by Stan Parish
• • •
When my exams were finished, when I had written my last frantic essay in the pages of a flimsy sky-blue notebook, I took the long way back to Andrew Melville, walking by the water, smoking and massaging the back of my neck where it felt like my vertebrae had been glued together. I checked my watch, hoping there would be time to strip my filthy sheets and clean my room, but there was no time for that now. Mike and Casey had landed in Edinburgh two hours earlier, and taken the train to Leuchars, where I had told them I would meet them with a cab.
It was misty enough that the taxi driver had to use his wipers to get us to the station. The train had just pulled out when we arrived, and Mike and Casey were making their way across the elevated walkway that crossed the tracks from the northbound side. They had never left America before. I was starting to think that people should just stay where they were from.
“What the fuck is this weather?” Mike asked as he bounded down the stairs.
“Par for the course,” I said. “Hey, Case.”
“Hey, bro,” he said. “Thanks for having us.”
“Can you believe that fucking hunk of metal just flew across an ocean?” Mike asked.
“He asked everyone sitting around us that,” Casey said, laughing. “You should have seen the looks on their faces.”
“Do you know what those things weigh?” Mike asked. “How do they not just fall out of the sky?”
“I’ve wondered that myself,” the cab driver said.
“Right?” Mike said. “Fucking miracle if you ask me.”
Mike sat up front and peppered the driver with questions about the food, the weather, the venereal cleanliness of the local females, turning to me to repeat anything he thought to be of note, as if I didn’t live here, or didn’t speak the language.
“Bro, what’s the name of the hotel?” Mike asked Casey.
“The St. Andrews Bay,” Casey said.
“You heard of that spot?” Mike asked the driver. “Nice place? Dive?”
“Best in town,” the driver said.
I turned to Casey.
“Why did you get a hotel?”
“The three of us in your dorm room? I’m on vacation, buddy. Don’t worry about me.”
I could see the town in the distance as we turned into the circular drive of the St. Andrews Bay Hotel, a solitary, U-shaped fortress that stood guard over a private golf course. I had never heard of this place. A helicopter dropped out of the sky and alighted somewhere behind the building, delivering guests.
Under the soaring ceiling of the lobby, Casey put down Mike’s Am Ex for incidentals, and explained that he’d be paying cash. The hotel was newer and more luxurious than the one on the Old Course, with thicker carpeting and modern furniture upholstered in plaid. I lay on a queen-sized bed in their two-bedroom suite, watching a National Geographic special on a Russian supermax prison where the convicts were forced to walk bent over at the waist anytime they left their cells. Mike walked out of the bathroom, soaking wet and stark naked.
“Son of a bitch,” he said to Casey, who was counting British pounds from a teller’s envelope and laying them in stacks on the bedside table. “I left my entire fucking Dopp kit in New Jersey. Do you have any Old Spice?”
“Just stay out of my vitamins,” Casey said, pointing to his open duffel without looking up.
An hour later, we were polishing off a round of beers and sandwiches at the North Point Café, two tables from where I had eaten lunch with Clare’s parents. Mike sat facing the big front window, and glanced up from his plate to examine every passerby. He turned to me suddenly, arugula hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“You never said they had waves here.”
“There’s nothing rideable,” I said. “It’s a bay.”
“So guys just walk around like that for kicks?”
I turned in time to see a pedestrian on Market Street wearing a fleece vest over a full wetsuit and carrying a battered surfboard under his arm. We stared at each other and stood up as one man. Casey glanced down at the bill and tossed cash on the table as Mike and I scrambled for the door. The surfer was waiting for a traffic light as we spilled into the street.
“You’ve never seen this?” Casey asked as we jogged east.
I shook my head. Mike slowed as we caught our mark, and fell into step beside him.
“Hey, man,” he said. “We saw you walk by the restaurant back there. Are there waves here?”
“Not always,” the man said in a Welsh accent. “It’s breaking today, though.”
“Where?” I asked.
“East Sands. Just up the way. Are you on holiday?”
“He goes to school here,” Mike said. “At least he says he does. We’re his boys from back home.”
We were passing the crumbling ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral and the graveyard that had been swallowing the dead since the 1100s—places I had seen in pictures but never bothered to seek out. I heard the surf as we started up a short, steep hill at the east end of town, and I was telling myself that this was impossible even as we crested the hill and found ourselves looking down at a crescent-shaped beach. I counted three peaks in fifteen seconds, three sandbars that were causing the waist-high swell to break.
“How the fuck did you miss this one?” Mike asked.
I could think of several reasons, none of them good. We followed our guide to a cluster of surfers, one of whom had just come in.
“How was it?” Mike asked him.
“Really nice, mate. Best it’s been in months. The tide’s just pushing in.”
Mike introduced us all by name.
“We’ve met before,” the surfer said to me, unstrapping his ankle leash. He had bright blue eyes, a deep cleft in his chin, and a nose that was jagged on the bridge from a bad break, the kind of face that stays with you.
