“It’s so much better even though so little was changed. I want to grab Dad’s camera and take a picture.”
“You did most of it.”
“Right, but … ” she trailed off, clearly mystified by her own process.
Ebon smiled, their ages seeming to have equalized in a moment. She’d been the professor throughout the build, but now they were two kids in the sand, equal as peers.
“The best way to get cool things to happen is to be quiet,” he said. “I don’t need to talk a lot. I just needed to get you talking, and the rest came out without even trying.”
“Oh,” she said.
He looked up at the porch, at Mr. Frey. Aimee’s father been watching them, but when Ebon glanced over, he returned his attention to the paper. Ebon found him both impressive and a little frightening. He wasn’t going to find the strength to suggest they go to Aaron’s Party under Mr. Frey’s heavy gaze right now, but it would happen in time. What Grams had anticipated had somehow actually happened: he’d made a friend. They could build while they waited to see what came next. Fix what was broken and make it better, improving what was already good.
Aimee stood and looked down at the sandcastle.
“Now that we’re done, I kind of want to destroy it,” she said. “Like, kick the crap out of it.”
Ebon stood.
“Okay.”
So they did.
CHAPTER SIX
Apples and Lemons
EBON AWOKE TO FIND HIS FACE stuffed full of downy pillow, almost as if he were being suffocated. For a moment he was totally lost, seeming to remember something about disorientation, sand, or both. But he must have decided against going to Aaron after all, because here he was, back in his own place in the city, surrounded by lush bedding. He could feel Holly shift beside him, a wall of pure white comforter between them. Down lower, he could feel the radiant heat of her skin near his. Holly always slept naked. It would have been a constant tease if she were remotely chaste, but Holly was hardly chaste, always interested in interlocking body parts.
The comforter shifted, and her arm slapped across his chest. Holly grunted, the porcelain-white arm sliding with the sleepy movements of her body beside him.
Except that Holly didn’t have porcelain-white skin.
And she was dead.
Ebon sat up, forcing himself to stay centered. A deep part of him argued that he’d recently been through a lot, and that he’d had other strange periods of disorientation, like whatever he dimly recalled in the sand. The dream he’d just had had felt real, just like the dream of Aaron that had come before it: of staying with grown-up Aimee at her father’s place on the island. He even remembered sleeping in her old bunk beds, seeing the bunk above his where someone had carved initials as if in that old weathered bench on Redding Dock.
Careful, something told him.
“Get me coffee,” said a voice.
Ebon looked over to see a huge mess of red hair. It was bright orange, voluminous enough to recall the guts of a disemboweled Muppet. Then the hair’s owner rolled to the side and showed him a beautiful face he was sure he’d seen before, even though she’d never turned to give him a look at her smooth, pink-blushed features the other day, when he chased her through Aaron.
The strange woman smiled up at Ebon. “Morning, sunshine.”
“Uh … ”
“You’re going to make me coffee, aren’t you?”
Ebon wanted to close his eyes and sigh, but didn’t dare. He should have been scared shitless, but wasn’t. Everything was too normal, as abnormal as it was. It was hard to be the only one running around the room screaming, while the unalarmed sat by and watched.
“I … ”
“And maybe you’re going to make me eggs.” She pressed her lips together, spreading them into a wide, satisfied, drowsy red bow. Those lips looked soft, and Ebon fought an odd desire to lean forward and kiss them. Despite their lack of gloss, they looked bright enough to have been recently lipsticked: red against white skin, like the soft pink creeping across her cheeks. “Mmm. Yes. I think you might just do that.”
Ebon spoke without thinking, somehow knowing it was exactly what she expected because it was the sort of thing he always said. Because she always said things like she’d just said. It was a game between them, even though he’d never met her.
Or, he thought, trying to decide why she seemed so familiar, have I?
