Summer Hours

by Amy Mason Doan

“So are you working on part two?”

  “I wish. The Courier shut down.”

  “Right, I heard. I forgot.”

  “I was just killing time at the matinee. But the sound effects gave me a headache.”

  “Sit.” He hopped up, sweeping leaves off the bench.

  “No, I should get home.”

  “Please sit. I’ll run to Fenton’s for Advil and a drink.” Fenton’s was our old soda fountain/druggist on Main, a block away. They still sold splits and patty melts at the counter. “What’s your poison? Coke, iced tea, juice?”

  “You don’t—”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to make it an egg cream.”

  I smiled. “I like egg creams. But I’ll have a Coke. Thanks.”

  Five minutes later, he returned with another iced coffee for himself, my Coke, and a foil travel packet of ibuprofen. I popped them and we sipped in companionable silence, people-watching.

  Our sleepy downtown had had a cutesy revival. People drove in from all over to stroll our main street, take pictures of The Orange Tree, eat chicken Caesars under misters at one of the fancy new cafés, and shop. Dusty old Bernadine’s Closet had been bought and renamed Casual Friday by some woman with a Range Rover who always had a Chihuahua with pink-painted nails dangling from the crook of her arm. She sold $200 khakis and $50 baseball caps with rhinestone crosses emblazoned on them.

  I’d asked if she had openings but she’d said, I’m turning girls away left and right, honey, in this impatient but fake-nice voice that made me wish I’d never come in.

  “Feeling better?” Cal said.

  I nodded. “Eric used to call it reentry. How you feel going back to the real world after a movie.”

  “That sounds about right.” He paused. “So he’s majoring in film now, did you hear?”

  I shook my head and toyed with my straw, taking measurements of my hurt. Eric hadn’t bothered to share. “That’s great, though.”

  “He didn’t tell his mother, either,” he said gently. “It showed up on some forms.”

  “I’m sorry, by the way. You asked me to watch out for him. But he doesn’t tell me much anymore.”

  “It wasn’t fair, expecting you to check up on him.”

  “I wanted to. I’ve emailed him a ton, but his answers have been...”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Brief.”

  “Sounds like a euphemism.”

  “I should probably stop emailing him. It’s getting pathetic.”

  “Pathetic is not a word I’d associate with you.”

  I ran a finger through the beads of moisture on the sides of my clear plastic cup, merging the drops. Wondered which words he did associate with me. “Well, I lost my internship. I’m wasting the summer. And I’m starting to realize my prospects aren’t so great for a real journalism job, either. After graduation.” I smiled faintly.

  “So the newspaper folding left you hanging?”

  “It didn’t fold, exactly. The owner sold it to the County Chronicle. But yeah.”

  “And now you go to movies in the middle of the day. Not that I’m one to judge. I regularly take three-coffee lunches.” He shook his iced coffee. “It’s the new three-martini.”

  “I could use the caffeine.”

  “You do seem a little tired. You look lovely, of course. Just a little... Are you sleeping?” He crinkled his eyes in concern, looking at me.

  I cradled my cup in my lap and tucked my hair behind my ears, sure I looked like hell. I’d rushed to the matinee in rumpled shorts and a tank top, without brushing my hair or even scrabbling it into a ponytail, without a dot of makeup. “I sleep ten hours a night. Sometimes more. I...”

  “What?”

  “It’s been a strange summer.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. Then, abruptly, he said, “Work for me,” bouncing his cup on his knee. “Not technically me. I’m not running the place. But I just staked this fun incubator in LA, and you can tell me if they’re spending my money wisely. CommPlanet, it’s called. There are some clever little hatchlings in the mix.

  “You could research, write. Hell, I don’t know what, exactly, but they’d slot you in for the rest of the summer. Most of the concepts are media related in one way or another.”

  “I wasn’t hinting for a job.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Sure. Work whatever hours you like, word it however you like. You can be...an analyst. Isn’t everyone an analyst these days?”

