open his parka. Then he wrapped the parka around both of them, pulled her hands inside and folded his arms around her again.

Leslie felt his heart pounding, felt his lips brush her hair as the wind blew it into his face and felt his arms tighten around her as she pressed even closer. It was hard to breathe, but she didn’t want him to loosen his grip.

The back of her head rested against his cheek. She was warm and secure. He made her that way.

But now he was cold. After a few minutes Leslie felt his jaw move. His teeth were chattering.

Leslie pulled free and turned toward him. She put her warm hands on his shivering, ice-cold cheeks.

“James” she whispered, feeling his cold skin, looking at his white and purple lips and cheeks. Looking into his eyes.

James wanted to kiss her then, but he couldn’t. His lips were numb. He couldn’t form words to speak. He couldn’t even hold his cigarette with his lips.