If You're Lucky (3 page)

The reggae band had started up again. Fin said something to me I couldn't hear and I leaned in closer. “What?”

His lips brushed against my hair and I felt his warm breath on my ear. The wine had relaxed me and I felt a small current of attraction zip through my belly. He repeated himself. “I said you're beautiful.”

I wasn't expecting that. Could he be flirting? I was flattered. I felt myself blushing.

He laughed. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you. It's just that I feel like I know you already. You look so much like Lucky.”

“Yes. You said that.”

“But different, more delicate, and your eyes are a bit more green than blue. Lucky's eyes were blue.”

“He had my dad's eyes. I have my mom's.”

I looked down. I noticed he was wearing a black cord around his neck. There was something silver hanging from it, dangling just below his T-shirt collar. I pointed to it.

“What's that?” I asked.

He pulled the silver charm out from below the neck of his T-shirt: Fearlessness, written in Sanskrit.

“It was Lucky's,” said Fin, leaning in again.

“I know.”

“He gave it to me. When I first met him, I'd just crashed my motorcycle. I was a bit of a mess. Then I fell off a roof I was working on and then he watched me surf and he figured I needed it more than he did.”

“Oh.” I was a bit hurt. Lucky had always said that I could have it. That was typical Lucky though; he'd probably given it to Fin without a second thought. I remembered one time, I'd slipped it off Lucky's neck while we were sitting side by side on the sofa, and put it on mine. He angrily demanded I give it back. I remember taking it off my neck and dangling it in front of him, teasing him. He grabbed for it and I yanked it away and stuffed it in my mouth. It tasted salty. He pounced on me, squeezing my cheeks together till I laughed so hard that I spit it out.
It's for luck,
he had said.
You can have it
when I'm dead.
And I remember my response too:
If you're dead it's not really working, is it?
I never thought about that charm again until I noticed it was missing from Lucky's neck at the morgue.

Fin studied my face. “Do you want it? You should have it. Here . . .” He started to take it off.

“No. Don't be silly. He gave it to you. You should have something to remember him by.”

“That's very kind of you. It means a lot to me.” He gestured at the empty barstool next to him. “Why don't you sit down?”

I looked at the empty chair and then back at him. “Did Lucky tell you about me?” I asked.

“No. Sit. Tell me all about you.” He smiled.

I could feel my face getting hot again. “I'm sorry. I have to go.”

I rushed to the bathroom but someone was using it. I walked quickly down the hallway and out onto the front porch of the Inn where the air was heavy and cool. I took deep breaths. I shook my head at how childishly I'd just behaved, running away from Fin like an overly sensitive little girl. The porch was quiet and I could hear the soft rumble of the surf rolling in. I smelled Marc's peculiar European cigarettes. He sat in the shadows on the porch swing, smoking, still in his chef 's whites. Marc is Swiss French and barely civil to anyone, though lately I'd received a few nods of approval from him for my desserts.

“Sorry for your loss,” he said, exhaling smoke.

“Thank you.”

“Would you like a cigarette?” He expertly shook one out of the pack and offered it to me.

“No. Thanks.” I took the wooden porch steps down to the pavement. I crossed the highway and found my way through the darkness to the beach where I sat down in the damp sand and watched the oily black water until I was numb with cold. I heard raised voices and heavy steps on the wooden deck behind me. I looked back at the brightly lit Inn. A girl I was quite sure was Sonia ran across the porch with someone following her.

“You shouldn't have come!” she shouted. It was definitely Sonia.

“Wait!” said a man. He followed her down the stairs to the parking lot. They disappeared into the darkness. I watched the Inn and listened but I heard nothing more except the dull noise from the party. After a few minutes I saw Sonia walk back inside alone. A car passed by on the highway. I turned back to the water.