“You’re mates with Damien and Jules,” he said in response to my blank look, as if this were the logical explanation for my forgetting. It was such an obvious dismissal that Casey laughed to break the tension. The surfer turned to Mike.
“I’m Wells,” he said.
The two of them began discussing tides and takeoff spots.
“How did you not hear about this?” Casey asked as we watched someone pull into a closeout and disappear in the whitewater. Mike was taking off his clothes.
“Bro, really?” Casey asked.
“My boy Wells here is loaning me his suit,” Mike said. “I’m getting out there.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Casey said. “Don’t take the man’s suit.”
“It’s no trouble,” Wells said. “I’m ready for dry clothes. I’d like to watch my mates a bit.”
“One ride, bro,” Mike said. “One good ride. ‘Yeah, I surfed in Scotland.’ Who’s gonna believe that back home? Where’s a fucking camera when you need one.”
Mike dropped his jeans, and stood there, in the January air, wearing only his white boxer briefs and the ink under his skin. Wells tossed him the suit, and once Mike had wrestled into it, he strapped on the leash—something that he never did in Jersey—and jogged into the shore break with the board under his arm. Casey and I sat down in the sand.
“What happened with the cops?” I asked, unable to contain myself any longer.
“I was outta there by noon. Fucking Rob. I don’t know how he does it. This guy I used to cut lawns with was in for a DUI. We made a night of it.”
“How’s Melissa?”
“She’s taking the whole thing like a fucking champ. It was really hard for her, the stuff I was doing. She never cared about the money. She said that before, I just wasn’t hearing her. I was waiting til I got here to tell you this, but Rob set me up with something.”
“At the restaurants?”
“No,” Casey said. “Not this time. It’s a job in Mexico. We’re moving in a month
.”
“Are you joking?”
“This guy Rob knows is investing in some new hotel in Playa del Carmen, like an hour south of Cancún. They got this roof deck with a club they want me to manage. They’re giving me a little piece of equity to make sure I stick around.”
“Mexico?”
“What, you’re the only person who can set up in another country for a while? Melissa’s gonna do some PR and events for the hotel, that kind of thing.”
The blithe conversion of a career in cocaine to a management gig in an emerging market, a partnership, a piece of equity. It felt like my whole life up to that point had been a series of miscalculations. Casey smacked my shoulder with the back of his hand, and pointed toward the water.
“Here he goes,” he said.
Mike was scratching for a wave that had slipped by everyone sitting on the biggest peak. He caught it, popped up, and walked down the length of the board. With the toes of his left foot wrapped around the nose, he did a quick half pirouette and brought his feet together, riding backward with his ankles hanging off the board in midair and his arms extended. People on the beach were pointing at him, telling friends to watch. The wave closed out and Mike dove behind the rumbling whitewater, which swallowed him and then the board. His hand surfaced before his head, and he was holding up a finger as he spit out salt water to speak.
“One more!” he yelled to us.
• • •
We were back at the hotel when Casey finally asked how Clare was holding up. Mike was in the shower again, “defrosting,” as he put it, with the bathroom door open so that he could still hear us and be heard. I said I hadn’t seen Clare in a while.
“Really?” Casey said. “Why not?”
“Get him over here!” Mike called.
I shot Clare a text with the invitation and the room number, hoping that he wouldn’t answer. Casey called Melissa while I stretched out on the bed again and wondered how everyone would feel about staying here tonight, ordering room service and pay-per-view. I had told Casey about Kelsey before I knew she had a boyfriend. There would be that to explain, and putting Jules and Damien and Mike in one room seemed like a terrible idea. The front desk called to say we had a visitor.
“Hey, buddy,” Casey said as he opened the door. “Good to see you.”
Mike stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist this time.
“Dude, tell me you knew that there’s a break here. Is Tom just asleep at the wheel?”
Clare looked at me.
“Jesus Christ, put the straw down once in a while. People surf here. You didn’t know that either?”
“Did you guys go surfing?” Clare asked.
“I did,” Mike said. “I dropped in on Prince what’s his face.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
I had seen someone in the lineup who looked vaguely like William, but William didn’t strike me as a surfer, and lookalikes were obviously not out of the question.
“Oh shit. Did I forget to tell you that?” Mike said. “He’s not bad, actually. He was pretty cool about me stealing his wave.”
“His bodyguards should be here any minute to cavity search you before they throw you out of the country.”
“Bro, sign me up,” Mike said. “I’ve paid good money to have someone put a finger in my ass, and they didn’t even have a sexy accent.”
“Hey,” Clare said, “Damien wanted me to tell you that he’s having a dinner party at that flat he bought.”
“Tonight? He knows I’ve got friends here, right?”
“He knows,” Clare said. “He wants to meet them.”
