It was the 4th of July, and the Falter family had
lost its progeny to the major urban areas: Pablo and his fellow grads to a
Seattle Mariners game, Derek to a comics convention in Portland. Once they
recovered from the shock of a quiet house, Mom and Dad headed to the shore.
With its
drive-on beach, Ocean Shores is known as the Daytona of the Northwest.
Sometimes with comic results. Just the week before, a middle-aged couple had
parked their RV at shoreline, repaired to the rear for some hanky-panky, and
awakened a couple hours later to find themselves surrounded by water. They
managed to swim ashore, but stood there helplessly as their Winnebago floated
off toward Hawaii.
The beach
that day was like a shopping mall parking lot on the day after Thanksgiving.
The Falters had to cruise quite a distance before finding a decent spot. They
sent Derek’s dragon kite into the blue, and tied off the handle to their side
view mirror. David prepped their small barbecue for a batch of razor clams dug
up by their neighbors, the Fontescues. Elena assembled a teepee of aged oak and
set it ablaze for a beach fire. (David found himself stealing peeks at his
beloved’s rear end, which despite some recent expansion was still the finest
ass in town.) Soon they were seated in beach chairs, savoring their clams and
Pinot Grigio as the sun made its final descent.
Their
reverie was interrupted by the approach of one of Harvey’s whiny rental mopeds.
The pilot turned out to be David’s favorite rookie English teacher.
“What ho,
landlubbers!” She kept a firm grip on the handles, as if she feared that the
mighty beast could bolt at any second.
“Abbey!”
said David. He and Elena straggled from their chairs to offer a proper
greeting. “Honey, this is Abbey Sparling, the brightest new star at North Beach
High, and her husband Randy, the brightest new star at Boeing Aeronautics. This
is my beauty queen wife, Elena.”
“The
brightest new star at Elena’s Ice Cream Shoppe,” said Elena.
David gave
Abbey a hug and proceeded directly to Randy, with whom he never seemed to have
enough chances to talk. He thought of Randy as the kind of individual who could
change his mind about the South (an opinion soured by his master’s thesis on the
history of lynching). In character, he was like a human giraffe: tall, gangly,
a touch awkward. He spoke in a soft Georgia drawl delivered with a quiet
gentility.
“An
aeronautics engineer on the back seat? Randy!”
Randy
chuckled. “I think we know who the daredevil is in this marriage.”
“How’s the
commute?”
“A killer. Thank God for my four-day work
week. But take a look at what I’ve got on either end. For an aviation guy –
what we like to call a ‘wing nut’ – working at Boeing is like living at the Playboy
Mansion. ‘Check out the fuselage on that
one. And that one. And that one.’ And then, once I get home,
same thing.”
“Fuselage?”
He used a
hand to describe the curve of his wife’s figure. “Fuselage.”
“I’ve
misjudged you, Randy. You’re a dirty old man.”
“Well. I
hope to be, one day. If I could just get around that Hoquiam crawl.”
“Ouch! Been
there. Whatcha need is one of those flying cars from The Jetsons.”
Randy
smiled, showing a hint of early-onset crow’s feet around his baby blues. “Don’t
think I haven’t thought of bringing that up at a design meeting.”
“Hey, you
back there on the bitch seat,” said Abbey. “You ready for launch?”
Randy
laughed. “You hear the way she talks to me?”
“I think she
uses the same approach with her students.”
“It’s the
cute ones who get away with that shit.”
“The cute
ones with fuselage.”
Abbey turned
around and spoke in her best Hollywood starlet-ese. “Just remember, honey, if
the ride gets bumpy, whoever’s on the bitch seat gets to grab on to… well.
whatever they need to grab on to.”
“Welp!” said
Randy. “Gotta go.”
Abbey revved
up her puny motor and they headed north, fading into the mist and twilight. Watch out for the crazies, thought
David. But he didn’t say it, because everybody knew about the crazies.
If I had asked him one more question. If
they had joined us for a glass of wine.
The Falters returned to their chairs
and their Grigios. The sun was melting into the marine layer like a scoop of
lemon chiffon ice cream.
Elena laughed. “You’re sweet on her.”
David smiled. “Why darlin’, if I
wasn’t married to the most bonita muchacha en los Estados Unidos, and if Abbey
wasn’t a co-worker, and if I didn’t like her husband so much, and if she didn’t
have a husband… But as you can see,
that’s already a pretty long list.”
Elena ran a finger up the back of his
hair, which she knew drove him crazy.
“I’ll make you forget all about Abbey
Sparling.”
David smiled. “I was kinda hopin’ you
would.”
Just a second. Two seconds. A longer handshake. Give
Abbey another hug. Change the timing. Trajectories.
David sat at his kitchen table,
staring at a stack of pancakes that would never be eaten, across from a wife
who had slipped into a stupor. At the center of the table the Aberdeen Daily World, peppered with awful, awful
words. Teenage driver… alcohol
level…witnesses…airlift…stable but serious…vehicular manslaughter.
Through a gap in the vertical blinds,
David spotted a hummingbird, its chest radiating opaline waves of red and
green. He hovered there for a second, two, three, and then, struck by one of
those animal signals that humans will never understand, he vanished.
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