East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  “I think you’re worrying over nothing,” Blue said.

  Over nothing.

  She knew Blue didn’t mean it like that. At least not consciously. But how could she explain to them how essential Henry was to her, even in his condition? How could she make them see that he still gave her so much when the notion of love was consigned to what a person could do rather than just the fact of them being there and always there and never stopping. The times when she would climb into Henry’s bed, feel his heart thump against her own, nestle her face into the comforting sleep-smell of his neck, were the only times she was ever truly at peace, the only times her breathing settled and the fears retreated and everything in her stilled.

  He was still the love of her life, her whole world. If anything happened to Henry, she wouldn’t survive it.

  MAYA

  In the restaurant parking lot, Maya strapped on Andy’s helmet, the breeze off the water blowing warm and gentle as a whisper.

  “Where to, ma’am?” he asked, wearing that same boyish grin he had when he first spotted her in the bar.

  “Take me to the place your dog loved most in the world,” she said.

  “You really want to go to Tucson?”

  She gave him a look.

  “I’m serious, he loved it there. He was smitten with a labradoodle named Bernice. Wouldn’t look at me for a week after we left.”

  “Maybe the place he loved second best...”

  “That would probably be my neighbor’s pool. Which is why they put a big lock on the gate.” He climbed onto the bike.

  Maya got on behind him and pressed herself into the strength of his back, feeling a sense of deep relief in the touch, like stepping into a hot shower after getting caught in bad weather. “Take me to the pool,” she said. “I know how to break a lock.”

  He laughed and revved the motor and flipped up the kickstand with a practiced flick of his boot. Soon they were launching onto the unlit road toward town, roaring past the moonlit gleam of the bay, faster and faster, as if they were winged.

  “Woo-hoo!” Maya yelled into the night. Glorious and wild and set free. This was what mattered. Not bills, not loans, but soaring, but life. The ephemeral lust to touch something bigger, to merge with it. The wind moved through her, ignited her. She was a sparkler. She was the Fourth of July. She was bursting out of herself in the same way she’d felt the first time she had sex, bungee jumped, stole her parents’ car before she had her license, moments that felt lifted from life, in defiance of suffering. At sixty miles an hour in open wind, the boundary of her body disappeared. She was air and night and speed, vast as the universe, lit up as the stars.

  “Do a wheelie!” she called over the roar, though she wasn’t sure he had heard her. She laughed to herself imagining Hannah’s horrified face if she could see her now.

  Andy pulled onto a side street near town, the bike slowing to idle, the ride over and yet somehow still happening inside her. He parked in front of a modern A-frame house, the sudden quiet like a dive under a wave, and led her by the hand into the backyard. There a floodlit pool glowed in the dark as if a small corner of blue sky had been carved into the lawn.

  “All right, Houdini, let’s see your skills,” he said as they reached the gate.

  Maya tried the lock, considered her options and then simply scaled the fence like a criminal.

  “Resourceful,” Andy said, laughing, as he followed. “I like that.” He walked up to her, stood so close she could feel the heat coming off his body, feel the charge between them in that one inch of space. He smiled down on her, adoringly, the way one might smile at a puppy, with gentleness and generosity and forgiveness for anything she might ever do, and something softened and yielded deep within her as if all she’d ever wanted was to be forgiven. For what, she didn’t know. His hands found her hips, his fingers grazing them gently as he drank her in, and then he leaned down and kissed her. He smelled like mint gum and beer, his chest earth solid against hers, and she became all body, no thoughts, only bliss and wanting as he led her down onto a lounge chair.

  She opened her eyes.

  They gazed at each other.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said, goofy and sweet. As tough as he looked, there was something deeply vulnerable and unguarded about him, like a little boy sleeping. Her heart tugged, a sudden rush of tenderness unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  She pressed her hands against his shoulders, nudging him off. He was a quick summer hookup, nothing more. “What if your dog is watching?” She pointed to his jacket pocket where the small box of ashes was jutting out.

  He rolled over with a sigh and lay on his back beside her. “That’s okay. He’s seen a lot more action than this.” He flipped his jacket over, covered the container. “There. Privacy.”

  She laughed. “Much better.” The dizziness she’d felt as he kissed her lingered.

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “Do you think he’s, like, around you somewhere?”

  “Indy? Well...he’s not coming when I call his name, so...”

  She smacked his arm. “You know what I mean. Do you think there’s just nothing left of the barking and running around and happiness to see you?”

  She searched his face. A strange sense of urgency was grinding inside her. Lately she was too aware of the tenuousness of everything. She couldn’t stand the idea that nothing lasted.

  She thought of her friends, of that night, lost in that dark neighborhood. The obliteration of light. She pushed it away.

  “I don’t know,” Andy said. “I hope not. I hope I’ll see him again someday. In heaven or wherever. He was a great brother.”

  She sighed. A stillness settled over them as they gazed into the black expanse above, the crowd of tiny stars, the mottled moon suspended in the sky as if someone had batted it there. A particular kind of ache settled in her chest, something about the beauty and sadness of existence being so inextricably bound. “I’m not a God person,” she said. “I think we die and that’s it. There’s nothing.”

