twenty-four

  

Faryn and Jan Mitchell’s annual Ragin’ Pagans party started as a birthday bash for Faryn, but had grown and expanded like an amoeba every year since.

Every third weekend in March literally since senior year of high school, they’d hosted an all-night, no-holds-barred, crazy throwdown of a party, each one more elaborate than the last. The previous year’s party offered Jell-O shooters ringside of the huge Jell-O wrestling vat that partygoers could climb into with the opponent of their choosing, provided both parties were willing. So that combatants didn’t have to retire to their tents afterward covered in sticky gelatin, there were huge metal tubs filled with soapy water for scrubbing, a Slip ’n’ Slide for the rinse, and Jan and Faryn’s oversize Jacuzzi tub bubbling in the gazebo on the deck for warming back up afterward.

The south-of-the-border-themed Pagans party the year before featured a margarita fountain big enough to swim in, circulating mariachi players, and Mexican appetizers served out of sombrero plates balanced on the heads of little-people entertainers. Every year everyone pitched tents overnight on the wooded fifteen-acre property in Bonita Springs Faryn had inherited from her parents, and there was always a live band, a drum circle late into the night, and a catered breakfast the next morning that rivaled the brunch buffet at a five-star hotel.

The last thing I wanted to do was have to put on a happy, confident face in a huge group of people. But Sasha showed up to pick me up at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, her car stuffed with gear: the tent we’d share, four huge Rubbermaid containers I assumed held camping supplies, a giant duffel bag, and what appeared to be a bed frame.

I reluctantly slung my backpack and rolled-up sleeping bag on top of the pile. “Are you bringing enough gear for other people too? Like the cast of Survivor?”

“Hi!” Her face was covered with a grin when she jumped out of the car to hug me. “Wait till you see the stuff I have for our tent.” She looked so excited I made myself pretend to feel the same.

I’d woken up that morning with a slight headache—not the full-blown hangover I probably deserved, and was getting uncomfortably used to—and a feeling of guilt. I shouldn’t have called Ben Garrett. He seemed like a nice guy, and I’d treated him like every bad date I’d ever warned Sasha away from: calling him last-minute, using him as a prop to make Kendall jealous, and talking about myself most of the night.

At least I hadn’t slept with him.

One good thing had come out of the evening, though. Dad came over just after ten a.m. and took me back to my car (no questions, happily), and then we went to check out ICAN. Ben was right—the prices were incredible. I loaded up: new closet doors and cabinetry; a door so I could block off the office rooms from the rest of the house; upscale light fixtures for both bathrooms and the front hall; some lamps and furniture; and even, literally, a kitchen sink. The whole pile cost me well under a thousand dollars, and I’d been delighted—until we unloaded everything into my garage and I realized the mountain of work that still lay in front of me.

As soon as Sasha and I pulled into Faryn and Jan’s driveway and I saw the usual crowd of people milling around their yard—many of whom I had known since pre-K—I knew I’d made a huge mistake in coming. I said as much to Sasha as we started unloading her gear from the back of the Jetta onto the baggage trailer that Jan had hooked to his ATV for delivery to each guest’s preassigned campsite.

“You can’t think of it that way,” Sasha said, straining under the weight of one of the Rubbermaids until I grabbed the other end.

“Jesus, Sash, seriously—what the hell is in here?”

She ignored my question. “If you try to chase a good time, you’re never going to catch it. So don’t even try. If you feel crappy, just feel crappy.”

“Sounds like a great party.”

We hefted the container onto the trailer and turned back to the car for the rest. “What I mean is, just relax and don’t try so hard not to think about everything,” Sasha said. She had opened one of the remaining Rubbermaids and was rummaging around in it. “You might end up really being able to have fun.”

She pulled out a small battery-operated fan, replaced the top on the Rubbermaid, and set the fan on top of it. She flipped it on and stood in front of the whirring blades. “Whew. Eighty-eight degrees in March. Only in southwest Florida. How can you stand to wear that sweater?”

The lie that sprang to my lips was knocked out of me as a rock-solid something hit me from behind, and a vise clamped around my ribs.

“Brookadelic...Sashalicious. How are my two favorite backup plans?” a voice boomed in my ear.

Jan Mitchell would have taken a lot more teasing for his name if he hadn’t been six-foot-three by the tenth grade, and built like a strip-club bouncer. Our gang just called him Man Jan, to differentiate him from Jan Seever, the class slut. (Who, unsurprisingly, was known as Slam Jan.)

He and Faryn were the first of our class to get married, right out of school, and they were as crazily in love now as they had been at the prom. It would be nauseating if they weren’t so ridiculously good together.

Jan had one club-like arm wrapped around my waist, the other around Sasha’s, and he lifted us both off the ground in an intestine-crushing hug. I wrestled one arm free to squeeze him back. It was impossible not to cheer up just a little in Jan’s presence.

“You sick degenerate,” I told him. “Does your wife know how you talk to other women?”

