The Highest Tide: A Novel

by Jim Lynch

  Thick bluish smoke swirled beneath ceiling fans that looked as if they were about to wobble free. The noise made more sense inside, but it was more violent and personal too, the bass guitar rattling my ribs. People wiggled and swayed in place, all staring in the same direction. Nobody was sitting, and nobody was covering their ears but me. Phelps pulled me closer to the noise, slithering toward the front where the stink of spilled beer and cigarettes thickened. Some woman wailed above the bass and the drums. I couldn’t make out a word.

  I tried to keep up, but people fell back onto me twice, knocking me over once, all without ever seeing me. Still, I kept following, peeking through the tangle of shoulders, breasts and elbows for a glimpse, trying to see everything I could before I either got crushed or plucked out of there. It helped that everyone’s eyes were above me. The crappy part was I was at armpit level, and there was a whole lot of BO that didn’t seem to bother anyone else. Everyone was touching or almost touching. It reminded me of the awkward moment when I had opened the wrong door and saw thirty greasy middle school wrestlers panting and grunting on a thick maroon mat in a windowless room where the only air must have been recycled fourteen thousand times through the same noses and mouths. This was worse. Not as sweaty, but hotter and darker and so smoky my nose stung. Plus, the music hurt. Still, everyone pressed forward, as if they couldn’t quite hear it, as if they wanted to feel it.

  Phelps grabbed my arm and snaked closer to the stage until there were just these three girls short enough for him to see over. Everyone half-danced, facing forward, moving disjointedly, as if to different songs. When the girls in front separated enough to give me a brief view of the stage my lips went numb.

  Angie was wearing that same striped dress she wore when I saw her perform outside in the spring. Her hair was spiked and tossed, eyes closed, neck glistening. Her new eyebrow ring was neon green.

  Phelps lunged into my view and yelled, “Gotcha!”

  Maybe I should’ve guessed what was up, but Phelps was easy to underestimate. The posters outside hadn’t said anything about L.O.C.O. or Angie Stegner, and I still didn’t recognize most of her songs. But there she was, head cocked, her heavy boots set wider than her shoulders, her dress bunching high on tanned thighs. She suddenly screeched the way people screech when they jump off a high dive. Then her hairy drummer ended his frantic banging at the same time her bass quit throbbing through speakers that were as tall as me.

  The applause was pretty loud, I guess, but it was nothing compared to the music. I waited for Angie to shout something like, “What’s up, Olympia!” But she didn’t say anything. She waited for the applause to fade, then casually asked if we’d noticed her new screech. “A baby barn owl taught me that one the other night,” she told us. “It was the cutest damn thing.” She ripped another impression of it, then coughed and laughed into the microphone, which made everyone laugh. It felt like an invasion of my privacy to hear my favorite laugh shared with all these clammy people, as if someone had split open my head and passed my fantasies around like breath mints.

  Angie turned around to drink something, leaving us staring at the back of her dress that had such narrow stripes it seemed to move on its own. Some guy screamed, “Angie, I love you!” More people laughed, then yipped and hooted rodeo-style. I was hoping the music would start again before anyone noticed us, or someone else confessed their love. I looked around for phony Frankie, but I couldn’t make out a face. Every second the music didn’t play felt like our last. How long could it take to spot two thirteen-year-olds? At least they hadn’t turned on the lights. A stink rose up. I held my breath, but it intensified and lingered. There was no escaping the deadliest fart in the history of farts. Rotting sea lions smelled better. The worst muddy, low-tide stink was refreshing compared to this. But nobody cussed, muttered, screamed or even covered their noses, as if getting dunked in the old fart tank was just part of the whole rock ‘n’ roll ritual.

  My stage view vanished with the return of the beer-spilling boyfriends of the girls in front of us. And that’s when I overheard some guy behind me asking who brought their “fucking kid brother.” When one of them tapped my shoulder I ignored it. Then I heard somebody whisper that maybe I was a “tiny chick” or a “dwarf,” which sent them into nose-snorting giggles.

