Backcast

by Ann McMan

  “I think we’re covered.” Shawn was dumbfounded by the fare. “Let me get you a tip.”

  The server held up a hand. “No need, ma’am. It’s already taken care of.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “You bet.” The server pulled the door closed and headed back toward the restaurant.

  Shawn turned around to face Kate, who was watching her with an amused expression.

  “Burgers and fries? Just how nice were you to the handsome barman?”

  “Telling him he has a nice ass was my opening salvo. The rest happened organically.”

  “No doubt.” Shawn examined the tray. “Extra mustard, too?”

  “You never know.” Kate shrugged. “Things might get interesting.”

  “If memory serves, things always get interesting when we have extra mustard.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  These days, having Kate count on anything was an anomaly. It was a small thing, but Shawn decided that it was a step in the right direction.

  She set the tray down on the small table.

  “I’ll do my best not to disappoint you.” She walked toward Kate and the dogs.

  Kate got to her feet and met her halfway. “You never do.”

  “You have to help her out.”

  “Woman, get off my case.”

  “I mean it.” Barb was watching Mavis clean her service weapon. She’d used it to fire a few rounds of blanks into the air to break up the fight after Page Archer summoned her.

  “I stopped your damn brawl, now give me a break.”

  “I know. And thanks for that.”

  “If you ask me, you should tie their tails together and toss ’em over a clothesline.”

  Barb considered that. “Not a bad idea. I don’t think Towanda has written about that position yet.”

  “Perverts. Why do they hate each other so much?”

  “Beats me. They say the line that separates love from hate has a razor’s edge.”

  Mavis lowered her gun’s barrel. “Who says that?”

  Barb smiled. “I just did.”

  Mavis rolled her eyes. “Hand me that can of oil.”

  Barb passed it over to her. “Do you really have to clean it like this when you only shoot blanks?”

  “Sure. You’re still firing gunpowder—just no load. So the cylinder gets fouled just the same.”

  “How did Page know you had this with you?”

  “Because I told her about it when I checked in.”

  “It figures.”

  “What figures?”

  “This.” Barb waved a hand toward the gun paraphernalia. “Of course you’d disclose that you had it.”

  “By law, I had to disclose it. This place has a ‘no firearms’ policy.”

  “That’s my point. You obey the law.”

  “I wouldn’t have a job very long if I didn’t.”

  “And that brings us back to my original point.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Mavis.”

  Mavis slammed the gun down on the towel she’d spread across the tabletop. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

  “I want you to help her out.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you can. And because you’re a decent human being.”

  “You’re crazier than that pack of loons you call authors.”

  Barb didn’t reply. She sat and watched Mavis work a tiny brush in and out of the gun barrel. It made a soft, whooshing noise. Barb thought it sounded like the waves. She got to her feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to work. I’m feeling pretty good tonight. I think I’ve got another hour or so left in me. Might as well make hay while the sun shines.”

  Mavis looked out the window. “It’s nearly dark.”

  “I was being metaphorical.”

  “Don’t you stay down there too late.”

  Barb had a makeshift studio set up in the barn. Doug Archer had even hauled in a workbench to accommodate her tools.

  “I won’t.”

  “You said that last night and I had to come get your ass at twelve-thirty.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” Barb walked to the door. “Let me know how it goes.”

  “How what goes?”

  “Your talk with Quinn.”

  Barb was able to duck out of the room before Mavis’s oily rag connected with the back of the door.

  “How long have you been sitting down here?”

  Darien hadn’t been looking for V. Jay-Jay, but when she saw her sitting on the rocks that jutted out into the water alongside the pier, she decided to join her. The sun was setting, and the sky was fantastic, overlaid with dramatic swirls of indigo, tangerine, and coral. Darien thought it looked like one of those black velvet roadside paintings that were so omnipresent in the Southwest. V. Jay-Jay was perched atop an outcropping of big rocks that had been pushed in by the winter ice floes. Her stark silhouette was plainly visible against the explosive backdrop. She could’ve been Elvis. Well. A younger, more svelte Elvis, without the pompadour or sequins.

  “I came down to admire the view.” V. Jay-Jay nodded toward the horizon. “I can only imagine how electric it must be on the west side of the island.”

  Darien looked at her watch. “I’d say let’s roar over there and take a look, but by the time we got to the car, the sun would be down.”

  “True. I can rage against the dying of the light just as effectively from here.”

  “Okay. I know that’s a quote I’m supposed to recognize.”

  “You mean you don’t?”

  Darien shook her head.

  “I have so many things to teach you, White Rabbit.”

  “So you’re doubling-down now?”

  “You don’t know that one either?”

  “Nope.”

  “How on earth can you write if you don’t read?”

  “I read.”

  V. Jay-Jay raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay. Maybe I don’t read all those musty, dead poets that you’re so partial to. But I read plenty.”

  “The dead poets, as you call them, would have a fair amount of relevance for your particular brand of fiction.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “I read two of them last night.”

