Jacob's Ladder (8 page)

I was heading for the pier I could finally see in the distance, when I heard a voice behind me call out, “
Yasha
. I thought that was you.” I discovered I"d headed down the street where the fire station was located, and some of the men of the Santo Ignacio Fire Department were scrubbing down one of the trucks in the driveway of the big garage.

“Hi.” I walked across to one I thought looked familiar. “I can"t help being envious of all your wonderful toys.”

JT shoved a toolbox into the cargo compartment on the little EMS rig and slammed the door shut. He picked up a clipboard and hugged it to his chest as he leaned back against the rear fender of his unit. “I am living the dream,” he teased.

“What are you up to?”

“I thought I"d look around. What do you suggest I look at?” St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

41

“The beach is great this time of year. And Nacho"s Bar is known for its Sunday brunch, but it"s a nice place to get a drink and unwind anytime. A group of us will be heading over there after our shift at around six. Do you want to—”

“Who"s your friend, JT?” A muscular giant of a firefighter wrapped a beefy arm around JT"s shoulders, causing him to give up a soft
oomph.

“This is Yasha.” JT performed the introductions from a choke hold. “Yasha, Cameron.”

“Ow.” Cameron winced when he got a good look at my face. “Did our boy wizard pull you out of a wreck or something?”

“Or something.” I extended my hand, and he let go of JT long enough to give it a pump.

“Yasha was sick—”

“And you saved the day,” Cameron said, not unkindly. He ruffled JT"s hair.

“Good boy.”

“Thanks.” JT yanked his head out of the way of Cameron"s heavy hand.

Cameron looked at me. “So did I hear we"re going for drinks at Nacho"s?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Cool.” Cameron shot me a look that didn"t take an Enigma machine to decrypt, and I might have returned it in kind. He was bigger than big and handsome, and I couldn"t help but notice that he"d lingered a bit longer on our handshake than was strictly necessary. JT looked oblivious, and I thought that was telling. I had wondered about JT"s interest in me, whether it was simply follow-up care or something more. His indifference to the way Cameron hustled me back, leaning an arm on the truck behind me and hemming me in, subtle as it might have been for straights, seemed significant.

Cameron lowered his voice as he leaned over me, his big hand flat against the rig next to my head. It was such a powerful move, it shifted something inside me and made me shiver a little. Which was also significant. Why the fuck did I always respond like that with guys who could crush me? “So. How long will you be in town?”

With his arm raised like that, the short sleeve of his unbuttoned shirt strained to contain his bicep. A quick glance up into his eyes told me that Cameron was enjoying the interest it generated.

“Not long. I"m going up to Santa Cruz to visit my brother.” I was pleased that my words came out measured and even.

“Well.” Cameron"s eyes were warm and blue and held a hint of teasing. “Maybe we can entice you to stay on for a while.”

“Maybe,” I told him. I was probably staring at the way his tight undershirt caressed his massive chest when I felt a tug on my arm.

“Have you seen the beach yet?” JT asked.

42

Z. A. Maxfield

“No.” I let JT pull me out to the street and waited to see why he"d done it, if he"d tell me or if he was simply going to pretend he hadn"t just dragged me out from under a good-looking guy who was flirting with me. I hoped he couldn"t read my mind.
Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Catch a fireman by the toe…

Apparently I had a
thing.

“The pier is down the boardwalk at one end of town, and when you walk back, St. Nacho"s Bar is at the other. You can"t miss it. That"s where we"ll be meeting for drinks.”

“Sure. Six, you say?”

“Six.” JT"s eyes held nothing but sincerity. He was warmth personified, and I began to think that maybe he really was just concerned for my well-being. “I don"t want to…” He frowned, letting his words trail off.

“What?”

JT looked behind him. “I don"t want to presume or anything. Cam"s a really nice guy, but he"s kind of a player—”

“JT, can you stop? The rescue is over. I can take care of myself.”

“It"s not about that.” JT looked anywhere but at me. “Well. Yes, it is actually.

He"s known for being a bit of a brawler when he drinks, and a guy like you—”

“What do you mean a guy like me?”

“Well, someone who…” JT"s face both froze and pinkened. “I"m sorry. I didn"t mean anything by it.”

“All you know about me is what you learned during what was arguably the worst week of my life.”

