Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  Romantics constantly go on and on about their one true soul mate but Mel had learned that there was no such thing. She had had four soul mates, and she was sure there must be others out there just waiting to be found.

  That being true, and she knew in her heart that it was, it was odd that after all this time it was still J.T. she dreamed of at night.

  Chapter 8

  hey had dinner down at the Oyster Bar and then drove back along Blackbeard’s Wynd through the middle of the maritime forest. Moonlight fell between the arching branches of the live oaks. It lay in silvery pools along the road and washed across thickets of red bay and wax myrtle. Here and there they passed a large house, set back in the trees with its windows twinkling in the darkness. There were no streetlamps or neon lights, and other than the moonlight, the stars, and the patches of light that fell from the occasional house they passed, the road was dark.

  “It’s kind of spooky,” Annie said. She was sitting beside Sara in the rear seat, facing backward. Mel was driving and Lola sat beside her, humming a little song under her breath.

  “Can you see where you’re going?” Sara asked Mel.

  “Barely.” The headlights of the golf cart did little to illuminate the road in front of them.

  “Maybe you should slow down then.”

  “Maybe you should drive,” Mel said. She relaxed against the seat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting in her lap. It was almost like flying, she decided, whirring along in the quiet darkness with the night breeze on her face. This is how an owl must feel gliding above a moonlit field.

  “Is that a fox?” Annie asked, pointing, and they slowed down to look.

  It was a fox, a slight, fragile-looking creature the size of a miniature collie staring back at them from the shadows of the forest. It disappeared without a sound in the underbrush. Mel clamped her foot down on the pedal and they sped on, past the old lighthouse standing in a moonlit clearing, past the small cedar-shingled post office and the interdenominational church with its white steeple and tall arched windows reflecting the moonlight.

  “What do y’all say we go back to the house and play a game of Clinker?” Mel asked.

  “I’m not up for any drinking games tonight,” Sara said.

  “Me either,” Annie said.

  Lola raised her hand like she was answering a question in class. “I’ll play,” she said.

  “You’re on vacation,” Mel said to Sara. “Live a little.”

  “I’m not sure my liver can take a week with you.”

  “Oh come on, Sprague, never underestimate your capacity for binge drinking.”

  “I’m not Sprague anymore.”

  Mel stared at her in the rearview mirror. “No, you’re not.”

  They broke from beneath the arching trees. To their left, the wide flat marsh glimmered in the moonlight. To their right, a series of distant dunes covered in sea oats stretched to the sea.

  “Take a right at the next corner,” Lola said. “It’ll take us to the seaside road.”

  Lola’s house was beautiful in the moonlight, perched across a wide dune with the light from the tall windows spilling across the sand. Captain Mike and April had not yet returned. Mel pulled the golf cart carefully into the two-cart garage beneath the crofter and plugged the electrical cord into the wall. They walked up the steps to the boardwalk. Ahead of them, beyond the sea oat–covered dunes, the white-capped Atlantic slumbered in the moonlight.

  “Look at that view,” Sara said. They stood for a moment, quietly watching, and then walked across the veranda into the house.

  While the others went upstairs to put on their jammies, Mel made a carafe of espresso martinis. Regardless of what they had said earlier, Mel was confident in her bartending abilities. If you make them, they will drink. She poured herself a glass and then sat down at the bar to wait. A few minutes later Lola came out of the bedroom wearing a pair of blue silk pajamas. She crossed to the armoire, took out a couple of decks of playing cards, and set them down on the glass coffee table.

  “Here you are, my darling,” Mel said, handing her a martini.

  Lola took the glass and sipped carefully. “Yummy,” she said.

  When Sara came down a short time later, she noticed the carafe of martinis on the bar and said flatly, “I told you I’m not drinking. My liver’s still compromised from last night.”

  “We’re on vacation,” Mel said. “You have to drink.”

  “We’re not kids anymore, Mel. You can’t tell me what to do. You can’t make me do things I don’t want to do.”

  Mel responded with a derogatory snort. She knew she was bossy and self-absorbed. She’d been told she was enough times in her life: by her father, by her college roommates, by her successive lovers and husbands, by her friends in New York. But they all forgave her for it, because she was entertaining. Mel knew how to tell a good story.

  “I’ll have April make us up some wheatgrass shakes with milk thistle,” Lola said, as if that settled everything, “and then you don’t have to worry about your liver.”

  Annie, who’d just come in, said, “As delicious as that sounds, Lola, I think I’ll pass.”

  Lola raised one delicate eyebrow. “We could take some zeolites,” she said.

  Mel said, “Zeolites?”

  “Crystals,” Lola said. “Volcanic crystals that take the toxins out of your body.” She reached up into a cabinet and took out a large plastic bottle. “All the Hollywood stars take them,” she said, holding the bottle out to Annie.

  Annie sighed and looked at Sara. “Oh, all right,” she said.