  Darien was stunned. “My books?”

  V. Jay-Jay nodded.

  “You read two of my books?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “In one night?”

  “Yes. Why do you sound so surprised? It wasn’t like tackling two volumes of later Wittgenstein.”

  Darien sighed. “I’m pretty sure that was an insult. Once I have confirmation, I’ll be sure to act offended.”

  V. Jay-Jay smiled. “Why don’t you pull up a rock and enjoy what’s left of the view?”

  Darien picked her way out onto the rocks and found a reasonably flat place to sit. The colors in the sky were fading in intensity now. It would be dark soon.

  “It really is beautiful here. I see now why Barb picked this place.”

  “Me, too.” V. Jay-Jay stared out across the water. “It’s so unspoiled. So quiet. Like it’s yet to be discovered.”

  “All except for those two hundred, hopped-up bass boats that’ll soon be roaring around all over the place.”

  “True.”

  “I feel bad for Quinn.”

  “Why?”

  Darien was surprised by her question. “Don’t you? I mean—isn’t Quinn one of your classic antiheroes?” She made air quotes around the word.

  “Quinn is just a tragic figure, period. Fishing notwithstanding.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You disagree?”

  “I don’t know that I agree or disagree. I never really thought about it.”

  V. Jay-Jay didn’t reply.

  Darien struggled with whether or not to follow-up on V. Jay-Jay’s revelation that she’d read two of her books. She suspected that V. Jay-Jay was waiting fo
r her to ask—no doubt so she could give her a blistering review. She knew it was in her best interest to keep silent.

  She also knew that stuffing Pandora back into her tidy box of blissful ignorance was impossible.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  V. Jay-Jay looked at her. The light was fading fast now. Darien could hardly make out her features. “Of course.”

  “Did you like my books?”

  Oh god. She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She sounded like a pathetic teenager. But it was too late. Her weakness and vulnerability were all out there now—just like one of Quinn’s bad casts. She knew as soon as she let her question fly that she’d overshot her mark by a mile.

  V. Jay-Jay took her time replying. That didn’t do much to ease Darien’s discomfort.

  “I liked them just fine.”

  “You did?” Darien wasn’t sure she’d heard her right.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I guess so.” Darien shrugged. “I mean—they’re not exactly Wiener-whosis.”

  “Wiener-whosis?”

  “That guy you mentioned earlier.”

  “Wittgenstein?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  V. Jay-Jay shook her head.

  “What?”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “I thought you wanted me to be hard on myself.”

  “I think you could push yourself more when it comes to your writing. That’s not the same thing as beating yourself up.”

  “I don’t beat myself up.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “What happened earlier doesn’t count.”

  “The fact that you think your reaction to seeing that man today doesn’t ‘count’ is a perfect illustration of my point.”

  “Vee? Don’t start this stuff again, okay?”

  “Let’s step back and reconnect the dots here. Didn’t you ask me for my opinion?”

  “Of my books.” Darien held up a clarifying index finger. “Not my past.”

  “To be fair, it would be impossible for me to express an opinion about your past since I don’t know any details about it.”

  That much was true. Well. Mostly true. Darien had certainly cracked open a door on all of that with her performance at Hero’s Welcome deli earlier. She decided to turn the tables on V. Jay-Jay.

  “Why do you wanna know?”

  V. Jay-Jay looked confused. “Why do I want to know what?”

  Darien spread her arms. “The world according to me. Why do you care? Nobody else does.”

  “I doubt that’s true.”

  “Trust me. It’s true.”

  “I disagree. What about your adoring fan base?”

  “What about them? They don’t know anything about me.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. Like you, I don’t write under my real name.”

  “Darien Black isn’t your real name?”

  Darien shook her head. “Black is my real last name, but ‘Darien’ is just a name I borrowed from a poem I liked in high school.”

  V. Jay-Jay was silent for a few moments. Darien could tell she was racking her brain to come up with the reference.

  “Keats?”

  Darien nodded.

  V. Jay-Jay smiled. “You chose well.”

  “Yeah. I liked the irony of taking a name that was universally associated with one of the biggest literary blunders of all time.”

  “I think this is a nuance that will be lost on most of your readership.”

  “I didn’t pick it for them.”

  “So, what is your real name?”

  “Why do you wanna know?”

  “Tit for tat, right? If memory serves, I told you mine.”

  Darien drummed her fingertips against the smooth surface of the rock.

  “As I recall, that was part of an information exchange.”

  “And your point would be?”

  “If I tell you, then I get to ask you another question, too.”

  V. Jay-Jay sighed. “Fine.”

  “Okay. It’s Jimmie. Jimmie Dean.”

  “Really?” V. Jay-Jay’s voice was tinged with suspicion.

  Darien nodded.

  “Your parents named you after an icon of social estrangement?”

  “No.” Darien rolled her eyes. “That’s James Dean. My parents named me after a country singer who became a sausage magnate.”