  “That’s grim.”

  She turned to him. “Is it?” It was. But. “Maybe it just makes this life more important.”

  Their eyes caught. She felt something like love. Though she knew it couldn’t be. She turned back to the sky.

  “I have this theory,” she said, “that your degree of faith is based on your prebirth relationship with your mother.”

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “That’s our first experience of another being, right? In the womb. A presence that can be felt but not seen—one that is hopefully, but not necessarily, protective and benevolent. And that’s when our brain starts developing, so...”

  “Right...”

  “Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got.”

  “Wait. That’s your whole theory?” He laughed.

  She laughed too. “Just that maybe you either learn to trust in something bigger than you early on...or you don’t.”

  He frowned, considering.

  “Look, I’m not saying it holds up, but it certainly would explain my lack of faith.”

  “I mean, but even by your example, doesn’t the womb just prove the limits of our perspective? I’m sure when we were in it—which is really weird by the way—I’m sure we thought that that was all there was. We had no idea there was this whole universe out here.” He gestured toward the pool, the house behind them, the trees shivering lightly in the breeze.

  “My friend Hannah thinks that when you die, your soul merges with those of everyone you’ve ever loved. Like you know how sometimes when you hug someone you’re in love with you feel like you can’t get close enough, you want to crawl up inside them? She thinks death is like one giant soul hug. Like our bodies are the prison and death is the freedom.” She paused, thinking about Henry. “Anyway... I’m not actually sur
e she still believes that.” She needed to stop thinking about sad things.

  “I hope it’s something good,” he said. “I’m sort of afraid of death. Or at least of dying in a gruesome way. You?”

  “Not at all. Don’t intend to ever do it.”

  “Good plan,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her, and then his weight was on top of her and his weight was the certainty, the salve against all the instability in her life and the strange feeling she’d been having of being too light and loosely tied, made of dandelion feathers. He squeezed her and she wanted to say “Don’t let go,” wanted to glue herself to him so she wouldn’t float away on a breeze. She suddenly understood what Hannah meant about souls hugging.

  “I could lie out here forever,” he said.

  “Wait, how long have we been here?” She thought of her friends back at the restaurant, imagined them as she hoped they’d be, halfway through dinner in their lobster bibs, laughing and talking as they cracked claws, dipping their mini forks in butter, all of their differences set aside.

  He looked at his watch. “About forty-five minutes.”

  “We should probably get back.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “Okay. Off we go.”

  “Back on the road.”

  “It was fun while it lasted.”

  “Yep, we should do this again sometime.”

  Finally, Maya sat up, looked around at the manicured lawn, the white lights strung like musical notes across the patio, the glowing ripples of the pool reflected on the house. “It’s pretty here. I can see why Indy liked it.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said, though he was looking at her and not the surroundings.

  “We should get married here.”

  “Indy would’ve loved that. He was a romantic at heart.”

  “You think the homeowners would mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we won’t invite them,” she said.

  He smiled, and she was surprised to find that she could picture it all. She had never actually thought about marriage. She’d only been teasing. And yet. When she’d said it out loud it made sense. There was just something about him...she didn’t know what.

  She’d had too much to drink, that’s what, she decided.

  Still, it was sort of fun to think about.

  “A fall wedding, I think. Small. Twenty people or so. I don’t want anything fancy. But I want a pretty dress. I want to be the prettiest girl you ever saw.”

  “You already are.”

  “So you’ll marry me, then?”

  “Of course,” he said, and he said it just like she had, like they were merely playing a game—but there was an earnestness beneath the conversation, as if they realized that rescue had come for them both. Blue would hate her for a thought like that, think it was weak and dependent, but Maya was starting to think that all people were in need of love’s rescue and women were sometimes just more honest about it.

  Not that this guy meant anything though. She understood how chemicals worked in the body.

  She jumped up, went to the pool, bent down and ran her fingers through the still water. He followed her.

  “I guess you can’t exactly spread the ashes here. That would be kinda gross for the owners. But any last words for your pooch?”

  He smiled, considered. Their eyes locked for a moment before they both looked away. “Nah,” he said. “He already knows.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll say something.” She stood, raised an imaginary wineglass. “To Indy,” she said, “who always liked to make a splash.”

  She turned and pushed Andy into the water. He pulled her in behind him, the two of them crashing into blue, coming up laughing. The water was warm and rousing. He grabbed her, kissed her, her stomach whooshing, her heart floating in her chest like a beach ball. Making her forget everything but the moment.

  Suddenly the night flared white, spotlights glaring at them from every direction. They heard a window open in the house.

  Their eyes widened as they looked at each other. Then, giggling quietly, they scrambled to the pool ladder.

  The back door flew open. A man was yelling, charging toward them.

  “You goddamn kids!” he shouted, which, at the moment, they felt like they were, and then they were running across the patio and scaling the gate, leaving a guilty trail of dripping water behind them.

  They reached Andy’s bike and he handed her his jacket before they both hopped on.

