Erica was working the bar when I walked in.
“Mike Chance! What brings you to town?” she greeted me without hesitation.
“Just visiting my brother,” I said, not about to get into it.
“Nice. They were in here a couple months ago. Twin babies, so cute!”
“Yeah. They have their hands full,” I said and ordered a beer.
“Food?”
“I ate. Just thought I’d stop in. I don’t really know anybody out here anymore.”
“Lucky. Danny McCoy was in here last night. Guy still thinks he’s god’s gift,” she said. “Beer’s on me.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Really, don’t worry. Yeah, I swear Danny comes in here every time he has a new girl, just to show her off to me.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot you guys dated. We didn’t hang in the same circles.”
“Yeah, you were always out here at the beach. I was doing theater and Danny was driving around in that stupid Camero. Wasted my first two years of college on that guy.”
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
“UCI. I’m a teacher by day. Fifth grade.”
“Nice. You must be exhausted.”
“I bought a house,” she sighed. “Overpaid for a house.”
“Bummer. Hey, I just broke off an engagement, so, cheers,” I offered.
“No way. With that chick you were with last time? She seemed...”
“You remember that?”
“Yeah. My life is pretty boring.”
“New tattoo?” I said, observing a dark line curving out on her shoulder blade. It was still red and puffy.
“Yeah, I keep it covered at school. It’s a Gaelic symbol for water. I think.” She craned her neck to see it. “It looked cool on paper.”
A group of four guys filed in the door and she took menus to them. I recognized one from my volleyball days, but I didn’t remember his name. We exchanged a nod.
The time change was getting to me. It was almost two in the morning back home. “Erica,” I said, leaving five dollars on the bar, “I’m beat. Jet lag. You working tomorrow?”
“No. Wednesday.”
“I’ll try to stop in,” I said.
“Good to see you, Mike,” she said with a smile. Pretty girl. Dark hair to her chin. She had the same raspy voice in high school.
As I walked out the door I heard, “Hey, brah.”
It was the mop-headed guy from my beach days. “You playing still?”
“Um, here and there. I’m just visiting town.”
“You should come out to Huntington Beach tomorrow. Got a regular game going. We’ll find you a partner.”
“I’ll try. Thanks for the invite. I’m Michael. Uh, Mike.”
“Lucas.”
Lucas Wright. I remembered him now.
I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I felt good. I took a shower and lingered over breakfast. I read the Orange County Register and had three cups of coffee. The morning sun was bright. I had the entire day ahead of me, and I hadn’t been this upbeat in months.
One thing I missed about California was hills. They gave me a sense of location as I moved about. They provided compass points and a constantly changing beauty, even as rows of identical houses crept higher and higher up. I made my way to the storage unit on Grand Avenue, where nothing would indicate that Tustin had ended and Santa Ana had started. In fact, you could drive for an hour north and never notice leaving one city and entering another. It all ran together forever.
I checked in at the office and told the manager that I had hopes of having the unit empty that day. He directed me to Unit 419. I pulled the van in front of a door, about half the size of a single car garage. Stale dry air hit me as I opened the door.
There it stood. A full foot taller than me, it had a blue moving blanket draped over the top. There were a half dozen dusty boxes stacked next to it. I took the blanket off. The dark wood was still in perfect condition. Over 100 years and it had been cared for meticulously by my grandfather, who had inherited it from his father. He passed away a decade before my grandmother. After that, the clock would fall out of use when my brother couldn’t stop by to make sure the weights were set properly. I remembered that you could only set the time at certain times of day or the chimes wouldn’t ring properly. I’m pretty sure there was a special key to wind it as well. My chances of getting this thing working were slim, but it was as beautiful as I remembered. The gold in its face was real; its simple curves carved into the top made it look like a tall stately gentleman.
