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Brigit seems determined to sleep
in, and Jack can no longer wait her out. He slides quietly to the edge of the
bed, and takes a moment to study her face. Over the past ten days, this has
become a favorite recreation. As beautiful as Brigit may be in daylight, in the
unguarded serenity of sleep she is ravishing.
He
summons the high-def and rolls past a dozen channels before he lands on Big, a movie in which a kid makes a wish
to be a grown-up and wakes up in the body of Tom Hanks. Hanks’ boy-man fusion
plays against a cast of so-called adults adopting all the strait-jacket poses
of the corporate world. Jack comes to a horrible conclusion: That was me. The world of numbers that
had once been his personal playground began to change in college and by his
second year in Silicon Valley the fun was gone. The numbers were different now;
they could make people rich, could destroy people, could help to launch
world-busting waves of technology, could rip people off or cause great scandal.
The numbers got too important, and this gave Jack the illusion that he was important. He never would have
thought to accuse himself of being an egotist, but there it was on the high-def
– he was one of those people.
Paradoxically,
he isn’t egotist enough to think himself capable of coming up with an idea like
this on his own. He suspects it’s something that Ben has planted in his head,
like an injected microchip. The immediate incarnation of this thought is a trip
to the pantry, where he breaks into an area previously considered sacrosanct:
the region of children’s snacks. When Brigit comes down the stairs, she finds
Jack sitting on the floor before a coffee-table spread of strawberry fruit
rollups, apple juice in a box, and frosted blueberry Pop-Tarts with pink and
purple sprinkles.
She
rubs her eyes and looks at the screen. “Oh! I adore this movie. I had the biggest crush on Tom Hanks. Why are you
sitting on the floor?”
She
comes around to sit on the couch above him, ruffles a hand through his hair,
but stops when she spots his breakfast.
“Oh!
I get it. You’re living out the movie. In reverse.”
“I
think I already lived out the movie,” says Jack. “Brigit? I think I have a
project for us. Want a Pop-Tart?”
“Delighted.”
She reaches across to grab one off his plate.
The
beach is veiled in mist, nearing on rain, but the weather only seems to bring
more focus to their work. Jack uses a half-size shovel from Thompson’s garage
to dig a trio of concentric circular trenches just out of reach of the
breakers. After that, he begins at the bottom of the innermost circle and digs
a trench toward the water. Afterward, he leans with a foot on the shovel blade,
breathing hard.
“Are
you seeing it?” he asks.
“I
think so. But… why don’t you tell me?”
“Well.
Once the tide begins to rise, and the breakers come in higher and higher, the
water will enter this central trench, then branch off into the circles at
either side. If it gets real wild, it
might even go all the way up and meet at the top. That would be cool.”
“It
would,” says Brigit, though it’s clear she’s distracted. “Would you mind a
suggestion?”
“That’s
what you’re here for.”
“Well.
Like any great public works project, you need some ostentation, just to show
the taxpayers that their money is being wisely spent.”
“Anything
in mind?”
“If
I know the Flores family, I’ll bet they have just what we need.”
On
the deck, they find a large plastic trunk stuffed to the gills with beach toys.
Brigit finds a set of molds in the shapes of various medieval castle-sections
and sets to work on the central circle, constructing a palace of Disneylandian
elegance. The process is composed mostly of shoveling damp sand into a mold,
picking out a target area and slamming it upside-down to the spot. Several of
her subsequent lifts reveal walls and towers with missing fragments, but this
only adds a quality of ancient ruination. Brigit adorns the battlements with
gull feathers, inscribes the tower walls with narrow pathways, and even places
pebbles here and there to create the illusion of villagers and sentinels.
Duly
inspired by all this construction, Jack forges a bridge of driftwood sticks
across the “moat” to the castle entrance. Remembering Suzanne’s little trick,
he then assembles a grove of trees between the first and second trenches by
dripping gooey sand into conifer-like piles.
“That
is so Tolkien,” says Brigit.
“Stole
it from a friend.”
Jack
decides that a little reinforcement wouldn’t hurt, so he finds a rectangular
plastic Tupperware container and uses it to forge a wall of sand-bricks along
either side of the seaward opening. He then uses more driftwood sticks to form
two bridges, one at ground level, the other joining the tops of the walls.
Done
with their efforts, Jack and Brigit stand at the opening, reciting the minutes
of their mutual admiration society.
“That
castle is simply… smashing!” says Jack, trying hard to sound British.
Brigit
attempts to return the courtesy: “And that thurr wall is a might purty piece uh
work.” Then she returns to her real voice: “Now what?”
“Now
we wait for disaster.”
“How
long will that take?”
They
turn at the sound of thunder and find a breaker steaming in at their feet.
Brigit dashes left, Jack right, and the water cuts between, rushing into the
trench, taking out Jack’s lower bridge and climbing all the way to the second
circle.
Jack
stands next to his already-imperiled walls, hands on his knees, and laughs.
“It’s
life, Bridgey. Disaster is never far away.”
The
rules have changed. Jack and Brigit sit in the hot tub “starkers.” They’ve
positioned a patio umbrella over the edge to spare them from the rain, which
peppers the water at the other side of the tub.
“So
all of that perfidoodery today,” says Brigit. “That was all inspired by that
movie?”
Jack
gives this a good mulling over. “I think it also comes from this general track
that Ben has me on. He’s trying to get me to remember how to play.”
“He
told you that?”
“I
think he did. And you know? Why shouldn’t adults play? We’re so much better at
it than children.”
“Oh!
Preposterous little morons.”
“Just
look at that wondrous creation we came up with today,” Jack continues. “Do you
think a couple of third-grade punks could come up with such ingenious
hydro-engineering and granular architecture?”
“We
Brits pop out of the womb designing castles. It was marvelous, by the way, how those trenches operated. Once the
water started whooshing around the circles like that, I imagined myself the
tragic queen, perched atop the tower, wondering whatever would become of me if
the floodwaters took out my beloved castle. I fancy it’s all gone by now.”
“I
think so.”
Out
of nowhere, Brigit takes on the expression of a tragic queen. It’s too real to
be acting.
“Bridge?
What’s the matter?”
“Oh
Jack. I have to leave. I talked to my assistant manager today. Sharon. She’s
been covering for me all this time, but her family vacation’s coming up and I
can’t ask any more of her. I feel… I feel like I came down here for one man,
and now I’m losing two.”
Jack
slides over on the bench and wraps his arms around her. She leans her head back
on his shoulder, and he strokes her damp hair.
“Okay.
Listen to me, because I’m the mathematician here. Number one, you cannot lose a
man you never had, so the Thompson equation is zero minus zero equals zero.
Number two, I like to think that the two of us meeting in this odd way
represents a completely unexpected profit; let’s call that variable x. I also
don’t think we’re done, so throw in a variable y. So any way you look at this,
you are ahead of the game by a factor of x plus y.”
“Are
you saying I’ll see you again?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
In
the morning, he sees her off, riding along to the security gate and then waving
in long, slow sweeps as the black ‘Stang
disappears around the leftward bend. He has no idea what to do with himself, so
he jumps the railing and heads across the beach.
The
trenches, the drip-forest and the castle walls have all been reduced to smooth
memories. The only survivor is the central tower, pockmarked by rain but still,
clearly, a human creation. Jack crouches beside it and sees, for the first
time, the Barbie doll that Brigit has placed atop the battlements, surveying
her ravaged kingdom.
Photo by MJV
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