by David Kearns
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning I woke at 5 a.m. to the sound of seagulls squawking out on the deck. Occasionally a seagull finds a crab on the beach, carries it up to my deck, and picks it apart there. Other gulls follow, and a fight over the crab ensues. I don’t know why the seagulls like eating crabs on my deck, but they do. Maybe I should get a cat.
I was in my underwear, but it was still dark and there were no other houses next to the deck, so I wasn’t worried about being seen. I opened the sliding glass door onto the deck and the gulls scattered. I walked over to the half-eaten crab and nudged it off the deck with my toe. It fell twenty feet and landed in the grass below.
When I went back inside, Emily was standing in the living room. Her silver pistol was cradled in both hands in the two-handed isosceles stance taught in beginning gun safety classes, and the barrel of the gun was pointed directly at my chest. She was wearing red silk pajamas with a pink rose pattern stitched up one leg and across one side of the unbuttoned blouse. The moment felt so implausible that I checked myself to be sure that I was awake and not having a dream about rampaging fashion models. If I’m honest about it, my sense of shock registered on several different levels at once. On one level I thought “She’s crazy like Fullmeyer said she was.” On another level I thought “I didn’t expect my life to end this way, but if it does have to end, this is a better way than some.” Almost as an afterthought, I wondered what the protocol is for reasoning with a gun-wielding psychopath. I assumed that keeping my words as simple as possible was the way to go.
I said “Everything’s okay, Emily. Just some seagulls fighting out on the deck. You should go back to bed.” I wondered if those were the last words I’d ever speak.
“I heard a commotion,” she said. Her speech was slurred. It sounded like she said “commosha.” Her eyes appeared to be focused on something behind me. She wasn’t looking at me as much as she was looking through me.
“I know. I heard it, too,” I said. “Just some damned seagulls, that’s all. It really is okay. Go back to sleep. Get some rest.”
She nodded her head dully and then lowered the gun. She was still for a moment, like a robot that had been turned off, and then she turned away from me and sleepwalked her way back to her room. She didn’t bother to close the door behind her, and I heard the bedsprings squeak when she got into her bed.
I’d be lying if I said that the memory of her standing in the living room wasn’t burned into my memory.
I went into my bedroom and put on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt, then made a cup of coffee and sat in the recliner. As I drank my coffee, the black outline of Three Arch Rocks gradually became a grey outline against the horizon, and songbirds began calling to each other in high, delicate notes. I heard the faint sounds of car engines and slamming car doors that accompany the arrival of the beachcombers in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill. Emily tossed and turned in her sleep, making her bed springs squeak. A solitary crow cawed several times nearby and then fell silent when there was no response from other crows.
I got up from the recliner and stood at the big picture window. I thought about Anthony Peck and Randall Burton and my parents, and wished I hadn’t taken my father’s gun that day, or wished that I’d stayed home that day and shot Burton when he came upstairs looking for my parents. I’d played the “what if” game with myself many times over the last twenty years. It isn’t a great way to start a day, because every time you play the game, reality reasserts itself and you’re still the loser. I considered putting my running clothes on and heading down to the beach. Intense physical exercise can be a powerful antidote for sadness.
I was putting my coffee cup in the sink when my cell phone buzzed with a text message. Cell service on the beach is non-existent, but I live high enough up the hill that the cell service works sporadically at my house. That morning it was working. Five minutes later it might not be. I reached over and picked up the phone.
The message was from Eric Fullmeyer.
Eric: You up?
Me: Yes
Eric: WTF?
Me: Could you be more specific?
Eric: Got a text last night that you swapped Sandy with Emily
Me: Yes. For a day or two
Eric: Really think Emily’s in danger?
Me: Yes. Can’t prove anything, but yes
Eric: Where is she?
Me: In the small bedroom of my house, asleep with her gun
Eric: Are you hoping someone will make a run at Sandy in Emily’s house?
Me: That’s the plan
Eric: Not a bad plan. Sandy can handle herself
Me: Sandy and Emily are friends now. Sandy wanted to do it. I thought it made sense, too
Eric: Next topic
Me: Okay
Eric: Heard anything from Eccles?
Me: He has me over a barrel and told me to leave Peck alone
Eric: Will you?
Me: I’ll try. Had a phone conversation with Peck. It wasn’t friendly
Eric: Did he threaten you?
Me: The threats were mutual. Two of Peck’s crew followed me and Sandy into a bar yesterday
Eric: And?