I opened the top box. It was full of tiny plastic boxes. In each was twenty or thirty photo slides. My grandfather used to set up a home movie screen and show slides of their vacations. He would have loved PowerPoint. I spent an hour squinting at the slides. Some were straight tourist gift shop collections. Twenty-four slides of San Francisco, or Yosemite. Others were pictures of my grandparents visiting relatives. Another box contained the delicate teacup collection. I didn’t know what to do with that. With the huge van, I could take it all and worry about that later.
Vince called to see if I had plans for lunch and we agreed to meet for a burger. I stretched my legs, stiff from sitting on the ground, and started to load the boxes. The clock presented a challenge. It was heavy, but manageable. But its sheer height made it unwieldy. My brother told me that the weights were wrapped in towels in the base of the clock. I walked the clock on its corners but it was too tall to go out the door without leaning it over. A light “gong” sounded as I tipped it, a tone that immediately brought me back to childhood. It was that same note, same resonance, that I had heard a thousand times growing up. I was like a smell or a taste that takes you back to a moment, only it took me back to a million moments. Along with it came all the people. I could see my grandmother tying her garden shoes. I could smell the orange blossoms in her back yard. I could picture the 1950s pink and brown tiles in her bathroom and the scale that sat in the corner. I could see the pencil marks on the doorway where I was in constant pursuit of my once-taller brother.
I smiled. This clock re-connected me to something. I laid it gently into the opening of the van and eased it in. I pushed it in like a casket and covered it with the blanket. I had no idea where I was going, but it was going with me.
The sun was still high in the sky when I showed up at the beach volleyball courts in Huntington Beach. Slamming the van door shut, I could hear the dead thuds of more than a dozen men and women practicing. This was a serious crew. Far more serious than the typical league at the Undertow. There had to be four guys over 6’5”. The women had deep tans and were covered in ink. I approached tentatively. I didn’t see Lucas Wright, or anyone from his group. I left my flip flops on a wall separating the sidewalk from the sand and surveyed the four courts. The Pacific roared beyond.
“That all you got? Man, this is going to be easy,” I heard someone yell as a ball went bounding toward the wall.
There he was. Maybe ten pounds heavier, with a shaggy goatee.
“Pick Sotpeak,” I said.
He squinted and looked my way.
“Are you still talking shit on this beach?” I yelled, walking toward him.
“Mike Chance? What the...”
I tossed him the ball and we exchanged a hug.
“What are you doing here, you bastard?” he asked.
“Family business,” I shrugged. “I’m leaving in a day or two.”
Pick shouted in the direction of two other players. “Hey, Rolo! I got my partner for tonight.” Then he turned to me. “You need a partner right? Who told you to come here?”
“Lucas Wright. Saw him at Joey’s last night.”
“Ah ha! That guy’s a punk,” he smirked.
“You think everyone is a punk,” I said, stretching. “So, what are you doing these days? Besides playing volleyball. Please tell me you aren’t still waiting tables at Tony Roma’s.”
“Hell no. I’m a lifeguard, man. Th
is is my office. And real estate. You know, on the side.”
“Lifeguard slash real estate. So, ‘California,’” I laughed.
“Call me if your house is ‘under water,’” he joked.
“Is that on your bus-stop bench?”
“It should be. Let’s play.”
Admittedly, I was nervous at the start. Aside from the height and power on the beach, most of the teams played together year round. Several were pros. We dropped the first set against an easy opponent, and found our groove quickly taking the next two sets. We fell into familiar plays. Pick was a far better player than Sam, and he’d improved significantly since our teen years. Less athleticism, more smarts. We won our second match, before getting completely smoked in the third by a pair of Lithuanians. It was past 10:00. I was beat, but the night was just starting.
I agreed to have a drink with Pick and Rolo, a short Filipino with calves like grapefruits. His black hair had bleached spots. Pick hammered on him for letting his sister practice hair dying on him. I wasn’t sure if this was true, or another one of Pick’s jabs. We folded in to Rolo’s Audi. For a bunch of beach bums, everyone had tony jobs and cars.