Several weeks had passed since the party for Lucky. Somehow it was already late June. I was starting to tire of the looks the locals kept giving me. I look enough like my brother to light a spark of hope in their eyes. I could almost see them thinking,
Lucky?
And then remembering,
Oh, right,
Lucky's dead, it's just George.
They didn't mean any harm by it, but couldn't they tell by my face that I missed him so much it hurt?

I was reluctantly back in the work groove at my other job at Katy's Kites and Salt Water Taffy, which opened at ten sharp on Saturday mornings. The sharp part is because Katy, the owner, who lives in Petaluma, likes to call every morning, even though the place never gets customers for the first hour. Once she knows the store is up and running, she can go back to her gifted twins' soccer games and ballet recitals. At 9:55, I unlocked the front door, turned off the alarm, flicked on the neon open sign, and went outside where I hung several long-tailed kites from their hooks under the eaves to flap around in the wind all day. No one really buys kites anymore. People come for the taffy. The phone started ringing right on time and I ran inside to answer it.

“Hi, Katy.”

“Hi, Georgia. Everything okay? Have you restocked the bins?”

“Yes,” I lied. “Everything's great.”

The fog was thinning. Big puzzle pieces of blue were appearing through the gray. It would most likely be sunny by early afternoon. I restocked the taffy bins. Katy's features thirty-five flavors. I used to like how some of the flavors, like lemonade or apple pie, would evoke happy memories of my childhood with Lucky, but I've come to hate all of them. The flavors are all fake. The thought of a whole summer of this made me feel weary, but I needed the job.

Sharona, my part-time coworker, arrived late, full of the usual apologies and hung over, the remnants of last night's makeup blurring her pretty features. She smelled like liquor and cigarettes. Sharona and I are only three months apart in age but there is little evidence to suggest that. For instance: She already owns her own car, a rusted-out Toyota wagon she's been driving since the minute she turned sixteen. She knows how to get a fake ID and how to get cheap concert tickets online and how to apply smoky eye makeup. She knows how to buy lingerie and where to get a good tattoo and how to get to San Quentin to visit her dad every month. He got into some sort of trouble years ago but he found religion in jail. Sharona went the same way when her home life started to fall apart and she believes that God has forgiven her dad. She told me that they read the Bible together when she visits. The thing I like best about Sharona is that she never judges anyone. We get along great and she's one of the few people in town who really knows me and still treats me like I'm normal.

I handed her a latte in a to-go cup. Lattes are part of my Saturday ritual. Before work I always stop by the Heron and pick up one for each of us.

“It might even still be hot,” I said.

“Mmmmm.” She smiled and sipped it gratefully. “Hi, by the way.”

“Hi.”

I counted out the change drawer while Sharona straightened up the bins of taffy. The smell in this place, a sweet artificial berry smell, is sickening so early in the day. I pulled my wool turtleneck up over my nose. All of my clothes smell like this place.

Sharona's not a fan of dead air. She likes to chatter away while she works but I don't mind. I like listening to her. I watched her wince as she bent over the lowest row of bins. A small gold crucifix dangled between her breasts, bouncing off a tattoo of a coiled cobra.

“Man, I feel awful,” she said, standing up straight, arching her back.

“What did you do last night?” I asked.

“Mags and I were at the laundromat because my mom's washing machine broke again and we met this guy there who was on his way to a party in Santa Rosa so we went with him. It was off the hook. I think it was the Jell-O shots that did me in. . . .” She paused and a look of alarm spread across her face. “Damn!”

She ran over to her purse at the checkout, digging through it till she found her phone. “Damn!” she said again as she punched in a number and looked at me, shaking her head, tapping her foot.

“Hey, Mags, it's me. Did you happen to pick up the laundry last night? 'Cause I didn't. Please say you did. Call me.” She clicked off her phone. “Oh, man. I hope she remembered. We left our stuff in the dryer. I am such an idiot.”

She dropped her phone into her bag. That's another thing about Sharona: She carries a purse, not a backpack, and it's full of things like car keys and lipstick and cigarettes and birth control.

