Must Love Otters (7 page)

Something is banging into the side of the house. I open the window and look out, expecting to see a tree branch knocking against the tired siding.

It’s the demon goat.

Bleeeeeaaat
. He’s looking up at me. Goddamned thing knew I was in the bathroom. “You following me, you little psycho? I’m gonna eat you one of these days.”

Bleeeeeaaaaat
. Mangala’s creepy, horribly-not-right rectangular-pupil eyes stare up at me. He’s frothing at the mouth, a clump of weeds dripping with slobber hanging out his bearded jaw. Oh my God, maybe he’s rabid. That would explain a lot.

I look back at the open drawer. Goats eat everything, right? Do they like codeine?

We’re about to find out.

I throw one pill. Beans him right between the eyes. He bleats and the half-masticated blob of green plops to the ground. He eats the pill.

“No way … this is too easy.”

I throw another one. Eats it. The prescription says 300/30—the ratio of Tylenol to codeine. How much codeine will take down a goat? Considering Mangala ate not one but two plasticized canvas tarps last winter, was hit by the mail truck, killed a coyote that wandered into the yard, was terrorized by a pack of raccoons and still lived, I should probably give him the mother lode.

Six pills later, bastard is still looking up at me like a circus lion waiting for bloody slabs of top sirloin. He snorts, and pillows of white spittle fly from his sticky goat lips. He’s looking at me sideways through a devil-spawn eyeball. I shudder. Those eyes, man. God was like, let’s give this beast sideways eyeballs to fuck with the humans.

I don’t dare give him more. I only want to knock him out so I can get to my car in one piece. I don’t
really
want to kill him. Okay, maybe I do, but that makes me sound like a dick. I’m supposedly the animal lover. The girl with the WildAid and World Wildlife Fund bumper stickers. I hide the bottle in the back of the drawer, hopeful that Dad won’t notice six missing pills. Okay, eight. I took two for later. For me.

Dad’s already back in his study, unspooling wire around neon puffs of dyed yarn. “I’m gonna head out.”

“Hey, thanks for coming out. I’m sorry about Keith …”

“Nah. Don’t be.”

“You have a fantastic time up at that resort. Email me if you can. No—wait—don’t. Unplug. Just have some time to yourself.”

“Love you, Dad.” Smooch for the road.

“Okay, maybe one email or text so I know you’ve arrived all right.”

“Will do.”

“Love you, Hollie. You’re my favorite daughter.”

“I’m your only daughter,” I sing over my shoulder, closing his study door behind me. Technically, biologically speaking, that’s the truth. I will never let him forget it.

Sitting atop my box of childhood treasures is a box of cupcakes. Confounded cupcakes hell-bent on reminding me of my suckage quotient. I don’t want to admit that Moonstar’s cupcakes are anything other than poop-flavored fat makers. She’s—I don’t even know what Moonstar is to me. She’s a kid some friend of Aurora’s dumped on her doorstep when the girl—birth name, Tanya—was eleven. After a few years of living with Aurora, she got mad because Aurora was going to marry my dad so she packed up and moved into a commune, had a baby at fifteen, gave the baby up for adoption, went back to school, got her MBA by twenty, and now runs a successful, international all-organic cupcake business. She’s a millionaire several times over and looks like Hippie Barbie. I pretty much hate her.

And my father nags me about seeing her. “You guys are the closest thing the other has to a sister.” Which is exactly why we hate each other. Not even the flaxen hair and sun-kissed, lightly freckled face and perfect little tight organic body can make up for the fact that her soul is silicone fake.

I’ll leave the cupcakes on Mrs. Hubert’s doorstep. She can feed them to her rotting cat or throw them at the paperboy.

As I step onto the porch, the rotting wood creaks under my feet.
Shit. Goat.

I listen for the bell. Make my way down the four sagging steps. Listen again. Nothing but birds.

“Mangala … where are you, buddy?”

No response. No tinkle of his bell, no bleat from his septic maw.

The codeine worked. I pull my keys out, just in case. The box isn’t heavy but it definitely precludes my view in front of me.

Which is exactly what that calculating little soul-slurper was banking on.

I scream loudly, but to no avail. I can’t get the gate to latch, so he chases me around the car. My parcels slide across the trunk lid, cupcakes flying and splatting open on the driveway. I launch myself onto the hood on the next spin around. But not quite in time.

His evil horns tear into denim. I’d scream for my dad, but it won’t help. I’m on my own here. Just me and the demon goat.