“You a lifeguard too, Rolo?” I asked.
“Real estate. Just real estate.”
“You sold a house since you dumped Clorox on your head?” Pick called from the back seat.
“Four, jackass.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, man,” Rolo fired back, “I sell houses to make money. Not to live in them.”
“Shut it, and drive faster.”
“Mike,” Rolo turned to me, “Pick has been living in this lady’s house for seven months. Says he can’t sell it. How many showings have you done there? What? None? Did you say none?”
“Hey, it’s got bad decor,” Pick argued. “It needs staging.”
“It’s your furniture.”
“It’s a quarter mile from the beach, man. She’s in Paris. She doesn’t really want to sell it. And I don’t have a car.”
“You could buy a car for the commission,” Rolo shook his head. “An agent without a car.”
We drove inland. I asked where we were going. The answer was vague. Rolo had a cousin in Garden Grove. I’d left the van on the beach. I really didn’t want to be in Garden Grove, but I didn’t want to rock the boat.
The smell of marijuana could knock you down from the sidewalk. Then I remembered, it was basically legal in California now. I was immediately offered a joint. Not a toke. A joint. I declined.
“I work for a bank. Drug testing,” I said. I’d never been drug tested. But I hadn’t smoked pot since college. There was tequila, so I poured some in a glass with ice and squeezed a half a lime into it. Two strong drinks later, we were back in the car, heading back toward Tustin. Pick wanted food and he wanted a specific diner’s chilidog. Rolo passed cans of cheap Mexican beer and played Led Zepplein. It was a time warp.
I told Pick about seeing Erica at Joey’s the night before.
“What’s her last name?” he asked.
“Moss, I think.”
“Erica Moss?” Rolo asked. “I know her. Hot.”
“She’s okay,” Pick replied.
“I have her number,” Rolo said, reaching for his phone.
“Do not call her,” I said. “Last thing she needs is a late night call from us.”
“I’ll text her,” Rolo said, gripping the steering wheel with his knees.
I reached over and put my hand on the wheel, “Just drive, man. Focus.”
The rest of the night was a blur. We inhaled a plate of chilidogs and polished off a twelve pack of beer on Newport Beach.
I woke up the next morning to a snoring chorus. Pick was sitting in a blue hotel room chair with his head pitched back toward the sky. Rolo was on the opposite side of my bed. The sun was up. My phone was buzzing. It was Vince.
I whispered into the phone, “Hi.”
“You have a girl in there?”
“No, I wish. Two dudes, in fact.”
“Wow, guess you’ve moved on,” Vince laughed.
“Volleyball game got out of hand last night.”
“Well, get your recovery in. I promised Sara we’d come down to Joey’s tonight. Kids go to bed early, so meet at 5:00.”
I spent the morning getting rid of Pick and Rolo and getting the van. I called my dad and said I would be on the road on Thursday and I hoped to make it to Santa Fe in one day. It would be a full day of driving, but everyone in my family had done it. I called Sam and asked him to go by my apartment and get my mail. I admitted that I also wanted a report on how Christie was acting. I called work and told them that I was working with Human Resources on using vacation time for missing the entire week. I told them there was a family issue. I did not call Human Resources. There was no communication between the departments, so I could untangle the matter when I got back.
I was early to Joey’s, and a little anxious because I knew Erica was working. She saw me and poured a Sierra Nevada. She was all business for the first few minutes, but when she got a lull she leaned on the bar in front of me and smiled.
“So, I got a text from Rolando last night. Said you were talking about me. At 2 a.m.”
Bastard. I hung my head. “It was a long night. I just mentioned to Pick that I’d seen you and they ran with it. I told him not to...”
“It’s cool. Just giving you a hard time.”
“They wanted to call you.”
“But you didn’t want to...”
“It was late. We were not entirely coherent.”
“So, when you shoving off, back to F.L.A.?”