  V. Jay-Jay started to chuckle. Then her chuckle turned into a laugh—and not just any kind of polite, garden-variety laugh, either. It was a full-throated, shiver-your-timbers kind of laugh that spread out, wrapped up, and shook every part of her glorious, compact frame. The sounds she made were bright and musical. The sweet, strong, happy noise swirled around their heads like a stray zephyr of mirth.

  V. Jay-Jay’s lapse of composure was stunning, but it was also infectious. Darien found herself beginning to smile. It was impossible not to. How had she never seen the humor in this before? It was ridiculous. And funny. Soon she was laughing just as hard as V. Jay-Jay, and the two of them were perilously close to losing their hold on the rocks and slipping into the water.

  Darien reached out and took hold of her arms to steady her. To steady them both.

  To steady us against what? Her head was spinning. Against falling?

  Were they falling? If they were, it wasn’t into a place Darien was unwilling to go. She knew that now.

  They swayed and held on to each other as their bodies continued to shake—now with something different from laughter—something that inhabited the other side of laughter.

  It was too much. Holding on to where they were was too much. It wasn’t sustainable. Not any more. They slid off the rock into the lake. The shock of it was incredible—a blinding contrast to the heat of V. Jay-Jay’s body. Cold water washed over them and penetrated their clothing. Darien wanted to cry out—but she didn’t. Her understanding of the differences between pain and pleasure, hot and cold, liquid and solid grew hazy. Uncertain. Everything around her dissolved into a crazy confluence of sensation.

  It was night and the water was fathomless—dark but full of light—familiar but unknown. Realities melted away from them like forgotten punch lines from jokes that no longer mattered.

  Old things had passed away, and all things were becoming new.

  Essay 7

  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

  How many times had I heard that? How many times had I recited that in the quiet of my cell, over and over—like a talisman against failure? I clung to the words like a lifeline that would lead me off the path of perdition and back into the safe harbor of God’s grace. Over and over I punished myself with the words. Like a flagellant wielding a slender bough of birch.

  Countless times. Endless nights. Forever and ever, amen.

  “The decision to follow God is not an easy one.” That’s what the Abbess told us as we all knelt before her in our short, white veils. “Many are called, but few are chosen. Some of you will persevere, but others will fall away. For this, we must all be prepared.”

  Prepared? Prepared for what? For failure? For mortification? For ostracism? For a lifetime of disappointed hopes?

  What kind of affirmation was that? What twisted brand of encouragement was that?

  We were young and scared. We were vulnerable and naïve. We had given up everything before we even understood what everything meant. We needed love and encouragement, not odds and prognostications about how many of us were headed toward certain failure.

  Even then, I had issues with authority. That alone should have convinced me that this path I had chosen to walk would not be an easy one. A life in the church was all about subjugation—about bending your will to another’s. And not just to one other—but to a sequence of others. All the way up the food chain to the man at the top. Because in the church, as in the rest of life, there was always a man at the top.

  “Have many friends,” they taught us. “Have many friends, bu
t not one.”

  Not one.

  She wasn’t like me. She was smaller. Meeker. She didn’t question authority. She didn’t question anything. Coming here was never a choice: it was a destination. She belonged here and she knew it. Living a life by rule and method wasn’t suffocating to her, it was liberating. Empowering. It was everything.

  Have many friends, they said.

  Many. Not one.

  After morning prayers and breakfast, we worked together in the washhouse. We’d spend hours upon hours bleaching, washing, and ironing. Folded stacks of stiff, white cotton would rise around us like columns in a pagan temple. As we worked, we prayed. We prayed that God would open our hearts to love others as we were learning to love each other. We prayed that we might persevere and take our places among the chosen. Mostly we prayed that the heat and longing that closed in around us like the soft, moist air of the clothes press would dissipate if we remained true to our vows.

  Many. Not one.

  She held out longer than I did. She had a deeper faith. A less forgiving nature. A greater willingness to embrace the teachings and the strictures of our order. When I would try to talk with her about what was happening—about what I was feeling—she would ignore it. She would recite the Psalms of the Divine Office. Her chanting and humming would go on and on until I would surrender and concentrate on my work.

  At night I would return to my cell awash in loneliness and misery. My insistent prayers for release from this torment went unanswered. Because I could not touch her, I began to touch myself. The ecstasy and release I experienced only served to increase my feelings of isolation and hopelessness. The hours until I was reunited with her inside the solitude of our white prison were torturous. My days and nights were now marked by the ticking order of a different Office.

  It wasn’t until I called her by her real name that she relented.

  It was Friday, the day we took in laundry from our sister house in town. I had been running sheets through the clothes press for hours when the unit jammed. This wasn’t uncommon. The thing was antiquated and badly in need of servicing. When I bent over it to try and dislodge a thick wad of twisted fabric, the rollers lurched forward and the sleeve of my tunic got caught. I couldn’t pull it out and I couldn’t reach the stop switch. I pulled back with all my might, but I was being dragged by my habit into the machine.