“I see.” JT"s face shuttered closed. “I"m sorry.”

“No—” I put my hand on his arm. He"d been nothing but kind, and I didn"t want to give him the idea that I wasn"t grateful. “I"m really glad you"re looking out for me. But I"ve been taking care of myself for a long time. Even though you"ve seen every evidence to the contrary, I"m pretty good at it.”

“I"m sorry. Never mind. I know that. I forget sometimes that people are more than the problems they have that bring me on the scene.”

“Thanks again, though, yeah?”

JT shot me an “it"s cool” grin and turned to go inside.

I was glad to see him smile, but I had felt something tenuous that had been building between us dissolve, something that had felt—at one point—like more than friendship.

Probably, all things considered, it wasn"t really an actual loss. But it felt a little disconcerting. At least while I was sick and thought he was my grandfather, I"d felt allowed in. Deeply cared for. Worth a risk. Now I was less certain of that, and I felt something else altogether. Disappointment maybe.

I was surprised to find it hurt a little.

St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

43

I followed his instructions, first toward the boardwalk and then to the pier.

The tide was out, and I could see the pilings clearly, crusted with barnacles and what looked like mussels, rippling with algae, draped with seaweed and flotsam.

I tried to let go of everything that had happened to me when I sank into the sand, which I found to be rougher and more pebbly than the sugary sand beaches in LA where I lived. It was dusty brown and resisted the efforts of the sea to pulverize it into homogenous pieces. The shore too was a little rocky, and I wondered if anyone surfed here or if there were boulders under the waves that made it too dangerous.

The sand was warm on my back; the breeze light. Ocean waves and the cries of seabirds drew me easily into a relaxing doze. Soon I was caught up, carried away by it, and I felt as if my body were rising and falling on the crest of each crash of the waves as they broke against the shore.

Unexpectedly a shadow fell over my face, and when I opened my eyes, I found Muse standing over me with a paper parasol.

“You"re going to get really sunburned.” She kept the shade over my face while she sat down daintily beside me. “I fell asleep right there once, and even though it seemed a little cloudy at the time, I woke up with a bad burn, and my face peeled for a week.”

“Good point.” I sat up, and she held her little umbrella over both of us with some difficulty as gusts of wind caught it and threatened to tear it from her grasp.

She studied me like I"d washed up from the sea and she"d found me there dead.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I thought I"d just look around Nacho"s.” I crossed my legs and leaned back on my hands, completely relaxed for the first time in days. “I like it here; it"s the town that time forgot.”

“I was born here.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “You"ve never lived anywhere else?”

“No.” She rolled her eyes. “St. Nacho"s is really small and all, but I think I belong here. The place is an ancient source of power actually, although not everybody knows that.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes.

“Laugh all you want, but Minerva at Rune Nation says that the local Indian tribe put a spell on this land so people would pass it by.”

“Ruination?” Muse charmed me, but it was hard to keep up.

“
Rune Nation
,” she repeated. “It"s my favorite bookstore. They sell books and crystals and herbs. Stuff like that.”

“I see. And this Minerva?”

“She owns the store. Anyway, she says that unless St. Nacho"s wants you here, you won"t even see it.”

44

Z. A. Maxfield

“Ah.” I rolled over onto my stomach and rested my head in my hands so I could just watch the waves. It"s funny how when you"re doing that, you realize you don"t do it nearly enough. “That"s kind of cool. How old are you, Muse?”

“I"m nineteen.”

“That seems very young to me.”

“Does it? I guess so.” Muse sat for a while in silence, but I thought it was killing her. She didn"t seem the type. “How old are you?”

“I"m thirty-two. Well. I"ll be thirty-two in August.” I probed that spot in my psyche and didn"t discover any issues. Thirty hadn"t been hard on me, not like some of the guys I knew from clubs who built their lives around being young and cool.

“What about your guy?” she asked, staring straight ahead.

“What about him?”

Muse met my eyes. “Where is he? How"d you end up here? What"s going to happen? Will you go back?” I think even she was surprised by the barrage of questions once she"d asked them, because she went back to staring at the water.

“I don"t know the answers to any of those questions.” I thought about it. “I know how I ended up here. I got kicked off the bus.”

“That must mean St. Nacho"s wants you.”

“I"m sure it does,” I said drily. “Everyone wants me.”

