Magic, Machines and the Awakening of Danny Searle

by John McWilliams

  “I could live without my satellite radio,” José replied over the engine noise. “But next I bet you’re going to tell me there’s no Santa Claus.”

  “No, I’m not, because here he comes now.”

  Owen stepped out of the garage bay as I shifted into first.

  “Have fun you two,” José said. “And remember, Santa’s watching.”

  I popped the clutch and the front wheel hopped as we sped out onto Montauk Highway.

  “Where we heading?” Danny asked, wrapping her arms around me and holding on tight.

  “East.”

  ****

  An hour and a half later, after stopping at the Seaside Grill in Amagansett for lunch, we pulled into the nearly empty parking area below the Montauk Point Lighthouse. It was cooler out here on the island’s easternmost tip, the ocean breeze sweeping away most of the late October sun’s warmth.

  We locked the bike and hiked up to the lighthouse, then along the southern bluff where, thirty feet or so above the beach, we sat down on a narrow rock ledge.

  I pointed at a fishing trawler on the horizon.

  Danny nodded.

  “So, David’s coming out this weekend…?” I asked. I had to ask. I needed to know how she felt about it.

  “I didn’t invite him. Your dad did.”

  “Actually, it sounds like he invited himself—again.” I tossed a stone off the ledge. Waves crashed along the beach. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s complicated.” She brought her knees up, rubbing them for warmth.

  “Well, complicated’s my specialty.”

  “It’s just that David can be kind of smothering. I don’t want to hurt him or anything, but…”

  “But what?”

  “His therapist says I should give him more time.”

  “Time for what? Wait, hold on, David has a therapist?”

  “She’s more like a business advisor. But she is a therapist. She, Dr. Susan Saito, helps him with his personal and business decisions. She’s the one who recommended that he allow me to move to the island.”

  “Allow you?”

  “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that she recommended he not make a fuss. You know, for the sake of our relationship.”

  “You two have a relationship?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “So you’re telling me that you and David are seeing a ‘friend counselor’?”

  “I never thought of it like that, but I guess so.”

  “They really do do things differently on the west coast.”

  “We—he—doesn’t live on the west coast. And is it really that weird?”

  “Actually… yes, it’s pretty weird.”

  “Well, then I guess I’m weird.” Danny tossed a stone off the cliff.

  “You’re not the one who’s weird. David’s the weird one. The man’s a stalker.”

  “No he’s not.” She laughed. “Once you get to know him, you’ll see. He’s a pretty good guy. Your dad likes him.”

  “Of course he does. My dad likes money.”

  Danny shook her head.

  A minute or two passed as we listened to the thunder of waves, shifted our butts on the cold hard ledge, and tossed a few stones off the cliff.

  “See those ridges over there in the sand?” Danny pointed west along the beach. “They look like whale bones, don’t they? Isn’t it cool how sand can form artwork like that?”

  “That’s emergence,” I said.

  “I know.” She swatted my knee. “I pay attention. Your dad said that even the wetness of water is emergent. Wetness, he said, only emerges once enough water molecules come together for their individual behavior to form an upper-level behavior that we can perceive—like a school of fish.”

  “It’s because of their weak hydrogen bonds,” I said. “The water molecules, not the fish.”

  “Water molecules by themselves aren’t wet. Individually, they possess no quality of wetness.” Danny’s eyes filled with fascination. “Wetness is an illusion, an illusion that lets us predict the behavior of a lot of water molecules. I think that’s cool. It’s as if even the tiniest bits of the world are putting on a magic show that allows us to exist.”

  “What else did you and my dad talk about?” A cool breath of air washed over us.

  “All sorts of things—why?”

  “I like hearing your take on things.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “Sometimes I think your dad thinks I’m crazy. Actually, sometimes I think I’m crazy, too.”

  I laughed, casually putting my arm around her as she leaned toward me.

  We sat there for a minute, staring out at the ocean.

  “Tyler?” she said. “I think my butt’s frozen to this rock.”

  “Mine too.”

  We stood and, hands in our pockets, seagulls screeching overhead, we followed the weed-strewn trail down to the beach.

  “How did you and David meet, by the way?” I asked when we reach the sand.

  “Do you really want to talk about him?”

  “No, but since I don’t know a thing about your past, I’m just looking for a place to start.”

  “Well,” she peered out at the horizon, her eyes the pastel blue of the ocean, “it isn’t much of a story. I met him while waitressing near a theater where he was doing one of his productions. He asked me to come in for an audition and, not long after that, we started dating. It didn’t work out, but we remained good friends. And then, just a few weeks ago, I moved out here.” She seemed pleased with herself, brushing her hair out of her eyes, looking a little like Jasmine after having recited a story about unicorns.

  “You were right. That isn’t much of a story. You two met in Las Vegas?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father says you’re originally from Ohio.”

  “Oak Hills, Ohio. It’s just a small town. My parents still live there.”

  “How was that—growing up?”

  “Normal. Nice. But normal.” She kicked the sand.