  Luckily, the next song came almost right on top of the last. It just felt like a month. The problem was I no longer had a view of anything but the wide denim backs of the annoying boyfriends. This time, I could tell, the drummer was singing. He and Angie took turns banging out rhythms and he kept saying pass out every ten seconds or so. There were no other words. Just pass out. People howled. It was the song they’d been waiting for. The couples in front of us squatted and the stage opened up better than ever. Angie struggled to keep her eyes open. Her swaying seemed excessive. Pass out. I noticed Phelps chatting with a woman crouched to his right, and by the time I looked back to Angie I’d lost sight of her in the tangle as the couples rose again, smelling like what I assumed was pot. I overheard Phelps asking that crouching woman if he could have some of her secondhand smoke. The song throbbed on. Pass out. I had no idea where it was going or if it would ever end, and I couldn’t find an angle to see more than flashes of Angie. I focused on the thud of her bass, hoping to learn something about her from it, but there was too much going on. I watched that woman rise next to Phelps, grab his chin and cover his lips with hers, as if performing CPR. It lasted a long, long time. I had time to think seventeen thoughts and feel everything from fear to jealousy before smoke leaked out of Phelps’s mouth and he started coughing wildly. I wasn’t sure if he’d been assaulted or initiated, but once his smile surfaced I felt nothing but envy. He stuck out his hand for five. I gave it to him hard enough for it to sting, then refocused on the stage until I found an angle to see my girl who I told myself was far smarter, cuter and ten times cooler than Phelps’s dundula even if she wasn’t filling me with smoky kisses.

  Angie studied her strings, her left hand sliding up and down the long neck. Passout. The new lighting somehow made her look soaked, like some musical mermaid fresh from the bay. The boyfriends rose in front of me again, and the music seemed louder when I couldn’t see her, because then it was just noise and sweat and another fart that belonged in the Guinness book. Phelps flipped me a thumbs-up because he, of course, was tall enough to still watch Angie jam. He air-guitared her for me in between glances at that girl who’d lit him up. I watched her hug some other guy and blow smoke inside him. Then she hugged a woman. I turned away, overwhelmed, as they kissed too. The gang in front of us crouched to smoke again, but I didn’t like what I saw. Angie was swaying, and not to the beat. She and the drummer were slowing down. Passss ouuuuut, he said. Then again, even slower. As the song ended, Angie teetered and the drummer rose, leaning toward her with his hands out. The applause swelled, and I started scrambling through the dipshit denim boyfriends toward Angie, not excusing myself, moving through limbs, stench and smoke. Then I heard laughter and I caught a glimpse of her smiling. Soon everyone was busting up, and she said, “Thank youuuuuuuuuuu.” The drummer leaned back, smirking all over himself.

  When I turned around and exhaled, some older guy was lecturing Phelps and waving me toward them. Then the thick bouncer barreled toward us, the crowd fanning from him as if he were on fire, as the band kicked in again and Angie’s bass shook my bones and her voice rose above the bedlam. “Life sometimes feels like too much worry,” she yelled. The thick-chested man steered us out with fat hands that had huge rings on every finger. I missed half of Angie’s next line, then heard, “So what’s the hurry?” Once we were completely out the back door I heard her croon, “Just give me twenty good reasons to keep onnn livin’.”

  “Names?” the bouncer demanded.

  “Seymour Butts,” Phelps said, then giggled as Mr. Thick started jotting down Seymour. The bouncer suggested we fuck ourselves and beat it before he rang the cops.

  We strutted down the middle of Capitol Way, feeli
ng the way Butch and Sundance no doubt felt after a little run-in with the authorities, with Phelps crowing about simultaneously making out and getting stoned, although he later admitted he didn’t really feel anything from the smoke and was so startled by her lips he hadn’t kissed her back.

  “So what’d it feel like?” I reluctantly asked.

