“Sure, kid. Sure.”
After Grady’s departure Frederic amused himself by catching a spider that had spun a web between two of the crooked rust-stained teeth of a rake. For a while he had hopes that it was a black widow and he could train it to bite people to death, a reasonable alternative to suing them, but the creature didn’t have the black widow’s distinguishing red hourglass on its abdomen. Nor did it seem to want to bite anything, not the ant Frederic offered it, or the scab from his thumb, or a shred of the bandage dangling from his left wrist. He replaced the spider in the teeth of the rake.
During these maneuvers he kept listening hard, but nobody whistled three times or even once and Grady was still missing. Frederic waited another five minutes, then he picked up his skateboard and went back into the boiler room. He kicked a couple of pipes and tried to turn a wheel marked Do Not Touch and to remove a High Voltage sign from the fuse box. But everything was sealed, padlocked, clamped, welded.
Through the kitchen (Private, Keep Out) he left the club by the rear door (Employees Only), where he had a view of the parking lot. Grady and Aragon were standing beside Aragon’s old Chevy, right in the very center of the lot without any trees or shrubbery around to provide coverage. There was no possible way of approaching them without being seen. They were out of reach, twenty years and a thousand miles away, and he could never catch up with them.
He had made a secret pact with his best friend, Henry, not to cry under any circumstances. But Henry was in Philadelphia visiting his parents and Frederic was here and now, hurting inside and outside.
Tears rolled down his cheeks like leaden bubbles.
“You got it all wrong,” Grady said. He had pulled a pair of jeans on over his trunks because it was against the rules for any employee to enter or leave the club wearing only swimming attire. Aragon noticed that the jeans were too tight around the waist — Grady was eating regularly again.
“I swear to God, Aragon, I haven’t even spoken to her since I came back.”
“Why not?”
“I tried to, I wanted to be friendly, but she avoided me. I thought she was sore at me and I didn’t blame her. I just felt grateful she hadn’t put the cops on me about the Porsche. So while she was avoiding me I was avoiding her and it was working out fine. Then suddenly zap, I get this letter.”
He handed Aragon a piece of pale blue paper that had obviously been unfolded and refolded a number of times. It was soiled at the crease lines and damp from moisture seeping from his swim trunks into the pockets of his jeans but the ink hadn’t smudged. The writing, neat boarding- school backhand, was embellished with a few touches of Miranda’s own, extra-large capitals and circles over the i’s instead of dots.
Beloved:
I want to write that word over and over again because it is beautiful like you. Beloved, beloved, beloved.
Oh, how hard this masquerade has been on both of us, acting like strangers when all we can think about is lying in each other’s arms. But be patient, my dearest. I have made my plans very carefully, and though they may seem strange to you at first, please trust me. We must live as well as love. This is the only way we can do both.
Your own
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” Grady said. “I thought she was putting me on. But she’s not the type, she’s deadly serious about everything.” He read the note again before he replaced it in his pocket. “That’s a lot of crap how all we can think about is lying in each other’s arms. Jeez, I never even thought about it when I was doing it, and that was a year ago.”
“Eight months.”
“Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at calendars.”
“In the note she refers to plans,” Aragon said. “What plans?”
“You’re the one who talked to her, not me. I told you before, I haven’t even spoken to her since I got back. Now suddenly she’s writing stuff about lying in each other’s arms. For all I know, she’s got a church and preacher lined up. I feel trapped, man. Trapped.” He thumped the hood of the car with his fist. It left an imprint in the dust like an animal track.
“Why did you come back here, Grady?”
“I needed the job and the surfing’s good. I never dreamed Miranda would be waiting for me with a bunch of crazy ideas. Maybe I should run away. What do you think?”
“You’re pretty good at it,” Aragon said. “Maybe you should.”
“I mean it. She might be really far out. She might try something wild, like taking a shot at me or sticking a knife in my back, especially if she finds out I’m interested in someone else.”
“Are you?”
“Sort of.”
“Explain ‘sort of.’”
“Well, Ellen and me, we got something going. She’s a nice girl with class and a steady job. It might work out okay. I could do worse.”
“Could she?”
Grady thumped the hood of the car again but there was no force behind it. It was like a gesture he’d seen done in a movie by someone he identified with. “Stop coming down hard on me because of that business in Mexico. It wasn’t my fault. None of it was my idea in the first place, not her and me, not the trip, not even the Porsche, which never did me any good anyway. You know what happened to it?”
“You sold it and lost the money in a crap game.”
“I parked it in a garage in Phoenix and it got ripped off,” Grady said. “How’s that for a laugh?”
“Fair.”
“You still think I’m a louse, huh?”
“Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at dictionaries.”
“Well, I’m not so crazy about you either, you self-righteous bastard. You probably never had to do a day’s work in your life, everything handed to you on a platter, college, law school, the whole bit. Me, I ran away from home when I was thirteen, they were going to kick me out anyway. Want to know why? I stole a car. How’s that for laugh #2?”
“About as funny as laugh number one.”
“It was my uncle’s car and I didn’t mean to steal it, I only wanted to go for a ride. But once I started driving I couldn’t stop. I kept right on going until the gas tank was empty. I ended up near a ball park in Visalia. I watched the game for a while, then I hitchhiked home and got the hell beat out of me. I left again the next day, this time with the money my aunt kept hidden under her mattress... So there you have it, the story of my life, chapter one.”
“The lady, the mattress, the money,” Aragon said. “You started early and learned fast.”
“I found out where it’s at and how to get there. Sure. Why not?”
“Is the word out about you and Ellen?”
“We haven’t done any advertising, but I guess Mr. Henderson has caught on and some of Ellen’s neighbors in the apartment building, people like that. Ellen’s got a lot of friends, and friends talk.”
“Are you living in her apartment?”
“Not technically, no. I rent a room on Quinientos Street.”
“Does Miranda know about it?”
“I don’t see how, unless she followed me home from work one night, and she wouldn’t do that. She’s always got those two crazies with her. They tag along after her like she’s their mother.”
“Or stepmother.”
From Grady’s lack of reaction to the word, Aragon was certain that he wasn’t aware of Miranda’s plans for his future and her own, via the Admiral.
“What do you think I should do?” Grady said.
“What do you want to do?”
“Sit tight, keep things alive with Ellen, pretend I never got the letter.”
“When did you get it?”
“Three days ago. It was slipped under the door of the guard shack with my name on the envelope.”