It’s
Christmas morning, and Jack is bathing himself in numbers. He realizes that
some people would look askance at this, would whisper the word “workaholic,”
but let them celebrate their way – all he wants for Christmas are long columns
of integers. Until his cell phone rings.
“Thompson!
How’s the great white north?”
“Unbelievably
freakin’ cold, my friend. I had completely forgotten.”
“You’ve
been Californianized.”
“And I’m a
Texan. And a full-blooded beaner.”
“Well I
wouldn’t say that.”
“But it’s
true!”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t say it.”
“Smart man,
gringo.”
“So how are
things going? How’s the wife and kids?”
“Ah, Jack.
I can’t tell you how good it is, watching those little velociraptors tear into
their presents. They’re so damn cute, I can barely believe I made ‘em.”
“And the
wife?”
“I have won
her over. So much so that they are all moving back, as of January tenth.”
“Fantastic!”
“And you
have to move out.”
“You
bastard! Kidding, kidding. I couldn’t think of a better eviction.”
“Thanks,
man. You having a good Christmas?”
“Yes. I’m
working.”
“I knew
it!”
“And, I’m
almost done.”
“Wow. That is phenomenal. I knew you were the one to get us out of
this shithole. I have got to figure
out how to get you back full-time.”
“Maybe an
alias and plastic surgery?”
“On the
other hand, it’s Christmas! Have some fun, wouldja?”
“Audrey’s
coming over this afternoon.”
“Ah, the
Oompah-Loompah with the fine ass. I want you to screw her in every room of the
house. I want those pheromones floating around when my wife gets home.”
“Yes, sir!
Hey, and congrats again. Glad to hear things are working out.”
“Thanks,
dude. See ya!”
“Ciao!”
Jack folds
his phone and immediately wonders where he picked up a word like “Ciao.” A
half-hour later, his right hand is dancing over the number-pad on his laptop,
just like old times. He flips a page on the spreadsheet and realizes that it’s
the last – and that it only contains one entry. Several finger-twitches later,
he is entirely done with the project. He misses it already.
He looks up
for the first time in quite a while and discovers an astounding amount of
sunlight flooding the windows. He checks the clock, finds that he’s got two
hours before Audrey, and gets up to pull on his sweatshirt.
After a
week-long storm that pounded the coast with rain and left dustings of snow on
the coastal mountains, the beach looks like it’s been scrubbed clean by a
hundred thousand housemaids. The sunshine is brilliant, the water as flat and
calm as a koi pond. The storm has left little mounds of rocks every hundred
feet, and Jack finds bits of sea glass, tucked among the pebbles like hard
candy. He was only planning a brief hike, but the introduction of treasure
keeps him going, all the way to the cliffs of New Brighton. There he finds
enough rock-stacks to populate the state legislature, and wonders if White
Horse was out here during the rainstorm. He crouches beneath the tallest and
tries to fit it into the screen of his camera phone. When he sees the results,
he indulges in a hearty curse.
“Damn!”
“Not
workin’ out for ya?”
His eyes
are fixed on the nothing-looking blobs on his phone screen. “I swear these
things are protected by a curse. They refuse to show up on photos.” He punches
the erase button and looks up to address his interloper, a thin woman with
milk-white skin, oval-shaped eyes and long, straight hair. Failing to come up
with a name, he announces their place of meeting.
“The Fog
Bank!”
“Bobbie,”
she says. “And you’re Jack.”
“Um, yeah.
So what brings you to the White Horse Jenga pile?”
“You know
White Horse?”
“Sure. He’s
a legend.”
Bobbie smiles.
“And yet, you didn’t notice that he was in that band we were dancing to?”
“No shit!”
“Rhythm
guitar.”
“I guess I
had more important things to look at.”
“Uh-oh.
Smooth talker.” She smiles broadly, re-introducing him to those dimples. As if
to catch him in the act, she says, “So how was the wedding?”
“Hmm. Which
direction you headed?”
“All the
way back to Rio del Mar. This walk is my Christmas tradition, before my family
stuffs me like a piñata. We call it the Cliffenbock.”
“Ha! A
noble brew – and a long hike! But I’ll need most of it to explain that night.
Shall we?”
It takes a
half mile and a thorough cross-examination before Bobbie accepts Jack’s story.