  “It’s tempting but—”

  “That way you’ll have something to put on your résumé for the summer. You can say you...let’s see...verified facts and generated time-sensitive content. Now, doesn’t that sound related to your chosen field?”

  His eyes flashed mischief at the absurdity of it all, the ruse of the professional world. He nudged my knee with his. At the casual brush of sun-warmed fabric on my bare skin, I glanced down. His pants were navy linen, decadently wrinkled and expensive looking. One soft blue fold tickled the side of my leg, just above the knee.

  Something to put on my résumé.

  I’d heard the phrase so many times it had started to make me crazy. We weren’t even sophomores, but I knew a dozen kids whose parents had friends manufacture internships for them. Then they could say they spent the summer at a lab in Boston or an anthropological dig in Bolivia. It was one big, nepotistic racket and we all knew it.

  His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, flipped it open to see who it was. He pressed a button, silencing it. “Think about it. I’m rarely there but I have a little pull.”

  “Don’t they have a thousand real applicants who’d kill for an internship?”

  “Probably. What’d they pay you at the Courier?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll double it.” He grinned. “No, seriously, we’ll figure out something fair. What do you say?”

  “I’m more of a print person.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” He pointed his phone at the newspaper kiosk on the corner of the square. It was empty, streaked with icicles of white bird poop, topped with an array of theater soda cups.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  It would be wrong for a hundred reasons. I didn’t like the sound of someone “slotting me in” as a favor. Or “generating content,” whatever that meant.

  If Eric found out, he’d sever any wispy thread of friendship still dangling between us.

  But mostly, it would be wrong because I knew, with the part of me that was as secret and cool and selfish as a movie theater full of people on a weekday, that the excited flutter in my belly had little to do with putting something on my résumé.

  9

  Civilized

  2008

  Thursday, 11:35 a.m.

  Outside Santa Barbara

  I keep expecting him to act like the person I remember, the still-boyish man who ducked out of the office every chance he got. My coconspirator, urging me to set my own hours. Not this man welded to his phone, ignoring the beauty around us.

  True, the prettiest view is on my side of the highway. At fifty-five miles per hour the public beach we’re passing is a rainbow-sprinkled blur. A streak of yellow confetti’d with bright blankets, coolers, bathing suits.

  Beyond this bright human chaos is the endless Pacific, only one color—soothing blue.

  Maybe he’ll relax at lunch.

  Maybe he’s as ready to stop as I am.

  I’m thirsty and stiff and tired. Hoarse from shouting over the wedding present. I want the world’s biggest Arnold Palmer, a spiked one, and a conversation without a barricade of cardboard and Bubble Wrap involved. A civilized conversation.

  That’s the note the two of us are trying to strike: civilized.

 
; I chose the most civilized restaurant I could find, read dozens of Yelp and Califorkia.com reviews before picking the Harborside. Classy decor, impeccable food. It’s a popular spot for business lunches—the kind of place where a crumb scraper scoots a silver squeegee around the tablecloth between courses.

  I thought it was far enough from the big conference hotels. We’re miles away, and I haven’t been up here since I worked at CommPlanet.

  But as I pull off the freeway and loop toward the beach, the midday light so bright even through my sunglasses that it’s transformed the ocean into flashing silver, I’m back in those dark conference rooms.

  My leather seat is warm from the sun, but I can feel the hotel air-conditioning blowing behind my knees.

  More than a decade ago, and I can still see the damn slides. Those cocky marketing slogans.

  “Cool. Comm. Connected.”

  “Visionary brand alignment.”

  And the hyperbolic finale—“Tomorrow starts now!”

  Was that last one prophetic?

  Was that the day it started? The day curiosity tipped into desire?

  Or maybe it had started the first morning I watched him from my room. And everything after was inevitable.