Shit. “You little prick! These are my favorite jeans!”

I don’t dare move. Damn bastard might try to finish me off.

Except he’s distracted by the fluffy goodness dotting the driveway. He digs in, paper wrappers and all, the pink and yellow plumes of frosting—which, for the record, look amazing—smearing his muzzle and manky goat beard.

Wishing right about now that I had a sunroof so I could squeeze into the car and run over the wretched beast. Mangala looks up at me, his mouth chewing way too fast for a creature with many milligrams of codeine on board.

“Next time I’m giving you the whole bottle, you asshole.”

Bleeeeeeaaaaat.

In the cab to the train station, I feel nauseated.

It’s just nerves. Nervous nerves. Because I’m leaving everything that I’m used to and standing on my own two feet and no one is holding my hand or mumbling in my ear. Everyone else in the City of Roses is going about their lives and doing their Monday morning things … I, however, am playing hooky. Two fingers down my throat when Polyester Patty was on the line, and voila. “Take a few days off. Could be contagious.” I thank my sensitive gag reflex for delivering me unto another sin.

Tucked into my suitcase is some sexy lingerie and a new razor and body lotion that smells like summer, just in case. Perhaps Revelation Cove will reveal her secrets to me in the form of some newly single stud and he’ll want to do more than talk about pressure dressings and why the new defibrillator batteries aren’t up to snuff.

Keith texted last night about his shoes, so I filled a box and slid it onto the porch. He said he’d come for the TV on Wednesday when Mushroom Cap Joe could help him. I didn’t bother to tell him I’d be gone, basking in otters and hot springs.

And I don’t want to talk to or see him right now. My resolve is about as firm as a saltine cracker soaked in filmy chicken soup.

In a fit of panic at 2 a.m., I reread the resort’s confirmation email. Something about a forty-eight-hour cancellation policy to avoid the nonrefundable charge equal to one night’s lodging plus tax. Not enough hours left to cancel. As such, I’m stuck. That kind of stuck you get when you stick your head in between the bars at the zoo to get a better look at the lion but then the lion sees you and starts to pace on the other side of the enclosure and the only thing that’s keeping him from eating you is the murky green pool that he can’t quite leap across and the zookeepers are pouring oil on your head to try to get it unstuck from between the bars and everyone’s talking behind their hands about how dumb you are and that you deserve to be eaten by the lion.

I should’ve emailed Concierge Ryan to make sure there are no lions.

Ridiculous. British Columbia doesn’t have lions.

Do they?

I love taking the train. This one even smells nice, thanks to the fact that the dining room is just one car down. And I’d like to smooch Steve Jobs for the greatest invention this world has seen in the last one hundred years, besides antibiotics and PEZ: the iPod. I can drown out the world with audiobooks and music and podcasts. I can catch up on my monumental reading list, learn how to better market my nonexistent business, listen to the music I prefer instead of Keith’s brain-melting detritus.

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for fueling these budding antisocial tendencies. My burgeoning crazy thanks you.

Three hours later, the cab ride from the King Street Amtrak station to Pier 69 where the Victoria Clipper boards is short but eventful. Like, pretty sure the driver was pretending we were in Baghdad, or maybe Boston. No seatbelts, vinyl seats I could not bring myself to look at after that first unfortunate glance. I might have stuffed the train’s complimentary newspaper under my ass to prevent the transfer of communicable disease. Half a bottle of Purell later, I feel secure enough to present the Clipper ticket agent my credit card without worrying I will transfer microscopic pathogens to my wallet or onto her unsuspecting hands.

That’s how the next plague is going to start. With unwashed, germ-slathered hands. It’ll thin the herd. A lot.

When the giant catamaran motors out of Seattle toward Victoria, British Columbia, I am humbled by the power of such a big vessel. The whole concept of a boat this big skimming the surface of Puget Sound as if doing nothing more than giving it a wet kiss. Rainbows shimmer in the spray under a half-clouded sky, Mr. Golden Sun squeezing through stubborn puffs of gray and white to remind us that spring has sprung and he’s doing everything in his power to make sure flowers bloom and bees buzz. I forgo the iPod for the duration of the trip, instead sitting outside in the chilly May afternoon on the water, the ferry’s dull roar lulling my eardrums into a comfortable deafness, watching port towns and vast mountains covered in the planet’s lushest greens appear and disappear along the water’s edge.

