Seal With a Kiss (15 page)

Violet rolled her eyes at the clerk behind the
counter. "A hundred. Do you have that many?"

"What do you need with that much ice?" The kid
couldn't have been more than twenty, but he winked
as if to say, Don't worry, baby. I can take care of 'a
pretty little thing like you.

Feeling raw from the impromptu soul baring that
had taken place in the truck, and too tired to go
through the usual I'm having a party, wink, wink,
nudge, nudge routine, she snapped, "Because I have
a twelve-hundred-pound trained sea lion outside in a
refrigerator truck that's not refrigerating, and if I don't keep him cool between here and Cape Cod then
he could very well die. Okay? Do you have a hundred bags of ice or not?"

While the youth stammered that they only had fifty
bags of ice on-hand at any given time, Violet felt a
tap on her shoulder. She spun, figuring Smitty had
snuck up on her again.

It was a stranger with a baseball cap and a neatly
trimmed moustache. "I couldn't help overhearing,
ma'am, but did you say you've got a sea lion overheating in a 'fridge truck outside?"

"Yes. Yes, I do, and no, you can't meet the sea
lion." She pressed a hand to her eyes, trying to stave
off the headache that seemed inevitable.

Smitty had come up beside her during the
exchange, and handed her a cup of coffee. She
swigged it gratefully.

"What Violet meant to say was `yes, we have a
sea lion in a broken refrigerator truck outside.' "
Smitty nudged her and she nodded at Mr. Moustache.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm a little stressed."

The stranger nodded. "Understandable. The reason
I asked, though, is because I've worked on a few of
those trucks in my time. Maybe I can help with the
cooling unit."

Quicker than he could say `moustache,' they
whisked the man out to the truck, where he gave the old refrigeration unit a checkup. He muttered a few
things while he tinkered, then went to his own truck
and returned with a small toolbox.

"This thing get banged around recently? You have
an accident or something?" the man-whose name
was Roy-asked as he fiddled with the compressor's
guts.

"No. No accident," Smitty answered, just as Violet
said, "Yes, the unit was hit by a flying sea lion crate
several times while we were trying to load it."

"A flying ... ? Never mind," Roy said. "You
knocked one of the hoses out of its fitting. I've got
it cobbled back together now. Start 'er up and let's
see what happens."

Violet started 'er up and the unit chattered to life.
She heard cheers from outside. It seemed that they
had attracted something of a crowd. She supposed it
wasn't every day that a sea lion visited the Travelers'
Assistance truck stop.

Cheered by the success of the repair, and just starting to think everything was going to be okay, she
jumped back onto the pavement just in time to hear
a squawk from Smitty. "Violet!"

She saw that the doors at the back of the truck
were open, and her heart sank to her stomach. She
sprinted back, yelling, "What's wrong? Should I call
a vet?"

Not that the local cat and cow vet would be much
help if Jasper was overheating.

But Jasper wasn't overheating. It was better than
that. And in a way, worse.

She skidded to a stop and stared. Whitish goo
oozed out of the back of the truck and fell with a
plop onto the dark pavement. The interior light of the
refrigerator compartment wasn't great, but it was
enough to illuminate Smitty's form next to Jasper's
crate. Smitty was holding a limp torn piece of black
plastic. More of the white glop dribbled from it.

"Hork, hork!" Jasper bobbed his head and then,
incredibly, belched. Instead of looking dry and overheated like she might have expected, he looked wet
and vaguely ... slimy.

"What happened?" Violet squeaked, aware that the
crowd of truckers had pressed closer to see Jasper.

"I think ..." Smitty's voice sounded funny, like
he wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or run screaming. "I think he ate through one of the bags. Or two."
Another blob fell. "Or all of them."

Violet's gaze landed on a chunk floating in the
white goo. It looked like a half-eaten pepperoni
pizza. The goo could've been melted ice cream. The
slime on Jasper's back could be liquefied Popsicles.
"Oh man. Brody's going to kill us. We've fed an
entire freezer case to the sea lion."

