Chapter 5

Hugh staggered from the sea. Bent and shaking like a sick old man, he hid his face in his hands while water streamed from the bulging pockets of his bathing suit. He flopped on the tide line and coughed up the acidic seawater. Crawling back from the yellow pool, he dropped his head to his forearms, pressing his face to the clammy shivering skin.

The mewing of the gulls and the clap of the waves vanished. Hugh felt far from the sea, and yet he was looking out at the sea, scanning the horizon for the twin swimmers, his sons. The ocean turned grainy and white, and the sounds returned as if from a speaker drawing closer to his ear. He pushed to his knees. His stomach convulsed and vomit filled his throat and mouth. He clamped his lips, but the hot salty mix gushed out, splattering and mingling with the resurfaced jellyfish. Hugh scuttled sideways and collapsed again.

It was another ten minutes before Hugh rose and walked back to his towel.

He was a coward. Neither his boys nor the letter had been there. He did not believe in ghosts. He did not believe in visits from the spirit world. The only things left of his boys were the empty tethers. His sons had been swept out to sea, probably devoured by sharks to become a delicacy for the Japanese.

Digging his fingers into the sand, Hugh glanced away from the surf. Coming up the beach was Aaron, one of his students. Most of the kids he taught chose Santa Monica or Malibu, but occasionally Hugh would meet an outlier at Topanga.

“Hey, Mr. Mac,” said Aaron, halting six feet from Hugh’s towel, his gaze over Hugh’s head.

“Oh, hello . . .”

“This your hangout?” asked Aaron.

“Yes, I guess. Yes.” Hugh looked around. “I like this beach.”

“Like that commercial, huh? Find your beach,” Aaron said with a tight knowing smile.

“You’ve been swimming?” Hugh asked.

“No, I don’t go into the sea. I can’t swim or anything. I stay out.”

“Makes sense.”

“Hey, can I get my story back?” asked Aaron.

“Your story?” asked Hugh.

“Yeah. The one I wrote about my grandpa.”

The second story Aaron wrote for the class. Yes, the grandfather’s job as hit man for a Mexican drug cartel, until he erred and killed the boss’s son, subsequently vanishing and presumed dead.

“I passed all the stories back,” said Hugh.

“Maybe I was absent.”

“Then I would have put it in the class tray. You know, on the bookshelf.”

Aaron shook his head. “I looked.”

“I don’t know then. You should have asked at the end of the semester.”

“Yeah, well I was sick . . . You think maybe it’s still there?”

“I don’t know—you’re sure I didn’t—”

“Maybe you could check,” suggested Aaron.

“Drop by my class in the fall,” said Hugh, tired already of the request.

“I ain’t going to be around in the fall.”

“Maybe I could mail it to you.”

“That wouldn’t work. Couldn’t you get it?”

“You mean like today?”

“Yeah.”

Hugh said, “I don’t even know if the school is open.”

“Would you try?”

“Look Aaron, I may not have kept it. Maybe in a day or so . . .”

A hand fell on Aaron’s shoulder. The nails were bright purple. Anna, Anna of the sleepy brown eyes and Fuck Like A Porn Star stenciled on her notebook’s spine, Aaron’s sometimes girlfriend.

“You were way out,” said Anna to Hugh.

“You saw me?”

“Didn’t know it was you. Just someone swimming far out. I thought you weren’t going to come back.”

“Cheaper than flying to Hawaii,” said Hugh, forcing a grin.

Anna glanced back over her shoulder. “I don’t like to swim.”

“You and Aaron both, huh? That’s too bad. It’s great exercise.”

“But you get wet.”

“True,” said Hugh flatly, not sure that Anna was making a joke.

“So, you going to get me that story?” asked Aaron.

“Why is the story so important?”

Aaron rubbed his knuckles across his chin. “I just don’t want anyone to read it.”

“I have read it,” said Hugh.

“Sure, you. But nobody else. That was the deal.”

“I still don’t understand—”

“It just is,” said Aaron.

“Give me your phone number. I’ll call you.”

“About what?”

“If I get by the school and can find your story.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“If I go by the school, I’ll get the story. I’ll call you.”

“Call Anna, okay?” Aaron made two fists, rapped them together. His face colored as if embarrassed. “I got to take a piss,” he said, walking toward the restrooms.

Anna watched Aaron for a few seconds and then shifted back to Hugh. She gave him a tight-lipped smile, shrugged her shoulders and dug her fingers through her hair. She faded into the seascape.

A drop of seawater dripped from Hugh’s nostril, and another behind it. He caught the flow with the back of his hand. He should have prepared himself. He should have expected the life force to play a trick or two.

A bullet was not so susceptible.

But a bullet could not be an accident.

