The Queen of Everything (26 page)

I stepped up onto the deck of the boat behind
Kale, who reached out his hand to help me. He handed me a beer and I cracked the
top. Martin, one of the guys who apparently owned the boat, wiped the back of
his mouth with his hand as people laughed. Oysters in a bowl sat on one of the
boat's small Formica tables, all slippery like innards you should be hiding your
eyes from.

"That is so dis-gusting!" a girl squealed, and
he kissed her on the mouth as she tried to wiggle away.

Kale had already finished his beer and stuck
his hand into the open case for another. From

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where I stood, on the lurching deck of the
Red Pearl,
I could see the ivy-covered wall of the Hotel Delgado and
those peering faces sitting at the restaurant's window, which glowed yellow and
comforting from the light inside.

"This is great," Kale said. I could hear the
low roll of thunder off in the distance. It was too far away for the pelting
rain to start yet. A summer storm could go on in the same way my mother said
childbirth did--contractions and calmness, contractions and calmness, closer
together until at last came the violent main event.

"Come on," Kale said.

He took my hand and maneuvered me through
bursts of laughter, food and drink tossed into mouths, protests when the music
stopped and then started again. The boat lurched. I lost my balance and grabbed
onto Kale so I wouldn't fall on my butt.

"Oh yeah, I like that," he said, and grinned at
me. A glass fell and shattered on the deck, and I heard someone
curse.

I shivered. It was cold out there on the water.
Kale held my wrist and guided me down a set of narrow stairs heading below deck.
When we reached the bottom, he rubbed his hands up and down my arms to warm
them.

"There," he said.

It was quieter in the cabin, the thumps
of

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the music muted and fuzzy around the edges.
Dishes were piled in the tiny sink of the tiny galley. I nearly tripped over a
grocery bag of empty cans someone had placed on the floor. An open jar of salsa
on the counter was punctuated by half-drowned bits of chips. Several guys were
jammed into the curved bench-seat of the galley's table, watching a miniature
television and arguing about some tiny play of a tiny sporting event. I could
see why Kale wanted a boat like this. Everything was just his size.

Kale opened a narrow door that led to a small
cabin. A bedroom. In fact that's all it had room for, that bed. He shut the door
behind us, and the compact space and Kale's presence made me suddenly
claustrophobic.

"It's hot," I said.

"You're telling me," Kale said. He gave my
chest a playful shove, with enough force, though, that I landed sitting on the
bed. Suddenly, none of this seemed like such a good idea. Suddenly, I couldn't
quite remember why it had felt so urgent to pick up that phone and call Kale, of
all people.

"Oh yeah, worth the wait," Kale said. He
lowered himself onto me, kissed me until I fell backward onto a foam pillow that
stank like it had gotten wet once and had since mildewed.

"Relax," Kale said.

But I couldn't. The beer I had drunk
started

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to work around my knees, making them feel
tingly and unstable. The unsteadiness, coupled with that closed-in place and
Kale's body on mine, made my anger at my father rapidly disappear. It was a
mental magic act; the horrible things I was sure my father was about to do
changed instantly into more innocent possibilities. Maybe he wouldn't meet Gayle
D'Angelo at all. Maybe he would be saved by the Second Chance Guy. Maybe he
would do just a small thing and not one hideously life-changing; a bent fender,
say, instead of a fatal crash.

Kale kissed me some more and pushed his pelvis
into mine. I wanted him off me. Next to me on the bed was a sweatshirt rolled
into a ball, a bottle of suntan lotion, and a pair of men's sandals worn into
deep grooves at the heel so that the brand name had faded half off. I could
smell the lotion; the kind that has that fake coconut odor stronger than any
real coconut ever had. I didn't belong here. These were not my things, and this
was not my place. I pushed at Kale's shoulder.

He took hold of my hand at the wrist. His face
was down close into mine. His breath washed over me, warm as the air outside,
steamy with beer. "You're acting like a baby," he said.

Something rose up in me when he said that. I'm
not sure what it was; anger again, I guess. Anger at Kale, at my father, at the
powerlessness

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I'd been feeling lately. Kale was wrong. I was
stronger than that, stronger than anything happening or about to happen around
me. I was brave, and I wanted Kale to know it. "Anger is most dangerous," Big
Mama says, "when it makes you want to prove yourself bigger than you are. Anger
makes you stupid then, irrevocably so."

I pulled my shirt over my head. My bra seemed
embarrassing. So white in the darkness, with its little bow between the cups.
Why the little bow is necessary, I will never know. I could hear laughter
outside. I imagined it was for me, for my silly white bra, but the short,
pleated drape of the tiny porthole was pulled closed.

Kale took off his pants. I realized that at
least one rumor about Kale wasn't true. There was no tattoo. The wind howled,
both restless and pissed off.

My head felt sick and spinning. I thought about
health class last year. Those pills in pink cases all lined up in an
embarrassing oval. Those springy plastic diaphragms, trampoline fun for sperm.
My heart beat crazily. Panicky. Sperm. Spermatozoa. So cheerful. Like a party
hat with a tassel. My voice was squeaky and small.

"Wait," I said.

But Kale reached around from I don't know
where, held up a square foil packet and waved it around as if he'd just found a
dinner mint on his pillow.

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"Don't worry. I come prepared," he said into my
neck.

Ha ha,
I thought.
A funny pun. That
Kale.

The boat lurched and my stomach did too, queasy
from rocking and from beer I wasn't used to drinking. Down below, where we lay,
you could hear water sloshing against the boat's side. A feeling began to work
its way up sickeningly from my heart. Kale seemed to know what he was doing.
That plastic thing he put on looked like it hurt. Like a person could snap it
and really hurt someone. Now he looked ready for surgery or something. He gave
me his sleepy, dreamy eyes.

