Echo Moon

by Laura Spinella

  Okay, he remembered getting into the truck in East Marion. He recalled the uncanny urge to drive forward, amazed the truck’s engine turned over. That he knew how to drive it. While all this was curious recall, Pete couldn’t explain how he’d arrived at the sight in front of him: a sandy beach. “How the fuck did I get . . .” Pete slid open the truck’s door and essentially fell from the seat. “Here?”

  His legs gave way and he crumpled to the ground. Gripping on to the truck door to pull himself up, Pete had the sensation of having traveled to some far-off place. Maybe the moon. He steadied himself and peered inside the truck, almost hoping to find an empty gin bottle. Drunken stupor would be a welcome explanation. There was nothing, and Pete didn’t drink like that. The beach looked deserted, along with the dirt area where the truck was parked. He hung on to the door, turning in one direction, then the other. Gulls squawked and tiny waves lapped twenty yards away. Brown seaweed made for a messy shoreline, and across the water was a small strip of land. He wasn’t looking at the sound; you couldn’t see land across that body of water. Where the fuck am I and how did I get here? To the right was a row of shed-like structures, similar to those he’d discovered in Walberswick, England.

  Oddly, Pete smiled. That memory, as opposed to this moment, was a good thing. Walberswick was from another era. Pete had flirted with peace on that timeless riverside respite. His dopey smile collapsed as his heart thundered. Time. The neatly painted beach shacks in front of him bore no sense of time. No girl in a bikini or blaring music. Waterfront, of course, was ageless—a wooden rowboat turned upside over told him nothing. Rising streaks of pink and orange gave way to a dome of blue. East. To his left was east. He considered approaching one of the small shacks, knocking on a door. He started in that direction and stopped. What if a door opened to someone from another century?

  The question filtered through his woozy mind. He curled his toes into the soles of his sneakers. It seemed like ninety-dollar Nikes should indicate a firm grip on the twenty-first century. Yet the beach was uncannily familiar. Walking, he steered away from the huts and moved parallel with the shoreline. Irrational fear tugged at him like the tide. The idea of wandering in, vanishing, was also on Pete’s mind. It would be one way to answer every confounding question that plagued his life.

  “Keep moving, Soldier . . . that’s not your destiny . . .” The trudge of Nikes stopped. The voice was the same one he’d imagined on Rocky Neck beach. Or always thought he imagined. It belonged to his lifeguard uncle.

  He murmured to the horizon: “Lifeguard . . . lifeline. Something life affirming would be great right about now.”

  He turned in a three-sixty motion, staving off panic and the impossible. Several yards away, a wooden sign was staked in the earth. “Earth, sure. Circa . . . ?” He stumbled in a circle, reassessing the views. “Not a fucking clue.”

  Approaching the sign, improbability did not abate. Not until the wooden sign grew legible. It read: “Site of the Gillette Dock, taken to sea in the Great Hurricane of 1938. Bayport, New York.” A few feet away was a discarded Starbucks cup. He sighed and squinted at the water. A bay. This was the—present-day—Great South Bay. Pete realized precisely where he was, positive of three things: One, he hadn’t a clue how he ended up there. Two, this was the location depicted in his mother’s ghost gift, the vintage postcard. Three, Esme had visited this place, taken in the same bay view a hundred years earlier. The view that had inspired her to write on the card: “When I spent two weeks on this beach, I didn’t dream of you then. E.M.”

  Pete spun toward the truck, frustration coming at him like a cavalry charge. He marched back with his fists clenched and his eyes on his sneakers. He couldn’t process last night or this morning. Visits to another life via the portal of an unknown REM state and the gateway drug propofol, something pumped into him years before, he got that. His cumulative experiences were driven by a profound psychic gift—sure, fair enough. He could file all of it under old news. But now it seemed he could add blackouts to his otherworldly woes. A blackout that had dumped him on a beach illustrated on a ghost gift that belonged to his mother. Pete moved faster to the truck. From the relative safety of the cab, he stared at the wide span of water, tiny shacks, and the past, which—by his best guess—seemed to be overlapping with the present.

