Catalina

  Robby pulls me to him. “Come on, girl, you’re gonna be okay,” he says into my hair. I remember the intimate smell of him, the taste. It’s thick in my mouth, and in the hull of the boat it’s suffocating.

  “I’d be fine if you wouldn’t hug me.”

  “Maybe you should go up, get some air. I can bring the drinks.”

  He looks at me for a moment. I can feel him studying my face. I’m sorry I couldn’t love him.

  “How many have you taken today?” he asks.

  I pull away. “Let’s not start the trip that way. If we start out badly, I don’t know where we’ll go from there.”

  “What happened in New York?”

  I busy myself with finding the wine opener. Thoughts of Eric already invading—the smell of him, so different than Robby’s, and they do not mix. The hull of a boat cannot contain them both.

  “Elsa, tell me.”

  I’ve found the wine opener, but it’s the expensive kind that injects air into the cork. I’m struggling with it and thinking of Eric, and his office overlooking Fifty-third Street, and how when I’m called in a woman from HR is there too. She’s the one who asks me to sit. Talks about cutbacks—that assistants, sadly, are the first to go. But Eric can’t do this job without me, I’m thinking. I’ve made myself indispensable, right?

  Eric chimes in too. Saying how he fought for me but in the end it wasn’t up to him. I don’t understand anything they’re saying. Then they are both standing, both talking about things that don’t matter and in the same voice, as if they both know me in equally intimate ways. My face must concern the HR woman, because she’s repeating herself, saying the severance package is quite generous. The lights are on in the building across the street, and I can make out people standing and talking together, their backs turned to me. Eric’s hands are in his lap, tender as bird wings. Did you hear us, Elsa?

  I’m thinking, Who is this Elsa? Her name is so sterile and dead. It’s not me.

  He puts his hand near mine.

  It’s better this way. You see, don’t you? And his hand just sits there, so close I can feel its heat—he is on fire.

  Then Eric suggests the vacation. Make the time off a good thing, go see your mother. Go back to Los Angeles and see your friends. It’s been years, hasn’t it? You nod your head yes, it’s been more than five years.

  The city swallows us up, the HR woman says.

  And then Eric says, It’s really a generous severance package.

  And you’re thinking, Haven’t they already told me that part?

  And they’re sharing a look, and saying, I know, I know.

  And he moves his hand farther away …

  “Nothing,” I say to Robby, who is standing with the bottle open now. I shake my head. “Nothing happened. Work has just been stressful.”

  He sighs. “I always knew New York was a terrible idea. Didn’t I say?”

  “I remember something about it.”

  “Los Angeles is the last frontier for the American dream. If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere.” He hands me a glass of wine.

  “Still a good speech,” I say. “Even if it is complete bullshit.”

  He looks embarrassed. “Yeah, I hope so.”

  “I thought the new job was going great? That’s what Charly said anyway.”

  He shrugs, uncomfortable. “I’m lucky to have a job, everyone’s fucking coding these days. You don’t know what it’s like competing with these twenty-year-old kids—they’re hungry, really fucking hungry, and they all went to Cal Arts or RISD. I’ll be thirty-five this year, and it’s someone else’s game out there, a young guy’s game, and there aren’t enough jobs for us all.”

  “But you’ve got Jared—isn’t he the boss?”

  “And he still likes to do keg stands.” His face is strained. He suddenly looks old. “He’s my boss.”

  We drink. The silence is deafening. “I give that speech to the interns sometimes—the one about this being the final frontier. They always seem to be from the Midwest, and I like to scare them a little.”

  Jane shouts down to us, “Prepare to tack!”

  I take the bottle and wineglasses.

  Robby stops me. “I think the original speech ended with: Please don’t go, Elsa.”

  His eyes are sad, clouded with an expression that makes me wonder if there’s still time to swim back to shore.

  I take the wine and glasses to the cockpit.

