Chapter 44

As Hugh turned south on Pacific Coast Highway, the shadows of palms swept the Volvo’s hood and the loose end of a nylon strap, lifted by the onshore breeze, tapped against the windshield as if counting the fleeting silhouettes. Tick, tick, tick.

Hugh bought the car rack at Val Surf on Ventura Boulevard. He was pleased to see that the surfboards on display hadn’t changed in ten years, when last he and the twins had toured its rows of Roberts and Channel Islands boards, stroking the Rustys and Losts, debating the merits of each surfboard shaper, like wine enthusiasts judging vintages— still the same size, still the three fins.

In his backyard, Hanna watching, Hugh set his sons’ surfboards on the ground and scraped off the dried wax, hard like an old man’s stubble. He rubbed on the new, still sold under the brand name Sex Wax, which set him giggling like Scrooge on Christmas morning, free of the spirit world, back in the hurly-burly. Two hours later, he held the boards at arm’s length and thought that his boys would appreciate his effort.

Was he not entitled to his whim?

He brought the surfboards into the house for the night and placed them on either side of his bed. Kazuki had called him as promised, and reiterated his promise to reunite him with his sons. Without a milligram of drug, Hugh fell asleep, for he had sailed into calm waters.

Yet whatever the mix of fiction and reality, it had led him to the truth. He may have wandered off on a fictional path, but its terminus was reality.

Hugh was to meet Kazuki at Mother’s Beach at four o’clock, and his sons, Kazuki seemed to promise, would arrive subsequently.

Along the coast, it was a perfect afternoon. Hugh drove with the windows down, luxuriating in the cool breeze, drawn to the dazzling moves of the surfers at the endless breaks. Atop the rock seawall, departing beachgoers appeared, faces serene, sated, arms flecked with sea salt. Minutes later the Santa Monica Pier appeared like a sluggish barge, but soon sharpened, its thicket of amusements thinning until the Ferris wheel and roller coaster revealed their spokes and tracks and cars. He and the boys must have spent one hundred days on the pier, striding past the rides to the pier’s farthest reaches, where they baited up and dropped their lines. These things they had done and would do again.

He exited PCH at the California Incline and continued south along Ocean Avenue, past the sleek hotels and restaurants, and soon into the Venice funk and flow. As he approached Marina del Rey, he glanced at the muddy canals where Takumi and Hitoshi had seined for bait, now bordered by a rainbow of exotic houses. Turning onto Via Marina, where dozens of sailboats glided across the wide expanse of the channel, he saw at the harbor’s entrance the biggest yacht in the world. It looked as if it were stuck, heaving violently as it tried to break through the protective jetties.

At Mother’s Beach, the car’s clock read three forty-five as Hugh pulled into the same parking space as when he had met with Albert. As before, the seniors were cooking, perhaps dinner but not much different from what they had been cooking for lunch. Waves of smoke carried the rich odor of the charred meat and barbeque sauce. There were a few more visitors on the beach, more families. But it was so similar as to be the week before, and Hugh supposed, the week before that. He looked for Kazuki, but his ex-father-in-law was nowhere to be seen. Ten yards from the tide line, where Hugh, Setsuko and the twins had encamped, Hugh set down his gym bag and towel. He returned to the car, removed the surfboards and carrying one under each arm, walked back to his chosen spot.

“No surf here,” said a boy of twelve or thirteen, sitting nearby with his mother, who was offering him a red pail and yellow shovel.

“It comes up later in the day,” said Hugh with a wink.

Hugh stuck the boards in by their tails. He spread out his beach towel and sat cross-legged, facing the barbeques and parking lot. He didn’t doubt that Kazuki would show up, just as he didn’t doubt that his boys would follow. Minutes passed. If Kazuki were late, he would call. Hugh opened his gym bag, dug through the gear for his cell phone, and finally dumped the contents on the towel. He couldn’t have been so careless as to leave the phone at home. No, must be in the car. It would take two minutes to run to the parking lot and get it. He rose, looked around. He considered whether he would take the surfboards with him or leave them by the blanket. He could walk backward: well, not backward, but he would turn from time to time to check on the boards. But if some swift-footed urchin grabbed one, well . . . This was the mistake he had made twelve years ago at Oceanside. He thought nothing would happen in his absence, and yet everything had happened. He had left his post. He looked toward the lifeguard stand. He stood up and called out.

“Hey, lifeguard!”

The lifeguard glanced at him. “Would you watch these boards for a minute? Just want to get my cell phone.”

The lifeguard adjusted his sunglasses.

Hugh jogged past the seniors, the barbecues, and the Mother’s Beach sign. As he reached the parking lot, “Paranoid Android” played softly. Someone was calling him. He reached his car in time to hear his recorded message, but by the time he opened the trunk and found the phone, the recording had stopped. The caller had hung up. As he checked his recent callers, a car pulled alongside him. Parked close. Bright red. Sports car. The call had been from an eight-hundred number. The sports car’s driver’s door opened. The door tapped the Volvo’s body. Hugh closed his trunk.

