The Lifeguard (15 page)

Maybe Pilot was modeling for him again and while he was posing Antonio asked about me. I don’t ask too much. I don’t want to seem like I’m obsessed with him.

“So how did you get sick, Sirena?”

“How?” I shrug. “I just did…I woke up that way. I caught a virus from someone in the hospital, I guess. I really don’t know.”

“Sometimes we make ourselves sick,” Antonio says. “It’s our body’s way of expressing what’s inside our heads.”

He doesn’t look at me when he says this. Does he know what happened? How could he? Did Pilot tell him how he completely blew me off?

Antonio keeps painting.

My first day of kindergarten, I can’t forget it. I was so nervous that after breakfast I threw up. It happened the next day too. Then I think of the headaches.

I start telling Antonio about them and my voice won’t stop.

“There’s something else…” I hesitate and look over at him.

“Go on,” he says, gently.

I rub the heel of my hand back and forth along the sand, smoothing it, like the runway for a toy plane. I look up and begin to tell him all the things I never told anyone else before, not even Marissa.

“One day last year I was coming home from school. I was driving and I was alone in the car.”

He listens closely, I can tell, because of how he holds his head and the way his eyes look out ahead of him, so serious.

“I was supposed to go bowling, only our regular place was closed for a private party, so the team agreed to meet someplace else, about five miles away in another part of the city, a place I usually don’t go to.” I stop and stare out at the waves smashing against the shore and at how behind them, if you look out farther, you see new ones rising up to take their place.

“Please,” Antonio says, inviting me to continue.

“I was on the freeway…There wasn’t much to look at, just signs, cars, and then off to the side of a road…a small motel.”

He shifts in his chair, turning to me. He places his paintbrush down in the narrow slot on the easel.

“I don’t know why, but right away my eye picked out a truck in the parking lot of the motel. It was instantaneous, a kind of déjà vu. Without thinking, I got off at the next exit and drove back to the parking lot. I knew then why the car looked so familiar. Even though it was a pickup—the same black Ford pickup that everyone in the universe drives—it had one thing that made it different. Someone had dented the door and scraped off the paint, and it hadn’t been fixed yet.”

“
Querida
,” Antonio whispers.

“So…it was…my father’s truck.”

I swallow hard and stare back at the waves. The sun is slowly sinking lower in the sky, getting ready to hide for the night. I take in a breath. I need more air. “I sat in the parking lot and an uneasy feeling spread through me.”

Antonio looks at me with such compassion that my eyes fill with tears. He sits silently, watching me. “I don’t know how long I waited in the parking lot, but when it got close to supper time, I started to pull out.”

He shakes his head slightly.

“As I was leaving, I looked in my rearview mirror. He was coming out of one of the rooms. He was with a woman. His arm was around her waist. She was young, so much younger than him.”

“Sirena,” he whispers, like an apology.

“Maybe we do get sick for a reason.”

We sit for a long time, neither of us speaking. Antonio paints, and I watch him. The air gets cooler as the sun starts to disappear. It’s almost dark when he finally puts down his paint brush.

“Are you okay to get home by yourself?”

I nod. “Thanks for listening, Antonio.”

“I’m your
friend
, Sirena,” he says. He reaches out and covers my hand in his.

I get to my feet finally and start to walk back to my bike. I feel stripped of body armor. It’s the same hurt as the day I saw him. I want to ask Antonio if there’s a special plant or medicine in the Amazon jungle, some pill or magic drink that I can swallow. Something that’s strong enough to make the pain go away forever, along with the memory. Before I get on the bike I stop and walk back to him. “Did you hear about the man who almost drowned today?”

He nods.

“I was there…Pilot saved his life. I never saw anything like that, Antonio. There was a doctor there who tried to save him, but he gave up. If Pilot didn’t keep working on him he would have died. I think he
did
die, but…”

Antonio’s face breaks into a smile. “He’s good, he has learned.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is the keeper of the flame. The human spirit.”

I pretend to understand.

Aunt Ellie looks worried when I walk into the house. “I thought you’d be back earlier.”

“When I talk to Antonio, I lose track of time.”

“Well at least call, please.”

She’s a science writer, so I ask her something that’s been bothering me.

“Aunt Ellie…is Antonio psychic or something?”

She tilts her head to the side. “How do you mean?”

“Sometimes I get the feeling he knows things before they happen…or…I don’t know…he
sees
things.”

“I’m not sure,” she says. “What I do know is that he sees more than most of us. And understands more. He’s got this…”

She searches for the right word. “Depth.”

“He said Pilot’s a ‘keeper of the flame.’ What did he mean?”

“He’s a
lifeguard
,” she says. “Literally.”

“What do you mean?”

“He saves people…except for…”

“For what?”

“Nothing,” Aunt Ellie says impatiently, getting up and going to the kitchen. “That was a long time ago.”

A
unt Ellie dangles a crystal charm on a thin gold chain in front of me. It looks like a fist clenched for victory.

“Antonio dropped this off for you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called a figa,” she says. “It’s a good luck charm from Brazil that dates back to African myths from the seventeenth century. It attracts positive energy, they say, and protects you from evil. But it has to be a gift to work, Antonio said.”

I fasten the tiny clasp behind my neck and look in the mirror. “So now nothing bad can happen to me—ever.”

She purses her lips. “I’m not sure it’s
that
good.”

I don’t usually go out alone at night. But the air is cooler now and I need to get out and run. The screen door bangs shut behind me and I sprint toward the beach. The ocean glows with an eerie yellow haze from the full moon.

