The Practical Navigator (8 page)

“You do drugs?” Leo asks.

“A little pot on occasion.”

“You drink?”

“Little beer on occasion.”

“What do you do more than on occasion?” Leo says.

“Surf.”

“I don't like surfers. A ripple in the water, they don't show up.”

“I surf at dawn and sunset.”

Leo likes the kid. “You got a sense of humor?”

“Guy's walking his dog,” says the kid. “He goes into a bar. The bartender sees him—hey, no dogs! It's a seeing-eye dog, the guy says, I'm blind. Since when is a Chihuahua a seeing-eye dog, says the bartender. Damn, says the guy, they gave me a Chihuahua?”

“Unload those bricks,” says Leo, laughing. “Eight bucks an hour, we'll see if you last the day.”

Michael did. He came back the next day. And the next. And the week after. Smart. Curious. Willing to do anything asked of him if you showed him how.

“I need to take the next couple of days off.”

It had been three months.

“Why?” says Leo.

“There's a surf contest in Redondo Beach.”

“Is there money?”

“Yeah.”

“See you next Monday.”

Michael had come back the following Monday with a huge grin and two hundred dollars and to celebrate bought a case of imported beer for the crew.

“You must be good,” says Leo.

“Just okay,” says Michael.

The next contest is local and on a cold, gray day, the temperature in the high fifties. Leo, who is allergic to bathing suits on the best of days, goes to watch. It blows him away. One moment a guy is like a floating head out in the water, the next he is up on his tiny board, screaming down the face of a wave, pirouetting at the bottom, cutting up, then down, back and forth, in constant motion, sometimes skating across the top of the wave, balanced on its cascading edge, one surfer actually going
under
the curl, then shooting out the side, some of them, including Michael, going up the face and taking off, turning an impossible 180 degrees in midair, Leo wondering if the board is attached to them or they to it, coming down, carving at the bottom, going back up to do it again, on and on. And they were tireless. Coming in, they'd immediately turn and, with hungry strokes, paddle out again through the heavy water as if it were a race to see how many rides they could get before they died of exhaustion.

“I have a sponsor.”

It was a year later, Michael now up to fourteen an hour, and hearing the news, Leo felt like a proud older brother.

“What, you mean you don't want to do drywall the rest of your life?”

That night they went out and got happily incoherent on curb shooters, Baileys floated in a shot glass of Bacardi 151. Michael introducing him to Anita who arrived around the second round, the two of them obviously crazy about each other.

“What'd you do,” Leo said the next day, “to get a honey like that?”

“Lucky, I guess.”

But as time passes, Leo wonders. Anita, moody to say the least. When around, usually attentive, smart-funny, and smiling, but then growing quiet and distant, then suddenly gone for days at a time, Michael miserable, knowing he shouldn't go to that place but beside himself with worry.

“It's a piece of crap.”

Leo, shaking his head when Michael somehow got the mortgage on the bungalow.

“Yeah, but it's my piece of crap.”

Leo had shrugged. “So we'll make it better.”

Michael and Anita, now world travelers, Hawaii, Australia, South Africa, Fiji. Michael making modest bank, living the dream, but smart enough to be aware that it wouldn't last forever, that the time would come when he'd want a place to return to, not knowing that it'd be sooner than later, that like a ship running aground on a hidden reef, he would never see the rocks that shattered his knee and cracked his skull and put him in a coma for three days. Never dreaming that within two years it would all be over. A surfer who had lost his balance. A swimmer who, having been pulled from the ocean unconscious and half drowned, was now afraid of the water. Call it post-traumatic near death syndrome.

Leo was working on a site the day the pickup truck pulled up and Michael got out. He approached, limping.

“You do drugs?” Leo said.

“Any I can get.”

“You drink?”

“Like a fish.”

“You got a sense of humor?”

“A guy gets hit by a rock.”

“And?”

“That's it.”

