Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction (21 page)

A short story with characters from The Artists Trilogy and the upcoming Dirty Angels Trilogy

by Karina Halle

Distraught by her husband’s affair, a woman flees to Hawaii to lose herself, but instead finds something unexpected.

CHAPTER ONE

I knew that the wave was too dangerous. I knew it and that was why I went for it. It came rolling into Hanalei Bay like a brilliant blue shock wave, diamond-studded from the sun, catching the attention of the bored surfers on this otherwise average day. It called to me like a slippery siren, just as it called to them. But instead of watching it pass underneath my dangling legs, like I had done with every surfable wave in the last hour, I decided to answer the call.

I decided it would be a good way to die.

Determined, I lay down on my stomach and began paddling like a madwoman, knowing the liquid beast was barreling up behind me. I could hear some of the territorial surfers out there were yelling, perhaps to get out of their way, perhaps to warn me, but I didn’t care. The golden beach spread out in front of me as kids grabbed their bodyboards and fled from the surf, their parents yelling at them to be careful. They knew the dangers, just as I did.

I wasn’t a great surfer. But then again, that was the point.

I sucked in my breath, salt dancing on my tongue, and got to my knees as I felt the massive pull of the wave take me and the board back.

My feet found the rough, beaten surface, my legs bracing for balance. The ocean roared beneath me. This wave was what every surfer could ever dream of, their holy grail, their Moby Dick, and I captured it like fireflies in a jar. I could feel the power, the surge, the sea spray, the sun on my skin. I could feel everything, as if I were finally alive and breathing and part of the world.

And yet living was the last thing on my mind.

I rode that wave for a few seconds that stretched out into eternity. Maybe my life flashed before my eyes, or maybe it flashed behind them. One moment I was up, feeling the immense girth of the wave curling up behind me, and the next I was down, a flower crushed in a closing hand. The board was yanked away from me so hard and fast that the cord was ripped off my ankle, and I was pulled in a million directions before the way down was the only way to go. The wave pummeled me until I took in water and gave up nothing in return.

No fight.

My eyes closed, burned by the salt, and my hair whipped around my head like seaweed. With heavy limbs and a heavy heart, I sank.

The ocean took me under, intent on holding me hostage with no ransom.

No one would have bartered for me anyway.

And then a hand reached out for me in the depths, wrapping around my wrist. I didn’t know if it was the hand of life or death. But it had me.

Then another hand grabbed my arm and I felt the water around me surge, my body being pulled upward. I opened my eyes into the stinging blue glow, and past the rising bubbles and foam, I caught a glimpse of a man’s face. His expression was twisted in turmoil; I suppose from the act of trying to save me. He obviously didn’t know how little I’d appreciate it, how little I was worth it.

Suddenly, I was brought up to the surface, the sun and air hitting me just as the water began to rush out of my lungs. I could only cough until my chest ached, the rest of me completely useless as the man towed me toward the shore. My brain switched on and off, processing everything in splices of film:

The man’s longish hair sticking to the back of his bare neck.

The gray clouds that hunkered down above the cliffs of the Na Pali coast.

The people on the beach watching my rescue, hands to their mouths, murmurs in the crowd.

The painfully vivid sky as the man laid me down on the beach, cradling the back of my head in his hands.

The man as he stared down at me—his disturbingly scarred face contrasting with his beautiful hazel eyes framed by wet lashes.

The face of a man I knew would be more dangerous than any wave.

And so, with consciousness slipping out of my hands again, I smiled at him, at the danger I recognized within.

And then the new world went black.

• • •

“Are you sure you don’t want us to take you to the hospital?” the EMT asked me for the millionth time.

“I’m fine,” I said deliberately. “Though I’m getting a headache from all your questions.”

“It’s really better if—”

I narrowed my eyes at the clean-cut man, even though it hurt my brain to do so. “I didn’t call the ambulance, and I have no intention of riding in one to the hospital all the way in Lihue.” I paused, inwardly wincing at what I was about to say. “I’m an artist and I’m uninsured.”

He gave me a dry look. “Well, if you’re going to continue surfing, perhaps looking into insurance is a good idea.” But before I could say anything to that, he snapped up his kit and headed back to the ambulance that was purring behind the public restrooms.

I sighed from my perch on top of the picnic table and ignored the curious looks of the vagrants who were hanging around underneath the shelter, drinking cheap beer. Water from the rains that had passed by a few hours ago was still dripping off the roof, smacking the concrete and sand below with a desolate sound. The looky-loos who had been twittering about me earlier had gone on their sunburned ways back to the sand and surf, and Hanalei Bay looked as it did before I nearly died.

I was back to being alone. Back to being caught in my thoughts. Back to everything I had tried to escape from.

Except now that I’d actually willed myself to give it all up, there was something that pushed at my mind.

Someone.

The man who had saved me.

Just where had he come from and where did he go? When I came to on the beach a few minutes later after I had blacked out yet again, he was gone, and I was stuck looking at the faces of the panicked tourists, one who must have called the ambulance for me. The man, with his scars that crisscrossed the side of his face, and his vibrant eyes that hinted at the depths within, had completely disappeared.

The least he could have done was stick around so I could thank him.

But
would
I have thanked him? Perhaps if I saw the darkness in him, he saw the same darkness in me.