“I’m not your slave.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist, the comforter like a cloud between them. Ebon’s eyes drew in the room, straying upward. The wall to the right of the bed was glass from floor to ceiling. The room was sparse, specked with a few pieces of furniture that were far too modern and expensive-looking to be his. The view through the window wall was phenomenal. They were somewhere high up, on Aaron after all, and the bay stretched below like blue gems, the trees fully in bloom with Aaron’s autumn colors. Given the hour and the lack of direct sun, Ebon decided they must be facing west, same as Aimee’s cottage. He could even see the same off-shore rig he’d seen from Aimee’s window, only from a higher vantage.
Aimee.
“Oh yes, you are,” said the red-haired woman, hugging him tight. She gave him another squeeze, her moan full of early morning sleepiness, then let him go. As she rolled back, the comforter fell away, and he saw that she was as nude as Holly would have been. She had huge, soft-looking breasts topped with small nipples as pink as her lips. She made no effort to cover up, as if Ebon had every right in the world to look — which he now did without shame, stiffening despite the mystery. “You’ll do whatever I need. Because I’ve got what you need.” Ebon felt a hand on his bare leg and jumped. He’d have to look, but he was pretty sure he was equally naked.
“Did I scratch you?” She pulled her hand out from under the covers and looked at five red-painted nails.
“No, it’s … ”
“You were just really eager to get out there and make the coffee.”
“I … ”
The woman’s hand had gone back under the comforter and was again on Ebon’s leg. It moved higher, her finger pads brushing an already hard member. Her fingers curled, and he felt himself encircled, more horny than alarmed.
“What?” she said, watching his face.
“Nothing.”
“You don’t want to?”
Ebon swallowed. “Maybe we could just talk.” As he looked at the woman’s large soft breasts, they were the five hardest words he’d ever had to say.
The hand left Ebon, and the woman shrugged, now sitting up herself. She fluffed a pillow and shoved it behind her back and they became a Normal Rockwell illustration: two people sitting up in bed, possibly preparing to read educational periodicals while smoking pipes. Except that the woman was topless, and as she sat up, Ebon’s refusal grew painful as he saw that despite her chest’s size, nothing sagged.
“Oh. All right,” she said, her voice playful. She had the air of someone doing something absurd and knowing it, playing along to appease the insane. “Let’s talk.”
He looked over, and the woman smiled, her expression pleasant. She was the most unique female canvas Ebon had ever seen. Her hair was so orange that it almost looked fake; her skin was pale, blushing into peach with no freckles; the accents on her body and face were so pink they seemed fragile. He wanted to push onward, see what colors lay below.
“What should we talk about, Ebon?”
He flinched at his name, but of course she had to know it. They’d spent the night in bed together, naked. In Ebon’s world, that kind of thing didn’t happen casually. Names were exchanged before any and all sexual incursions. Again he looked down, wondering with new vividness whether they’d actually had sex. If he was going to do something so odd and disorienting, he should at least be able to remember it for later mental replay.
The woman was smiling broadly, a knowing look on her face.
“What?”
“Just indulging you. As always.”
<
br /> “‘As always’?”
Again, Ebon wondered why he wasn’t sprinting away in terror. The woman’s pleasant mood (not her ample chest, though that was helping) was keeping him rooted. Her bearing was so ordinary, so unfazed, so day-to-day. It rang something in his chest, strumming the sense of magnetic familiarity he’d felt since first seeing her on Main Street. He knew this woman. Deeply. Intimately. The fact that he’d woken up naked beside her felt much more like a culmination — maybe even a reunion — than something brand new. His shock here and now came from a sense of missing time, he realized, not from the situation itself.
And here she was, plugging hours gone missing with this implication of familiarity between them. Ebon always did this, whatever “this” was. Ebon always wanted to talk, and the woman always indulged him. They always made the same banter about coffee and eggs, and they probably usually ended up spending that breakfast time in bed, renewing bodily acquaintances.
He was sure of all of it, yet could remember none of it.
She was still waiting, wide pink lips in a pleased bow, chest bare. Ebon had an incredibly strong desire to ask for her name, but that probably wouldn’t go over well.