“Unload those bricks,” said Leo. “We'll see if you last a day.”

Two and a half years later, Michael knowing more about contracting than Leo ever had. The following year, breaking away to start his own company, taking Leo with him, slow at first but then the projects getting bigger and better. And then in 2012 the local housing market nose-diving again, all of them scrambling ever since, sometimes up, sometimes down, never at rest.

*   *   *

“How is he?” says Leo. “Okay, I think.”

This is a lie. Truth be known, Leo worries about Michael. A good guy who's been thrown too much with no breaks in between.

Including you.

“Work is good?”

“We're getting by,” says Leo.

“And Jamie?” Anita not looking at him.

“You want the facts or you want my opinion?”

“Since when have I ever cared about facts, Leo?”

Never, thinks Leo.

That's the problem.

“I wouldn't trade Jamie for whatever a normal kid is if you asked me to,” says Leo. He feels annoyed at the questions now. Time to ask his own questions. “What are you doin', Anita, huh? Not a word for I don't know how long and now you're back outta nowhere? I mean, you know I love you, and I appreciate the drink, but Jesus Christ.”

It takes a moment for Anita to answer. “I want to matter again, Leo. Simple as that.”

“He's not going to take you back, you know.”

“You're sure?”

No, Leo is not sure. He is not sure what Michael will or will not do, and whatever it turns out to be, is not sure if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. When you get right down to it, Leo is not sure of much. Only that he cares about these people.

“He's seeing somebody.”

If this is news to Anita, she doesn't let on. “What's she like?”

Leo shrugs. “I didn't say I'd met her, I just know he's seeing someone.”

“How serious can it be if he hasn't introduced her to you?”

Leo laughs. “You kiddin'? She'd run for the hills she knows he has guys like me for friends.”

“And exes like me.”

They laugh together. They grow quiet together. Leo can see she's now in a different place, a different time, who's to say? Michael telling him once that Anita's silences often preceded bouts of depression. “What does
she
have to be depressed about?” Leo had asked.

“Neeta? You okay?”

“I won't fuck things up for him again, Leo. I promise.”

The red-gold globe that is the sun is touching the horizon. In moments it will start to spread and melt like butter. Leo has been told that the sun itself is already below the horizon, that a sunset is merely refracted light, subject to air particles and altitude, that in its own way, it's a mirage and that a mirage can be shaped by the mind.

“Hey, you ever seen a green flash?”

“Only in a glass,” says Anita, pouring the last of the gimlet into Leo's drink.

“Australian Aborigines,” says Leo, “consider it good luck. Success, good fortune, that kinda stuff.”

“I never knew that,” says Anita.

“'Course not, I'm making it the hell up.”

They belly-laugh sweet. Making Anita laugh is like being kissed, thinks Leo. He toasts the horizon. Tequila touched with lime. “Come on, green flash.”

“Oh,
yeah
.”

 

15

Fari appears at the front door wearing faded Levi's jeans, a man's white button-down cotton shirt, and a tweed jacket not dissimilar to the one Michael owns but that on her seems tailored and stylish. It's a look that he likes, one she doesn't mind wearing for him, and besides, she is of the opinion that with expensive shoes and a good leather belt, one can get away with anything. They take her car, one of the smaller BMW sedans, fire-engine red with a manual transmission. Michael drives, enjoying the stick shift and the handling.

*   *   *

They meet for the first time when Fari hits him while parallel parking. The car is new to her and she is trying to reverse into a space, backing in, coming out, backing in again, trying to no avail to get close to the curb. Exasperated, she gives up, puts it in first, glances in the side-view mirror, and inadvertently popping the clutch, lurches forward into the street. She sees the man in front of her just in time to frantically hit the brakes, but still, he is knocked back off his feet onto the pavement. She shrieks as the car shudders once and stalls. And then she is out the door, sure she's killed or maimed him, that she will go to jail or be sued, that a moment ago everything was one way and now it's irrevocably another. She kneels, her hands fluttering over him. He is alive, thank God, his eyes are open. She tells him not to move, that it's all her fault, she wasn't looking, that she has insurance, is he all right, is he all right?