Sharona pulled the phone book out of the drawer and started thumbing through it. “What's the name of that laundromat again?” she asked quietly, running her finger up and down a page. “It's Mister Soapy or Mister Sudsy or something. . . .”

She wasn't really talking to me. There is a velocity to Sharona that is more spectator sport than interactive. I gazed out the window, preoccupied. I'd been thinking about Sonia all morning. It kind of surprised me that she was still here in False Bay. I would have thought she'd have gone back to school by now. She had to have missed her final exams. Maybe she didn't care. Anyway, I wasn't one to talk. I'd worked the pity angle with my teachers in most of my classes. Easy enough. I've always been known as the “fragile” girl at school. Based on my colorful history, no one wanted to see how I dealt with the death of my brother. Some of my teachers made me write the final at home, and some of them just gave me a passing grade, but I never went back to class after Lucky died. Maybe Sonia would stay on for the summer. Maybe she could get a job around here somewhere. I could even help her find one. We hadn't hung out as much as I'd have liked. I thought we'd be a comfort to each other but she'd been spending her days alone at home.

The bell on the door tinkled. Our first customers of the day, a woman and two kids. The kids bolted for the taffy bins. They'd obviously been offered it as a reward for good behavior. On the weekends, a caravan of SUVs filled with families from the city passes through town on their way to Sea Ranch for the weekend. The younger couples go to Mendocino for romantic getaways with wine tastings and hot tubs.

The kids knew the drill. They greedily filled a plastic bag.

“
No
peanut butter!” commanded the little girl, watching her brother bury his arm in the bin.

He looked at her defiantly and dropped a handful of peanut butter taffy into the bag. She pinched his arm hard enough to leave a bruise. I was shocked at the anger in her eyes as she did it. Her brother yanked his arm back and started wailing.

“Retard,” she said, thrusting her chin out at him.

I looked at the mom but she was texting on a phone that she'd just pulled from her oversized leather handbag.

“Mom!” shrieked the little boy.

“What?” said the woman, eyes still on her phone, thumbs tapping away.

The little boy charged at his sister, kicking her in the shin. Now she was wailing too. Sharona and I exchanged a look. I felt a pang of sadness. Lucky was so generous with me when I was that age. At the first quivering of my lower lip he would grab me and turn me upside down or spin me around till I shrieked with laughter. There was no venom between us. We weren't like these kids.

The truth is, I don't have the stamina for retail. I can barely muster up a smile, let alone be civil to the weekenders. To me, they're all interlopers. Sharona, on the other hand, is endlessly patient with them. She stepped in and refereed the kids, cheerfully helping them fill their bag until the mom checked back in, digging through her bottomless handbag and producing a wallet. They finally left and I exhaled. Sharona picked up a few pieces of stray taffy off the carpet and went back to her chatter.

Out the window I saw a car pull up. Two girls, about the same age as Sharona and me, walked across the parking lot. A boy waited in the car, looking moody, staring at his phone. The girls quickly filled a bag. They paid and got themselves back in the car. The kid burned rubber out of the parking lot. City kids always like to let you know that they have somewhere more important to be.

Toward the end of last summer I met a city kid named Ryan. He was staying at his parents' oceanfront vacation home, which was three times the size of my house. I guess I knew he was all wrong for me. I knew that he thought of me as a “townie,” exotic only because I was a country he hadn't conquered yet. I didn't care about that. I liked him. He was new and he was bold. I liked the way he threw his strong arm around me and pulled me close whenever we walked anywhere. He had loads of confidence. He was possessive. He wanted me to know that I belonged to him.

I was a virgin and I wanted to have sex with someone who didn't know about my past, someone who didn't think I was crazy. When I told him it was my first time I thought he would be gentle with me and take it slow, but he unceremoniously swiped my virginity in the back of his dad's new Escalade. I left a bloodstain on the beige upholstery. “Shit! My dad's gonna kill me,” he said. I got most of it out with cold water, but I felt bad and embarrassed about the stain and I felt worse about the fact that I'd had sex for the first time with someone who cared about things like upholstery more than he cared about me.

