“Hi, I’m Sean.”
“Nice to meet you, Sean. Fiona, you never told me you liked to sail.”
“Only when Sean has time to take me sailing.”
“This is my girlfriend, Mei,” said Jack, putting his arm around Mei. So Jack had an Asian fetish. He liked Hello Kitties.
“So Fiona, is this your—”
“Overprotective big brother, yes,” interjected Sean.
Jack and Mei looked at me. And laughed.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m his sister. Don’t you see the family resemblance?” I joked, holding out my hand to Mei.
“Of course. Absolutely,” she said.
“Would you guys care for a drink? We brought way too much vodka and apple-cranberry juice. Care for a cosmo, Mei?” asked Sean.
“Oh my God, I love cosmos.”
“Yes, she does,” said Jack. “She’ll drink you out of house and home, this one can.”
“Sean, can you make me one too? I love cosmos too,” I said.
“Sure thing, Sis,” he replied, giving me a wink.
Sean went down below to the cooler. A few minutes later, he emerged with the drinks in his hand. He reached over the walkway and handed the drinks to Jack and Mei. Jack suddenly wrinkled his nose and sniffed at the air.
The dead squirrel smell was still there.
The sick, sweet scent of putrefaction. The smell to which I had grown accustomed on the way over to the island. The smell which faded somewhat when Sean unloaded his biodegradable cargo into the Bay, but was still discernable. My stomach lurched. I looked at Jack, the way that Sean had looked at me, like I had just farted loudly in the middle of an important client conference.
But Jack only coughed and sipped his cosmo.
“Good drink. Chopin vodka, Sean?”
“But of course. Everything else is crap.”
Jack laughed, ignoring the smell of fart, the smell of death and decay. Mei giggled along, downing her drink in a few gulps.
“Sir, may I have some more?” she asked, trying to control her giggles.
“More?” Sean answered, cocking his eyebrow. “Why, yes, Oliver. Of course, you may have some more.” He took her cup and got up to go down to the cooler.
“Make it more part vodka, please,” Mei said. “God, what is that awful smell?”
“Smell, what smell?” Sean stopped, turning around to look at her.
“Oh, honey, that’s just the harbor. Probably some garbage tourists have chucked overboard. No regard for the environment, some people,” Jack said. “And you probably had too much vodka. Look at you. You’re all red.”
And she was.
It’s called the Asian flush. A little bit of alcohol, and Asians turn red all over. Like the scarlet letter, marking us for imbibing a little fun. Every drop evidenced on our yellow skin, telegraphing to the world that we can’t handle our liquor.
I don’t get the Asian flush. I must have a non-Asian constitution.
“No, it smells like something up and died,” insisted Mei.
She had no sense of people culture.
“I don’t smell it,” I lied, pretending to sniff the air.
“I do. It stinks,” reiterated Mei.
“Hm, I wonder what it could be. Let me get you your drink,” said Sean as he disappeared into the boat with her cup.
I stood there, trying to think of something to say to fill the awkward silence. But Jack beat me to it.
“So Fiona, you excited about starting work tomorrow?”
“Oh, absolutely. I enjoyed meeting everyone in the department. Sounds like a fun group. Can’t wait to join them in the trenches.”
Jack laughed. “Good. Bill, bill, bill. That’s what I like.”
Bill, bill, bill. The mantra of private law practice.
Sean came up with Mei’s drink and handed it to her over the walkway between the boats. The bright sunlight shone through the dark red liquid, making it look more like cherry Kool-Aid.
Like what Jim Jones fed to his 909 followers in Jonestown. All they wanted was to live together in harmony. All they wanted was utopia. All they got in the end was cyanide-flavored Kool-Aid.
I thought about leaping up and knocking the drink out of Mei’s hand. But she was already quaffing it down. Oh well.
“That was good. I was so thirsty,” Mei said, stumbling backwards. “Whoo, I think I overdid it, honey.” She reached out and grabbed Jack who eased her onto the deck seat.
