Wrack and Ruin

by Don Lee

  “Well, lookie here,” Margot said. “A wooden dinghy.”

  “Hm?” he asked, dreamily opening his eyes.

  “Your sloop has hoisted its sail.” She was glancing down between his legs.

  He saw that he had an enormous erection. It was odd. He hadn’t been thinking about anything sexual. His mind had been completely blank, granted he had noted earlier the girls’ perky, supple breasts.

  “It’s alive, it’s alive!” Margot said.

  “Oh, don’t laugh,” Trudy said. “It’s a very natural thing.”

  Under normal circumstances, Woody would have been terribly embarrassed, but he wasn’t at all bothered. “Got wood,” he said, chuckling. “Woody Woodpecker Peckerwood. If a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

  “Well, aye-aye, Captain,” Margot said.

  “Do you guys know the song ‘Sailing’?” he asked. They didn’t seem to know it. When had the song come out? The early eighties? They were probably too young to remember. “By Christopher Cross?” He closed his eyes again and hummed out, “Sailing, na-da-da, sailing.” He wished he could remember the lyrics to the song. He could hear the opening swell of the violins, the plinking repetition of the guitar intro—or had it been a piano? He could vaguely make out Christopher Cross’s nasal voice, but not any of the words. “Sailing,” Woody sang, “na-da-da, sailing.”

  Something squeezed his penis. “Whatza?” he said, blinking. Trudy had her hand clasped around his penis, which to his surprise was still erect.

  “Shhh,” she said. “Close your eyes. Lay back. Feel the earth rolling underneath you. Flow with it. Remember the poisoned arrow?”

  He did as she told him, shutting his eyes and breathing, staying in the present moment, letting her stroke his penis with one hand, and then two. No, that was Margot’s hand, joining Trudy’s, together moving with the lightest, gentlest touch. These girls were so nice to do this for him.

  Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t go any further than this—no pressure about what would happen next, whom he should kiss or touch first, how he would perform in a ménage à trois, although a ménage à trois intrigued him, he’d never been in a ménage à trois, maybe later they’d engage in a ménage à trois in earnest, which he wouldn’t mind, he wouldn’t mind that at all—but for now, he recognized that this would be an isolated episode, really it was the most natural thing in the world to occur, his penis just happened to be erect, and they decided to give him some relief, like standing behind a friend and giving her shoulders a casual massage, no come-on, as it were, just an amiable, spontaneous act of goodwill.

  And that was what it ended up to be. He ejaculated, shuddering and spasming with an intensity he hadn’t experienced in years, and they sat in the hot springs for a while longer, and then they dressed and leisurely hiked back down the canyon, enjoying the scenery, smiling at each other, not having to say a word.

  What a day. What a lovely, lovely day.

  AT DUSK, HE DROVE BACK to the farm, and found it empty. It seemed that everyone had gone out to dinner without him. He made three plain cheese sandwiches for himself, polished off two cups of yogurt, an entire bag of potato chips, and a full can of cashews, diet be damned, and gulped down two beers and several glasses of tap water. After he finished eating, he was sleepy, but at the same time restless. He had this great vibe, this groovy energy, coursing through him, and wanted it to continue.

  He went into Lyndon’s workshop and pulled out his brother’s stash from a cabinet underneath the bench and packed the bowl in Lyndon’s ceramic bong. The pipe wouldn’t draw well at first, and Woody thought it might be broken, but then he figured out he needed to keep his thumb over a hole on the back of the bong while he inhaled, filling the chamber, at which point he could suck up its contents. This was strong stuff, much stronger than the joint the girls had had. As he smoked the bowl, he stared at the padlocked barn doors. What was behind there? He examined the big chrome lock, wondering if he could pick it. He straightened out a paper clip and jiggled it around the keyhole, but the tumblers wouldn’t budge. He gave up and rolled a couple of joints for later, which, given his inexperience and inebriated state, was difficult to do. He kept ripping the paper or making the joint too loose, not spreading the pot evenly enough, before he was able to lick closed two little fatsos.

