Kingdom (28 page)

“The caretaker must have changed the code. He’s supposed to let us know when he does…” Dylan’s voice trailed off as he looked up at the security cameras mounted along the wall, staring down at the land below like gargoyles—passive sentinels of steel, wire, and glass. Dylan waited for a few seconds, expecting the cameras to do something, anything, but a stillness was settling over the land and there was only the sound of the ocean competing with the low growl of Dylan’s bike, waves crashing against the rocky beach like they had for centuries, for millennia; a constant, violent rhythm, terrifying in its permanence. The cameras remained motionless, their darkened lenses indifferent.

And then, without warning, the two gates controlling entry to the driveway popped open, each gate swinging out in opposite directions, revealing a clear path to the house.

Run-down and washed-out, the place was in desperate need of a paint job, and the gutters were still overflowing with dead leaves from previous autumns. As a result, gutter water had spilled out, leaving muddy streaks all
down the sides of the old colonial. A few of the black shutters were crooked, battered by the storms that would assail the coastline.

The landscape wasn’t in much better condition. The garden on the side of the house where Dylan’s mother had once spent much of her time now lay barren, the flowers and vegetation she had spent the past two decades cultivating had vanished, either choked out by weeds or chased underground by the now-rocky soil. Throughout the backyard, the once-majestic oaks looked bent and sick, their foliage a pale, timid green, as if the trees recognized the futility of entering into a full bloom.

As he wandered the property’s perimeter, his fingers trembling as he tried to light a cigarette, Dylan felt a pang of guilt, knowing that, to some extent, the property’s disarray was his fault, that he should have taken responsibility for the place, at least checked in on it a few times.

“It’s not your fault,” Meghan said with a sad, sympathetic smile.

“Wait till you see the inside,” Dylan replied.

The house was big but not too big: five bedrooms—three upstairs, two downstairs. Two bathrooms. There was a fairly modern kitchen on the first floor that had an island stove in the middle and opened up into a living room. The TV was ancient but that was OK; it was mainly used for ballgames or DVDs on rainy Sundays—no high definition required. Besides, there were books stacked all over the house; that random accumulation of books that seemed to always inhabit beach houses: German philosophy and books about sailing mixed with fat, dog-eared paperbacks—Chandler and King and O’Connell; the autobiographies of businessmen wedged next to Danielle Steel and books from freshman year in college that Dylan never read, their covers still glossy, some even still in their plastic shrink wrap; a half-dozen Bibles in various editions, the Word of God hotly disputed and lost in translation. These were the books pulled off the shelf in the rush to get to the beach that ended up keeping you up until dawn, these were books that had, more often than not, been dragged out to serve a purely decorative function—no bookshelves looked bad; empty ones looked worse—and instead wound up an integral part of summer vacations.

The rest of the house was a blur of long hallways, liquor cabinets, and nautical décor; of cedar chests, sleeper sofas, and white tile. Dylan gave Meghan the tour—the living room was the worst: All the wallpaper was peeling;
the ceiling was warped and waterlogged. Remnants of the family’s final trip to the beach—almost a decade old—were still scattered throughout the house: gas station receipts, glasses stashed behind overstuffed chairs, an old bathing suit hung out to dry; the fireplace still filled with ash. A panic washed over him and he was convinced he made the wrong decision; they should have stayed in Tiber City. He wasn’t thinking straight; the overdose at the End of the World and his mother’s death were triggering weakness and bad decisions. He jammed his hand into the pocket of his jeans and felt the flyer: Fuck the bank and fuck Heffernan—he should burn the thing.

But Meghan was opening bay windows and lighting candles, driving the dead air and decade-old silence out into the dusk, replacing it with the smell of the ocean and the sound of waves crashing over the rocky beach. Exhaustion smashed into Dylan and he staggered back onto one of the couches in the living room, his eyes slamming shut.

He opened his eyes 12 hours later: There were some bagels with cream cheese on a plate next to the couch and a note from Meghan:

At the beach. Come down when you wake up?

Dylan pulled himself up off the couch. At some point in the night he taken off his leather jacket and balled it up into a makeshift pillow, which was fortunate because he had sweat through his T-shirt—the nightmares had been terrifying and senseless. He had dreamed of the earth before creation: dark water and swirling, formless matter.