“What do I always do?”
“This.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
“This,” she said, now leaning over and running a pale hand through his chest hair, “is a fun time.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t ask me what it’s all about. It’s too big of a cliché. Besides, I’m supposed to ask things like that, because I’m the girl.”
“Sure.”
“Good thing I’m not that girly.”
Ebon looked her over, thinking she was girly to the tune of at least a double-D and maybe more. But when his eyes grazed the room, he saw how precisely it was arranged, how masculine the décor. The bedroom was large and open, sterile and spare. The bed’s headboard was against a wall covered in some sort of grayish cushion material. Ebon could see an off-white shag rug visible at the bed’s foot, the bed precisely set in its middle. Beyond the rug was a light-gray laminate floor. There was a single planter a few feet from them, off the end of the bed between it and a glass door leading onto a porch overlooking the ocean. There was a small tree in the planter, its leaves so waxy green they looked fake, though he could smell them and knew they weren’t. A small table and two modern-looking chairs were a bit farther into the room, near the door to a bathroom that, judging by architectural arrangement, probably had its own window wall overlooking the bay. On the table, at opposite ends, were two more vivid splashes of color amid the neutrality: a bowl of bright-yellow lemons and a matching bowl of fire-red apples. Ebon had heard about fruit being used as a decorator’s tool, but he’d never seen anyone do it. Except, he suspected, the many times he’d lain in this bed with this woman beside him.
“Okay,” said Ebon.
She punched him in the arm. “You’re supposed to say that I’m quite girly.”
“Oh. Well, sure.”
“You never get that right.” The woman vented an over-the-top sigh and, on its conclusion, leaned into Ebon and again ran her hand across his chest.
“Sorry.”
What’s her name?
He knew it. Somehow, he knew it. Because based on the way she was acting, they’d been together for a while, making love in a room accented with lemons, apples, and a single bright-green tree. In the bathroom across the open room, he’d find a bathtub that looked like a porcelain gravy boat standing on a geometric black plinth in the dead center of the floor, its plumbing invisible save a sleek, angular chrome faucet that rose near it, not actually touching the tub at all. There’d be another tree in there, same as the one by the bed. Beside the bathtub would be a small chrome table, a set of towels folded so precisely atop it as to look more like a set piece than anything meant for bathing. There would of course be blinds in the bathroom, but they’d never be drawn. You’d bathe while looking across rocks and waves, knowing that if sea captains with telescopes cared to try and see you nude, they could have all the eyefuls they wanted. The toilet in there wouldn’t be partitioned off either, but that wouldn’t matter because even the commode looked like art. It was the kind of bathroom you’d feel like apologizing to after shitting in it.
Vicky, he thought, new information barging into his brain space like an intruder. Her name is Vicky Kimble. When she told me her last name, I made a joke that it was the last name of Schwarzenegger’s character in Kindergarten Cop, even doing Arnold’s voice. She didn’t get it. I had to explain the joke, realizing how pointless and terrible it was the more I had to catch her up from scratch. Then she asked where I worked, just like that, as if I were charming her. She told me she works in the city too, as an interior decorator. We talked about the statue in the park that the pigeons covered in paste, called it a frosted donut. That made her laugh, and when she laughed I told her that my sharp sense of humor is my secret weapon. Just like it is with Holly. Like it was with Holly.
But when had that happened? And where? Ebon could have sworn he’d just seen her for the first time yesterday, but a double set of memories was now streaming into his head, overlaying each other like two photo negatives. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know how to reconcile it. What would he even make a doctor’s appointment for, if he dared to voice what may or may not be amiss here? How would he even begin to describe his malady?
Hey, Doc, I woke up with a strange woman who I knew the minute I saw her, and now I don’t remember our relationship. We hooked up after I chased her through town, forcing her to lose me like a spy with a tail. Eventually we started screwing — but see, I also came into town just yesterday, and moved in with my oldest friend, Aimee. So basically, none of it is possible. Who puts out a bowl of lemons anyway? Doc, you’ve gotta tell me: is that ficus tree real, or is it fake?