This is gorgeous country. I am so lucky to live so close to such beauty.

We dock, and the excitement of being in another country sets in. Passport stamped, a “Welcome to Canada” grumbled out by someone who didn’t really look like they meant it, which sort of spoils the moment because I thought all Canadians were supposed to be super nice. Plus, no one handed me a beaver or a moose or a flask of maple syrup. I thought that was part of the deal. Americans, when you go to Victoria, British Columbia, they don’t give you syrup. You have to buy it in the gift shop next to the docks. And there are no red-coated, stud Mounties waiting for you, either. I thought there would be hunky Mounties waiting for me. I’d totally volunteer for a pat-down if it came to that. “What, me, smuggle cocaine? You’ll have to search for it, you big brute.”

Maybe not from the angry-looking woman with the very tight ponytail and paramilitary gear standing by the door.

I’m cutting it close. The email from Revelation Cove said my floatplane will be loading at the docks near the Victoria Inner Harbour Airport, across the way. Wharf Street. I can find this. Standing outside the Clipper office, a brisk breeze skips through about a minute apart. Like the sky is having contractions. Let’s just hope the clouds’ water doesn’t break and let loose all over the busy sidewalks.

The sky isn’t pregnant, Hollie. No one needs you to count them through the contractions until the ambulance arrives.

Again with the nerves. Especially now that I see those little tiny planes bobbing on the surface of the water. Without concrete under them. Just water.

So much water.

We’ll be taking off—and landing—on nothing solid, on a surface that could just as soon swallow me whole, floatplane and all, than let me roost atop. Do we wear lifejackets? In case of a water landing? Because I’m pretty sure a water landing is absolutely part of this deal. Not like a big commercial jet where a water landing is
bad.
I’m willingly submitting to a water landing.

This flies in the face of all things sane. Pun intended.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Time for contemplation is over. I’m committed. I have to be Brave Hollie. “There could be otters, Hol. And cute boys. Get thee to the plane.” I hope no one hears me whispering to myself or I might find out if the security guards in Canada’s mental health facilities look as stern as the gruff Customs woman.

I hustle off the Clipper dock and move toward where I see floatplanes loading passengers and parcels. This won’t be so bad. The planes look big enough. I count the windows alongside one: six. That means, what, twelve passengers? Looks safe. It’s
got
to be safe. How many floatplane accidents have made the news lately? I’m tempted to Google it, but I don’t know what the roaming charges will be on my phone, and as we all know, I’m on a self-induced budget.

Pretty planes. So pretty planes. Nice planes.

I feel like I’m talking down a pissed-off Doberman with a rubber band around his balls and a Cone of Shame around his neck.
Nice planes, niiiiice planes.

People are boarding that one over there, a shiny white one with solid-enough-looking wings and sturdy pontoons and lovely green and blue stripes. Those folks look confident; the pilot looks fetching in his pilot-y getup. I have nothing to worry about.

I’m looking for the Revelation Cove supply flight, so I’m not to go through the regular airport check-in. The concierge emailed me the option of an extra night’s stay or a complete spa treatment for agreeing to take the supply flight. Means they have space for another guest on their regular flight. The email also instructed that I’m to look for a cart full of stuff on the docks with my name taped to the side.

Like that cart full of stuff over there with a piece of cardboard taped to it that says “Hollie Porter.”

I’m here.

And that floating air-slash-water vessel, the one where the rather tall, burly, bearded man in a beat-up red sports jersey is loading stuff into a very small, was-once-probably-red plane, is not like the pretty white and blue and green planes over there with the guy who looks like a real pilot.

Maybe this guy isn’t the pilot. Maybe he’s just a hired grunt loading what looks like the spoils of a Costco run.

“Excuse me,” I say. Not loud enough. His head and upper body are still buried into the plane’s rib cage. I try again. “’Scuse me.”

The man extracts himself. Piercing greenish eyes. Very thick beard. A nose that looks like it met with a baseball bat one too many times. Total mountain man. “Hey, hi. Are you Hollie Porter?”

“I am. Is this the … plane … to Revelation Cove? Wait—duh—of course it is. You knew my name.”

“Ryan,” he says, thrusting forth a wide, calloused hand. “We talked the other night on the phone.”

“Right, yeah. Cool.” He’s got something in his beard. Not sure if I should tell him.

“You’re more sober today,” he says, a smile broadening across his face. My cheeks combust.

“Yeah, I figured making my way through Customs trashed was probably a bad idea.”