He was hurting me, Jesus, but he didn't seem to
notice. His face was sweaty. Turning red from somewhere inside the layers of
tan. I turned my head. I didn't want to see him. I concentrated, concentrated on
the worn-down inner soles of someone else's sandals. Concentrated on being away
from there until Kale moaned the moan of something ripping away and laid his
full weight on top of me.

I figured out what the sick feeling was.
Betrayal. The horrible guilt of betrayal. And the one I had betrayed was
myself.

Kale leaned away, finally off me, and reached
to the floor where he'd set his can of beer. He took a long swallow.

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"When my mom was having me," he said, "the
doctor needed to be sobered up before I was born."

I wanted out of there, right then. My own
nakedness seemed more humiliating than I could bear. I was so incredibly,
unbelievably stupid. Stupid and foolish and hateful.

The handle of the cabin's door rattled. "Open
up," some guy yelled.

"All right, all right," Kale said.

"Kale," I said. "Shit." I inched under damp,
musty covers, hid my head. Kale rustled around, sat down on my leg as he pulled
up his pants.

"Come on!" the guy pounded the door with his
fist.

"Fuck, would you wait a minute?" Kale opened
the door.

"I want my sweatshirt," the guy said. From
under the covers, I could hear the guy snicker.

"Hey," Kale said, his voice
swaggering.

I stayed there, flat and quiet. Cringing. Kale
and the guy talked about boats. I wanted to change my name and disappear. I
wanted to become someone else. I wondered how the hell I had gotten where I was.
I wondered if I could die under there, from asphyxiation.

Finally the guy left. My face was hot and
sweaty from hiding under the sheet. As much as I didn't want to lift my head and
see Kale, and as much as I didn't want to have to come

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out of there and be me, the air felt
good.

"What the hell were you doing?" Kale
said.

"What do you think I'm going to do, let him see
me?" My voice was back, but there was nothing behind it. No real strength to
back up my words. I felt very tired. It seemed a long, long way back
home.

"Yeah, let him see you. Jesus."

I had no smart remark for him. I wanted to cry.
A feeling of loss and aloneness overtook me, and it seemed sudden and incurable
and sad as a deadly disease. I wanted the smell of him off me. I couldn't forget
what I had just done and how stupid I was until that smell was gone.

"Stay here and hide the whole fucking party,"
he said. He found his shirt on the floor, left through the tiny door. I didn't
know what he was so mad at. I didn't know what to do. I waited to see if
something might happen that would tell me what to do with the mess my life
seemed to be, but nothing did. The music kept thumping, and the waves kept
sloshing against the boat. I decided I would get dressed. I decided that I would
have to get up and get Kale to take me home.

I went out the tiny door and into the tiny
galley now empty except for a girl looking for something in the tiny
refrigerator, maybe tiny food.

She ignored me, and I passed her as if it
was

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usual for me to emerge disheveled from bedrooms
during parties. As if it were usual for me to do stupid dumb-ass things I didn't
even want to do in the first place. I held the rail and walked up the stairs to
the upper deck. I wound my way through boozy strangers swaying to music that was
now shouting loud again. It was amazing that the Tiny Policeman hadn't found
that party yet. Thunder rolled and some stupid girl screamed, and the lurching
of the boat made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to find Kale. Jason Dale was
heaving over the side of the boat, forgetting to be a considerate neighbor and
just vomiting away on the dock. I started to think that I would actually feel
grateful when I finally found Kale.

But I did not feel grateful.

When I saw him, grateful would not be the word
that comes to mind.

I heard his voice, laughing. I followed it,
wound my way through bumping elbows and spilled puddles of sticky beer on the
floor. I saw the back of his shirt. When I finally got to him, his tongue was
trying to shove something down Wendy Williams's mouth. I'd always thought Wendy
Williams rubbed Kale the wrong way. Judging from her hand on the crotch of his
shorts I guessed I was mistaken.

I stared, caught between wanting to cry and
wanting to grab at him and scream. People were

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looking at me as if I might be the half-time
entertainment.

I turned and ran. As much as you can run on a
pitching boat filled with people. I pushed my way through, to the love notes of
"Hey, Bitch" and "Ex
-cuse
me!" and I stepped past the recovering Jason
Dale, who stared at me like I was an apparition. I stepped off the boat and onto
the dock, where my feet could run, run now, slapping on the wooden slats, the
sound mixing with the beginning pelting of rain.

I got to the end of the dock. The rain had
begun to wet my hair into thick ropy strands. A waiter and a waitress from the
Hotel Delgado had finally dashed outside, doors slamming from the wind behind
them, to gather the sugar packets and toppled Lucite frames describing desserts
and the flapping plastic tablecloths. Inside, the golden light of the restaurant
flickered off and was soon replaced with the bobbing lights of lanterns brought
to the tables by shadowy waiters. The island still had magic, whether you wanted
it or not.

I started to cry. The tears and rain made me
blind. I gasped for air, started to walk. I didn't think about safety or
lightning or darkness. I didn't dare think, I just walked stupidly, without
plan. I would have to go back to my father's house. I would have to see what
shambles were left there when morning came.

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The rain turned into a furious hail, mean and
stony balls of ice. They actually hurt as they struck the top of my head and my
back, but I didn't care. It was only punishment for being such a fool. You could
hear the wind come in a wave, the roar of it. Hailstones hurtled onto the
hotel's stone path, the now-bare outdoor tables, the old roof.

I was listening to the weather be angry. I
didn't hear the truck behind me, tires rolling on slick pavement. But I saw the
double columns of headlights. I looked over my shoulder.

He opened the door of the truck. He was still
in his waiter's uniform. Still had the white apron tied around his waist.
Jackson Beene opened the door and then just stood there on the ground beside me,
waiting patiently as I threw up.