  He replaced Lyndon’s bong and plastic baggie of weed in the cabinet and stumbled outside. It was such a clear night. He looked up and, even with a partial moon out, saw billions of stars—stunning. He never saw stars like this in L.A. He craned his head from side to side, trying to take in the breadth of the firmament, and almost fell over. “Whoa, Nellie,” he said aloud, dizzy, and laughed. When had he ever said Whoa, Nellie?

  He heard a soft thump at his feet. Bob was standing in front of him, a tennis ball on the dirt. “Heya, Bob,” Woody said. “What’s up?”

  Bob picked up the tennis ball with his teeth, dropped it, and looked at Woody expectantly.

  “Don’t you know you have bad hips? It’s not good for you to be playing fetch.”

  Bob stood his ground, waiting.

  “Oh, just once,” Woody said. “Just once can’t hurt, right?” Perhaps Lyndon was being overly protective—a dog hypochondriac. Who knew better than a dog what his body was capable of? Maybe his hips had healed, regenerated, and he was being deprived of play, of joy.

  Woody grabbed the ball, reared back, and threw it as far as he could. Bob loped after it, running just fine, running so easily, in fact, that he was able to snatch up the bouncing ball without breaking stride. Yet, instead of returning to Woody, he kept going, jogging away from the house, into the fields.

  “Bob, boy-o, where you going? That’s not the object of the game, chief. You’re supposed to bring it back to me, you stupid dog.”

  Woody followed Bob into the fields, but each time he thought he was catching up to him, he’d lose him again. Woody walked on the tractor path beside the bluffs, gazing at the ocean, which glinted with silvery reflections. At the end of the path, he spotted Bob again, looking back at him, tennis ball still in his mouth, as if he were intentionally leading him somewhere.

  “Where you taking me, Bob?”

  Bob trotted inland through a block of Brussels sprouts. Woody strolled after him, and on impulse stripped a sprout off a stalk and munched down on it. It was remarkably good, with an intricate sweetness, like honeysuckle.

  He crossed a field of grass, which waved in the light wind—a west wind, he knew, if anyone were to ask. It was a heavenly feeling, wading through the waist-high grass, like fording a river. In the middle of the field, he lay down, letting the grass tickle his face, and stared up at the stars, watching some wispy clouds float across the sky. “Sailing,” he sang.

  He lay quietly in the grass, and made promises to himself: He was going to become a Buddhist. In the morning, he’d find a bookstore in town and read up on Buddhism. He’d learn to meditate. Maybe he’d try to locate that Tibetan nun Trudy had met and solicit some advice from her. Maybe he’d go to a monastery himself for a while. Lying in the field, he could hear insects burrowing in the dirt. He could feel the grass and the Brussels sprouts growing. He could feel the goodness in him blossoming. He was a good person. Whatever faults he had, he was—deep down—good.

  When he got up, he spied Bob cutting into a thicket of bushes and trees. Woody smelled something, like the aroma of mint he’d detected in the redwoods, but far more pungent. As he neared the thicket, the smell grew stronger, almost making his eyes water. What the hell was that? He pushed through the bushes and uncovered a handful of marijuana plants, taller than he was, staggering in their robustness.

  Edging closer to the plants, he tripped on a root. On closer examination, it wasn’t a root. It was an aluminum pipe, which was connected to black hoses laid out to irrigate the cannabis.

  “Lyndon,” he said. “You son of a bitch.”

  People never changed. His brother, the old commune hippie, was growing pot. That was what he had locked away
in his barn. He was harvesting pot in there, probably cultivating more plants indoors, a hydroponic lab. That explained the sparks Woody had seen the previous night: Lyndon had been welding grow lights overhead, hanging them from the rafters. He was planning to save his farm by dealing. What a hypocrite. So much for his condescension, all those years of lording over Woody with his moral superiority. He and Lyndon weren’t that different, after all—they were both willing to do whatever was necessary, even if it meant skirting the rules or the law, to get what they wanted. At a different point in his life—say, yesterday—Woody might have worked this discovery to his advantage, used it to hurt Lyndon, but interestingly he didn’t feel, at the moment, vengeful. He was, more than anything, amused. Live and let live, he thought.

  He lurched through the thicket into a clearing on the other side and lit a joint. It popped and sparked as he inhaled. He had neglected to remove the seeds and stems. Still, it was serviceable, his buzz intensifying with a hallucinogenic patina, allowing him to see more clearly in the dark, as if he had night-vision goggles, everything aglow in green.

