Sleeping Beauty (19 page)

I pull the mesh bag from the water and dump the abalone onto the sand. Prepping them for cooking is a lot easier in a kitchen, but this isn’t the first time I’ve done this on the beach. It takes twenty minutes to shell and gut them, another twenty to trim them and cut the meat into slices with a razor-sharp dive knife.

I light a match and toss it into the fire pit. The lint catches immediately, the flames quickly spreading to the kindling and logs. Pretty soon I have a vigorous, popping fire going. I set up a propane lantern by the tent so Brendan doesn’t have to fumble across the pitch-black campsite once he’s back down at the bottom.

I throw an abalone steak on a nearby flat rock and start pounding it with the butt of the knife. Once all the steaks are flattened, I layer them inside an aluminum cooking bag, separating them with the sliced onions, now-melted butter, lemon juice, and oregano I brought, already mixed together in a gallon-sized plastic bag. I seal the edges of the aluminum bag and, for good measure, I wrap it in another layer of aluminum and seal it tight. The flames have mostly burned themselves out, leaving orange, glowing coals behind. I throw the whole packet right into the middle.

“Claire!” comes a disembodied voice from above.

“Hey!” I shout, looking up, seeing nothing. “I was getting worried!”

“I’m coming down!”

I cup my hands together to concentrate my voice in his direction. “Be careful! Go slow!” That’s when I smell them. I look down at my hands, still covered in abalone slime, and spring into action. I toss the shells into a plastic bag and reach for the guts. Then I freeze.

No time,
I tell myself.
You’ve never found one. Never once. Happens one time in a thousand. Terrible odds.

I tilt my head, looking for him. Descending the gorge with a full pack of firewood in failing light will take at least thirty minutes. Maybe more.

Just look. There’s always a first time
, I think. Starting at one end of the gut, I squeeze the tissue between my fingers, feeling my way along until I get to the other end. The first two are filled with nothing but half-digested mush. I’ve nearly given up on the third when I feel it, something solid in the gut of an animal that doesn’t eat anything harder than kelp.

Cutting carefully with my dive knife, I make a small incision in the gut. I poke my fingers around inside until I find it. Grinning like a kid, I carefully pull it out before splashing my hand in the water to rinse off the goop. Then I sit on a rock by the fire to admire the silky whiteness of the first abalone pearl I’ve ever found.

“Something smells good!” Brendan yells, closer now, about halfway down from the sound of his voice. “I could smell it all the way at the top!”

I spring to my feet, stowing the pearl in a tiny zipper pouch in my pack. After the abalone remains are tied up in a bag and stowed far away from our site, I scrub my hands and arms with soap and rinse them in the lagoon. Then I do it again, using sand with the soap to remove all traces of abalone slime.

I dry my hands, and sniff them to make sure they don’t smell like rotting gastropods. A squirt of hand sanitizer to kill any possible remaining stink, and a squirt of lotion so my hands don’t feel like beef jerky. I pull the elastic band off the end of my braid, and run my fingers through my hair until the strands are separated, letting the blonde waves spill over my shoulders.

By the time Brendan emerges from the vines and brambles at the bottom of the path, I’m sitting cross-legged on a blanket, leisurely turning the aluminum packet in the fire with a set of tongs.

“You’re just in time,” I say. “I think fifteen more minutes and we’ll be ready to eat.”

Over by the tent, I hear his pack hit the ground followed by the clatter of driftwood smacking together. After a few seconds of silence I look up. It’s fully dark now so I can’t see what he’s doing from across the campsite, but I don’t think he’s doing anything much at all, just standing there, arms at his sides, staring into the fire.

“What are you doing?”

No answer. He turns and disappears. A few minutes later I hear the splash of water. With my chin resting on my bent knee, I roll the luminous pearl between my fingers, listening to him swim in the lagoon, stopping every five minutes to turn the aluminum packet with the tongs.

Dressed in a fresh pair of shorts, Brendan drops to his knees on the blanket next to me, rubbing his wet hair with a towel while I fight off the urge to run my hand over his pectorals. “What’s that?” he says.

I hold out my hand.

