THE STORM BLEW ITSELF out sometime during the night. The wind was still yammering but there was no rain when Macklin got up and looked out through the bedroom window blinds. Heavy overcast, and a light fog swirling in among the pines and other trees that separated the cottage from the big estate to the south. Shelby was still asleep. He put on his new robe—her Christmas present to him this year—and went into the bathroom to use the toilet and splash his face with cold water. He hadn’t slept well; he felt logy and tight all over, as if his skin had somehow shrunk during the night. At least what sleep he’d had had been dreamless.
He padded into the kitchen to see if the power had come back on. It had—a relief. He found coffee, set the pot brewing, then turned on the baseboard heater and raised the blinds over the mullioned windows that faced seaward. The ocean’s surface was strewn with deer-tail whitecaps and huge fans of kelp. Below the unkempt lawn that sloped down to the bluff edge, part of the cove below was visible—spume geysering over a collection of offshore rocks each time one of the incoming waves broke. Ben had told him there was a rock-and-sand beach that ran the full length of the inlet, flanked by rocky headlands, accessible only to the three cliffside homes. Maybe later, if the weather held, he and Shelby would go down there and check it out. One thing they had in common was the beachcomber gene.
In the kitchen again, he took out the breakfast fixings they’d brought with them, put together a Florentine omelette, readied six strips of bacon for broiling in the oven, sliced English muffins. Cooking was a source of pleasure for him, always had been, and he was good at it. For a time, after college, he’d thought about enrolling in one of the better culinary academies, learning how to be a quality chef, but he’d never followed through. Maybe if he had …
No, hell, he’d known back then that he wasn’t cut out to be a chef. Restaurant owner was more suited to his abilities, or so he’d believed. He understood well-prepared food, he had managerial skills, all he’d lacked was the capital. Five years of dull work in the restaurant supply business, with every extra penny of his and Shelby’s incomes saved, plus the cash from an affordable mortgage on the house Shel had inherited from her mother, and they’d taken the plunge.
Macklin’s Grotto. Fine Seafood Specialties. A prime location in Morgan Hill, small but with an intimate atmosphere; a well-regarded chef trained in one of the better Manhattan restaurants, a menu that featured fresh fish and shellfish dishes, and the best cioppino he’d ever tasted. How could it miss being successful?
Except that it had. Oh, not in the beginning; business had been good the first year, with plenty of repeat customers and new ones brought in by word-of-mouth recommendation. But then the economy had begun to sag and people were less inclined to spend their money eating out. Arturo, the chef, had quit to take a better-paying job in San Francisco, and the best replacement Macklin could find for him hadn’t been nearly as accomplished or creative. Empty tables even on the weekends, cash reserves running out and bills piling up. And then the death kiss—the woman customer who’d slipped on a piece of salmon in cream sauce dropped by a careless waiter and cracked a bone in her wrist. Their insurance company had paid the medical and settlement bills, dropped them cold immediately afterward. And there was no way he could get another policy without paying an unaffordable high-risk premium.
Three years of living his dream, only one of them really good. Then back into the restaurant supply business as a glorified office manager at Conray Foods—a mediocre job, but one that paid reasonably well. And then after a year and a half, with no warning, out on his ass and into line at the unemployment office.
And once the unemployment insurance maxed out at seventy-nine weeks, or more likely, was suspended sometime after the first of the year? It wouldn’t make much difference in the short haul. But in the long haul … then what? Wasn’t likely to be any kind of decent job for a man his age, with his limited skills and experience and health issues. He’d be lucky to get minimum-wage dregs: busboy at Burger King, grocery bagger at Safeway, newspaper deliveryman if there were still newspapers to be delivered. Some future. Some hope to offer Shelby.
What was that line from Body Heat? Something about the shit coming down so heavy sometimes you feel like wearing a hat. Right. Only with him, it’d have to be a ten-gallon Texas Stetson—
Feeling sorry for himself again. Knock it off, Macklin. Your life is what it is—period. Nobody to blame but the gods or whoever runs the universe, if anybody or anything does. Accept it. Be a man.
Grow up, be a man.
Pop’s voice, echoing in his memory. Harold P. Macklin—always Harold, never Harry or Hal. Sporting goods salesman and habitual gambler who’d lost far more than he won at poker, horse races, blackjack, and the sports books in Tahoe and Reno. Cold, distant, domineering. Lousy husband, lousy father. Ruled Ma and his two sons with an iron fist and an acid tongue.
Stop acting like a goddamn baby, Jayson. Grow up, be a man.
I’m sick and tired of answering your stupid questions. What do I look like, an encyclopedia?
Cooking? That’s woman’s work. What are you, a faggot?
Sometimes you make me wish to Christ I’d had a vasectomy the year before you were born.
He remembered the October day when he was fifteen, the school principal taking him out of his English class to tell him that both his parents were dead in a highway accident. On their way home from one of their frequent trips to Reno, Tom and him left in the care of Aunt Carolyn or to fend for themselves as they grew older; Pop driving too fast and losing control on an icy stretch near Donner Summit, both of them killed outright. He’d cried for Ma, but not for the old man. Never shed a tear for him, never missed him. Seldom even thought of him, except for a teenage vow to be a damn sight better man. And yet here he was, his father’s son in the only way that really counted.
Harold P. Macklin, Jayson L. Macklin—a couple of losers.
The coffee was ready. He could hear Shelby stirring around in the bedroom, awakened by the aroma. He turned on the broiler, started an omelette large enough for two. He wasn’t hungry, but maybe she was.
Her mood this morning seemed better than yesterday’s: She had a smile for him when she came out. Quiet at the table, but when she did say something it had an upbeat ring. At least she was making an effort.
“I should go into Seacrest,” he said after they finished eating, “pick up a few things at the grocery, fill the gas tank. Want to come along?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Won’t take long.”
“I’ll find something to do here,” she said. Meaning she preferred her own company to his. “See if you can get a new wiper blade while you’re there. The one on the passenger side started sticking last night.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I’ll take care of it.”
Macklin waited until ten thirty before leaving, figuring that the grocery store and garage would be open by then—if they were open at all this time of year. He didn’t relish the prospect of having to hunt down groceries and a new wiper blade somewhere other than Seacrest; the nearest town in either direction was fifteen miles.
He was backing out of the carport onto the lane when the angry blare of a horn sounded close behind him. He jammed on the brakes just as a car whipped past, coming too fast from the direction of the Lomax property and narrowly missing the Prius’s rear end. Dark blue four-door sedan with a woman at the wheel—Claire Lomax or Paula Decker, he couldn’t tell which in the brief look he had before the car disappeared.
The storm had done minor damage in places: a bishop pine splintered in the woods that bordered Ocean Point Lane; a small rockslide along Highway 1 halfway to Seacrest; a small chunk of cliffside eroded away where the highway ran close to the edge, leaving a long scar down to the sea. He remembered reading somewhere that problems like this were common on this part of the coast during El Niño winters. Not a place you’d want to live year-round unless you craved isolation or were born with a pioneer spirit.