  “You know how that first sip of Pepsi fizzes in your mouth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kinda like that.”

  I doubted it, but what did I know.

  “Could feel her knockers rubbing against me when she laid that smoochy-smooch on me,” he added.

  “No you couldn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The story’s good enough without exaggerating.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She definitely liked me,” he said, running his hand through his hair the way he did when he thought hard about something.

  I didn’t tell him I saw her filling all kinds of people with smoke, but I did boast that I helped Angie come up with the song she was singing when we got booted. Phelps surprised me by how thrilled he was for me.

  “Maybe you and me are gonna be a band, Miles. I’ll be the lady-killing guitarist and you’ll write lyrics, although there are probably only so many songs people are gonna wanna hear about barnacles and starfish.”

  “I read a book last night,” I said, “called Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving.”

  Phelps digested that. “What’s that all about?”

  “Sex, basically, but it’s also about yin and yang and goddess energy and chakras.”

  “Slow down,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Borrowed it from that old lady friend of mine.”

  Phelps laughed. “‘Hey, Granny, can I borrow your sex book?’ How many pages?”

  “Hundred and twenty-nine. It was weird. They called the G-spot the ‘sacred spot.’”

  “Like it’s got some religion to it?”

  “They had crazy names for everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “They call a dick a ‘wand of light.’”

  A Starburst flew out of his mouth. “You gotta be making this shit up. What’d they call a pussy?”

  “The ‘precious gateway,’” I said, “or the ‘golden doorway.’”

  Phelps roared. “My lady, may I brighten your golden doorway with my wand of light?”

  “There’s all kinds of tips in there too,” I said. “Like you’re supposed to always keep your eyes open when you’re making love.”

  “Doesn’t that depend on who you’re with?”

  “You’re supposed to breathe together too.”

  “Come on!”

  “Why would I make this up?”

  “What else?”

  “You know how I was telling you that G-spot book talked about women ejaculating?”

  “You said it was gross.”

  “Well, it’s not so gross the way the Tantra people talk about it. They call it ‘divine nectar.’”

  Phelps giggled himself off balance.

  “They say it can come out of their precious gateways like a mist. Sometimes it’s even like a fountain that shoots divine nectar six feet into the air.”

  “Stop!” Phelps choked. “Enough!” He found his breath. “What else?”

  “They say men should ejaculate less often.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, they say we should orgasm within ourselves sometimes.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “I don’t either, and I read the thing.”

  “How are we supposed to stop ejaculating?”

  “By focusing on the higher chakras in our chest and neck.”

  “That is some outrageous bullshit.”

  “They say the best way for men to attain higher spirituality is through long periods of no sex.”

  “So we must be fucking saints already!” Phelps bellowed.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “we must be.”

  We took the longest route imaginable to the bikes, talking in circles about the sneak-in, the smoky kiss, the songs, the Seymour Butts line, the golden doorways and the divine nectar, recycling it, refining it and reliving it, each of us, in our own way, flattered beyond recognition.

  Chapter 20

  I’d already biked to the library and read everything I could find on oarfish by the time my mother informed me that Angie Stegner had her stomach pumped earlier that morning at St. Pete’s hospital.

  “She almost OD’d,” Mom said, as if Angie deserved it.

  I tried to picture a stomach pump, but all I could see was the little bilge pump I carried in the kayak.

  “That girl’s crazy,” Mom said, while updating her to-do list. She was sitting cross-legged, her bare left foot bouncing noticeably from the thump of her oversized heart.

  “You think everybody’s crazy,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “She has no regard for her father’s reputation. She has no personal accountability. She has no cares for anyone but herself, and her only concern there is apparently to see how many illegal drugs she can consume. I’d call that crazy, Miles.”

  “Why are you so mad,” I asked, “at someone who’s sick?”

  “I’m not mad. Who said I’m mad? Did I say I was mad?”

  “She’s bipolar,” I said. “Lots of people are.”