  With no GPS and a vehicle that didn’t move over forty miles per hour, it took Pete a while to make it back to East Marion. Still, it was early morning as he bumped up the driveway. The old compact car caught his eye, but he motored along until he was back inside the barn. The lantern had been extinguished. He exited the truck and the dilapidated building. Then Pete shoved the wooden plank over the door—like maybe this would keep the truck from escaping or the past from entering. He leaned against the rough wood. Clear as the sky, behind his closed eyes, Pete saw a much smaller door, a plank sliding across it. A young man with two braids stood guard; he smiled at Pete.

  Am I in the room?

  His mental point of view was staring up at a crude ceiling, as if lying in a bed. The room was small, a hovel. Smells made him gag, rank odors of filth and illness. Pete lurched from the barn door, both his hands clamping onto his head. “Goddamn it!” he yelled. “Get the fuck out of my mind!” He was silenced by an internal flash of Esme; she too was in the shabby room.

  He tried for logic again. It could be this new vision was aided by the photographs he’d discovered in the bungalow—Esme, beautiful and beaten. But Pete had never lost hours. Never woken up clueless about his location or how he’d arrived there. And not just anyplace, but a spot on the map where Esme had been a hundred years before. To a point, Pete was able to handle the haunting repetitive visits to his past. Hell, he’d been practicing most of his life. Upsetting as those occurrences were, they didn’t bleed into this life. In fact, until this trip home, specters and his other life had been mutually exclusive. “Why?” he shouted to no one, lost to frustration. “Why are you doing this?”

  Pete focused on the compact car. It was the only object that didn’t make him feel like he wavered on complete madness. The car door creaked open, the front seat flipping forward, smacking against the steering wheel. The horn sounded, which only drilled into his aching head. The girl from yesterday stumbled out from the back seat like a lost clown, her deep red hair askew, her expression as bewildered as his.

  “What the hell are you shouting about?” she said, her voice sleepy.

  Pete fought the urge to ask why she’d slept in the car, woken up someplace other than her own bed. Or maybe she didn’t know either, and they could explore this grand new fucked-up state of confusion together. Pete stood about twenty feet from her. He forced his staccato breaths and thoughts into a more stable rhythm. Scaring the shit out of her wouldn’t be a great idea. “Sorry.” He held up a hand. “I . . . a bat swooped at me.”

  She moved in a sleepy stagger, glancing up at overgrown trees. “Don’t bats come out at dusk?”

  “This one must have had a screw loose. Maybe I startled a nest.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “The barn.” She glanced that way but didn’t come closer, and Pete figured he’d better find “normal” fast. “I looked for you last night. I came out here . . . late. I saw your car. You weren’t in the house.”

  “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I didn’t come here looking for you. I saw the car and couldn’t find you.” Pete struggled for the thing that usually tripped him up—awareness of difficulties more precarious than his own. “I got worried after I looked everywhere.”

  She pointed toward the vehicle. “Obviously not everywhere. You didn’t think to look in the car?”

  The “duh” question triggered the concrete events connected to last night. He was about to look in her car, his phone had gone dead, then the light from the barn had caught his eye. Pete raised an arm, and it thudded against his khaki-covered thigh. “Just glad you’re okay.”

/>   “Yes. Fine. A little stranded, maybe.” She motioned to the car again. “It wouldn’t start. I ended up calling Caroline.” She tugged on a messy braid, which struck him as a sign of uncertainty. “She’s my roommate. I was kind of desperate.”

  “Was she supposed to come get you?”

  “Hardly. She wanted to send a car.”

  “Like a taxi?”

  “Like a car and driver.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “It’s why I tried everything else first. Caroline comes from megamoney. She likes to be in charge.” He waited. “She enjoys being right—queen of passive-aggressive behavior. The luxury ride back to Manhattan would have turned into a fantastic ‘I told you so.’ She warned me not to borrow Lucy’s car. She’s a different friend.”

  “I see. Less bossy . . .”

  “And less reliable transportation.” She glanced at the car. “Caroline wouldn’t have come herself, either way. Being in Wicked takes up her evenings.”