  Jane is at the wheel. She’s a natural. I thought I had her figured out. Early thirties, with a zest for life that is maybe a little too consuming. Maybe she has competitive older sisters and has to be the best at everything. But then Charly tells me she’s from Palos Verdes, her parents are pilots, and her younger sister is an engineering PhD student at Berkeley. In her family Jane is the black sheep. She went to Santa Monica College, got her associate’s degree, and then started managing a restaurant on the pier. She competes in ultramarathons, actually won one last year. She met Robby online. She was lonely, Charly says. They moved in together quickly. They make a good partnership, everyone needs companionship, she says. This legitimately bums me out. Jane does not strike me as a woman willing to exchange love for solace.

  Even now as she stands fierce and unflinching at the boat’s helm, facing the horizon with the Los Angeles coastline disappearing behind her, a big toothy grin at the open sea in front of her, I cannot accept it. How could she settle? Her short hair flaps beneath her hat and for a full minute she does not blink. I think I see tears at the corners of her eyes.

  “From the wind,” she tells Robby. She wipes them away with the back of her hand.

  Tom sits beside her with a gadget in his lap, but he’s looking at her with something like awe.

  “I brought drinks,” I say a bit too loudly because his expression worries me.

  “Ah, you found the Chateau Smith-Haut-Lafitte,” Tom says in perfect French. “I knew you’d pick an expensive bottle.” He pours a glass for Charly and Jane.

  Robby returns from below deck with an Alka-Seltzer for Jared, who laughs.

  “Thanks, buddy, I’ve got it bad today.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Robby tells him.

  “Once we break open the scotch,” Tom says with satisfaction. “It’s twenty-five years old. It fixes everything.”

  “Let’s get to it, then!” Jared says, brightening. “To a grand weekend!” We all hoot, and he downs the seltzer.

  The wine is delicious; it settles right behind the eyes and loosens things up back there. The sun comes out. The swells are gentle and occasional ocean spray cools us. Once the city is out of sight the wind picks up. We travel at six knots, making a steady slice across the bay. The sky is huge, the clouds moving across like giant graceful elephants, but then they’re morphing, shifting into something else. The wind must be fierce up there.

  A pod of dolphins trails in our wake, and we scramble to take pictures, Jane leaning over the line, dipping her fingers into the sea and laughing into the wind. They glide easily to the bow of the boat, with Jane following, her shoes slipping on the deck. The pod takes off, leaving her at the bow to stare after them. Against the horizon her silhouette looks boyish and solitary, and she doesn’t answer when Robby calls out for her to be careful.

  Before we reach open water I’ve vomited. Everyone on deck is pointing and yelling at a sea lion and her cub, and I’m chucking up blueberry pancakes and expensive French wine into the toilet. I rinse my mouth and take my medicine: two pinks and an oblong white. The boat jerks and the open pill bottle goes crashing to the floor.

  “You okay?” Robby calls from up top.

  I hastily pick up the pills. The bottle’s cracked, the lid won’t click into place.

  “Elsa,” he says, popping his head in. “You okay?”

  I shove the pills into the Altoids tin. “Fine, Robby, fine,” I tell him, and give one of my slow-burn smiles. Dazzle a man and you blind him.

  14

  The trip across
the bay on the Catalina Express takes about an hour; sailing the twenty-two miles takes half a day. The excitement of being out at sea wears off about halfway there. Charly catalogs the kitchen’s contents, getting excited when she finds it’s fully stocked. Robby lies out at the front of the boat, yawning and flipping through a book. Even Jared and Tom look a little bored. But not Jane, at the wheel, lips set in content determination. I see her breathe deeply every once in a while, puffing her chest out like a proud animal. The wind picks up, rocking the boat so that most of us are sitting with one hand holding on to something.

  Charly says to Jared, the wind beating the words back, “I packed lunch!”

  We tack with Jane steering and Tom pulling ropes. Charly repeats herself now that the wind is with us. “Tuna sandwiches,” she says.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Jared says, embarrassed. He looks at Tom, who has climbed back behind Jane, his perch since we left the marina. “Tom has plenty on the boat,” he says.

  The sun glints purple off Tom’s polarized sunglasses so that I can’t read him. He smiles, though. “We’re camping the first night, so any extra food is great,” he says, taking a sandwich. “Thank you, Charly.” He looks at her softly so that she blushes a little.