I keep going for a few minutes, slow down, then sprint again. Finally I kneel at the edge of the water to wet my face and arms and cool off. Above me is an endless expanse of night sky. I listen to my own breathing and the lapping of the waves—the only sounds in the uncut stillness that surrounds me like a blanket of darkness.

I get to my feet and tighten my shoelaces. I stretch then take off again, building to a steady pace. My breathing is easier, I’m in better shape. I keep going, happy this outdoor world is mine alone.

Then out of nowhere, it isn’t.

I’m overcome with the odd sensation that someone else is out there, nearby. I look around me. Nothing stirs. No one makes a sound. I slow my pace.

“Hello?”

No answer and I feel silly. It could be a fluttering bird or small animal, something that belongs here more than I do. The tiny flash of a firefly dances by. Another sparkle to my left. Another past my ear. I swipe it away.

It’s safe to be on the beach at night. It is. This isn’t a big city, there’s hardly any crime.

Still…

Is my street sense forever on alert or am I just paranoid?

The boom of male laughter in the distance shatters the quiet. I jump. It’s the kind of laugh that comes with too many beers. I flash to the poker games that went on too late when my father had his friends over. I would lie in bed listening, waiting for them to go home.

More laughter. This time like a crash of thunder. There could be a beach party nearby or a group out on a deck. I keep walking and then start to run toward home, anxious, on alert, but I keep going, determined not to let myself get overcome by fear—fear of nothing.

You’re not used to being outside, by yourself, I tell myself. It’s all in your head.

Only it isn’t.

There’s something on the sand ahead of me.

As I get closer, I make out the outline of a figure. I keep going and see that a guy of forty or more is lying with his head back, his long, tangled black hair coated with sand. He’s drunk and revolting, his shirt half open, twisted around him. He has a thick, hairy chest.

“Hey.” He raises a bottle of beer toward me. “Wanna drink?” He’s slurring his words.

I shake my head and run.

“Hey, wait, wait.”

I run faster and faster, my breath coming so hard it aches. I lose track of where I am or how far I’ve gone, until it feels safe to relax and cool off. I slow to a walk, fixated with watching the water. Off in the distance I spot someone at the edge of the waves.

Don’t get freaked out
, I tell myself.

And I don’t.

Disconnect. Out of context.

I slow, but my heart doesn’t. It’s the perfect, chiseled profile I recognize first. Instead of board shorts, he’s wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Nervousness rises up in me. Why would he be here at this hour? Is he with someone? Did I interrupt something? I keep walking toward him. I have no choice.

“Pilot,” I blurt out.

“Sirena.”

“What are you doing here?”

He looks at me quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not on duty, are you?” I say lightly.

“I come out here at night sometimes. What about you?”

I shrug. “I wanted to exercise and, you know, get air.” I hesitate. “There’s some crazy drunk down there.” I point behind me.

He nods. “I know him, he’s harmless.”

He looks at me and comes closer. “I’ll walk you back.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

I want him to, but I don’t. Can you feel two conflicting emotions at once? Anxiety balls up in my stomach. The harder I try to be as calm as he is, the worse it gets, the tension doubling back on me. There’s the wall, the awkwardness. I’m captive in this uneasy world when he’s near me. I’m never prepared for him.

Why did you ignore me? I want to ask him. Do you know how I felt? Do you know how much it hurt? Only I have to stop those kinds of thoughts. What would be the point? We walk along without talking, the silence creating a wider divide. Help! I want to scream out to nobody and everybody. How ridiculous is that?

Should I say something about the man he rescued? Anything I can think of will sound like I’m in awe of him and what he did. So I don’t, which makes no sense, even though for him, bringing someone back from the dead may be nothing unusual.

I stare up at the sky hoping for an opening line. It’s flecked with a million stars.

I try
not
to think of what an impossibly perfect setting this is.

I try
not
to think that he’s
not
thinking of what an impossibly perfect setting this is.

I pretend to concentrate on hunting for the few constellations I recognize. He must be wondering what to say too because after a few minutes he lifts his chin toward the sky. “Full moon,” he says.

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“More murders, accidents, suicides, births, kidnappings.”

“Really?”

He laughs softly and shakes his head. The rare smile. “No.”

So he gets over on me, but his nearness blurs my vision like the wrong glasses. Things don’t appear the way they’re supposed to. Is there a breathalyzer test for emotions that shows if you’re off balance and out of touch with reality? It feels like we’re two distant planets and I’m orbiting around him in slow motion.

He kneels and picks up a stone, skimming it above the water. Plop, plop, plop, it lands exactly the way it’s supposed to.

What is he not good at?

A gauzy haze veils the moon as we walk on. “How long have you been a lifeguard?

“Three years.”

“Have you ever
not
saved someone?”

He looks away for a moment, then turns back to me. “Once,” he says, softly. “Myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was out on a swimming practice with some other guys, and all of a sudden we were surrounded by dolphins. They herded us together and wouldn’t let us swim away. ”

“That’s so strange.”

“We thought so, too. Then we saw why.”

“What was it?”

“There was a great white shark nearby, and they wouldn’t let it come near us. They were protecting us, we realized, the way they protect their own.

“What happened then?”

“They surrounded us until finally the shark swam away. Then they broke the circle and let us swim back to shore.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“I know.”

“Things like that must happen to you all the time.”

He reaches for my arm, disturbed. “Why do you think that?”

“Because you’re not
like
anyone else.”

“Neither are you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

I start to turn away, and then turn back and face him again. “What
is it
with you? Why do you
hate
me?”