“Are you going to go back to your guy? When you leave, I mean.”

“No,” I told her. “I"m pretty sure that ship sailed a long time ago, but I just didn"t notice. I"m not standing on the dock waving.”

“Did you love him?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Her voice was small.

“What about your…?” Before I finished that sentence, I realized it probably wasn"t any of my business.

“I went out with this guy in high school, and it was one of those dark, passionate teen things. I guess I"m drawn to that.”

“No kidding,” I teased. When I realized maybe it hit a little too close to home, I added, “Me too, really.”

“I see.” She gave that some thought. “I think maybe we just hit the trifecta. My dad beat on my mom, his dad hit his stepmom and all the kids, and we were kind of alienated socially at school. We found each other, and it was like coming home.”

“You never think it"s going to happen to you, do you?”

“Nope.”

“I remember lying awake at night, chanting over and over again that I"d never be like that. At the time I thought the worst thing in the world would be to be like my dad. It never once occurred to me I"d be like my mom…” St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

45

Muse nodded. “I used to hear them screaming at each other and think, just hit him
the fuck
back. Show him you won"t take that shit lying down. That"ll stop it.” I glanced at Muse"s profile. “Did you try it?”

She looked down. “Yep.”

“Did that work?”

“Nope.”

“Shit.”

“One good thing was that the first time I came home with a black eye, my mom packed our things and moved us out of my dad"s house. They"re divorced now.”

“It took you getting hit by
your
boyfriend?”

“That it did. And now she runs the group.”

“Alice is your mom?” I grinned.

“Yes. Not being a doormat is now the family business. What about your family?”

“The only one left is my brother, Daniel. He lives in Santa Cruz. He"s a mover and shaker.”

“Family"s good.” She returned her attention to a group of gulls at the water"s edge. It was nice, sitting with her. Maybe she was a little dark, but she sort of sparkled with it. It gave her a resilience and a patina I found refreshing.

I remembered a different time and a different ocean. I remembered looking out at the water off New Jersey"s Sandy Hook. My zeyde borrowed a car from one of the men he worked with at the appliance store and drove us down to New Jersey for a day on the beach, although at the time, I didn"t know why. It was the off-season, and cold, and he"d picked us up from school in the early morning, before lunch even.

None of those things made sense to Daniel or me, and we sat in the back of that big car—probably a Cadillac Eldorado or a Lincoln Town Car—trying to figure out what all of it meant. Daniel had a black eye and a cracked rib that day, but at fourteen he felt triumphant. He"d stopped our dad from hitting our mother, taken the punishment himself, and the two of us were flying high—him from fighting back for a change and me from hero worship.

Zeyde wore his usual navy blue wool sport coat over a white shirt and a thin blue cardigan sweater with gray slacks. He"d had on an understated silk tie and wore his ubiquitous Borsalino wool felt hat. I thought at the time he was the epitome of sophistication, and apparently women thought so too, because wherever he took us, he attracted ladies like a magnet.

We arrived at the beach, and Zeyde told us to go have some fun, that we"d earned a day off school and a chance to enjoy ourselves. He gave us money for treats and took us to lunch and dinner. He chatted the waitress up and left her a show-off tip that made her pink and happy.

46

Z. A. Maxfield

When we got home, my father was gone, along with every last trace that he"d ever existed. His clothes, his equipment, photographs, records, tools, letters, paperwork—all gone.

Neither Daniel nor I ever forgave ourselves.

“Yeah.” I remembered Muse was there, and she"d said something about family being good. “Family"s good.”

“Are you okay?”

I spoke hoarsely. “Sometimes the way the light glitters on the water hurts my eyes.”

She gave me a shove with her hand. “Mine too. Especially when I"m crying.” St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

47

Chapter Seven

Muse and I said good-bye when it was time, and I made my way over to Nacho"s Bar. At first glance it was exactly the kind of place I like. Food service and a full bar. A game on the television. Nothing that spoke of pretension or desperation. It was a neighborhood place, and an assortment of people made themselves at home at its sturdy, dark bar or clumped casually around tables on the Saltillo tile floor. I found my firefighters out on the patio, mostly dressed now in jeans and T-shirts that read SIFD
Sparks
. They were relaxed and enjoying some beer. Cameron smoked, holding his cigarette in one hand and an ashtray in the other.