  “Geez, if wicked describes her, maybe you ought to rethink your room—”

  “I didn’t call her wicked. I said she’s in Wicked. Caroline made ensemble last spring.” The girl pulled a cell phone from her back pocket and poked at it. “Anyway, it got late, and I decided to wait until morning to figure out a plan B. I thought about sleeping inside, but that place . . .” She cocked her chin at the house. “It’s creepy.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “So why did you come back so late? Did you sleep here?”

  Easy explanations continued to elude Pete. Instead, he gave in to exhaustion and asked, “Do, um . . . do you want to get some breakfast?”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  On his way back to the bungalow, Pete had passed a restaurant. He called Grace as they drove toward the North Fork Diner now, his phone charging in the Audi’s console. Pete could imagine Grace’s reaction, waking up and finding him gone. She’d probably alert the local police, maybe his mother. On the other hand, Grace didn’t do anything before a three-mile run. His call went to voice mail. “Hey, I’m fine,” he reported. “Sorry I was gone this morning. I went out to the house . . . early. I ran into, uh . . .” He glanced at the girl seated beside him. “Alice.”

  “Ailish.” She said it curtly, insulted or amazed at his inability to recall.

  “Right. Ailish.” He glanced in her direction again; the name wouldn’t stick. He spoke into the phone. “Montague.” Her last name dropped in on his busy brain. “She had car trouble. We’re getting breakfast. I’ll be back . . . soon.”

  They turned into a dusty parking lot, and she hopped out when they rolled to a stop. Ailish swung her backpack over her shoulder, her messy braid flying in the opposite direction. Peering through the open car window, she hooked her finger around the bridge of wire-rimmed sunglasses, cobalt-blue lenses, and slid them down her nose. “Girlfriend keeps close tabs on you, huh?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Really?” She paused. “Wow. The hovering must have been claustrophobic when she was your girlfriend.”

  He got out, slamming the Audi’s door with an annoyed thud. “What makes you say she used to be my girlfriend?”

  “Evidentiary clues. For one, clearly you’re sharing a room. ‘Sorry I was gone this morning . . .’”

  He didn’t say yes or no, yanking on the diner door, his hand sweeping by in an exaggerated gesture. “And the second reason, Miss Mind Reader?”

  “I might have been in a whirlwind state yesterday, but I’m a good people observer.”

  “FBI profiler?”

  “No. But it is part of my job.” She glided past him, chin tilted upward. “Remember. I told you, I’m an actress.”

  No. He hadn’t remembered, and he froze at the blip of information. Cold air rushed at him from the diner interior.

  “Are you coming?”

  Pete squeezed his eyes shut and breathed deep before following.

  “As for . . . ?”

  “Grace,” he said, glad someone else could forget a name.

  “Grace. I’m sure Grace is a lovely person, but after meeting you . . .” She slid the glasses down again. “She hasn’t a thing to worry about from me.”

  Pete kept walking.

  “Besides, as noted, I’m good at reading people.”

  Pete was about to object to her tarot-card opinion of Grace. Then he recalled the sexy blonde on the beach. In the moment, Pete had been fine with Grace’s interruption, glad to be rid of the girl and her father’s ghost. Of course, Grace’s ploy had also removed any obstacle to her beach-blanket picnic for two. That motivation hadn’t struck him, not until this girl unwittingly noted it. He moved deeper into the diner, Ailish leading the way. She was quirky but quick. He pointed toward a sign for the restroom. “Did you want to use the restroom? I’m guessing it was a long night in the car.”

  She looked that way but didn’t budge. “No. When nature called at five a.m., I just went there . . . into the woods.” She sang softly under her breath, some rhyming trill that repeated the phrase.

  The soft sound of her voice penetrated, and for a second Pete felt like the whole diner went wonky. He shook it off and turned left. She went right.

  “Oh, let’s sit over here! In the sun. I love early morning sun. You don’t get much of it in the city, with all the tall buildings. Our condo is like a tomb. Sun kind of makes you feel . . . reborn.” She kept moving, forcing him in the opposite direction.