Jasper burped again.

"Can seals eat pepperoni?" called a voice from the
crowd.

"He's a sea lion, not a seal," Violet replied, shutting the doors on Smitty and Jasper. "And you can
ask me about the pepperoni tomorrow. I'll probably
know by then." She thanked Roy profusely, got in
the truck, and drove to the truck wash at the back of
the lot.

They had a half hour to wash away the incriminating evidence and get back on the road. Then they
could only pray that sea lions actually could eat pepperoni. And ice cream. And popsicles.

Every hour from Virginia to Maryland, they pulled
over and checked on Jasper. Each time, he greeted
them with a cheerful `Rork!' and a flipper wave. The
truck had cooled right down now that the compressor
was working, the cargo area had been washed out
thoroughly, and home was getting closer by the mile.

So why was she feeling, if possible, even more on
edge than she had been before?

"You ready to keep going on that quiz now that
we seem to be on the right track with Jasper and the
truck?"

She glanced at Smitty. That was why she was
edgy. That last question. "I'm not sure I'm still in the mood for that silliness, okay Smits? Let's just
head home and forget about the quiz."

His soft chuckle carried over the hum of the engine. "Running again, Vi?"

"I'm not running," she snapped. "I'm ... Oh, fine.
I'll answer the darn question. Then can we toss that
magazine out the window, please?"

"No littering," he said mildly. "And the question
was to name your worst day."

She thought a moment. Just as her best day had
been with Smitty, her worst day had been with him
also. Or rather, without him. "I thought about picking
that day at the water park when you asked me to
make a family with you. Or the day I found out you
were marrying Ellen. Or the day you actually did."
Smitty shifted in the passenger's seat as the list grew
long. "But I think my worst day was the day I left
the Puget Sound Project and came back to Dolphin
Friendly."

"Was it such a bad choice then? Do you wish
you'd stayed with ... Chaz?" he asked quietly.

She turned and thought she saw real pain in his
eyes. She shook her head. "Don't be silly. I love
Dolphin Friendly and I wouldn't trade the last eight
years for anything."

"Then why are you going to leave?"

He said that like it was a foregone conclusion. Like she'd already given her notice. The idea made
Violet sad. She stared into darkness that was marked
only by a dashed line on the open highway. "Do you
want to know why that's my worst day or not?"

"Go ahead."

She took a breath. "When Brody wrote and told
me that you and Ellen had divorced, I was glad. Not
because I wanted you to hurt-though maybe that
was part of it-but because I thought it meant there
was still a chance for the two of us. So I quit Puget
Sound and came home to Dolphin Friendly."

"We were all waiting for you on the dock," he
remembered, his voice hoarse.

"Yes. You and Brody and a couple of interns I'd
never met. Brody hugged me. The interns shook my
hand. And you faded into the background. After two
years, you barely even said `hello.' "

She felt that unfamiliar burn in her eyes and told
herself it wasn't time to cry now. Maybe after she'd
given her notice, she'd lock the door and let the tears
come-but not until then.

"What did you expect?" he asked as though truly
surprised. "We'd drifted apart even before you left.
And you'd turned down my proposal. How was I
supposed to know you were expecting flowers and a
marching band?"

"Don't make a joke of this," she snapped. "Of course I didn't want a parade." Her voice softened.
"I just wanted you to hug me and say you were sorry.
Then I could say I was sorry and we could go from
there. But we never did that."

"No, we didn't." His voice seemed to come out of
the darkness. She felt him take her hand where it
rested on the gearshift. She didn't pull away.

"You want to hear about my worst day?" he asked
quietly.

She nodded.

"My worst day was the day my mother died."

Violet was surprised. She'd expected him to say
his worst day was at the water park in California, the
day he married Ellen, or the day she divorced him.
But though her own parents were alive and well in
the Midwest, surrounded by her landlocked siblings,
she imagined that she might consider it her worst day
if one of them died unexpectedly.