  “Bipolar? Who told you that?”

  “I don’t need to be told everything.”

  “Of course. I forgot you’re a psychiatrist and a marine biologist already.”

  “She cares about me.”

  That surprised her. “Angie Stegner cares about you?”

  “We talk lots.”

  My mother rolled her eyes and something flickered inside me.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “You shouldn’t talk about people you don’t know,” I said.

  There must have been something in my tone because her lips paled. “I’ve known Angie since she . . .” Her voice rose, then halted. “Dammit.”

  Whenever she sputtered my instinct was to apologize and get past it. I’d seen her ignore friends for months because of one imagined insult. But anger was blowing through me too. “You call Angie crazy. You call Florence crazy. You call all the cult people crazy. You think you’re the only one around here who’s not crazy?”

  “Just because you got on television,” she barked, then said, “Dammit, Miles!” and stopped again.

  “I hated being on television,” I yelled, “and if you don’t know that then you don’t even know your only kid.”

  With that, I marched out of the house, my feet making a whole lot more noise than usual, my thoughts shouting in my head to the point that I couldn’t make out her words behind me.

  My stomach burned all the way to the Stegners’ door, which was open such that I could see Frankie Marx slouching on the brown leather couch.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Frankie glanced up, then popped upright as if I outranked him. “Miles! What’s up?”

  I couldn’t come close to matching his enthusiasm. “Angie around?”

  After some shuffling overhead, the judge leaned over the balcony, his face a heavy mask. He didn’t have his glasses on, and he was squinting, a vein swelling diagonally across his forehead. “Mr. O’Malley,” he purred, starting for the stairs.

  I looked back at Frankie and almost felt sorry for him. He didn’t look anything close to cool. He wasn’t sure how to sit or stand, much less what to say.

  “She out of the hospital?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then glanced upstairs, and we listened to the judge’s leather soles tap down the steps.

  “She okay?” I asked.

  Frankie’s circular head movement, neither a nod nor a shake, alarmed me.

  The judge extended his hand as if it were still a gift. Then I heard more stepping behind him and
Angie’s oldest brother descended. I shook Brent’s hand too, as if we were all agreeing to something important, before the judge quietly explained that it probably wasn’t the best time to visit.

  I’d never heard Stegner men whisper before. Back when all the boys lived at home, I could overhear their daily conversations from our yard. It wasn’t that they yelled at each other in a combative way. The house was just so big, and they were so sure of what they wanted to say, that there was a whole lot of shouting.

  “You’ve grown up a good bit,” Brent said.

  “Not really,” I said, “not as much as you have.” That shook a grin out of all of them. “Just want to tell her about this fish I saw.” I wished my voice didn’t sound so insignificant.

  The Stegner men swapped eyebrow shrugs, then the judge cupped my shoulder with his warm hand. “Give it a try, young man, if you’re up to it, but don’t be offended if she’s not a gamer today, understand?”

  Stepping into her bedroom disoriented me. I’d obsessed over it so much that to actually be inside it was like standing on the deck of a ship in a bottle.

  It smelled like beer and smoke mixed with old stuffed animals, although I didn’t see any. Her head was propped awkwardly on two pillows and her body lay flat beneath girlish flowery sheets. A poster of Chrissie Hynde hung behind her. I recognized her because Phelps spent an afternoon educating me with a stack of his brother’s Rolling Stone magazines. All I knew about her was that she played guitar and growled like a bobcat when she sang about doing it in the middle of the road. Everything else on the walls looked dated, including faded gymnastics ribbons and a dusty painting of a wedding procession in which frogs held up the sweeping train of some rabbit’s dress.

  Angie didn’t look anything like herself. Even something as seemingly permanent as her eye color was off. They were black, not green, and her skin had lost its tan overnight. I’d heard about babies getting switched at the hospital, but never teenagers or adults. She sighed when she focused on me and said, “Ahhh, shit.”