“Aw, sweetie. Can’t hold your liquor, can you?”
“She okay?” asked Sean.
Mei lay down on the deck bench and closed her eyes.
“Oh, she’s fine,” said Jack.
But she wasn’t.
Because she asked one too many questions. So Sean had to save his own ass.
And because she violated one of the most important tenets of people culture: You don’t tell people that their farts stink. Or that their boat smells like death.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“DON WANTS TO TAKE you crabbing to make up for what happened at dim sum,” my father informed me when I got home from sailing.
The ground peanuts in the dumplings had failed to kill Don properly. He survived despite their best efforts to send him back to Jesus. Stubborn bastard.
“That’s okay, Dad. He really doesn’t have to.”
“But he wants to. He’s such a nice boy.”
“Dad, he’s boring. And I really don’t want to hang out with his entire family again.”
“No, Fiona. It’ll just be you two. And some of his friends.”
And some of his friends. Great. His friends wanted to check out the potential future wife too.
“Tell him no thanks, Dad. I’m not interested.”
“Fiona, don’t be rude. He really feels bad about what happened at lunch. And his father is my friend. The least you can do is to be polite and say yes.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
I agreed because it was easier than arguing with my father. Been there, done that. So not doing it when I had more serious issues to deal with, like the fate of my new boss’ girlfriend. I had pretended to be too full of cosmos and sushi to talk much on our way back from Angel Island. Too tired to do anything but steer us back into South Beach Harbor.
You never get into a fight with the driver when the car is travelling down a dark country road in the middle of a thunderstorm. You never accuse your friend of ruining your life or making you an accomplice to a felony when you are floating alone with him in the middle of the Bay on his sailboat. Unless you want to end up as fresh fish food.
So I waited until I was in the safety of my own bedroom to call Sean.
“Sean, tell me Mei is going to be okay.”
“Sorry, Fi. Can’t do that.”
“Oh God. She was my new boss’ girlfriend. Are you insane?”
“A little, but I like to think of myself merely as colorful.”
“Not funny. Jail, Sean. Life in prison. Have you thought of that?”
“Not going to happen, Fi.”
“And how do you know that, Sean?”
“Didn’t you see Jack’s wedding band?”
“What?”
“Wedding band, Fi. The guy was wearing a wedding band, and Mei sure wasn’t Mrs. Betner.”
“So he was with his mistress. So what?”
“So you think he’s going to drop an underage, drunk, unconscious girl off at the ER? Think of what that would do for his reputation and his marriage.”
“She wasn’t underage, I don’t think. She looked at least eighteen.”
“I meant under the legal drinking age. Think of how that would play out in the papers.”
“Sean, this is serious. Jack will probably report us to the police.”
“No, he won’t. He’ll be held responsible for anything that happens to her. That and he’s probably worth too much to risk his wife finding out. A divorce would kill him.”
“So you think he’s just going to d
o nothing?”
“Oh, not nothing. I think he’s going to make it all okay.”
“Sean, this is nuts.”
“Not our fault she was drinking. And it was on Jack’s boat, not ours.”
“Christ, I have to see him tomorrow morning. What am I going to do?”
“Nothing, because nothing happened.”
I wanted to ask him what else was in those drinks. But I didn’t. Partly because of self-preservation and partly because I already knew. He had slipped a lethal dose of roofies into Mei’s cosmos for carrying on about the smell of death emanating from his boat. For not adhering to the rules of people culture.
“You think Jack is that big of an asshole, Sean?”
“You tell me.”
On Monday morning, I showed up early in a three-piece Tahari suit and three-inch Dior heels. Annette, the head of Human Resources, showed me to David Keener’s old office.
The office windows faced the San Francisco Bay from the twenty-first floor. The bay, the sky, the hills, the City. I didn’t need wall art. The City would be my living decoration. Keener had also enjoyed a state-of-the-art computer and personal printer. Everything he needed to bill eighty, ninety hours a week at peak efficiency. Keener had it good.