Faryn walked up behind her husband, her crinkly gauze skirt swinging, brown feet bare, curly hair wrapped up in a scarf. “Are you kidding? I count on you guys to give me a break from him.” She put a hand on her husband’s Popeye arm. “Jan, put the women down.” Then she looked at Sasha and me. “We’ve got you two in your usual spot.”

He smacked a noisy kiss on each of our cheeks before he lowered us back to the ground. “And wait till you see what we got in our spot for this year!” Jan said as he clean-and-jerked a Rubbermaid in each arm. “We just had it installed.”

“A hot tub? A media room? A driving range?” Sasha hazarded as she followed our gear, holding the battery-powered fan in front of her and looking like the star of an eighties hair-band video. She was being only a little facetious—one year Jan had a pit dug outside his and Faryn’s tent and filled it with water and clay for spa-style mud baths. Another time he’d brought out a full living room set and arranged it under an awning as a tent-front sitting room. He strove to outdo himself every year.

“Would you believe a yurt?” Faryn said dryly, shaking her head.

Jan tossed the keys to his wife as he gestured Sasha and me inside the ATV. “Hey, hon, pick me up at the parking field after you drop off the girls. I’m gonna put Sasha’s fancy German station wagon over there.” He waggled the fingers of his upturned palm at Sasha, and she handed over her keys. Everyone had to as soon as they arrived, receiving them back only after a good night’s sleep and a big meal in the morning. If you weren’t willing to surrender your keys, you weren’t invited to stay.

Faryn hoisted herself up into the ATV as Sasha’s car hot-rodded out of the driveway; then she pulled onto the well-worn dirt track leading behind their property.

“So what’s the theme this year?” I asked as we bumped along in the grass behind their salmon-colored stucco house.

A corner of Faryn’s mouth tipped up and she shook her head. “You gotta see it. You wouldn’t buy it if I told you.”

We hit a rut and the ATV bounced. Sasha craned around to check our gear on the trailer as Faryn rounded the tree line and said, “Welcome to winter wonderland.”

I could hardly believe my eyes. It was snowing. In southwest Florida. In almost ninety-degree weather.

“Holy moly,” Sasha said, her eyes as big as eggs.

Snow fell from the sky in flurries, in blizzards, collecting on the St. Augustine grass in drifts as high as a dachshund—which I knew because Jan and Faryn’s wiener dog, Chili, was happily trotting through the accumulated snowfall, only his dark whip-like tail and beady little black eyes clearly visible. In the midst of the three-hundred-or-so-foot radius where the “snow” was being shot out of a huge machine was what appeared to be a ski jump, and scattered nearby were a couple of sleds, snow skis, and a snowboard.

“Jan’s seriously proud of this,” Faryn said. “One of his A/C clients is a commercial refrigeration company. These machines are designed to blow crushed ice over produce, but Jan had this idea.”

A few dozen partygoers were already amid the drifts, making snowmen, having snowball fights, or sliding down the ski jump. Sasha grinned like a little kid who’d never seen snow before. Because actually, as far as I knew, Sasha had never seen snow before. Not a lot of us native Floridians ever had. She was practically bouncing in the seat.

Faryn dropped us off at our usual campsite—a prime one, shaded by rusty-trunked gumbo-limbo trees with their peeling, papery bark; weeping bottlebrush that dripped with fuzzy scarlet blooms; and sweet-smelling ylang ylang—and Sasha and I pitched our tent. While I unrolled my sleeping bag and got out my toothbrush and a flashlight for later, she dived right into unloading her supplies.

The thing that looked like a bed frame was, in fact, a bed frame. She set it up inside the tent, then slapped an air mattress on top of it that she inflated with a battery-powered pump. The Rubbermaids contained a comforter and sheets, two king-size pillows, throw rugs, camp lanterns, a magnetic overhead light, and the fan. She set an empty container beside the bed as a table, on which she lined up a box of tissues, Ziploc bags, Wet Wipes, and a host of medications: Pepto Bismol, Immodium, aspirin, Tylenol, a packet of vitamin B complex—and a bottle of Scope and a Water Pik.

Despite the anvil in my stomach, I couldn’t help a laugh. “You idiot.”

“Hey, it’s not just the Boy Scouts who know a little something about being prepared.”

By now the sun was starting to head toward the horizon, staining the sky first crimson, then flame, then finally violet and indigo. We headed back toward the clearing, where the snow machine could still be heard cranking out the powder as fast as the warm tropical evening melted it down.

“Fore!”

The shout came from Jan, who was lit by the glow of tiki torches placed around the clearing’s perimeter, hunkered down over his skis in his tank top and cargo shorts at the top of the ski jump, his shades dropped down over his eyes as makeshift goggles. A dozen or more people stood watching as he launched himself down the slope.

He careened down flawlessly and slid upright to the bottom. But then apparently one of his skis caught on something under the snow, and Jan fell forward and slammed down face-first. I saw Faryn wince, off to the side.