In a sense, he respects that. He’s already seen too many idiot girls buying
everything that Thompson has to sell.
“So back
then, you and Audrey were just dating. And now you’re more serious.”
“She’s
coming over for Christmas supper.”
“My timing
sucks.”
“Your
disappointment flatters me.”
“Finding a
non-gay man who can dance is not that easy.”
Jack laughs
and pauses to pick up an aqua-colored chip ribbed with bottlecap threads. He
hands it to Bobbie.
“Thanks!”
“For your
troubles. For your friendship.”
“Stop being
so nice, Jack. You’re breaking my heart.”
Thankfully,
she appears to be kidding. He finds a perfect disc of black stone and scores a
seven-hopper on the smooth water.
“Oh, sure,”
says Bobbie. “You can skip stones, too. Is there anything you’re not good at?”
“Well right
now I’m not very good at being employed. Hey, how’s your curvy blonde friend?”
“Oh,
Kirsten? I’ve only seen her once since then. She is wildly in love. I’m
surprised you didn’t know.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause
she’s hung up on your friend. Tony Banderas.”
“Um.
Pardon?”
“Sounds
like a pain in the ass to me. He always has to come over to her place. At least
until the divorce comes through. I know he’s your friend, but I don’t trust
that guy.”
Jack laughs
much too loudly, trying to hide his great surprise. He suddenly feels like he’s
treading in dangerous waters, and had best keep his mouth shut.
“Yeah,” he
says. “There’s a reason he’s getting divorced. Or two. Or three.”
“That’s
what I told Kirsten. Sexy man, but much
too smooth. Watch out, sistah! Hey, this is totally off the subject, but have
you seen my hat? I thought I left it at the Fog Bank, but…”
“I’ve got
it.”
“You do!
Well that was kinda silly.”
“I was
kinda drunk.” Jack bends down to fetch a postage-stamp square of green glass.
“And it just looked so… lonely. Plus, I had this vision of roaming the
countryside, trying it on the heads of different women until I found my
Cinderella.”
Bobbie
slaps him on the shoulder. “Watch it,
prince. You’re getting a little too charming. Any chance I can get it back?”
“Excellent
chance. Follow me.” He takes a sharp left, and soon they’re climbing the back
deck of Big Brown.
“Holy crap.
So the story is true. I told Kirsten she must have been hallucinating.”
“Yup. It’s
Big, and it’s Brown.”
“And
frankly,” says Bobbie, “kinda ugly.”
“I have
mixed feelings about it myself.”
“So why do
you stay here?”
“It comes
with a beach.” They round the corner, and Jack looks up at the enormous
chocolate walls. “Plus a boatload of intangibles that I really can’t explain.”
He asks her
to stay on the porch while he fetches the cowgirl hat from his front closet.
When he returns, she’s writing something on a small slip of paper. She hands it
to him, then takes the hat and places it on her head.
“Ah! Now I
feel complete. That’s my phone number. If things don’t work out with Audrey. Or
even if they do; you can never have too many friends.”
“Sure.”
Jack tucks it into his pants pocket. “It was great running into you, Bobbie.
Have a great Christmas.”
“You too,
Jack.” She looks off into a middle distance, as if she’s processing something,
then returns to Jack. “Could you… give me a few spins for the road?”
“Spins?”
“It’s a big
porch. We could probably manage it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Jack takes
Bobbie’s hands, finds an old Bonnie Raitt tune running through his head and
leads her into a series of the moves he learned with Audrey. He feels the same
remarkable sense of balance and gravity from their meeting at the Fog Bank, and
is soon tossing Bobbie around the tiles with abandon. They begin to laugh at
their own synchronicity, and they keep going until Jack runs out of ideas. He
warns her ahead of time, imagines the song coming to an end and drops Bobbie
into a dip. Balanced across Jack’s arm, the world an upside-down kaleidoscope,
Bobbie sees a beautiful redhead, perched on the second step with a pet carrier,
wearing a look of extremely pressurized calm.
“Hi,” says
Bobbie. “You must be Audrey.”
“I ordered
these little message carriers online.” Audrey holds a small aluminum tube with
a clip to one side. She hands Jack a pen and a tiny slip of paper. “So the idea
is, we write down our Christmas wishes, and Mamet and Cigarette will fly them
to the heavens.”
She leans
down to write something. Jack writes, I
want Audrey to forgive me for dancing with strange women on my porch.