In the fall semester, a student wrote a story in which the teenage narrator, bullied by schoolmates, committed suicide. Hugh didn’t think that the writer, an easygoing friendly girl, was writing about herself, but her story galvanized the students. Hugh spent the remainder of the class making the case against self-destruction. In subsequent classes, Hugh returned to his admonition whenever he could. If he committed an identifiable suicide, his students would label all his earnest arguments as bullshit. What would stop one— or more—from following his example?

Though today he had missed his mark, it had to be death by misadventure.

“What are those?” asked Anna.

“Pelicans,” said Hugh.

A half dozen of the birds flew by. Anna’s head swiveled as they skimmed the ocean for a hundred yards, one by one dropping almost violently into the sea. Her eyes drifted away. Aaron was coming back, walking with martial precision, each step the same length and same duration.

“You ready?” asked Aaron upon reaching her.

“Uh huh . . .”

“You give him your number?” Aaron asked.

Anna got out a pen and paper and scribbled her number. Aaron watched as she gave it to Hugh and he tucked it in his gym bag.

“Have a nice day,” said Anna.

Hugh smiled good-bye and watched them as they climbed the steps to the exit road. He would not be surprised to see them hitchhiking north on Topanga, Anna with her thumb out, Aaron ten yards away, pretending he wasn’t with her and ready to run to the car the moment it stopped, deflating the faux Samaritan.

Hugh dug his fingers into the sand and considered another immediate try at offing himself. But suicide took energy and the ordeal had left him drained.

There was a hurricane off Mexico. A swell was coming. If he were lucky, tomorrow the sea would rage. He wouldn’t fuck up his suicide twice.

If Setsuko ever read the letter, she would understand that he kept his implied promise, even if it took two tries . . .

Hugh set his gym bag into the Volvo’s open trunk. He lifted the yellow beach towel, backed up a step and snapped it. A volley of sand stung his face. “Shit,” said Hugh, releasing the towel and clapping his right eye, as if it were not too late. He waited a moment for the tears to clear the particle of sand, bending his head so that the drops fell to his toes. On his white trunks he saw a blue smear. He scraped it with his fingernail. He lifted his hand. A bit of ivory-colored paper sat under his nail.

He lifted his head to the roar of a truck speeding around the first bend of the canyon. With two quick steps, he could end the stupidity now.

Do it. Do it—

“Hey, boss,” said a new voice. “How long have you been parked here?”

“What?” asked Hugh, still considering the truck, the road, the distance, the time, barely conscious of another voice that seemed to come out of the past.

A hand tapped his shoulder. Heart beating terrifically, he turned to a bare-chested man, Kyle.

“I asked how long have you been here?”

“Couple hours,” said Hugh.

Kyle looked away and smirked as if to a companion.

“You see Hanna?”

“Hanna?”

“My old lady. Blue hair. Pretty. Tats. You know her, man. You talk to her all the time.”

“I don’t think so. Sorry.” Hugh stared after the truck, now turning north on PCH. With his thumb, he worked the sliver of paper from under his nail.

“You never saw her here?” asked Kyle.

“We said hello,” replied Hugh, looking back toward the sea.

“Where’d she go?”

Hugh shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“We barely spoke.”

“She invite you in the trailer?”

“We said . . . hello.”

Kyle again gave the self-assured smile to his invisible friend and then drew back his shoulders. He had a boxer’s stomach, lean arms and clothesline veins. A motorcycle crackled and roared as it accelerated into the canyon, its chrome shedding sunlight. Hugh felt the engine’s throb in his chest. The motorcycle disappeared around the first curve.

Hugh gazed at the sliver of paper, rolled it between his fingers and then flicked it to the dirt. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He slammed the trunk, brushed by Kyle and slid into the car. Another breath, another two steps, and he would have been beyond magical thinking and assholes like Kyle.

The interior was a sauna. In the rearview mirror, Kyle walked toward Hugh’s open window.

“We weren’t finished talking,” Kyle snarled.

“Yes, we were.” Hugh fished in his pocket for his keys.

Kyle swung the driver’s door open. “You ain’t going nowhere,” said Kyle, bracing the door open with his leg and grinning.

Hugh shoved the key in the ignition. Kyle reached across him for the key. With his left hand, Hugh grabbed the man’s wrist. With his right hand, he clasped the elbow, but he hesitated to apply pressure. Kyle’s grin faded.

“Hey, Mr. Mac!”

Anna and Aaron sprinted across the boulevard toward him. “Can you give us a ride?” Hugh released Kyle, who drew back from the door, rubbing his forearm and staring hard at Hugh, who had all but forgotten him.

Never let a student get into your car.

“Sure. No problem. Get in,” said Hugh.