“Sorry,” the woman said, stepping out between the cars, bending to check Hugh’s as if for damage. She turned and stepped toward him. “I try to be so careful.” He glanced at her, saw that she was pretty and radiant in her summer dress. She was wearing a light, flowery fragrance that carried memories within its scent. He dismissed her concern with a shake of his head, but she smiled at him with glistening lips and asked him a question. He peered into the green eyes, so fixed on his, so interested in him. But it did not happen that way. It did not happen that way. Forgive me. But it did not happen that way. Forgive me. But it did not—he stepped back from the woman. He couldn’t answer her question. He hadn’t heard her question. He strode back past the Mother’s Beach sign, the barbecues, the seniors. His feet sunk into the warm sand. The letters shimmered in his mind’s eye like a heat wave.

Sandy.

Hugh envisioned the car coming toward him. The silver-framed license plate: CSNDRA, though he never addressed her, never thought of her—only the diminutive, Sandy, not Cassandra. Never Cassandra. He saw Sandy’s face through the windshield. He should turn, run back to his sons, break the promise to meet one more time before he left with his family for Japan. She was visiting a cousin in San Diego. Ten minutes, come on. He knew what she hoped. One more chance to convince him of what he had drunkenly suggested. Fool. But Sandy smiled at him and the smile contained the promise that once more he would touch that lovely neck, the pearls of her spine, the slender waist and long thighs. Hear her silly giggle, taste the spearmint on her tongue, answer her bad riddles, submit to her insatiable desire. Unearth what he had buried for Setsuko.

Hugh walked down to the tide line, where he stopped before a weathered stanchion rising from the sand like a rotting arm in a horror movie. His arm snapped back. He smashed his fist into the inoffensive wood. His knuckles flecked with blood, Hugh screamed at nothing more substantial than the ghost of a memory. He could not summon her face, her frost-green eyes, her ever-parted lips, her aquiline nose and ears that stuck out tauntingly through the blonde strands. No, he could not recall—

I said it. Oh, I said it—so my fingers could rest there, so she would cry in relief, so she would laugh joyously. Yes, Sandy, we’ll all run away. We’ll live on an island with ceaseless waves for our boards and fruit that falls into our palms. Hitoshi and Takumi will grow to love you . . . forget, forget . . .

Setsuko had heard . . . It was only a fantasy, but it should not have been even that. It should not have been. An hour that he had lost, hidden from himself.

He couldn’t see her again.

He didn’t, or call her or think of her.

Hugh walked into the water, dipped his hand in the bay. When he looked back toward the blanket, the surfboards were gone.

But when he got within fifty feet of his towel, he saw the boards were there, lying flat, no doubt a breeze having knocked them down. He caught his breath. He brushed off the sand sticking to the fresh wax and restored the boards to their upright positions. It was then he noticed the box settled into the sand. He lifted the box, sat down on the towel and opened it. As he began to read, someone yelled.

The shout came from a woman, pulling a small child, thrashing through the water toward shore.

Behind the woman a dorsal fin appeared, and then a second and a third. Screaming children surged and stumbled through the water. A whistle blew. A dozen dorsal fins cut the surface, moving in a tightening circle. Hardly knowing he had taken a step, Hugh was thigh deep in the bay, his arms around a thrashing child.

“Wait! Don’t panic!” said Hugh. “They’re just leopard sharks. They’re harmless. They show up every other summer.”

“But they’re sharks!” a woman protested.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of!”

The lifeguard had jogged to the water’s edge. He waved his hands above his head and grinned to allay the crowd’s fear. “They’re shy. Docile,” explained the lifeguard. “They just eat worms and clams.”

“What are they doing here?” asked a young mother with a baby strapped to her chest.

“They come with their young. It’s safe for them here. Usually they don’t come in these numbers, but they’re harmless. Really. Harmless.” The lifeguard waded out as in demonstration. He pointed. “There’s one right there.” A few yards from the shore a shadowy form rose to show a dorsal fin and then disappeared.

One man waded out. “Why, it’s just like the Galapagos.” He took a few more steps. “Hey, I see one.”

Several more bathers returned to the water.

Leopard sharks.

Above their heads, a seagull circled.

Hugh returned to his blanket, opened the box and took out a manuscript with red covers. He turned back the cover.

Fingal’s Cave by Kazuki Ono.

Hugh turned another page and read, “A few distant lights sputtered on as the plane neared its target, which from an altitude of thirty-two thousand feet was clearly visible beyond a few scattered cumulus clouds. Extraordinary only in its untouched landscape . . .

Two hours later, Hugh rose from his blanket and carrying the manuscript walked into the water. Amidst sharks, Hugh dug his feet into the bay’s primordial mud, and let the appalling words seep into him.

He had never again contacted Sandy, but with more reason she had never again contacted Hugh. Kazuki had found her, paid her just as Katashi had paid Cassandra. But Hugh’s resistance was negligible. Hugh did exactly what Kazuki planned for him to do. The job done, Kazuki paid Hugh’s old girlfriend to disappear. Setsuko could not have known this. Setsuko knew only what she saw and heard.

Was he like Yuudai a danger to his children?

He was not Yuudai, but was he Yuudai in Setsuko’s eyes?

Yes, or she would not have allowed her father’s plan to unfold, his book to be written.

Surely Katashi had lied to Yuudai. For all her will Sumiko could not turn back time, could not become the bird that took the arrow. Besides, the voice behind Katashi’s door called out Dad.