  He saw Bob, crouching beside some shrubs. He was growling at him.

  “Bob, don’t be scared. It’s me, my friend,” Woody said.

  Bob snarled louder. He took a step closer and tensed his haunches and hind legs, as if he were about to pounce on him.

  On closer examination, it was not Bob. It was the coyote.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHE PICKED THE SPOT: SUNAKU, A NEW RESTAURANT ON MAIN STREET fashioned after a Japanese izakaya, or pub, which served little dishes, tapas-style. A few years back, another Japanese restaurant called the Banzai Pipeline had opened in town, an ambitious project with trendy designs, flashily appointed with water cascading down copper walls. The owner, Duncan Roh, had, by coincidence, retired from the same venture capital firm where Sheila had worked and used to surf Rummy Creek with JuJu, Tank, and Skunk B. The restaurant had failed miserably, closing after just nine months. Duncan and his wife, Lily, had moved to Hawaii, where he was from, and Sheila had bought his house. Rosarita Bay hadn’t been ready for upscale sushi then, but it might have fared better now.

  Sunaku was packed. Lyndon was wearing his nicest pair of jeans—his black jeans—and a long-sleeved oxford shirt. He felt silly and fatigued and nervous, and he had half a mind to flee. What was he doing, going on a date? At least the other diners were mostly tourists, no locals of any real acquaintance here to witness this debacle. He sidled past the crowd in the foyer; he had had the foresight to make a reservation. The hostess led him to a table for two beside the front window, and Laura Díaz-McClatchey joined him shortly thereafter, wearing a dress for a change, rather than a pantsuit, her hair down and falling freely over her shoulders.

  Awkwardly—what was the protocol? kiss on the cheek? a hug?—they shook hands and sat down.

  “What happened to you?” Laura asked, looking at the Band-Aid on Lyndon’s forehead.

  “It’s nothing,” he told her.

  Unfolding her napkin over her lap, she said, “You know, I didn’t think you were going to call me. You waited long enough. I thought you were going to stand me up.”

  “That was rude of me.”

  “It was,” she said. “But I’m willing to forgive you this one transgression. Just one, though.”

  They occupied themselves debating what to order, reading over the extensive menu, interrupted briefly by the waitress, who pointed out the specials marked on paper strips on the walls. The waitress took their drink orders—hot sake for her, a bottle of Sapporo for him—and then they deliberated over the dishes again, Laura unable to decide, and Lyndon realized that she was as flustered as he was, stalling, for after exhausting all the happy rituals and distractions of the pre-meal, picking out what they wanted to eat and getting their drinks and relating their order to the waitress and toasting and drinking, they stared at each other with sudden vacuous panic, neither having anything to say whatsoever.

  Laura fumbled with her tiny sake cup, refilling it. “So you had some sort of accident?” she asked feebly, her usual self-assurance and verve nowhere in evidence, and Lyndon, who had hoped she would carry the conversation for them, hastily poured himself another glass of beer and told her about the destruction at the bar, the rolling, thunderous descent of nautical junk, which mercifully presented her with a conversational thread, thin as it was, and they grabbed at it like a lifeline: she talked about an earthquake when she’d been living in San Francisco, it was evening, and she was in the Sunset District, overlooking Ocean Beach, and swore she saw the sea light up, glowing green, and Lyndon excitedly said it must have been plankton, which becomes phosphorescent when disturbed, and he described kayaking at night in Baja, how the plankton would sparkle in the boat’s wake and on the blades of his paddle, the experience of swimming in it, psychedelic fairy lights bursting off his fingers, dolphins zipping underwater, making the depths look like they were being fractured with lightning, and Laura asked what kind of fish he spotted down there, she was an occasional diver, she had gotten certified on a vacation in Bonaire, and he told her about the bluespotted cornetfish, the moray eels, the sergeant majors, the devil rays and king angelfish and porcupine puffers, and of course the gray whales, migrating five thousand miles from the Bering Sea to the Sea of Cortés, and she remarked how surprised she’d been, on a whale watch once, to learn that whales had terrible breath, smelling like bay mud from eating all that shrimp, but they were so majestic and huge, the way they arced to the surface and slipped beneath the water, coming up for three breaths and then, fluking their tails, diving deep for ten minutes, and Lyndon asked if she’d heard about the humpback whale that had washed ashore and the ensuing fiasco, and of course she had, who hadn’t, which gave Lyndon and Laura, despite their guilt over laughing about the death and undignified disposition of an endangered species, a good, hearty chortle, except then, as their laughter faded, they realized, just as they had been lulled into thinking that things were going well, just as they were beginning to relax, that they had run out of things to say, the balls dropping, the roof deflating, the tanks wheezing into the most dreaded of all moments during a first date, dead air—good God, why did people go on dates? why would anyone willingly subject themselves to this type of torture?—when, in desperation, people were liable to resort to anything—where was their food, goddammit?—uttering something they didn’t intend to, something ill-advised, the last thing they planned to say, simply to keep the conversation going, keep the evening alive—he was overboard, sharks afoot—which was what Lyndon did, blurting out to Laura, “I have something I need to confess to you.”