Audrey takes the slips, folds them up and tucks them into the tubes, then clips
the tubes onto the right leg of each pigeon. Then they stand and, on the
customary count of three, loft their charges skyward. The birds circle twice
and head southeast along the shore.
“I never
get tired of that,” she says. Then she swats Jack on the arm with surprising
force.
“What the fuck were you doing? Don’t make me get jealous. I fucking hate that, so don’t even get me
started.”
Jack keeps
his arms at the ready, in case she goes for another strike.
“Do you
want an explanation? Or is that just going to piss you off even more?”
Audrey sits
in a patio chair and folds her arms very tightly. “Is it a good story?”
“Yes.”
“It better be.”
“After
Thompson found out he was going to see his kids at Christmas, he took me out to
celebrate. We ended up at the Fog Bank, where Bobbie and I did some dancing.
And I ran into her just now on the beach.”
“And just had to take her to the house?”
“Yes. I had
her hat.”
“Why?”
“She left
it at the bar.”
“And you should have left it there, because
that’s the first place she would have looked for it. But, you took it home, because really you wanted to see Bobbie
again. Am I right?”
Perhaps
it’s because he’s tired of having no good answer to the Cowgirl Hat Conspiracy,
but Jack feels his blood rising. “So let me get this straight. At a time when
you made your appearances in my life whenever the fuck you felt like it, I was
supposed to sit next to the phone and await your summons? You’re awfully fond
of your independence, sweetcakes, and that’s just dandy, but you have to let
other people have theirs, too, or it really doesn’t count.”
Audrey stomps off to the
railing and releases a filthy, muttered stream punctuated by the letters F and
K. And K. Jack thinks it best to leave her alone for a while. After a minute,
she turns and yells.
“This is
what I fucking hate! This is how it starts. One person says I love you, the
other agrees, and then everybody proceed directly to the bickering and mutual
disrespect. I have had way too much
of this shit!”
Jack
advances to a safe middle distance, which places him next to the tiki god.
“This shit
is exactly what it’s about, Audrey. We have to learn how to fight.”
“How about discussing?”
“No.
Fighting. I love you because you’re passionate, and I want to fight with you. Be real with me. And tell me this: Am I
going to see more of you now? Are you going to stay connected? Because when a
woman tells me she loves me, that’s what I expect.”
Audrey
takes a long breath, and seems to calm down. “Are we going to be exclusive?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then
– yes.”
“Good! Now,
are you going to kiss me?”
Audrey
shoots him a simmering look. “Oh, I’m going to do a lot more than that.” She
begins to remove articles of clothing as she charges in Jack’s direction.
“Jesus
Christ!”
“Exactly,”
says Audrey. “’Tis the day of our Savior’s birth.”
“Well thank
the Lord. How did we end up in the hot tub?”
“Hell if I
know. But what I do know is, if you ever have the opportunity to go straight
from fighting to fucking, you should always
take it.”
“Jesus. I
think I hurt my ankle.”
“Wouldn’t
be surprised.”
“I love
you, Audrey. And I’m sorry about the… incident.”
“Next time
you dance with another woman – preferably at some public event where I, too, am
in attendance – try not to look so damn good while you’re doing it.”
“Can’t help
it. I had an excellent teacher.”
Audrey
gives him a wary look. “You’ve been hanging out with Thompson too much. You’re
starting to talk like a dawg.”
“Yikes!”
Jack fishes his sweatshirt out of the water and tosses it onto the rooftop with
a splop. “Speaking of, the wife and kids are moving back home in a couple of
weeks. Which means I’m out.”
“Aah! I’m
gonna miss this place.”
“I get the
feeling I might be back. I have discovered some things about Thompson that do
not bode well.”
“A dawg’s a
dawg, honey. Never changes. That’s why I stick with monkeys. And in case I
forgot to mention it, I love you, too."
Jack kisses
her. “Thank you.”
“Because
you’re a monkey’s monkey.”
“I’m
honored.”
Audrey
wraps Jack up in her arms and stretches her legs into a ballet pointe just above the water. “But since
your time is running out – and since I have a few days off work – you mind if I
spend a few days here at the mansion?”
“Did you
bring any clothes?”
Audrey lets
fly with a witchy cackle. “Who the hell needs clothes?”
Photo by MJV
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