“So, Fiona, how do you like your new office?”
“Jack, good morning. It’s fabulous. I think I’m going to be very happy here.”
“Good, good. Could you step into my office for a minute?”
A wave of nausea swept over me. I was sure that a couple of homicide detectives would be waiting for me. And of all things, on my first day on the job. It would make the front page of The Recorder, the legal newspaper.
But when I walked into Jack’s office, it was empty, except for the mountainous piles of files, books, and papers on his desk, couch, and floor. I also noticed something I hadn’t during my initial interview: a family photo on the credenza behind his desk.
A smiling photo of a late-middle-aged woman with graying curls hugging two freckled-faced women in their twenties. Jack’s wife, Mrs. Betner. And their two daughters. His family. And a photo of a golden retriever, his dog.
But no photos of Mei. His mistress.
Duh.
I wanted to ask Jack if Mei was all right. But I thought better of it and allowed him to steer the conversation.
“So Fiona, how was your last weekend of freedom?”
“Relaxing and free. But I’m ready to work.”
“Did you do anything fun?”
Jack put out the bait. He waited to see if I was going to bite.
“Not really. Just kicked back and spent some time hanging out with an old friend. I wanted to rest up for my big day.”
“Good for you. I spent Saturday with my wife and kids. Don’t get to see the girls too often now. Young people seem to have lives of their own these days. And I was here all day Sunday, working. No rest for the wicked.”
He let out an uneasy laugh, and then stared at me. Hard. I got the message.
“Wow. You must be busy. Speaking of which, my assignments?”
Jack beamed. He tossed two merger agreements at me. “That should keep you plenty busy, Fiona.”
Sean was right. Nothing to worry about. Jack was a total asshole. You can always count on an asshole to be an asshole.
THAT EVENING, I BEGAN my new daily ritual of reading the news. I couldn’t stand news anchors with their perfect broadcast hair, makeup, and suits. Their Crest-clean smiles. The flashing logos of the television stations. The turned-up volume of commercials. So I read my news online, on the blessed Internet, on SFGate.com.
Under the news tab, I discovered an article of interest entitled:
Asian Woman Drowned in SF Bay: An unidentified Asian woman, in her late teens, was found dead early this morning in the San Francisco Bay by boaters. Police investigators believe that the young woman probably fell off a boat and drowned after consuming a large quantity of alcohol and unknown sedatives. Police are searching for any possible witnesses to the incident.
The article continued with the usual discussion about heavy drinking being a hazard of boating, how young people consume too much alcohol these days, how parents should keep a closer eye on the partying behavior of their children, and how police need to crack down harder on underage drinking.
None of which interested me in the slightest.
So Jack made everything okay by tossing Mei off his boat. No one wanted a dead Hello Kitty full of vodka and roofies. No one but the fish.
Want not, waste not.
“See? I told you nothing would happen.”
“Yeah, Sean. Looks like you were right.”
“How did your first day of work go?”
“I’m still here.”
“Fi, it’s almost eleven o’clock.”
“Uh huh. And I’m still here. Jack is keeping me very busy.”
“You know what they say about idleness and the Devil.”
“Yeah.”
Bill, bill, bill.
That was all I knew. Nothing about a sailing trip to Angel Island. Nothing about Jack in a toucan island shirt. Nothing about apple-cranberry juice and vodka. Nothing about Mei.
And I also knew absolutely nothing about crabbing.
“Don’s taking you up to San Pablo Bay this weekend to go crabbing, Fiona.”
“Are you serious, Dad? I’d really rather not go.”
“Well, too bad. You already said yes. And I already told him.”
“Dad, I have to work this weekend. New job. Don’t want the new boss to think I’m lazy.”
“You can take one evening off. You are leaving Friday night.”
“Friday night?”
“Yes, that’s what I said, Fiona.”
“Oh God.”
“You never know, you might like him,” my mother interjected.