“Tomorrow. First stop, Santa Fe, see my folks.”
Vince and his family arrived just in time to save me. Erica tried to comp my drink again, and I left her $5. I wasn’t sure that was an insult, since a draft beer plus tip would be $5 anyway, or if she was pocketing the entire $5. I was second-guessing everything I said and did. I’d been with Christie so long, I had no idea what to do with this mild flirtation. When you have a girlfriend, flirting is easy, because you know it will go exactly nowhere. When you’re single, there is the supposed chance of something more. That is precisely what makes single guys so often hapless. A guy who is in a relationship is void of anxiety and this is mistaken for confidence. That is why I was able to calmly enjoy a cold beer with three beautiful bridesmaids across the table from me. This is why they said I looked like a movie star. That doesn’t happen to single guys.
I made it back to my hotel early. It was good to spend time with my brother and I wished I could see him more. I knew he was disappointed. I packed my bag, was happy to find that the Rays were playing the Angels on TV. At ten o’clock, my hotel phone rang.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hey. It’s Erica.”
“Oh, hi.” I sat up.
“I’m not stalking you,” she laughed nervously. “Ok, I sort of am. You told me where you were staying. I’m off work and a girlfriend and I are heading to Mutt Lynch’s for a drink. Thought you might want company, unless you’re hitting the town with boys again.”
“No, I’m not...”
“I know you have to drive tomorrow, and...”
“No, sure. You heading there now?”
“We’ll pick you up.”
Erica arrived in a minivan driven by her friend whose name I never caught because before we got to the bar, she’d received a call and begged out, dropping us at the curb.
We grabbed a table in the popular tourist spot and Erica confessed, “Ok, I know there’s no way you bought that story. She was never coming for drinks, but I thought it would be weird if I just asked you out for a drink.”
I laughed hard. “No, I totally bought it, but thanks for coming clean.”
“That’s the oldest trick in the book! But she really should have at least stayed for one drink. It’s more believable that way.”
“I need to write this down.”
“You can’t use it, Mike.”
“What? Is this like proprietary? Do I need permission?”
“No, it just doesn’t work for guys. I mean, if you call a girl for a drink, whatever the excuse, it’s just an excuse.”
“But not with women.”
“Right. Women see right through it. Men don’t. You fell for it!”
“Erica, do you always have to trick men into have a drink with you?”
“You’re leaving town. I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance.” She paused and held up her hand, “Please, I’m not crazy. You’re just a nice guy and I figured, what the heck, he’s in town one more night, so if you rejected me at least I wouldn’t run into you on the street.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“I mean, I’m not trying to sleep with you. Just, oh for Christ’s sake, what am I saying?”
“I’m not sure. You bring me out here for drinks, I assumed this was guaranteed sex. Check please!”
“Please don’t embarrass me further. Can we change the subject? What’s the score of the game? How was your pizza? The twins are so adorable!”
“5-2, Rays. The pizza was great as always. Vince tried to get me to come work for him.”
“Really?”
“I turned him down. He didn’t beg, but he said it was a good offer. And I turned Sara down, who made the pitch from the family angle. I’m probably making a mistake, but I’ve been coasting for so long now, I’m trying to figure out my next step. It’s complicated.”
“Tell me about it. I’m teaching fifth graders and I refuse to quit the job that put me through college.”
This was easy. We were having an open and honest conversation. We had two drinks and I could have stayed for a third and a fourth, but I felt comfortable just ending the evening on a pleasant note.
“I am driving twelve hours tomorrow,” I said, when the server asked us if we wanted another round. I could see Erica was a little disappointed and the server went to get our check.
“You’re going to drive a van all the way to Florida.”
“Yep. No CD player. Not that I have any CDs.”
“You should pick up the first hitchhiker you see.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Better yet,” I said, attempting a joke, “Why don’t you come with me?”
The Grandfather Clock Page 3