"You didn't know me before she died," Smitty
said. It was true, they'd met at U.C. Santa Cruz when
school started in the fall. His mother had died that
summer. He continued, "So you didn't understand
how much it had affected me."

They were driving into a storm, and the first fat
raindrops hit the windshield. Violet slowed down and
turned on the wipers. "You talked about her sometimes. You loved her very much. I always felt a little guilty because I had such a big family and you ...
didn't."

"It was more than just missing her, though there
was some of that," he said. "It was the feeling of
being all alone. Nobody cared what my grades were
anymore. Nobody was going to nag me to go to the
dentist once a year or call me on Sundays just to
chat." He rubbed a hand across his face and Violet
heard the auburn stubble rasp across the calluses on
his palm.

Unaccountably, she found herself growing irritated
with him. "Didn't it matter to you that we were together that fall? I cared what your grades were-at
least enough to make sure I was beating you in at
least half our classes. I cared whether you went to
the dentist. I called to chat with you. Brody did too."
She knew it wasn't the same thing, but it still stung.
She had cared. How dare he make it seem like it
wasn't enough?

She frowned as the truck hurtled through the rainy
night and crossed into Pennsylvania.

She'd loved him. Had it really meant so little?

Apparently. He shrugged and said, "I'm not saying
I was right, but at the time I thought I needed more.
I needed to have someone I believed was going to
care about those things for the rest of our lives." He
paused. "Remember that trip we took on the Outreach?"

"Of course. It was our first real taste of open ocean
fieldwork, and it was almost a disaster when that
squall came up. Brody was washed over the side and
you went in after him. For a minute there we couldn't
see either of you."

Violet shuddered with the remembered chill. She
had never been so terrified before or since. For several minutes, they'd all thought Brody and Smitty
were both lost. How had that memory been supplanted by the black days that followed it? She hadn't
thought of Outreach in years.

"Well, that scared me silly. I realized that if I'd
drowned that day, there was nothing to prove I ever
existed." Smitty squeezed her hand. Violet was surprised to find him still holding it. "And the next day
you and I went to the water park and I made a hash
of proposing to you and not listening to why you
said no. I was so caught up in the idea of having
someone who was legally obligated to care whether
I came home from every voyage, I lost track that
there was someone else involved in the equation.
You. I think I was even a little glad you said no,
because I knew you were going to be out on the
water with me-and what if something happened to
you? Then I'd be alone again."

Violet sniffed. "I'm not finding this explanation
particularly heartwarming." But in a way she was. It hadn't really been about her, even back then. She
could still hate him for being foolish, but she
couldn't totally blame him.

"I'm just trying to tell you about my worst day,
and how it led to a string of bad decisions I'm still
trying to recover from." He paused. "So anyway, I'm
sorry. I was so caught up in being all alone in the
world that I ended up hurting the one person in the
world I loved. The one person who wanted to be
there for me. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, Vi, and I blew it."

Now the tears were threatening in earnest. Violet
felt one slide down the side of her face and brushed
it away on the pretext of scratching her cheek.
"Would've been nice if you'd said all that when I
got back from Puget Sound." Her voice broke and
she hated him for what he could still make her feel.
He accused her of running away from other people's
emotions? This was why. He'd taught her well that
emotions could only hurt.

"Yeah, well. I still had some growing up to do.
You said the other day that we were both too young
and too stupid to have made it work back then, and
you're probably right. But still, I wish it could've
been different. I wish Ma hadn't died that summer.
I wish you and I had met at a different time in my
life. I wish it had ended differently between us."

Ended.

And there it was. As far as Smitty was concerned,
it was over between them. They were pals. Buddies.
Friends. There was no going back, no going forward.

Violet sniffed and wiped her cheek again. "Are
there any more questions in this dumb quiz?"

He didn't flick the flashlight on to check, and she
wondered whether he was reciting from memory or
asking the question he wanted to know when he said,
"If you could have one wish granted, what would it
be?"

"You first."

He shook his head. "Nope. I'm changing the rules.
You first."

She didn't argue.