  “And now you’re living at your aunt’s house in Port Jefferson?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay… So, how did you get so good at magic?”

  “I just have an aptitude for it—or at least that’s what David tells me.” She took her hands out of her pockets. “Magical fingers—oh, look.” She picked up a piece of polished quartz. “A memento.”

  She placed the stone in my hand and, for a moment, I warmed her fingers.

  She was hiding something. Something I just knew had to do with David. But what?

  We continued our trek along the beach, me asking questions, she evading them. Eventually, we turned back.

  When we reached the rocky ledge where we had been sitting earlier, we paused. The fishing trawler appeared to be in the exact same spot, the waves were still pounding the shore, and, as the wind tousled Danny’s auburn hair, I felt conflicted.

  I wanted to kiss her, but I kept wondering what she was hiding. Something about David. Something about her past. Something. In a way, she now seemed more unfamiliar to me than ever.

  “We should probably start heading home,” I said.

  “You’re probably right,” Danny replied solemnly.

  With minimal conversation, we returned to the parking lot, got back on the bike, and sped out onto Montauk Highway, my suspicious mind racing alongside. Is Danny just using me to make David jealous? Is she trying to get him to commit to marriage? No, no, that made no sense. He’d marry her tomorrow, I bet. So what was this all about?

  My thoughts degenerated further. I imagined Danny and David out in Las Vegas, the two of them onstage: Danny in glittery spandex, climbing into a black box; David closing the lid. A few magical words and, poof, the box collapses and the pretty girl is gone—

  Gone until she meets him later in their hotel room.

  I downshifted into third and flew past a string of cars. I leaned into a tight turn and came out hitting the open highway doing
ninety.

  Forty-three minutes later, we screamed into an open bay at Zak’s Garage. I killed the engine and held the brake a moment, letting the world catch up.

  Danny climbed off, removed her helmet and leaned unsteadily against José’s refrigerator-sized toolbox. She ran a hand through her hair. Her cheeks were lobster red.

  José and Owen came over. They looked at her. They looked at me.

  I removed my gloves and stretched my fingers.

  “Well,” I said. “We did make pretty good time.”

  9

  When Saturday arrived, I parked my van next to my father’s Jeep Cherokee just as Danny’s Camry pulled in.

  “Good morning,” I said, climbing out. “Where’s David?”

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t talking to me.” She shut her door and came around to my side of the car. She was wearing a black jacket over a blue Sag Harbor sweatshirt, the sweatshirt really bringing out the blueness of her eyes.

  “Me? I was working on the Prometheus project.” I glanced up at the Turret.

  That’s where I had spent all of the previous day, the day after our bike trip. I did have mounds of documents to sift through and tons of preliminary notes to organize, but, honestly, the only thing I could think about was Danny and how elusive she had been out at Montauk Point. Yes, I was avoiding her. And, in a way, maybe I was punishing her. Although, I suppose, it was me who was locked away in the tower.

  “Well,” Danny said, giving me a little push, “you could have at least taken a break to say hi.”

  “Sorry. I should have. I wasn’t getting anywhere, anyway. So, where’s David?”

  Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe he’s giving up. Maybe his plane crashed.

  “He’s taking a limo. He didn’t want me to have to deal with the traffic.”

  “Thoughtful.”

  ****

  A half hour later, I was pulling my foot out of the suctioning mud down by the dock, my neoprene boots full of icy bay water. Having just finished tying off the Hobie 16 at the end of its roller ramp, I was about to check the lines on the 18.

  “Can we help?” Danny asked. She and Ishana were approaching from the house. Danny was wearing my mother’s navy blue wetsuit, a white stripe running down its sides; Ishana, a red and black Farmer Jane. Everyone looks good in a wetsuit, I mused. Well, almost everyone. I glanced at my father, Captain Nemo over there in his half-zipped, all-black wetsuit, clearing away cattails from the roller ramps.

  “Not unless you happen to have a replacement trapeze wire for a Hobie 16,” my father told Danny. He shielded his eyes and looked up toward the house. “Good morning,” he called out.

  “Good morning,” David replied, sauntering down the back lawn, dressed in a navy blue button-down shirt and chinos.

  “Normal clothes?” Ishana asked.

  “You didn’t expect me to be wearing a suit, did you?” David gave Danny a hug before stepping back to take her in. “That’s a good look for you.” He glanced from Danny to Ishana and then over at my father and me as we approached from the water. “You all look like you’re in a James Bond movie,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” my father said as he shook David’s hand, “there’s a part in this movie for you, too. Ish, can you take David up to the house so he can put on his costume?”

  “Aren’t you cold?” Danny tugged on David’s shirtsleeve.

  “I’m fine. It’s gorgeous out.”

  “What’s with you guys and the cold?” Danny said.

  I shook David’s hand, but before I could get a word in, Ishana dragged him up to the house, like an ill-prepared child from a playground.

  “What’s Levinson-Cooper Industrial Park?” I asked Danny, referring to the logo on David’s shirt. The writing had been in a western-style font and had had a city skyline and mountains behind it.