“Wise. They’re prone to body cavity searches when things are slow.” He hoists a giant bag of flour over this shoulder. “I just have to finish loading these things and we’ll be off. Do you want to grab something to eat or use the washroom?”

“Washroom?”

“The toilet.”

“Oh. No, I’m good.” The plane wobbles a little as he tosses his monster-sized groceries into the rear. “Um, you’ve got … something … here.” I point to my chin. He wipes a hand over his bristly mass.

“Gross. Ah, lettuce. Thanks.” He flicks the offending shred into the water. “Way to make an impression, hey?”

“Happens to me all the time.” I didn’t want to make him feel awkward, but I knew I’d be staring at it the whole trip. Like when someone has a pimple that needs attention. You can’t help but look. “So, uh, where’s the pilot?”

Ryan stands straight, smiling again. Teeth unnaturally perfect and very white against the dark of his beard. His curly hair makes him taller than he is. I’ll have to look up at him if I stand too close. And the shoulders are broad. His red jersey has a tear in the shoulder and the front is smeared with something black. Oh God, maybe it’s engine grease. Maybe the plane has mechanical problems. Maybe the grease on his jersey is a sign.

And he’s too big to be the pilot. How the hell is he going to fit inside that plane?

“Ryan Fielding, Revelation Cove concierge and pilot, at your service.” He bows, an arm folded across his midsection.

“
You
are the pilot?”

“Don’t I look qualified?”

I look over my shoulder at the other fellow in the dress blues with the wings pinned above his breast pocket. No, Concierge Ryan, you do not looked qualified to be the pilot.

I lie. “Yeah, okay.”

“Ever been in a floatplane?”

“No.”

“You’ll love it.” He loads the last item from the cart and reaches for my bag. “This the only one you brought?” I nod yes. “Good. Not a lot of space left here. Don’t want to risk overloading Miss Lily.” What happens if you overload it? Will she crash?

Are we going to crash? Did I pack too much lingerie?

He slams the flimsy cargo door closed. And then again when it pops open. And a third time. The fourth time he messes with it, it remains closed.

And my stomach is in my feet. This cannot be safe to fly in. He can’t even get the door to stay closed.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says, gesturing to the now-latched door. “Miss Lily’s very reliable. Even if she’s not as pretty as her cousins, right, Lil?” He pats the top of the plane’s wings.

“Right. Okay,” I squeak. “How long is the flight?” Gulp.

“Little over an hour, depending on the winds. We’ll get there just in time for a late dinner. You hungry?”

The roiling in my stomach has less to do with hunger than abject terror. “We’ll see.”

“You’re nervous.” He rests a hand on Miss Lily, bouncing lightly against the dock. Twilight is imminent—clouds along the mountainous horizon glow orange and pink. Oh my God, we’re going to be flying—and landing—in the dark. “This old girl will treat you right. But you should know—these smaller planes aren’t like the big jets. If there’s turbulence, you’ll feel it a little more.”

“You can land in the dark?”

“I think so.” He creases his brow, looks at the sky. Then laughs. “Yeah, I can land in the dark. I promise I won’t let you down.”

My legs are the consistency of Jell-O. I’m not a great flyer to begin with, but I clearly didn’t think this through. Concierge Ryan chuckles at me and opens the cockpit door. If you can call that a cockpit. He kneels inside the aircraft, shuffles through a zippered bag, and stands tall again, offering a token in his outstretched hand.

A sample-sized liquor bottle is dwarfed in his palm. “Cheap but effective. Drink up. Our complimentary in-flight refreshment.”

“I hope you have more where this came from.”

“Is Hollie Porter a lush?”

“Is Concierge Ryan really gonna judge when he’s asking me to get on an airplane that is likely held together with duct tape under that peeling paint?”

“No duct tape. I swear it.” He holds crossed fingers over his heart. That smile again. Some dentist has made a fortune off those teeth.

Ryan snickers and helps me across his seat into my own. The passenger space is no bigger than the front seat of a pickup truck, except the dashboard, embossed with
De Havilland
, is awash in dials and gadgets and gauges and handles. So many. God, please tell me these mean something to Concierge Ryan. The propeller is motionless at the front, alarmingly close to where our bodies are sitting. Well, except for that engine between us. Just like a car. The windshield stretches to the sides of the aircraft, windows on each door larger than they look from the outside. I can see the water everywhere. There is no escaping the fact that I am on the friggin’ water. In an airplane.