First Avenue (12 page)

As he neared the beach in his kayak, Sam saw Georgia sitting among the rocks that jutted beyond her house. He prepared to catch a small wave and sprint with it to shore, but just then she unfolded her long legs and stood. The wind caught her hair and a flash of red covered her face. He allowed a wave to pass and then another and watched her cross old
Simpson
’s beach to his. She had style even on rocks, and he admired the length of her stride. She waited for him with hands on her hips as he lurched toward shore. She grabbed the bow of his kayak and pulled him out of the water. Her freckled smile gleamed in the sunlight.

“Welcome home, sailor,”
Georgia
said. “Are you sure you have the right beach?”

“I am now. When did you get back?”

“Last night. Long after our protector was fast asleep.”

“You could have come anyway.”

“I know.”

Unlike most days, the paddle home from work had not allowed him to forget the morning, but he was certain he would forget now. He stuffed the paddle into an elastic strap on the kayak and loosened the waist skirt that stretched over the cockpit and kept his legs dry. He lifted himself out of the kayak. They were the same height.

“How was
San Francisco
?”

“Boring. Same old meetings. Same old stuff. How we make our clients richer while getting richer ourselves.”

“So how do I get richer?”

“You have to pay for that kind of information.”

“I’ll pay,” he said as he lifted the kayak over his head.

Georgia smiled mischievously and patted him swiftly on the butt. He could only laugh as they walked together toward his house. It must have been a boring week. By unspoken agreement they seldom touched each other on the beach. The neighbors had enough to talk about without that.

“I didn’t have to go to the office this morning, so I brought lunch,” she said. She stood beside the stairway while he put the kayak on two sawhorses below the deck.

“What kind of lunch?”

“What do you mean, ‘What kind of lunch?’ I went to the Market and bought fresh fruit. I thought I might bump into you there.”

“Not today.”

“Don’t tell me you had work to do.”

For a moment he was afraid that the smile he pretended to give was not going to move them on. He saw its consequence in her eyes. She had only meant to tease him, and she was particularly good at that. It always made him feel good. He put his hand on her back and guided her up the steps to the deck.

“Let’s have some of that fruit,” he said.

She smiled, one no more real than his, and her red hair dropped across her face as she looked back at him.

They sat at his table with fruit, pasta salad, and French bread between them. Also on the table was a new, red flower she had brought that day. He had no flowers of his own. Before she came, there was nothing green, nothing growing anywhere in his house. Even now she watered and tended the plants she brought, and when she left for a time, they had to wait until she came back. The survival of the fittest, he told her.

“I think it would be fine if you tell me when something is bothering you. A tidal wave wouldn’t wash us away. It wouldn’t make us seem old and married to talk about things.”

“We’re not married,” he said.

Her mouth stretched to one side of her face, her left side, as it did when he perplexed her.

“We’re not old either,” he added.

“I know that. That’s not what I meant. I tell you about my work,” she said. “Not that you’re interested, but I still tell you.”

“I talk about work.”

“You talk about having coffee at Silve’s or about that fish man. What’s his name?”

“Zeke.”

“Yes, Zeke. But not about anything important.”

“Having coffee with Silve is the most important thing I do.”

“Don’t think I can’t tell when something has happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Okay. Nothing happened. Be mysterious if you must.”

“You like mysteries.”

He liked that she could smile just then. There was much more he liked, but he always appreciated her unexpected smiles.

“Do you realize it was three years ago this week that
Victor
and I moved here?”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. The house was finally finished that September.”

“You were the first gentry in the neighborhood.”

“We are definitely not that,” she said.

“It seemed like it to the rest of us—the house I mean.”

“But the house meant nothing, did it?”

He shrugged his shoulders in response.

“You are a model of communication this morning,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Didn’t we fit in just fine?”

“You certainly did.”

“That’s not what I meant. Although, you have a point. Three years,
Sam
. Who would have thought three years?”

“Not me.”

“But don’t you think it’s sort of strange? It would seem like one of us would want something to change.”

“Why would we want something to change? I think it’s just about perfect the way it is.” He looked across the table at
Georgia
’s familiar face and became convinced all over again that it was just about perfect.

“Perfect? How is it perfect?”
Georgia
asked. Her face showed how much she doubted perfection.

So maybe it wasn’t perfect. He knew he should be more careful when she started talking like this. Why couldn’t he remember from one time to the next? Weeks and months could go by, and everything would be fine, but then something would happen—maybe a neighbor would look at her a certain way or some kids would accidentally stray down the beach—and this conversation would come up again in one form or another.

“Come on,
George
girl. We have it pretty good, you and me. What would you want to change? If you could fix it any way you like, what would you change?”

“If I could fix it?” Her tone let him know he had again not used the right words.

“You know what I mean.”