  Quick, quirky, and annoying, he thought.

  She slid into a booth, and Pete dropped onto the other seat, squinting at the harsh light. A waitress pounced, supplying thick laminated menus and pouring coffee. “Just leave the pot,” Ailish instructed. Bossy too, but different from Grace—like maybe she wouldn’t order for Pete. She perused food choices, flipping back and forth between the glossy pages. Pete opened his mouth; she held up her index finger, eyes never veering from the colorfully photographed food.

  Like a person can’t picture pancakes . . .

  Whatever. He had nothing relevant to say to her. The only topic they might have in common was her dead uncle, and talking about Zeke Dublin didn’t interest him either. Although on that front, Pete also realized zero spirits beckoned at him. He closed his eyes for a moment, only seeing oranges and reds blurred on the canvas of his brain. Endless days on assignment had the same effect, and mental fatigue had its perks. Pete tried to relax and chose to be grateful for the mental reprieve the universe currently allowed. He sipped black coffee, assuming his breakfast club guest was half-starved after being stuck at the bungalow since yesterday.

  The waitress returned. “You folks ready to order?”

  His dining partner flipped feverishly between two pages. Pete rolled his eyes. Great . . . impulsive and indecisive.

  She closed the menu and folded her hands. “I’ll have two eggs, sunny side up, with the Southern biscuits, gravy on the side, double bacon, and the sausage—I couldn’t decide, they both looked so good. Make it rye toast, dark, with the Irish butter if you have it.” She ran a bitten-nail finger over the silver caddy holding tiny plastic containers of jelly. “You’re out of peach. Can you see if there’s any peach jelly in the back?”

  Pete’s mouth gaped before he placed his order. “And I’ll have . . .”

  She shot him a look, holding him silent. “Could I also have a side of pancakes with fried bananas on top—do you have the silver dollar ones?” She jabbed a finger at the menu. “And the seasonal fruit to round it out.”

  Pete blinked, looking between her and the waitress, who wrote furiously. The server’s pencil finally stopped moving, and she glared at Pete as if he needed to catch up.

  “I’ll have toast,” he said.

  “White, rye, wheat, pumpernickel, millet, gluten-free—”

  “White. Just bring me white toast—dry.” He said this before Ailish assaulted him with an assortment of jams and spreads from which to choose. The waitress hurried away, and Ailish
chimed right in.

  “Wow. Are you always like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re going to bite the head off the world, or at least the nearest snake.”

  “Sorry.” Mostly sorry he’d suggested breakfast. “My work doesn’t allow for much food indulgence.”

  She wriggled her nose. “Corporate type, chained to a desk, locked in a boardroom, intent on paying off your swanky Midtown condo before you’re thirty? Maybe you’re shooting for partner this year.”

  “No . . . ,” he said slowly. “And so much for your people-reading skills. I’m a photojournalist. I travel most of the time. I’m either in an airport, where I wouldn’t touch the food, or—”

  “Oh.” She nodded, sipping her coffee. “Fussy too. Interesting.”

  “Or hauling ass through a country where staying alive doesn’t include an opportunity to sample the local cuisine.” He realized his reply was largely acerbic. He didn’t care. “At the moment, I have a bitch of a headache, which isn’t lending itself to the coronary disease du jour offered in this fine establishment.”

  “Bender last night?”

  “You’ve no idea.”

  That much didn’t elicit a verbal volley. Instead, she rummaged through her backpack and plopped three bottles of pain reliever onto the table.

  “Extra-strength ibuprofen, migraine-strength Excedrin, or plain old aspirin, which I don’t recommend on a slush stomach. Of course, if you’re into it, I have about a half ounce of weed in here too, but we’d do better out in your car with it.”

  “Yeah. My father would love that air freshener. You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Why? Does weed insult your moral fiber?”

  “Just my better sense.” He’d experimented enough at Brown, but booze and pot in excess had never been the cure or even soothed Pete. “I outgrew it.”

  “Whatever.” She shrugged. “I was just holding it for Caroline.”