“I already met him, and I don’t like him. I’m ‘tuned out,’ remember?”
“Fiona, listen to your father. Just go and have fun. You’ll have something exciting to tell your coworkers on Monday.”
Our lawyers go crabbing. They catch the very seafood they eat. They are well-rounded hunters, gatherers, fishermen if need be. They can negotiate, draft, and bring home their own dinners. Literally. They are worth the two hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour that you will be paying.
Crabbing in San Pablo Bay.
During my flight lessons, I often flew over the San Pablo Reservoir. Better than flying in the Mount Diablo area. No hills or mountains to create air turbulence. Nice and steady airflow over the water. A perfect place to practice pitching and turning at a steady altitude. I never realized I was flying over crabbers down below.
Crabbers like Don.
According to several fishing sites on the Internet, crabbing is basically sitting around and waiting for crabs to crawl into your trap while you play card games with your buddies. You need a suitable crab trap with about one hundred feet of rope topped with a small buoy or a white plastic bleach bottle. Either one will do. You also need to rent a boat to put the trap out where the crabs scuttle about in the water.
With that, you can catch Red Rock Crabs and Dungeness Crabs. Red Rock Crabs are smaller, have less meat and a stronger flavor. But you can keep them. Dungeness have a sweet, mild flavor and plenty of succulent meat, enough for a full meal—it’s what you really want to catch. So of course, it’s illegal to take or possess Dungeness crabs in San Francisco and San Pablo Bay.
But not one site told a girl what she should wear to go crabbing.
“What the hell do you wear on a crabbing trip, Sean?”
“Leave the Prada at home. That’s for sure.”
“Christ, it sounds like we’re just going to sit around in the middle of dipshit nowhere, out by the cold water, waiting to catch pneumonia.”
“That sounds about right. Jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, gloves. What any girl would wear on a crabbing trip.”
“Shit. Why didn’t the peanuts kill him?”
>
“Because God saved him for you, Fi.”
“Remind me to thank God for that one.”
Sean laughed.
“It might not be so bad. You’ll get to be on the water again. You liked sailing, didn’t you?”
Sure.
And so I bundled myself up in a heavy North Face down jacket, jeans, GAP sweatshirt and t-shirt underneath. No gloves. I couldn’t find them. All I could find were my snowflake mittens that I had worn in the third grade.
Don drove up to my house and rang the doorbell early Friday evening. When I was halfway down the stairs, my father ran after me, yelling and waving something in his hand.
“Fiona! Fiona!”
“What?”
He handed me a tube of my mother’s Mary Kay cranberry blush lipstick.
“Wear lipstick.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
HENRY DAVID THOREAU wrote a whole book about how great it was to be alone with Nature, how Walden Pond was the Earth’s Eye, how fabulous it was to be among the trees, how he would rather sit on a pumpkin by himself than on a velvet cushion surrounded by other folks.
Problem is, Thoreau never lived in the modern age. If he had, he might have been more like Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski didn’t just write diaries about living in the forest. He wasn’t just happy to sit on a pumpkin or a velvet cushion. He holed up in the woods, growing crazier by the day, until he ended up building mail bombs to kill people.
In our time, Nature has become the favorite accomplice of killers, rapists, homegrown terrorists, and other assorted nutcases. The Walden Ponds conceal the bodies and cars of their hapless victims. The lovely trees and shrubs that so thrilled Thoreau now provide ample hiding places for these miscreants, creating opportunities for ambush, mayhem, murder, and terror. Helping them do God’s work.
Thoreau was lucky. He died before the modern age.
If some psycho like the Unabomber didn’t get you in the woods, Nature herself would. With her fangs, her stingers, her claws, her jaws, her poisons. And her cold, her rain, her darkness, and her freezing wind. In case her other weapons failed.
It took man thousands of years to crawl out of the woods. Why anyone would want to go back and spend the weekend sleeping on the ground, I had no idea.
Hello Kitty Must Die Page 10