“I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, are you
all right
?!”

“What?” he says.

It is only then that she realizes she is babbling in Farsi, that under duress, English, her second language, has flown the coop.

“It's okay,” the man says. “No harm done, I'm fine, really.” He starts to rise.

“No, you shouldn't,” she says. “You shouldn't move.”

“Why not?” the man says.

“You might be hurt,” she says.

“I'm not,” the man insists. “You were hardly moving.”

“I was trying to park,” Fari says. It sounds feeble and terribly incompetent. People are stopping to look. It's all horrible. “I didn't see you.”

“I know that, it's okay,” the man says as if talking to a child. “Now if you let me get up, I'll get in my truck and you can have my space.”

“No,” Fari says, sitting back. “I'm finished.”

*   *   *

A week later they run into each other in the produce section of the local supermarket. He is pushing a cart. She carries a basket.

“Hey, how you doing?” he says, as if pleased to see her. She is disquieted but tries to be polite.

“I should be asking you that question.”

“Black-and-blue,” Michael says, his hand brushing his rear end. “I should sue.” Her heart skips a beat. “Hey,” he says. “Akra-peedie. What is that?”

What?
How is it possible he knows her name? And then she remembers. Her business card. She gave it to him. Wrote her home number down on the back and, though he protested, the name of her insurance company as well.

“Akrepede,” she says, pronouncing it correctly for him. “It's Iranian.” His name is Michael, she now remembers. Michael Hodge.

“Really? Cool.” He seems genuinely delighted. Why he should be, she has no idea. “But your accent, it sounds sort of English.”

“I studied there. In London.”

“Psychology.”

“Yes.” She's feeling more and more out of her comfort zone. She doesn't like or trust things that happen by chance. Planning and knowing what to expect is important to her. “It was nice to see you.” She starts to turn away.

“Hey, there's a Starbucks up front, you want to grab a quick cup of coffee?”

For the first time she realizes he's not wearing a wedding ring. And that he's attractive and very masculine. And they are comparable in age and that he's been flirting with her.

“Or a smoothie. There's a smoothie place,” he says.

She wonders if he makes a habit of picking up strange women in supermarkets. She is suddenly concerned that she is coming across as the kind of woman who could be. Smoothie suddenly has sexual connotations.

“Or you could hit me with your car again,” he says.

She feels herself almost smile. And immediately feels vulnerable. “Thank you but I really have to go.”

“No problem. Next time.” He doesn't seem let down. “Good to see you. Happy shopping.”

She finds herself mildly disappointed when he turns away.

*   *   *

She's getting into her car when she sees him across the parking lot, transferring his groceries from the cart to the rear of a pickup truck. On sudden impulse, she closes the door of the little Bimmer. She tells herself that it's merely courtesy as she crosses the lot toward him, moving between the parked cars. Nothing more than a friendly gesture. He looks up as she approaches. Again, he seems pleased to see her. Good.

“Hey. What's up?”

“Um … actually I think I do have time for some coffee … if you're still available.”

He glances at his watch. She notices now that it is an old Rolex, one with a leather strap. Similar to the one her father wears.

“Afraid I'm sort of committed to getting home now.”

She feels embarrassed. She shouldn't have done this.

“But how about some other time,” Michael says.

“Oh. All right. Yes.” She's trying to sound as casual about it as he does and is sure she's failing. Eight years as a practicing therapist, advising and providing support for emotionally dysfunctional people. How can it be that she is as mortified by the rituals of dating as any teenager? But of course, this isn't going to be any kind of date. She's being polite, that's all.

“How about this weekend?”

“I'll have to check my schedule,” she says, knowing she has nothing going on. “Let me give you my home number.”

“You already did.”

*   *   *