  “I put red bell pepper in it,” she says.

  Tom offers Jane a sandwich.

  “No, thanks,” she says. “Where are we anchoring?” Her gaze does not waver from the horizon, where the island is growing larger, more defined. She takes a PowerBar from her jacket pocket.

  “Paradise Cove,” Tom says, taking a bite of his sandwich.

  “Is that on the east side of the island?” Now that the swells have quieted, Jared has brought up the bottle of scotch.

  Tom nods. “It’s a sandy cove, you have to boat in to camp. If we’re lucky we’ll be the only people there.”

  “Sounds like heaven,” I say.

  Tom looks at me, pushing the last bite into his mouth with his thumb. “It is.”

  The trip up the east side of the island is gorgeous. The cliffs are dramatic, their exposed earth dark red. The wind brushes the long grasses along the bluff, and at the top of one of the cliffs a herd of bison stands in profile. The ocean here is unlike any water I’ve seen off the California coast, so dark it’s almost cobalt, and electric blue in the shallows. It’s clear too, and cold. I run a foot in the wake of the boat as we pass an old quarry, even its “Keep Out” sign seeming picturesque with its weather-beaten rust. I laugh when flying fish jump nearby.

  Maybe it’s the scotch, or the sun, or the wildness of the cliffs, but we all seem to get a little slaphappy, more adventurous.

  Jared is drunk, shirtless, and telling Tom and Robby how much he appreciates them.

  “Seriously, you guys,” he says, hugging Robby. “Seriously.”

  Charly calls me to the bow, where a school of garibaldi swim, bright orange and curious. She seems to have forgiven my inadequate comforting from this morning, and forgotten about last night.

  “Like Finding Nemo,” she says, pointing.

  Jane has stripped down to her bikini and given the wheel back to Tom. She joins us at the bow of the boat, squealing, “Little Nemos! Did you know they’re California’s state fish?”

  She snaps pictures of them, and then turns to me. “Will you take one of me and Charly?”

  I watch from behind the camera as these two women, one in a baseball cap and sports bikini, the other wearing a ridiculous bonnet, sunburned where her jacket has exposed her neck, pose for me. They face away from the water so that the ocean is behind them, pushing their cheeks together with unnatural, flirty smiles. I take the shot.

  “Let’s get one of the three of us,” Charly says.

  I hand the camera back. “Maybe when we dock. I’m getting a drink. Do you ladies want anything?”

  “We’ll be mooring in ten minutes and then we can break out the blender,” Tom says to me.

  “There’s a blender on this thing?” Robby has that lazy look he gets when he’s been drinking in the sun.

  Tom nods. “Tequila and limes too.”

  “WE ARE KINGS!” Jared yells from the boat’s stern. “KINGS!” His chest is puffed up and he shouts again, but Tom has turned on the motor, drowning out his voice.

  Robby gets up and yells with him, his face pink from the exertion. They chant together, and Tom too. “KINGS.”

  When the boat motors into Paradise Cove the sun is low. There are no other boats, and no one is on the beach. Once we’ve moored, Tom shuts off the engine and we hear the lapping of water against the hull, the ravens on the beach.

  “How do we get over?” Jane asks.

  “Do we have to swim?” Charly looks at the water, disappointed.

  Tom laughs. “You’re welcome to swim. I’ll take the dinghy.”

  Jared lets out a whoop, throwing an arm over Tom’s shoulders. “This guy,” he says, pointing with his beer bottle.

  The girls busy themselves with sunscreen and packing the beach towels. Jane brings hiking boots and a backpack with a first-aid kit. The boys do push-ups on the deck. We drive the dinghy right onto the sand, laughing when Charly tumbles into the water.

  “But I haven’t changed into my bathing suit yet!” she says good-humoredly.

  “I told you to wear it under your clothes,” Jared says, helping her up.

  “Ow, look out,” Jane says, hopping off the boat. “There’s rocks.”

  Robby picks her up, throwing her over a shoulder. “I got you, babe!”