He leans in closer. “Is that…” He plucks it out of my palm and holds it up to the fire. “Is this a pearl?”

“From the third abalone.”

“No way…really? I didn’t know abalone had pearls in them.” He hands it back to me.

“They don’t. Well, not usually. They’re pretty rare. I’ve never found one. I always look though.” I admire it one more time before tucking it into my pack, checking to be sure the zipper is closed. “You know what they say...”

He throws the towel aside and stretches out on the blanket, perched on one elbow. His skin, a few shades darker than pale from the once-a-week beach trips we’ve been making, takes on a tannin glow in the firelight. He seems to be purposely avoiding looking me in the eyes, focusing somewhere around the area of my neck. “No, what do they say?”

“You have to shuck a lot of oysters before you find a pearl.”

His gaze drifts a little further down my torso, stopping at my chest. Then he abruptly looks away into the shimmering coals. “Oh, well…”

It’s chilly down at the bottom of the gorge, and I only now realize what a bad idea skipping the bra was. I’m too mortified to look down to confirm what he’s seeing, but it does give me a perfect excuse rise up onto my knees and pull the aluminum packet out of the embers with the tongs. My face is still burning with embarrassment as I put the packet on the flat rock next to the pit. I throw another two logs on the fire, feeling the weight of his eyes on me the entire time.

He probably thinks I did it purposely
, I think.
Another pathetic attempt at seduction.

“We don’t do a lot of oyster-shucking in the far-flung hamlets of Arizona,” he says finally, turning away to meditate on the fire again.

I sink back down, my legs tucked behind me, watching the flames crackle, an occasional, desperate flame leaping into the air with a
pop!
I can’t look at him, knowing my face and body and every movement will betray how frustrated I am. Another rejection would be too much to bear. “You have to keep trying,” I say, not sure if I’m talking about pearls or sex now. “Once-in-a-lifetime things happen when you least expect it, you know?”

“Yeah.” Moving slowly, he pushes himself up until his posture mirrors mine, sitting back on his knees, hands on his legs. “Yeah, I think I do know.”

I see his expression, the same one he had down on the rocks, and I start to shiver. “It’s rare,” I whisper.

Without looking down, he leans forward and lays his hands on my thighs, just below the hem of my dress. “Yes.”

“I’ll–I’ll probably never find another one.”

“No.”

His fingers slide easily under the fabric, my dress lifting up with his hands past my hips and up to my waist. His eyes never leave mine, his hands finding their way easily, eagerly over familiar curves. “I’ve missed you.”

I close my eyes. My lips quiver as I form the words. “Brendan, I know you’ve wanted me to remember everything, and I really
have
tried to, but I don’t remember…” I trail off, not sure how to finish. What can I possibly tack on the end that won’t sound absurd? As if confirming my hunch, my brain supplies me with this jewel: “
I don’t remember
our one night, so it must not have been all that spectacular
.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.” His hands are on the small of my back, the muscles in his arms taut with the effort of restraint. “I can’t–” He exhales heavily. “I’ve tried, you know. I want you to be comfortable. I want it to be like–”

He becomes preoccupied with his fingers, pressing them into the flesh of my back, relaxing them as his hands move again, stopping just under my breasts, his thumbs just brushing my nipples. “It’s too hard for me to wait anymore.” Suddenly his hands withdraw, skimming my waist and thighs as he pulls them from under my dress. He drops them on his thighs with a soft
smack!

“Okay,” I say, my voice shaking.
God, this is so embarrassing
, I think, feeling like a fifteen-year-old virgin in the back seat of a car. A drop of water falls onto my lip.
Am I crying
?
Oh,my god, please tell me I’m not crying
. I look down, thinking I might die of shame.

His hands are on me again as he leans in, ducking his head down to touch his lips to mine, just once. “Okay?”

I feel myself slowly falling back, the fabric of my dress slipping over my arms and disappearing above my head as he eases me to the ground. He sinks onto me, the skin of his chest hot against me, eyes never leaving mine. With his left hand he strokes my hair, his fingers tracing the features of my face, his body rhythmically pushing against mine. His other hand inches down, down, past my waist, past my hips, pulling away the fabrics that separate us.

“Brendan?”