  “Go!” Maya yelled happily as she tucked her wet arms into the sleeves. She clutched his damp back, shivering with cold and adrenaline, life swelling like a laugh in her throat, everything pure, simple, fun. Perfectly what she needed. And two more days lined up like this, a boy and her best friends and summer on the wind. It was going to happen. Then Blue would lend her money for the house and everything would work out okay just like it always did.

  “You all right?” Andy shouted over the roar of the motor as they pulled back onto Montauk Highway.

  She was.

  BLUE

  Blue paid the check as Renee fired off texts to Maya that went unanswered. “So much for Maya buying dinner,” she said to Hannah. “Mystery of her disappearance solved.”

  She told herself Maya was fine. Hannah had seen her talking to some guy earlier, and now, knowing Maya, she was probably off in a secluded area making out with him. Which was all the more annoying considering she’d been cornered into lying to Renee about Jack because Maya had left them alone together. Oh, it didn’t matter that it had been her choice to lie. She was fully aware that it wasn’t fair to be mad at Maya about that. But she had enough legitimate reasons that she didn’t mind adding some illegitimate ones to the list. She should’ve never let Maya drag her on this stupid vacation. And okay, fine, she hadn’t technically been “dragged.” It was another spurious claim, but still, still. Maya left her with Renee! Who she didn’t want to share a country with, much less an evening. And now Blue was stuck dealing with the fallout.

  “I’ll check the parking lot,” she said, throwing a cash tip on the table.

  A sudden sick feeling turned her stomach.

  A glimpse of memory, darting like a shadow across her periphery.

  The recall of danger.

  “I’ll see if she’s on the dock,” Renee said, nervously fingering the cross around her neck. “Maybe she went into one of those little stores.”

  “I’ll double-check in here,” Hannah said.

  A look of dread passed between them.

  “She always does crap like this,” Blue said. “I refuse to worry.”

  But she couldn’t help it. That night lived in her. Rose up like a rogue wave and crashed down in irrational, all-consuming terror. She could see it in Renee’s and Hannah’s eyes, too, that quick leap to panic. One night, a few minutes, was all it took to rewire a brain.

  And even back then Maya had been too loose with the world, too obtuse to its realities.

  Even back then.

  She didn’t want to think about it. About that creep in her spine when eighteen-year-old Hannah had said, “I think we’re lost.” About the way her body had seemed to sense what was coming.

  But no, this was not the same as that. Maya was fine. Everything was fine.

  And yet hadn’t she thought the same thing back then, when they pulled in to the convenience store that night to get directions? She thought they would be rerouted back to safety. And instead. Instead.

  God, why didn’t Maya ever learn?

  Drunk and high as Blue had been after Check’s party, she knew enough to force herself sober the minute they’d gotten lost. And when they’d spotted that convenience store and got out to ask for directions? Blue had been acutely aware that the neighborhood was unsafe, that they should not draw attention to themselves. But no
t Maya. Oh no! She’d been as loud as a jet engine as she clambered out.

  “Who’s buying me a Slurpee?” she’d shouted.

  “Shh,” Blue said as they stepped around a homeless man on their way into the store. She still remembered the way he swatted at imaginary flies, his wide, electrocuted eyes looking out upon some unknowable horror.

  “Who’s buying me a Slurpee?” Maya repeated in a whisper and then burst out laughing.

  Maya got her Slurpee and directions from the cashier and the girls pushed back out into the night. Blue paused to give the homeless man her change, and that’s when she noticed that another car had joined theirs in the parking lot, a scratchy-looking guy leaning against it, sucking on a cigarette. His two friends sauntered past them into the store. Even before the man spoke, Blue felt something, an antenna standing at attention inside her, tuning in to some unnamable danger.

  “Hey, baby,” he rasped at Maya, his voice perverse, violating, as if he was rubbing up on her with it.

  Blue shot him a look of disgust and he laughed. His smile was a jack-o’-lantern’s, his rotted, broken teeth suggesting the meth pipe. He stuck out his arm and grabbed Maya’s ass as she went by.

  Blue wanted to say something, punch his ugly face, but alarm bells sounded in her head. She was too aware of where they were—lost. How dark the night was—crow black and underlit. How vulnerable four girls alone would be inside it. “Ignore it,” she said, pushing Maya toward the car.

  “Fuck that,” Maya said. “He doesn’t get to put his nasty hands on me.” She shook free of Blue, turned to the guy. “Listen, needle dick—”

  “Ooh yeah!” the man said, cackling. “I like ’em with a little fight.” He grabbed his crotch. “Whatchyou got for me, little girl?”

  “Maya!” Blue said. “Come on.”

  Maya squared up on him. “Keep talking and I’ll knock out your last tooth.”

  The man licked his lips. And again that laugh—it sent a shiver up Blue’s spine, the way it had a slime to it, slick with hate. She turned and moved faster toward the car, pushing Maya in front of her. She shoved her into the back seat and scrambled into the front. Turned to Hannah. “Let’s get the hell out of he—”