  “One of his family’s real estate ventures. That one’s in Denver, I think.” She stepped to my right so I was blocking the wind. “His family has a lot of real estate ventures like that.”

  “Hence all the money,” I said.

  “Some would say you’re doing all right, too.” Danny glanced back at my father’s gold Castle.

  “That’s not mine. None of this is mine.”

  “And David would say the same thing about his parents’ money. He even refused to go into the real estate business because he wanted to make it on his own.”

  “And he didn’t use any of their money?”

  “Nothing he didn’t pay back. Of course, now both he and his family have so much, I’m not sure it matters anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just seems like they can do whatever they want. They invest in things and do a lot of philanthropic work, but money just isn’t a concern.”

  “Does David have any siblings?”

  “No, it’s just him.”

  “Does he know how to sail?”

  “Yes—or at least I’m pretty sure he does. I’ve seen pictures of him on sailboats when he lived in Spain.”

  “Spain?”

  “His parents sent him abroad as a kid. David had kind of an unusual childhood.”

  “Join the club,” I muttered. “And what about you? Oh, that’s right: you had a ‘normal’ childhood.”

  “You’re making fun of me?” She squinted, adjusting her hair tie. “Sorry I wasn’t involved in brain-altering experiments or sent off to foreign countries.”

  “All right, but did you—oh, I don’t know—did you go to your prom?”

  My father interrupted, needing my help with the Hobie 18’s rigging.

  As I started away, I realized I now knew more about David than I knew about her. But, if she was willing to talk about him, I wondered, maybe he’d be willing to talk about her. It was worth a try.

  David and Ishana returned from the house. David, in my old black wetsuit, looked like a Navy SEAL—making me, in my flawless-gray wetsuit, look like a stand-in for Flipper.

  My father suggested that David and I take the Hobie 18 out, while he, Ishana, and Danny take the 16. “Ishana prefers to keep both hulls in the water,” he explained, “and since this is Danny’s first time out, she’s probably better off on the slow boat.”

  “We don’t go slow,” Ishana complained.

  “It’s all relative,” my father assured her.

  “Tyler, shall we?” David asked.

  I looked up the mast of the 18, wind whirring through its cables. Well, at least this’ll give me an opportunity to ask him about Danny.

  David insisted on taking the helm as we headed out close-hauled in a northwesterly direction. Cutting through the shallow swells, he told me about his parents’ 129-foot gaff-rigged schooner—which apparently sleeps thirty-six. He then went on about his car collection. He claimed he only bought them in pairs: one for storage, one for play. I tried to sound impressed.

  Back on shore, I could see that my father, Ishana, and Danny were just getting started.

  “All right,” David said. “Let’s see about tacking this thing.”

  I crawled across the trampoline to handle the jib while David turned us into the wind. He did this sluggishly, however, and we ended up stalled, with our mainsail flapping in the breeze.

  “Nice move, Captain,” I said.

  “I didn’t expect our speed to fall off so fast.”

  “Just put us back on course, would you?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Our next attempt went much more smoothly and soon we were hooked into the 18’s trapeze wires, using the power of the mainsail to lift our hull out of the water. At least David’s a fast learner, I noted. Through the stinging spray, I could see my father’s red and white sail.

  “They’re on an intercept course,” David said.

  “I see that.” I looked back at him. “You know, if you keep driving the bow under like that you’re going to flip us.”

  “I know—I’ve got it.”

  “How did you and Danny meet, by the wa
y?”

  “How did we meet?”

  “Yes, how did you meet?

  “You’re asking me that now? Tyler, look, I know you’re interested in Danny, but… it’s just not a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me. Her life is complicated.” He wiped his tanned brow with his forearm.

  “Can you at least answer the question? How did you two meet?”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Not much. Apparently it’s a secret.”

  “We met at a workshop for stage performance and showmanship.”

  “Not at where she was waitressing?”

  “Fine—a restaurant near the workshop.” He looked at me, his hair plastered back by the sea spray. “Does it really matter?”

  “Not really, but—” The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air, plunging into the bay.

  Breaking the surface, I gasped, taking in a lungful of icy air. I saw David’s head bobbing above the waves. He spotted me and laughed.

  Wonderful. This lunatic has my father’s sense of humor.

  “You okay?” His smile waned. “Sorry about that.”

  “I bet you are. From now on, I’m driving.”

  My father, Danny and Ishana sailed up as David and I righted our boat. Danny was at the tiller, though at the last minute my father took the controls and backed the main before they plowed into us.

  “Have a nice trip?” my father teased as we climbed out of the water and tumbled onto our drenched trampoline. He cast us a line.

  “Aiden told us you were going to catapult,” Danny said. “And you did.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Talk to El Capitán over there. He was at the helm.”

  “As if you’re not as crazy as him. What about that motorcycle ride?”

  “We didn’t crash, did we?”

  “What motorcycle ride?” David asked.

  “Tyler took me for a ride on his bike. I’m pretty sure I told you about it.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t. You went on the back of a motorcycle?” David shook his head in dismay. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? I hope you at least wore a helmet.”