• • •
The dishes had just been cleared from a farmhouse table long enough to be a runway. It was unclear how the previous owners had gotten it up to the airy third-story flat on Queen’s Gardens, and the movers couldn’t get it out, so the table had come with the place. The table and chairs were the only furniture so far; the blank white walls and the echo from the pressed tin ceiling seemed to amplify the emptiness. A dinner of mostly takeout had devolved into a drunken game of “Never have I ever . . .” and a girl with an Essex accent—which I learned to distinguish after hearing that Essex was the New Jersey of England—was asking if anyone had ever let themselves be tied up by a stranger. One last dinner plate was making its way around the table, covered in cocaine. I had promised myself that I would abstain while Casey was around, but that resolution had dissolved in champagne.
Casey seemed to be enjoying himself, and Mary had taken a shine to Mike as soon as we walked in the door. They had disappeared into the powder room together after two drinks, and emerged twenty minutes later in each other’s clothes. She wore his striped dress shirt unbuttoned to reveal a black satin bra, while Mike had her sky-blue blazer stretched over his bare torso, the sleeves ending halfway down his forearms, tight as leggings. Jules was ignoring them. Kelsey was still in her studio, working on her collection for the fashion show, which was all anyone could talk about by then.
“I can’t drink any more champagne,” Mary yelled, one hand pressed against Mike’s stomach as if she was feeling for the kick of a baby. I had never seen her this loose or involved. “Is there any still white wine?”
“Did you hear what Christopher Hitchens told Piers Morgan about champagne over lunch?” one of the English twins asked. “He reckons the four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.”
“There’s at least one thing on that list that you can’t live without,” Mike said to Mary.
Mary slapped his bare chest in mock horror.
“She loves picnics, bro,” Mike said to Damien. “It’s like the third thing she told me.”
Mary dipped her fingers in Mike’s vodka and flicked them in his face.
“Do you have a tee time yet?” Damien asked him. They had been discussing golf.
“Nah, man. Tom said he could set that up.”
“Your friend Tom picked up golf pretty quickly.”
“He’s a good learner,” Mike said. “That’s why we’re so proud of him back home.”
“What else do you have planned?”
“Not a damn thing. I’d paddle out again if that swell sticks around. You know they have waves here, right?”
“I did know that. Do you hunt? That’s worth looking into.”
“What’s in season?”
“Pheasant, grouse, deer. Jules, am I missing anything? Maybe we should go up to your place in the Highlands.”
“Don’t see why not,” Jules said. “There’s a driven shoot tomorrow on our neighbor’s land.”
Jules stood up to answer the door before I could ask what a driven shoot was. He came back with Kelsey, who was complaining about the fashion show’s executive producer until she saw a stranger sitting next to Mary, wearing Mary’s clothes.
“Kelsey, these are my friends from home,” I said. “Kelsey’s from New Jersey too.”
“All right,” Mike said as she kissed him on both cheeks. “Good to meet you. Where you from?”
“Ocean City,” Kelsey said, stepping back and regarding Mike with her hands on her hips. “Can I ask you something? Do you know how to walk?”
Mike shot me a look, asking me to translate. I had no idea what Kelsey meant.
“Jesus,” she said, reading our confusion. “I’m sorry, I’ve been in my head all day. I meant have you modeled before. Have you walked a runway?”
“Nah, but I always thought I should be a model,” Mike said. “I mean, I’m fucking gorgeous, right?”
“Right,” Kelsey said. “That’s why I asked.”
Mike looked like an actor who had forgotten his line. Sincere compliments were apparently a kind of social kryptonite for him. The plate of coke landed in front of Casey then. I could barely hide my shock when he rerolled the bill and took a l
ine and then another.
“You did that flyer for Kmart that one time,” Casey said to Mike, before touching his ring finger to the plate and rubbing it across his gums. “Those gay yellow shorts? Remember that?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Mike said, regaining his footing, turning back to Kelsey. “So yeah, I am a model. What do you want me to do?”
“Walk to me,” she said.
My heart jumped as she backed up and beckoned to him. Instead of following her lead, Mike boosted up onto one end of the table, steadied himself, and strutted straight down its length, his eyes burning a hole into a spot on the far wall. He walked right to the edge, paused, thrust one hip forward like a weapon, spun on his heel, and walked back, kicking over an empty wineglass that Damien caught before it hit the floor. Kelsey looked to Jules as Mike jumped down to applause. Jules was nodding his head, his mouth turned down in a deep frown of approval.
“Right?” Kelsey said. “You need a little coaching, but my God. How long are you in town?”
Mike looked at Casey.
“Unclear,” Casey said.
“Well, if you stick around until next week, I want you in my show.”
“I’m game to stick around,” Mike said. “I dig this place.”
She asked him for his suit size, which he didn’t know, but Kelsey told him not to worry about that. She fell into the empty chair next to Jules, and pulled her hair back.
“Let’s go have a smoke outside,” Casey said to me.
You could just hear the ocean from the balcony off the living room.
“This is them, right?” Casey said. “The guys Wells said you knew?”
“Yeah, this is them. Hey, I thought you said you didn’t fuck with coke?”
“I did, didn’t I? I guess that’s just something that you say.”