  10

  Good Influence

  July 4, 1995

  Dusk

  Crystal Cove Beach

  “Someone in Tahoe must need a nanny.” I patted clumps of damp sand on my sunburned feet to cool them. “I’d be a great nanny. I’d be Mary Poppins. Maria.”

  “That bad?” Serra swigged her raspberry Snapple.

  We sat on the sandy ridge above the beach shacks, watching the bustling mass of high school kids down the slope below us.

  There were at least thirty of them, and their anticipation of the fireworks and everything else that the night might bring was palpable. An energy that floated up to where we sat observing from our dry towel. They were splashing each other, shouting, play-dueling with sparklers. Pumping their pony keg. Whooping at the sporadic, echoing booms of the first fireworks, previews of the elaborate show to come.

  The more industrious among them had stacked logs into a teepee for the bonfire, but they hadn’t lit it yet. There was still a peachy glow of sunset tinting the world.

  “What’d you do all day?” Serra asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m never letting you leave. Why do you keep looking at the parking lot?”

  “Thought I saw someone trying to break into the Stay Wag. Can’t you work somewhere for free? At the Times or the County Chronicle or wherever?”

  “I offered. I guess the custodial beat didn’t impress them.”

  I’d applied to every publication from San Diego to Fresno, including my most gripping work on the switch to eco-friendly vomit-dissolving powder and graffiti solvent, but I had nothing. I’d tried non-journalism jobs, but it was so late even Baskin-Robbins didn’t want me.

  Here was where I should have told Serra I did have a job offer. In my chosen field, even. If you didn’t look too closely.

  But I couldn’t tell her, not until I’d decided.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d love to have you up in Tahoe with me, making fluffernut sandwiches and blowing up water wings. But can’t you at least enjoy your freedom?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Hey, guys!”

  It was Robin Engles, who’d been a sophomore when we were seniors. She wore a pink triangle bikini top, pink velour sweats, and a rhinestoned trucker cap.

  “Nice hat,” Serra said under her breath. “Hey, Robin.”

  “It’s so weird to see you guys without Eric! Is he home?”

  “He’s in New York for the summer,” Serra said.

  “Wow. Cool.” Robin’s friend tugged her down the sandy trail toward the bonfire, where she was immediately offered a cup, flanked by two shirtless boys.

  Someone lit the woodpile and Serra and I watched silently as it caught, first only a charcoal plume, a thin dark line against the orange sunset. Slowly the image reversed, the fire orange against the gray sky. Until it was a roaring, snapping pyre.

  This was where we’d met Eric, the July before high school. He was lying on his back in the shade of one of the abandoned beach shacks. I’d never seen him without his gang of friends from The Heights. The older ones drove ridiculous cars—BMWs and Lexuses—and that was enough to make me dismiss the whole crew.

  When I’d walked past him to buy an Icee at the snack bar, I’d seen the cover of the book tented over his face. The Pigman. It surprised me, Eric Logan reading alone. He was still Eric Logan then.

  “That’s a great book,” I’d said. It wasn’t like me to talk like that to a boy from The Heights, but I was in a good mood. Summer stretched ahead, and Serra was right down the sand, and the sun made everything seem easy.

  He’d lowered the book and gazed up at me. “You’ve read this?”

  “Twice.”

  “I’m only twenty pages in. Are they going to kill this old guy?”

  “You’ll see. Stick with it.”

  I don’t remember Eric pulling his towel over to ours, but he must have. Because the three of us sat together until the sun melted into a red glow across the water. Other kids had paired off and spread out, their giggles and murmurs shutting off, couple by couple, as they generated their own heat, but Eric and Serra and I sat cross-legged on our damp towels, talking near the fire until near midnight.

  So that was it. By October of freshman year, Eric had stopped hanging out with the boys from his neighborhood. Me and Serra became me and Serra and Eric.

  “Miss him?” Serra asked.

  I nodded.

  “Me, too.”