“Maybe I would have you and
Victor
be the same man—a little of you, a little of him when he was younger. Presto.”

“Which part of me would you keep?”

“Why, all of you, of course.”

“And Victor?”

“Some of him.”

“The parts that still work?”

“Don’t be nasty.”

“I don’t mean to be nasty,”
Sam
said. “I wouldn’t be half so decent if I were him.”

“It’s not easy, you know. Not everybody can shut these things out.”

“I know. And we can’t change them either. I think we’re stuck. But this isn’t a bad place to get stuck, is it?”

“I guess not.”

She looked at him with eyes that meant he had to say something more.

“When you first moved here, I used to watch you down on the beach. You looked like you were waiting for somebody. I imagined it was me. I didn’t even know your name then, but I was wishing it was me.”

“So you had your little fantasy. That’s not like you,
Sam
. And after you imagined I was the one you were waiting for, what more did you imagine?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do.”

“One admission is all you get. Anyway, it was me you were waiting for. I didn’t have to imagine that.”

“But
Sam
, it’s the imagining that gives pleasure. Sometimes I would wake up early, and I would see this strange man out in the water. I wondered what you could be doing all by yourself in that little boat, and why you would leave and return at such odd hours. You were a mystery then. That’s certain. It was the imagining that made it so interesting. I told myself that I wouldn’t get up to watch, or if I did, that it was just a coincidence. But it was uncommon how many times I woke up when you were out there. Wasn’t it strange how we both thought of the other? That must have brought us together.”

“It was the storm that did it.”

“That had nothing to do with it.”

“Of course it did. Don’t you remember? The water came all the way up to my foundation.”

The water had been like a battering ram on the beach, and the wind had been so strong that the rain came down sideways and barely touched the ground. It was the worst storm he had witnessed since buying the house, and he had even wondered if the house would survive. The next day was the opposite. The sun was bright and the water was unusually calm. Their beach had changed. Logs that had been in the same place for years were gone or transplanted to new high-water marks. In the afternoon following the storm, he had gone out to walk on the altered surface, to put his feet where the water had been, to reassure himself that the beach was still there.

Old
Mr.
Simpson
was out with his plastic bags, picking up debris.
Simpson
was the self-appointed janitor, and he took it upon himself to pick up any trash that washed ashore or was left by outsiders who had found their beach. Because of him all the neighbors were more careful to pick up after themselves and after others.

There was too much for
Mr.
Simpson
that day. One by one, the neighbors came out to help, and then she came. She knew
Simpson
, who lived between
Sam
and her.
Simpson
introduced her to everyone. Garbage bags in hand, the neighbors waved and smiled. All were pleased that the immigrant was learning, too. When it was his turn to be introduced,
Sam
stepped forward and shook her hand. She was wearing leather gardening gloves.

Her red hair was tied back, and she wore boots and blue jeans and a heavy sweater. They worked together, forgetting the others, picking up information about each other along with the garbage that filled their bags. They worked until
Simpson
told them to quit. “We’ve got it good enough,” he shouted to them, as though they were under his charge. Like good neighbors, he and
Georgia
parted and walked their separate paths around
Simpson
’s house.

“It was the storm,” he reminded
Georgia
.

“That storm had nothing to do with it. We had already met in our minds.”

“Okay,” he said, giving in to her interpretation. “So how did I measure up to your mind?”

“You measured up fine, as far as it went.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It took a little while, if you remember, to get to know you. It wasn’t bad after that.”

Her face returned to the expression that had met him at the water with the sailor greeting and the pat on the butt. He understood that one best, along with the wet one he saw as they stood in the shower. She admonished him not to get her hair wet, which he did immediately. It was too crowded for her to do anything but kiss him in response—a tongue-probing kiss that made it even more crowded inside the shower.

They made love with her hair wrapped in a towel. Her breasts were cooler than the rest of her, and he liked to feel them with his face. This was what he meant when he had told her it was perfect—the coolness of her breasts and her hair pulled wet and straight as it lost the towel. For the moment he didn’t want anything more, and he didn’t envy
Victor
her company or their separate bedrooms or whatever else they shared.

Poor old
Victor
, he thought, as he lay beside her with his eyes closed and relaxing into sleep. If he were in
Victor
’s place, would he have the same tolerance? Not likely. Not in a million years.

Georgia got up and walked into the bathroom. This had been an awkward time once, but she could get up now and do what she wanted, to rejoin him in bed or kiss him softly on the forehead to signal she was leaving. And he could do whatever he wanted—which was? he asked himself, without trying to answer, without even opening his eyes.

When he got up an hour later, he saw that
Georgia
had cleaned the table. On it she had left a note in her elegantly looping handwriting. It read, “Need to drop by the office. I’ll pop in later if you haven’t gone out. G.”

“Okay, G,” he said aloud. “Pop in whenever you want.”