“You’re so talkative this morning,” said Vicky.
Yes, it’s Vicky. Definitely Vicky.
“Yeah.”
“It’s good that we’re ‘talking’ as suggested instead of you getting me coffee and eggs.”
Ebon took a chance. “You always say that.”
Vicky laughed. It was cute, and he seemed to be navigating well enough, but he wasn’t really getting the information he needed. He looked out the window, again noticing fall foliage that he now realized had been summer green yesterday.
“What day is it?” he asked.
“The eighth, I think?”
“September 8?” That couldn’t be right. The eighth was a few days in the past.
“November 8,” Vicky corrected.
Ebon faked laughter, pretending to have mixed up his months, feeling cold. His last crisp memory had been in mid-September. Best-case scenario: He was now emerging from two months of amnesia. But a deep part of him worried that it had been longer, maybe a year and two months. Or two years and two months. He wouldn’t know until he looked at a calendar.
“What day did we meet, again?”
“I’m not girly enough to remember things like that.”
“Sometime in September.”
“Usually, you’re girl enough to remember exact dates.”
Ebon did remember. It had been September 11 that he’d chased her through the town. He remembered partially because September 11 had been a strange day ever since 2001 had made it famous. And he remembered it the rest of the way because, a deep part of him argued, it had only been yesterday.
Ebon rolled sideways. “Have you told anyone about me? About us?”
Vicky laughed. “Now that’s a manly question.”
“Just curious.”
“Okay, fine. Sure. I’ve told people at work about my island lover. The one that’s got me hauling my ass over here this late in the year, when I’ve usually shuttered down by now. They probably think you’re all swarthy and sweaty, like a native.”
“Aaron natives are swarthy and sweaty?”
“Well, you are.”
“What else d
o you tell them?”
“Are you digging for compliments?”
Ebon shrugged.
“I told my secretary that you stalked me into submission. I didn’t tell anyone else that though. Because sure, a lot of the male decorators I know are gay, but some aren’t, and there are reps and other uncouth gents who I figured it would be unwise to encourage re: stalking me to earn my affections.”
“Is that what it felt like? Stalking?”
Vicky nodded. “Oh yes. Let’s not sugarcoat your obsessiveness. It’s lucky you’re cute.”
“I was shy,” he countered. It was half-true, at least during the stalking session he remembered. What he’d felt had been closer to obsession (a stalker emotion if there ever was one), but at least obsession shared the spectrum with shyness. He’d wanted to see her, to meet her, to be in her radiant presence. For a reason Ebon wouldn’t have been able to articulate, he’d felt that she was his missing piece — as if she’d been dislodged from his psyche and was required, at that moment as his psyche struggled, to get back in there and prop it up. That had been a crazy day. She’d felt like an anchor, and when he’d lost her everything had turned upside down and sideways.
But if that day really had been two months ago, maybe he’d healed a bit from it. Maybe he’d told Vicky all about Holly, unburdening and stitching himself together. Maybe he was more on an even keel these days. Well, except for his pair of missing months.
She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Ebon felt a current run through him. It was the strangest, most hybrid sensation. The kiss felt deeply familiar and comforting, but also brand new. He was simultaneously kissing her for the first and thousandth times. It was the best of both worlds: the depth of an established relationship combined with the thrill of infatuation. Despite his intention to remain distant and gather information, he found himself propping up the bedspread again in his lap.
“Well, hon,” she said, “let me give you a tip. In the future, when you want to meet a girl, don’t just tail her for days. Most would have you arrested. Luckily I was curious. And maybe a little bit foolish to finally confront you. But I had to know what in the hell you wanted.” She snuggled closer. “You got lucky. I almost never come here during the week, but it was the only time they could deliver my new bathroom sinks from the mainland.”
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