  “That settles it then.” Mel poured two more fresh glasses and handed them around. “Here,” she said. “Drink your toxins.”

  After a couple of hands of Clinker they were feeling pretty festive. All thoughts of an early bedtime disappeared soon after Mel shuffled the deck and poured the second round of martinis. It was her turn again so she dealt the cards facedown to everyone. “One-two-three,” she said and everyone flipped over a card. Mel turned over a four of hearts and Annie turned over a four of clubs. “Clinker!” Mel shouted and slapped her hand down on the table.

  “Damn,” Annie said.

  “You lose,” Mel said. “Drink up.”

  Annie sipped her martini. She wasn’t drunk—she knew enough to pace herself—but she was pleasantly buzzed. She had once written a college paper on the Mazatec people in Mexico and their use of the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms in religious rituals. And while alcoholic beverages didn’t usually qualify as “hallucinogens,” the way Mel mixed them did. She knew from experience that Mel’s concoctions could make you forget yourself. They could make you do things you’d regret later.

  “No fair,” she said to Mel. “You’ve lived in New York too long. You talk faster than the rest of us.”

  “You mean I think faster than the rest of you.”

  Sara shuffled the cards. “You react better under the influence of alcohol than the rest of us,” she said. “Gee, I wonder why.”

  “I can’t help it if I can hold my liquor and you can’t,” Mel said, tossing a peanut at Sara. The next round went on for several minutes until Lola and Annie both turned over Jacks.

  “Clinker!” Annie shouted, slapping the table.

  Lola giggled. “I’m supposed to say something, aren’t I?” she said, and downed her martini.

  “That’s right, Lola, you’re supposed to say Clinker. Before Annie does. And slap the table.”

  “I just hope I don’t go home from this trip an alcoholic,” Annie said, grimacing and gathering up the cards.

  “Oh, come on,” Mel said. “How often do you drink at home?”

  “Hardly at all. Well, I mean we might have a glass of wine if Mitchell and I go out to dinner. And he drinks beer, of course, but I don’t like the taste of it.”

  “See? You’re not going to become an alcoholic just by drinking to excess once every twenty years.”

  “We only drink on the
weekends,” Sara said. “And then it’s only wine or beer. No hard liquor.”

  “Bully for you,” Mel said.

  “Isn’t anyone going to ask me how often I drink?” Lola asked. Annie stopped dealing and everyone waited patiently for Lola to continue. “Every day,” she said. “We have cocktails on the patio by the pool and Briggs tells me all about his day, how many deals he closed, how much money he made, what he shot on the golf course.”

  No one said anything. Annie went back to dealing.

  Sara lost the next round. “This is getting pretty boring,” she said, draining her martini.

  Mel poured her another one. “We can play something else,” she said.

  “You’re so competitive,” Sara said. “Why don’t we just relax and sip our drinks and watch TV?”

  “Chug the Jug?” Mel said. “Polish Poker?”

  “Didn’t we use to play Polish Poker in college?” Annie asked.

  “Shit-faced Driver?” Mel said. “Suck and Roll? You Blink You Drink?”

  “It says a lot about you that you still remember those games,” Sara said.

  “Hey, Annie, remember that party senior year at Whitey Fogo’s? The one where you and Mitchell had broken up and you came with Mule Gebhardt and got so drunk?”

  “I never broke up with Mitchell.”

  “Really?”

  “I never dated Mule Gebhardt.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Okay. Once.”

  Lola giggled. “I remember Mule,” she said. “He was sweet.”

  “I think you’re remembering someone else,” Sara said. “Mule was anything but sweet.”

  Lola frowned slightly and cocked her head like a small, bright-eyed bird. “Why did they call him that?” she asked, gathering up her cards. “Mule wasn’t his real name, was it?”

  “The other guys on the football team gave him that nickname,” Mel said. “It’s because his pecker hung down like a mule’s. They also used to call him Donkey Dick.”

  Lola’s eyes grew round. She put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, my,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be painful?”

  Mel grinned. “You mean for his girlfriend?”

  “Only if it was true,” Sara said.

  “Well, Annie, was it?”

  “Shut up, Mel.” She had lied when she said she didn’t remember that night. She remembered it clearly, right up to the moment she had let Mule take off her T-shirt. She had wished then that Paul could see her, that he might be watching jealously from some dark corner of the room. But then she had seen the bulge in Mule’s jeans and she had known she couldn’t go through with it no matter how badly she wanted to get back at Paul Ballard.

  “You were so drunk you got up on a table and sang the school fight song.”

  “I don’t remember,” Annie said.

  “What were we drinking that night?” Sara asked.

  “Tequila,” Mel said.

  “Oh, yeah. That rotgut stuff that Whitey brought back from Mexico with the grub in the bottom.”

  “And Annie got the worm,” Mel said.

  “I don’t remember,” Annie said.

  “Those were some wild times.”

  “I guess,” Annie said.