  “What?” she asked.

  And now, even though he knew it was a mistake, he couldn’t retreat, he couldn’t think of anything else to confess. “I told you I’m divorced. The truth is, I’ve never been married.”

  “Why would you lie about that?”

  Lyndon squirmed in his chair. Where was their food? If the restaurant was tapas-style, weren’t the first dishes supposed to come out right away? “It’s easier sometimes to just say I’m divorced,” he told her, “instead of having to explain why I’ve never been married.”

  “Why is it you’ve never been married?”

  “You really want an answer to that?”

  “You’re not ugly—you’re rather handsome, in fact,” Laura said. “I bet you were quite hot in your twenties and thirties. You’re no dummy. Granted, you’re a farmer-slash-welder-slash-ex-bartender, but you’re no hick. The verdict’s still out on your sense of humor, but you have your charms nonetheless. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women falling for you. So why haven’t you fallen for one of them? Is it because you’re looking for perfection? Or is it that you’re afraid it’ll be expected of you?”

  “That’s too simplistic.”

  “Is it?”

  Was it that simple? He didn’t know, really. Almost all of human behavior, he believed, could be reduced to one thing: people were terrified of being al
one. He didn’t want to be alone, but it was getting harder for him, each year, to imagine being with someone, living with someone, revealing himself—all of his quirks and neuroses and secrets, his little pot habit, for example, and what he was hiding in his barn. The thing was, he was generally okay with being alone. He liked his privacy. He liked his routines, his freedom, his unaccountability, and he didn’t really want to change. He had said to Sheila once that he thought the perfect marriage would be one in which husband and wife kept not just separate rooms, but separate houses. Why did they necessarily have to live together? Why did they have to decide which property to dissolve and which to share? (Before The Centurion Group had appeared, Sheila had said she would be willing to move to Lyndon’s farm, but his house would need a complete teardown, no doubt to be replaced with a swanky prefab McMansion of her choosing.) The true comfort of a relationship, Lyndon had said, came from being able to rely on each other when needed—for emotional support, for companionship, for sex, for a bulwark against the howling existential abyss. It didn’t come from being together so much you drove each other to lunacy and thoughts of grievous bodily harm. It didn’t come from learning each other’s every peccadillo, from bumping into all the opposing tendencies and noisy intrusions of everyday conjugal life. Ubiquity was not constancy. Make no mistake, he’d said, he was willing to “commit” to her, but he could be there for Sheila without always being with her.

  Sheila didn’t see the wisdom in such an arrangement. “You don’t want a wife,” she had said. “You want a fuck buddy.”

  It mystified Lyndon why she assumed marriage and/or cohabitation would improve matters. He and Sheila were so different. They fought all the time. Sometimes he wondered why she wanted to be with him at all. Yet he had another theory about relationships that explained their attraction, explained almost every woebegone impulse vis-à-vis men and women, which was that people were drawn to each other because of complementary pathologies. Everyone had a sickness—a discontentment, an absence—and, subconsciously, couples nourished one another’s sicknesses. Without them, the relationships would fail. Lyndon and Sheila’s arguments, their frustrations and impasses and maddening discords, were likely the entire basis for their affinity. What would happen if they changed that dynamic? Would they even be attracted to each other anymore?