I didn't hear from Ryan again after that. Having sex with him had summoned up emotions in me I hadn't expected. I needed to talk to him. I called a few times but he never picked up or returned my calls. I saw him a couple of weeks ago at the grocery store, trying to buy beer with a thin wisp of girl in tow. Kara, at the checkout, was not going for it. She told them,
No ID, no beer.
I stayed hidden in the cracker section. Ryan stalked out of the store with the girl trailing behind. I heard her call him “baby” as she tried to console him. If Ryan were a local he'd have known that Clive, who works at Ralph's gas station, will buy beer for anyone who pays him five bucks.

As the day wore on, the constant jingling of the bell on the door started my head pounding. The headaches were back. They were caused by the meds Dr. Saul prescribed six months ago. The meds he had me on before these made me feel morose and sometimes made me think about killing myself, so Dr. Saul switched me to these. He told me that the headaches would go away soon. He said that three months ago.

Sharona noticed. Even when she's nursing a hangover, Sharona is thoughtful.

“You okay? You look peaked. Is your head hurting again?”

“A bit.”

She came around behind me and gently massaged the tight tendons in my neck with her thumbs. I inhaled her mint gum and her perfume oil, a blend of patchouli and vanilla. Her hands were warm and soft and I didn't care that they smelled like cigarettes.

“Relax,” she said.

I tried to.

“When's your next appointment with Dr. Frankenstein?” she asked.

“Um, next week, I think.”

“You should get off these meds. They suck.”

“Mmmmm.” I didn't want to get into how complicated it all was. I just wanted to enjoy her hands rubbing my tight muscles.

“Oh, I can't believe I forgot to tell you this. I met this guy last night, and he works at that casino in Graton, parking cars. He says that the tips are amazing: two hundred bucks a night sometimes. If people win they throw him a twenty just for getting their car. He's going to talk to his boss and try and get me an interview.”

“You'd quit this job?” I couldn't imagine working here without Sharona.

“Hell, yes.” She paused, realizing how that sounded. “ 'Cause, you know, I just need to make a lot more money. I mean, it's not a sure thing or anything like that. It's just . . . Anyway, he was drinking. . . . He probably forgot.”

“No he didn't.”

“We'll see. Does that feel better?”

“Yes. Much. Thanks.”

“Sure.” She squeezed my shoulders.

The fog disappeared from the sky and a steady stream of optimistic weekenders came and went. I weighed a bag of taffy for a couple.

“We are
so
bad,” the girl in tight jeans kept saying. “I'm going to be on the treadmill
all
weekend after this.” Her voice sounded like a squeak toy and she had a wide, bland face that was out of proportion with her wiry, toned body. I had to look away or I'd have said something rude. Out the window, I saw a guy pedaling along the highway on a weathered old bike. He wore a newsboy cap backward on his head and he had the unmistakable ease of a local: no bells and whistles on his bike, nothing slick about his clothes. I was sure I'd seen him somewhere before, but I couldn't think where. He stopped pedaling and coasted past Sharona, who was smoking on the porch. He said something to her and she touched her hair as she responded. He nodded and gave her a friendly wave as he pedaled away.

“Four-fifty.” I said to the couple. The guy gave me a credit card.
Really?

I handed the bag to the skinny girl and walked out onto the porch as the bicyclist slowly disappeared around the bend in the highway. He seemed to be in no particular hurry.

“Who was that?”

“I'm not sure. He's cute.” Sharona stepped on her cigarette butt and kicked it off the porch with the toe of her boot.

We stood there a moment. The couple headed back to their Porsche. They were undoubtedly on their way to a cramped B and B in Mendocino featuring calico quilts and a four p.m. complimentary wine and cheese tasting. I waved absently to them. I was still trying to figure out where I'd seen that guy before.