  “Robby!” She looks relieved when he puts her down again. She has her arms around him, though—her face freckled from the sun, red on either cheek. She kisses him, a dainty peck. He rests his hands on her hips, swaying them gently.

  “Oh, get a room,” Jared says, and plops on the blanket Charly has laid out. “Who wants a beer?”

  “Me,” Tom says. “The first thing I do after sailing is drink a beer, maybe smoke a joint.”

  The beer is cold, the bottles already sandy. We sit so we’re facing the boat, looking out at the ocean we’ve just crossed.

  “Look at that,” Tom says, pointing. “Out there is Los Angeles.”

  Across the bay is a silhouette of a coastline familiar to us all, and yet from this angle completely foreign.

  “You can barely see it,” Jane says, taking a beer from him.

  “Out there is the empire,” Robby says, holding his arms wide.

  I squint to try to make out where the pier should be, where the Miramar is, where the airport and Charly and Jared’s house should be. Bakersfield just north and inland—New York and Eric a few thousand miles beyond that. It’s there, I’m sure. That whole life of mine. I suddenly feel light-headed. Strange. Like catching your reflection, that moment just before recognition, when you are a stranger to yourself. I pull my sweater tighter.

  Jared moves so he can put an arm around me. “I’ll keep you warm,” he says. His breath could be flammable.

  I get up to put my feet in the water.

  “Is it cold?” Jane asks.

  It is. Very, very cold. My feet go numb, and for a moment it takes the air right out of me.

  “Can you even feel it?” Robby slurs from behind me.

  I slip my dress off. I’m wearing the bandeau bikini I tried on for Rex.

  “It’s freezing,” I say, and do my very best to kick water on all of them.

  Charly and Jane shriek and jump up. They are out of their clothes and chasing me on the beach. Whatever pills and booze I’ve mixed has made this a dizzying day. My chest is tight, but light like a bird’s. And the more I run, the lighter I feel. I might just fly away.

  I run into the water, but the girls chase after me, their shrieks growing louder at just how cold the water really is.

  It doesn’t take long for our bodies to warm, though. The water is salty, we can taste it on our lips. It feels good to be we—we smell of the sea and sunscreen and something sweet. Look at our fingers: we lace them together; look at o
ur bodies: we float on our backs. I think of those women back at the Miramar, eating oysters and drinking white wine.

  Jane wraps her arms around my waist underwater. Charly puts a strand of seaweed around my neck.

  “Beautiful,” she says.

  The boys watch us from the beach. “Come in, scaredy-cats!” Jane calls to Robby and Jared and Tom. She swims over to a cluster of rocks. “I’m going to be king of the hill!”

  Robby stays on the beach but Tom and Jared splash in, whooping and daring each other to go farther. Tom dives headfirst, leaving Jared knee-deep in the water. Tom swims very well—long, smooth strides—and when he surfaces, it’s beside Jane at the bigger of the rocks. We can hear them laughing as they struggle to reach the top.

  “Oh, come in!” Charly calls to Jared, waving her hand at him. “It isn’t that bad.” We’re treading water, watching Jared pace back and forth, the water barely wetting his trunks. “He’s always peacocking around you,” she says to me. “But when it comes down to it, no follow-through.”

  “I’m sorry about last night, Charly.”

  She shakes her head again at Jared, who throws up his arms. “I know,” she says. She floats on her back, stretching her legs. “I think this is the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen.” Her eyes glitter.

  We swim together to the rocks where Jane and Tom are, helping each other out of the water. Tom has started heckling Jared from the top of his rock. Jane is perched on one of the smaller rocks, her knees tucked to her chin. She’s waving to Robby.

  “Come in!” she yells.

  “I’m good here,” Robby shouts back. “It’s getting dark, I’ll work on a fire.”

  “I’ll help with that,” Jared says, joining Robby, who’s already trucking up the trail.

  Tom yells after them, “There’s a locker at the top of the campsite with wood in it for us.”

  “That’s lucky,” Charly says to Tom.

  “I never rely on luck. I called ahead and had the rangers put a couple bundles in there for us. There should be fresh water too.” He pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger as if she were a child and dives back into the water.