Every muscle in his body seems to freeze. “Claire?” His breath is hot on my skin, his voice rough.

“Do I love you?”

He relaxes, and I inhale sharply as he sinks into me. “Like I love you,” he whispers, his words melting against my mouth as our bodies move together.

Chapter Fifteen

October 28
^th

I can’t get enough of the view. I open the bedroom windows wide and take a deep breath of the ocean air. I love it–the salty tang, the cries of the seagulls, the drone of the surf.

I can’t believe I went from the Valley to a beach-front house in Malibu in three months
, I think.

It’s actually Andy Gordon’s “guest house,” which is about twenty times bigger than my old apartment. We’ve tried several times to pay him rent for the good fortune of staying here. We’ve even written him checks for rent, but he just collects them with a frown and then never cashes them. “Stay as long as you want,” he’d said good-naturedly after we’d tried for the tenth time to convince him that paying him rent wouldn’t break us. “Stay ten years or leave tomorrow. Gives me a good excuse not to have my in-laws out for a visit.” I’d laughed, knowing full well that his mansion, which he and everyone else affectionately call “The Big House” has nine or ten guest rooms. I still need a map to navigate the hallways.

The front door opens and closes. “Did we get crackers?” I say, padding down the hallway in my ratty, black slippers and old white nightgown. I get nostalgic about my sleepwear, and these two pieces are the ones I had from the time my parents died. Brendan, god love him, never comments on the fact that I go to bed looking like I’m getting my next meal from Food on Foot.

Brendan pulls a red box out of the grocery bag and shakes it. “I saw it on the list so I gave it to Maria. I thought you were feeling better now that filming’s over?”

I grab the box from him. “I am, but I ate so many of them that I got addicted.” I tear open the top, wrestle the plastic open and pop one in my mouth. “Did you thank Maria?”

Maria is Andy Gordon’s housekeeper. She is kind enough to add our food to the errands she runs for Andy. Every week, I carefully write a check for our portion, but so far it looks like Andy is just chucking them in the same pile as the rent checks.

“Of course. Anyone who’s willing to take care of the drudgery of grocery shopping is due all the thanks I can give. Maybe even a little cash on the side.” He pulls out a plastic jug and sets it on the counter. He turns it so I can see the label. “Cranberry juice.”

“Awesome! How did you know?”

“It was on the list. If it’s on the list, we’re getting it, especially if you’re not awake for consultation.” He stops unpacking. “I thought orange juice was your thing?”

“I heard cranberry juice helps…certain things.”

“What do you mean ‘certain things?’”

“It’s gross,” I say, smacking the crumbs off my hands. “I’m not going to tell you.”

He puts his hands on the counter and leans his weight on his arms, suddenly serious. His normally light green eyes seem darker when he looks at me this way, making me feel like I’m in free fall. “Claire, remember how I told you I would help you remember everything?”

I look into the cracker box before I become physically defenseless under that gaze of his. “Yeah?”

“Well, you probably don’t remember this but …I’m a doctor.”

I chuck the cracker at his head. He dodges it and laughs. He does this more and more now–laughing–but it’s still an unexpected pleasure.

“I don’t have anything wrong with my brain.” I take a bite out of new cracker and chew a few times. “Well, not today anyway.”

“You think you have a UTI?”

“How do you know that?”

He points at the jug of cranberry juice. “Classic home remedy for urinary tract infection. Have you had one before?”

“Ugh, embarrassing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine, but call and make an appointment, okay? You don’t treat it, it can get worse.”

“Can’t you just write me a prescription for some antibiotics?”

“I’m your boyfriend, not your drug dealer.”

I roll my eyes. “I thought this relationship was going to come with perks.”

“Hey, if you ever need brain surgery, I’m your guy.”

“If I can get an appointment today, you’ll have to drive me. You’re going to start seeing the downside of having an invalid for a girlfriend.”

“I have to leave in an hour for work. Besides, I can’t think of anything worse than two doctors in one room.” Seeing my disappointed expression he says, “The Metro comes to Malibu, doesn’t it?”

“Very funny. It would take me an hour just to walk to the top of Andy’s driveway. I’ll see if Davin can take me.”