I got off the table and stood on the stiff grass, careful not hurt my ankle. It was especially tender after my board was ripped away from me, but not bad enough to warrant spending the money to get it checked out. I wondered if my board had washed up on the beach somewhere or if it was lost to the waves, then decided to forget about it. I didn’t want to spend an extra minute here, knowing that I’d made a fool of myself by almost dying and all that.

I fished my keys out of my board shorts and headed to the Jeep I’d rented during the last two weeks. I had one week left on it before I was supposed to return to the mainland, back to Doug and the life that was drowning me. I swallowed my bitterness at still having to find a way out of all of this.

On the way back to Kilauea, I drove fast—too fast—nearly smashing into a waiting car as I sped over the one-lane Hanalei bridge, stars in my eyes and the war raging on in my mind. It was a miracle I even pulled into the driveway of my rental house in one piece.

The fact is, I wanted to keep driving. I didn’t want to come back even to here, the place that should have been the escape from my marriage, from my job that didn’t even insure me, and everything. But that was the irony of trying to escape to an island. There was nowhere to go; you just kept going in circles, coming back to where you started.

I went inside to the kitchen and poured myself an extra-large glass of red wine, wishing I hadn’t finished the bottle of Scotch the night before. Leaning against the counter, I stared at the backyard, which disappeared into a thicket of hibiscus and gardenia, the azure sea stretching beyond it. I’d stared at the same scene ever since I arrived, willing myself to paint it. There was a papaya tree in the corner, a small fish pond, a hole in the distressed wood fence where brightly colored feral chickens would come through. This should have been paradise—this should have brought me and my art back to life. But it hadn’t.

My phone buzzed and vibrated on the counter. I didn’t even look at it. I knew I probably had a million missed calls since I headed out surfing, and I knew they were all either from work or from Doug. Work, because I was sure the temp couldn’t handle another day under my boss’s direction, and Doug because he just had to know where I was. Not because he cared—he stopped caring two years after our wedding—but because the fact that I took off to Kauai by myself was the biggest fuck-you to his renegade ego that I could have done.

I wondered what he would have thought if he knew I’d almost drowned without his permission, what he could have said if I’d come home with a death certificate. Would he genuinely be upset, distraught at losing his wife because he loved me oh so much—or would he just write me off to be with Justine?

I gulped back the rest of the wine and thought about what the gravestone of Lani Morrison would say on it. Here lies a wife? Here lies an artist? Here lies one lost woman who never quite found her way?

I hoped it would be blank and that people could draw their own stories about my life. They’d all be better than the truth, that Lani Morrison died at the age of thirty-three, childless by choice, locked in an unhappy seven-year marriage with a man who’d been in love with someone else for most of it. She lost her parents to a car crash when she was seventeen, found mediocre fame in her twenties for her watercolor paintings, then when her muse, her “spirit” for the art, left her, she had to find work as a part-time assistant in an office selling dishwashers.

May she rest in peace.

Fuck peace.

I slammed down the glass and it shattered on the marble countertop, sending shards everywhere. As I looked down at the mess, I felt acutely overwhelmed for a second, before I decided to let it all go. I plucked the bottle of wine off the counter and headed out into the backyard, where I sat down on the back stoop and proceeded to drink until all the cab sav was gone and I was even more numb than before.

Though not numb enough to prevent my thoughts from going back to the mystery man, my savior. What was it about him that kept stealing my attention? Every time I tried to picture him, I either saw his face under the water, partially obscured by the bubbles rushing past my eyes, or the sun-kissed look of his neck, his wet hair clinging to it as he pulled me to the shore.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back door, the images replaying over and over in my mind until a noise brought me to attention. It sounded like someone was outside the front of my house.

Carefully easing myself up, feeling more than a bit drunk, I made my way through the cool house to the front door. I opened it and had to blink a few times at what I was seeing.

It was my surfboard, leaning against a potted Phoenix palm. I walked over to it and ran my hands down the smooth sides, then looked around. The street was empty except for a lazy cat waddling through the neighbor’s grass. Who dropped it off, and more importantly, how the hell did they know where I was staying?

For the first time that day I felt uneasy, my skin prickling with gooseflesh. As empty as I had been, the fact that someone must have followed me to my house to return it to me was a bit unsettling, yet considerate. I took in a steadying breath and picked up the board, about to take it inside, when a piece of paper fluttered to the pavement.

I placed the board back against the palm and scooped up the paper in my hands. In neat cursive handwriting, the note read: “The next time I save you, you’ll want me to.”

A strange thrill ran through me as I remembered the man with the face of danger.

I wondered if he
really
knew how hard it was to save me.

CHAPTER TWO

I spent the next morning pacing up and down the hallway, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my day. Every now and then I’d wince as my bare feet found yet another slice of glass that I’d missed when I cleaned up the mess from the day before. From time to time I’d stride over to the windows and nervously peer out past the palm fronds, looking for a sign of that man who wanted to save me again.

It was kind of ridiculous, actually, but I was enjoying the suspense, the way my nerves rattled every time a car drove down my street. It gave me a strange sense of focus that had been missing the last few weeks .
 . . or months. Or years.

Finally around noon, after I managed to get down a bowl of cereal, I decided I’d had enough. I packed a beach bag, grabbed my board, and got in the Jeep. Though Hanalei was my favorite part of the island, I didn’t want to head back there. I knew that the November surf was notoriously wicked on the North Shore, part of the reason why I had wanted to go there in the first place.