He pulled on a pair of shorts and stumbled into the bathroom, chewing on one of the bagels despite the fact that his jaw was sore from grinding his teeth. There was a mouth guard he was supposed to wear but there were a lot of things he was supposed to do; remembering to shove a cumbersome hard-plastic object into his mouth before sleep wasn’t high on his list of priorities—he’d rather the nightmares just stop. He took a piss and tossed some cold water on his face, catching a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked a little older, a little more like his father. The ancient central air system kicked in, rattling the vents and Dylan felt a blast of cold on his skin—the house seemed emptier, quieter than it ever had. A familiar anxiety began to creep up from the pit of his stomach and Dylan didn’t want to be
alone in his dead parents’ house for another second. He ran out of the bathroom and didn’t stop until he was halfway down the path that led from the backyard to the beach; until he was far enough away from the peeling, faded wallpaper and the water-stained ceilings and the smell of decay and neglect that seemed to smother the entire house no matter how many windows were opened, no matter how many candles were lit.

By the time he hit the beach the sun had dipped behind the clouds, pushing the temperature into the 60s. A wind kicked up out of the west, strafing the dunes and blasting sand in every direction. Meghan was standing at the water’s edge in shorts and a bikini top, the surf washing over her bare feet, her painted toes, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared at the horizon. Dylan hung back along the edge of the dunes, watching the wind whip her hair and wondering what was going to happen to them, to him; the address his mother had given him looping through his brain over and over like a cable news crawler in fast forward.

Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon and it was getting difficult to distinguish the sea from the sky, and then he was running toward Meghan, tearing off his shirt with a war whoop as he tackled her into the surf. They both tumbled forward, crashing into a wave and the world went silent: Stereo surround sound cut off in favor of underwater mono. Dylan opened his eyes and saw nothing but murky grays and browns, swirling sand, and the outline of Meghan’s thighs. He popped his head back up, the salt water stinging tiny scrapes and cuts he hadn’t even realized he had and for a second Meghan looked pissed but then she started laughing, telling him he was an asshole, but slipping off her top as she said it; her nipples hard against his bare chest. When she kissed him it tasted like salt and sun block, her arms draped around his shoulders as waves broke over them, around them, the rip tide tugging at their feet.

They spoke of the past.

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said.

“I know,” said Meghan.

Dylan laughed. “You realize how fucked up things are in my life right now? Why do you want to be a part of this?”

Meghan flipped her hair back, spraying water everywhere. “It’s not like I really have a choice in this,” she said. “Of course it’s fucking crazy. I’ve spent the last five years trying to tell myself that. I just knew if I didn’t come to the bar that night, the next time I would have seen you was at your funeral.”

Dylan groaned: “Bullshit.” The protest was half-hearted at best. He knew it; she knew it. No one had to say anything.

They did not talk about the future; the address his mother had scrawled on the back of the Heffernan for President flyer; the oil tankers cluttering the horizon, massive gray vessels en route to the other side of the world.

Waves continued to crash around them. Dylan waxed nostalgic:

“My dad used to take me out in the chop, show me how to body surf: It would drive my mother crazy.”

Meghan said: “Show me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, come on.”

“All right. It’s not too hard: Just wait until the right size wave comes, and try to get out in front of it. The swell will pick you up and then, when it breaks, you’ll just ride the crest. Keep your hands out in front of your face and you’ll be fine. Otherwise you’ll lose a tooth.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Dylan crouched low in the water, gesturing for Meghan to do the same. A few medium-sized waves came, but the breaks weren’t right and Dylan dove under the swell; Meghan bobbed over the top. Finally a bigger wave rose up, building at first, gaining speed as it headed toward shore; Dylan started to paddle out in front of it but in seconds the swell picked him up and he was on top of the wave. Then the wave broke hard, throwing him down into the water but he stayed with it, his arms outstretched, streamlined as he surged forward with the crest so quickly that his shorts slipped off, lost in the wake. And then he was twisting to his side, trying to shield his stomach and balls from the rocky shore but the wave was still going strong and he flipped head over heels, crashing onto the beach in a blur of sand and surf and seaweed.