  So Serra saw Eric-shaped holes everywhere, too.

  By the bonfire. Her bedroom floor, where I’d slept over for the last two nights. In her pool, on Space Mountain at Disneyland, and the Giant Dipper in San Diego. And in the gently lapping ocean, where a gangly boy was skimboarding in the fast-disappearing light.

  We’d had a blast, driving to all our favorite places in the shuddering Stay Wag, but ever since Serra had flown in I’d felt his absence more. The missing third Mouseketeer.

  “Has he emailed you lately?” I asked.

  “Not much.”

  “You don’t have to lie. I know you get longer emails than I do.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “Maybe I could’ve handled it better, but he doesn’t have to be so...extreme.”

  “Don’t take it personally. He’s sorting stuff out. Stuff that has nothing to do with you, like his parents splitting up. Mr. California banging his mom. Hey, my dad saw Mr. California at the office the other day, some meeting for investors... What?”

  “I hate the word banging. Whatever, forget the Logans. Let’s talk about you. Are you getting enough time to paint?”

  “I’m militant about bedtimes.” Serra capped her Snapple and raised an eyebrow, attempting to look like a sinister babysitter and failing utterly. Her cherubic face wouldn’t allow it. “But I’m not painting. Yvonne has this fantastic loft studio she lets me use whenever, with bins of all this great material just sitting there for the taking. I’m pretty obsessed with my latest experiment. Yvonne thinks I should stick with it, at least. It’s a triptych.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A piece with three parts. Beginning, middle, and end. I got the idea from one of Patti’s old toys.” Patti was Yvonne’s seven-year-old, Serra’s charge for the summer.

  “Sounds cool. I want to see it.”

  “It’s either brilliant or complete garbage, but that’s all I can say for now.” Serra spied something behind me and grinned, waved. “This might cheer you up. And you’re allowed to take it personally.”

  I turned.

  Maggie stood near the beach volleyball court: black
hair, black shirt, black bag. Morticia Addams among Malibu Barbies. She spotted us, ran over, and collapsed onto me. “Surprise!”

  I clung to her. “Are you seriously here?”

  “Serra said you were desperate. So I told my parents you were a good influence and it would be okay if I missed one tutoring session Friday as long as I studied on the plane, blah blah, and they bought it. And the ticket.”

  Serra laughed. “We are a good influence.”

  “I need to test this ocean of yours,” Maggie said, unlacing her Docs and rolling up her jeans. “Come on!”

  The three of us ran downhill, past the tilting, abandoned beach shacks, with their peeling turquoise and pink and lavender paint, and the bonfire, which was just starting to crackle. We sloshed into the knee-deep water.

  “So three days is enough to teach me to surf, right?” Maggie said.

  * * *

  We never found time to get Maggie surfing lessons, but it was a glorious weekend.

  The Orange County that Serra and I took for granted, Maggie saw as exotic. The birds of paradise in my backyard, The Orange Tree in the square, the baseball fans swinging stuffed “rally monkey” mascots at Angel Stadium to get some mojo going in the ninth. We were her tour guides. My mom was charmed by Maggie’s earnest questions about her garden, and for the three days she stayed with us, my mom spoiled us with lemon-blueberry pancakes and fresh juice before leaving for work.

  But when Serra and Maggie left, my world felt more cold than before. Like the moment a smile vanishes from a face.

  I took the job.

  11

  GDI

  July 18, 1995

  4:00 p.m.

  “How’s Rebecca?” Cal peered down at me over my cubicle wall, a lock of blond hair hanging over his eyebrows, tanned arms in rolled-up sleeves hooked over the edge.

  “Hi!” I clicked Hotmail, whisking my personal email account into a tiny flame at the bottom of my screen.

  “Am I interrupting some important analysis?”

  “I can take a break.”

  I was the summer media content analyst at NoozeButton.com. The only thing I’d analyzed so far was the menu at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.