  Mel gave her a wary look. She leaned over to pour her another drink. “What happened to you senior year? You kind of went crazy there for a while.”

  Annie held her drink up to the light like she was examining a precious stone. “Wild oats,” she said. “I was sowing them. Right before I settled down to being a good wife and mother, and a God-fearing Republican.”

  Chapter 9

  hree days after they met him at the bonfire, J.T. called and asked Mel out. Sara had been expecting this—she had steeled herself to accept it—but when the call came she found herself unable to stay in the room with Mel. She took her backpack and went downstairs to the quad. It was a cool evening in early October and the maples along the edges of the lawn shimmered like firelight. Students sat in groups around the quad, clustered beneath tall streetlamps, talking quietly. Here and there a cigarette glowed in the darkness.

  Sara had come down with the idea of studying but now that she was here she didn’t even bother to open her backpack. She walked to the shadows at the edge of the quad and sat down on an empty bench, listening as someone strummed a guitar and began to sing softly “Fire and Rain.” James Taylor suited her mood. She put her head back and stared at the stars, listening.

  She had seen him twice on campus but he hadn’t seen her. She’d made sure of that, ducking behind a laurel bush, lurking in the doorway of the science building until he passed. Both times she had felt cowardly, ashamed, but she couldn’t face him. Not yet anyway Not while there was a chance that she might stammer or sweat profusely or knock something over. She needed time to work on her routine of cool detachment. She practiced in front of the mirror in their room when Mel was out. Don’t I know you? she would say, waving one hand airily in front of her face and making her expression vague. You look familiar to me. What was your name again?

  Across the quad the guitarist had moved on to “Bartender’s Blues.” Sara sighed and put her feet up on the bench, wrapping her arms around her knees. Mel would be excited about the date. She’d only mentioned him a couple of times since the bonfire but both times a delicate flush had appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes had shone with a subtle light. Sara guessed that he probably had that effect on a lot of women. She had hoped that despite what he had said that night on the beach he was already committed to someone else. That he had a girlfriend. That way she and Mel could pine together. They could form a sisterhood of unrequited love. She had hoped it was true, and yet deep in her heart she had known it was not. She had known he would call and it would be Mel he asked for.

  And she, of course, would have to be happy for Mel. That’s what good friends did. They supported one another no matter what the cost. No matter how painful.

  She lay down on the bench with her hands behind her head, gazing up at the stars. The evening air was sharp and smelled of dead leaves and wet grass. Pegasus stared down at her and above him Perseus shone in all his splendor. When they were girls she and Mel had learned the names of all the constellations. They had checked out books from the library and took turns spending the night in each other’s backyards, spraying themselves with insect repellent and huddling in lawn chairs while all around them fireflies glowed and shooting stars streaked across the sky.

  Sara looked up at Pegasus and tried not to think about Mel laughing and talking on the phone with J.T. All around the quad, dormitories towered against the evening sky, their windows making little cheerful squares of light. She thought, It could have been me he called. She tried to imagine what that might feel like. She tried to imagine him coming toward her in the darkness, crossing the quad with long, purposeful strides. Heathcliff striding across the moors toward Cathy. Darcy searching in the moonlight for Elizabeth Bennet. Fuck. I read too much, she thought.

  She stood up suddenly, hoisting her backpack across one shoulder, and began to walk swiftly around the perimeter of the quad. The guitarist had stopped playing. He was loading his guitar into a case as she walked past, her backpack thumping against her hip. A couple of Goth kids dressed like Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious came toward her, holding hands in the darkness. She thought, I don’t care if I ever see him again. She thought, He means nothing to me.

  “Hey,” someone said behind her. She kept walking, her legs trembling as if she had run a marathon. Her breath fogged the air around her face. The moon, shrouded in clouds, rose above the turrets of Amsterdam Hall.

  “Hey!” The voice was louder, more insistent. She stopped walking and swung around.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

  He stepped forward into the light. “Sorry,” he said, as if he found her expression amusing. “Sorry to disappoint you.” He was dressed in a corduroy jacket and a pair of ragged jeans, his hair shaggy around his ears.

  “I’m not
disappointed,” she said without thinking, and her face flared with heat. She put her head down and began to walk again.

  He fell into step beside her. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. I’m just walking.”

  “I called your roommate.”

  “I know.”

  “We have a date Friday night.”

  “Cool.”

  “She said for me to come over. She said you were watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  “Well, if she said that then I guess we are.”

  They walked for a while in silence until they came to the front of Nordan Hall. He brushed her arm lightly as they went up the steps, her backpack bumping against her hip. He opened the double doors and she stepped inside, blinking for a moment under the fluorescent lights. Her face was numb from the cold. She signed him in at the front desk and they walked down the narrow corridor and stood waiting together for the elevator. He was even better-looking than she remembered, tall and broad-chested. She stood looking at her reflection in the elevator doors, trying to remember if she had put on any lipstick.

  “I like your hair,” he said. “It’s curly.”