Me: I told them to leave us alone and they wouldn’t. It got physical. We walked out. They didn’t
Eric: Peck won’t like that. Time to get your go-bag and leave?
Me: Not yet. I need to see this through with Emily
Eric: I can take care of that. It’s my job
Me: I made her a promise. Not going to break it
Eric: Sigh
Eric: Call if you need backup
Me: Will do
By then the sun was brightening along the beach and hitting Three Arch Rocks, painting it with a lemony glow that I only see in the early morning. I weighed the relative merits of eating pancakes, going for a run, or going for a run and then eating pancakes. Eating pancakes won out over the other choices. I got a pan out from under the stove, buttered the inside of the pan, and got some pancake mix out of the cupboard. I poured some mix into a bowl, added water, got the whisk and spatula from the kitchen drawer, and then beat the mix until it was completely free of lumps. Then I turned on the burner under the pan, bided my time while the pan got hot, poured a single large portion of the mix into the pan, and set the rest of the batter aside until Emily got up. I flipped the pancake a few times while it cooked in the pan, and slid the pancake from the pan and onto a plate when it was a perfect golden brown. It’s harder to feel worried about death threats when you have a fresh pancake in front of you.
I put maple syrup on the pancake, made another cup of coffee, and took the pancake and coffee over to the two-person table in the nook by the big picture window. The bald eagle flew overhead on its way to the bird sanctuary. Meal time.
“The grim reaper is coming,” I said. “Time to fly.”
“Who are you talking to?” Emily asked.
She’d come out of her bedroom so quietly that I hadn’t heard her. She was wearing a pair of Sandy’s jeans and a red sweater with a white dress shirt collar showing at the neck. She’d combed her hair out and put on some of Sandy’s lipstick. She was still carrying the pistol, too, but it was pointed at the floor this time.
“I’m talking to myself,” I said. “That bald eagle is on its way out to the bird sanctuary to have breakfast.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Would you like some pancakes?” I asked. “There’s plenty of batter left.”
“Did I point my gun at you last night? I think that I did.”
“You were sleepwalking, but yes, you did aim your pistol at me,” I said.
“I took a sleeping pill. I’m not exactly sure what happened.”
“All is forgiven, Emily, but I’m pretty sure that’s right.”
“You were in your underwear, I think. White boxers,” she said.
“Right. It was like we had a sleepover that went haywire.”
She looked horrified. “I am so
sorry. And so embarrassed.”
I cut a chunk out of my pancake and put it in my mouth.
“Don’t be,” I said, talking around the food I was chewing. “I’ve done worse. I’ll make bigger mistakes than that before the day is over.”
“I hardly slept at all last night,” she said. “I think I’d only been out for an hour or two when I heard the noise. I thought I was in my own house when I got up and saw you coming inside.”
I took another bite of pancakes.
“Emily,” I said. “I’m going to make you a couple pancakes and a cup of coffee. Then we’re going to go down to the beach and walk on the sand.”
“Are you trying to be my therapist again?” she asked.
“Not at all. You have a reprieve from worry about being stalked. I’ve got a short grace period before things get very ugly for me and possibly for Sandy, too. Why not enjoy the day? If you want to spend the day inside, though, I’ll do that instead.”
She nodded slightly and said “Okay. Are your pancakes any good?”
“Tip top. I use a mix but the pancakes are excellent.”
“Then I accept your offer of breakfast and a carefree day.”
I went over to the countertop and got the bowl of pancake batter. I worked the batter with the whisk again to make sure there were no lumps in it. Sandy laid the silver pistol on the countertop.
“You really are a gentleman,” she said. “Like Sandy said you were.”
“In all but the most extenuating circumstances,” I said.
“I’m sorry we teased you so much last night,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I can take it.”
She leaned against the countertop near where I was cooking. She had her backside against the cabinets and her arms crossed over her chest. The force of her presence was palpable even when I wasn’t looking at her. It felt like there was something coming off of her that was impossible for me to ignore.
She watched me pouring batter into the pan, and then she said “Hey.”
I looked up from the pan.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”
“You’re doing something nice for me, too,” I said. “Usually cooking pancakes is a lonely job for me.”
She gave me a chuck on the shoulder with her fist.
“You can’t take a compliment, can you? What would Doctor Phil say about that?”
“As I mentioned before, I am the most humble person I know.”
“Sandy also said you were full of crap. It seems like she’s right.”
I smiled. “I doubt that she used the word ‘crap,’ Emily. Probably something much stronger than that. Your pancakes are ready. Prepare to be astonished.”