“I’m good!” he said, popping back up like a carnival duck, to assorted catcalls and applause.

Sasha and I followed a trail that led around the clearing through a stand of bamboo that sounded like tongues of flame as they rustled in the breeze. We came out into another, smaller clearing, where a throng of people surrounded a thatched-roof tiki hut covering a bottle-lined bar.

Behind which, serving drinks, stood Chip Santana.

I stopped cold, staring.

Chip had a shaved head, a goatee, and a mad-at-the-world glare. Blue-green eyes and a devil’s smile turned the whole assemblage into a dangerous, volatile ball of explosive just waiting to lure some hapless female close enough to go up in the inevitable blast.

I was not hapless. But it had taken all my concentration with Chip to remain in full possession of my hap.

I’d started seeing Chip Santana just a few weeks after I met Kendall. Not at all the self-aware, introspective type, Chip was the least likely patient I’d ever had. He’d started coming to therapy sessions at the insistence of his boss at the beach bar where he worked. After one too many bar fights, his manager said that Chip either got a handle on his temper, or he was out. It took every ounce of patience and tact I had in our weekly therapy sessions to help drain his brimming vitriol every week, but we had finally begun to do some constructive work together.

And then he started flirting with me.

It was no big deal at first—patients develop crushes on their therapists so often, it’s practically industry-standard. It would be in the tone of his voice as he made some innocent statement sound suggestive, or a smile that seemed loaded with meaning, or an up-and-down raking of those ocean-colored eyes the length of my body that had nothing to do with doctor-patient privilege. Right before my practice had literally disintegrated, I had been just about to terminate treatment with Chip, because he was making me uncomfortable.

Which wasn’t really his fault. Hostile and vitriolic as he could be, there was something primal and seductive about Chip Santana, and I’d begun to admit to myself that I was uncomfortably attracted to him.

I wasn’t just concerned about the potential compromise my feelings posed to the patient-counselor relationship—our version of the Hippocratic oath. I held myself to an even higher standard, a principle of professional conduct I’d devised for myself years ago: the Evanston Code.

Dr. Janette Evanston, the best professor I ever studied with and still the best therapist I’ve ever seen. And in my senior year she tried to kill her husband with a Henckels carving knife. When she was led off the UF campus by the police, head tucked, hands cuffed behind her back, I stood on the sidewalk outside the psych building with my mouth hanging open like my jaw had come unhinged, rather than my professor.

But Dr. Evanston had set the bar for me. Whatever was going on in her homicidal mind, I’d never gotten even a whiff of it in all the time she served as my thesis adviser. She was a master at separating her personal and professional lives, and I tried to live up to her example. Right before she started serving her twenty-to-life.

I hadn’t exactly thought through what reason to give Chip for wanting to terminate our work together. I’m sorry, but as your therapist, Chip, I find you far too sexually attractive. Big hit with the American Psychological Association. But luckily, once the practice was closed down, he’d had to find another therapist, rather than wait for me to reinstate my own practice somewhere else, or he’d be fired.

Sasha had stopped when she realized I wasn’t beside her, and she turned around to look at me. “What’s the matter?”

“That,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “That’s Chip Santana. One of...one of my former patients.”

“Whoa. He’s hot...sort of scary-hot, but hot,” she finally decreed, after giving him such a thorough going-over I expected her to slap a “grade-A” sticker on his ass. “Well,” she said finally. “I can see where it would be awkward for his therapist to come up and ask for a cocktail—or several. Why don’t I go grab us drinks?”

She was gone before I could reply that, at the moment, technically I wasn’t Chip Santana’s therapist anymore.

I settled down to wait on one of a line of chaise lounges set up in the clearing, watching as Sasha leaned over the bar and shouted an order to Chip, then laughed at something he said. Behind the bar he was all charm, his hands in motion, his eyes taking in everything, making sure no one was neglected. That smile—that dangerous, light-up-the-night smile—was quick to his lips.

God. Those lips.

Finally Sasha walked back toward me with a plastic cup in each hand. She gave one to me and then flopped down on the chaise beside me without even jostling her drink.

“What were you two talking about for all this time?” I said casually.

“Don’t worry—not you. I didn’t even tell him I knew you. He has no idea you’re at this party.”

I looked over at Sasha in her full-on Maryann-on-the-island camping getup—tight-fitting Capri jeans, halter top, and bandanna wrapped around her head—and thought that was truer than she knew. With Sasha in full charm mode, Chip probably had no idea any other women were at this party. I took a sip of the cocktail she’d brought me. It tasted watery, as though it had sat for a while.

“So...what did y’all talk about?”

Sasha took a giant gulp. “Well, let’s see...boating—that is apparently the subject of dearest interest to him. Did you know he has a fishing boat? And what else...oh, chemistry, of all things.”

“Chemistry?”

“Yeah—he was telling me about bartending. Chip said it was like mixing up lab experiments, and he said he’d majored in chemistry or something like that.”

“Oh...that kind of chemistry.”

“Hey, Chip says there’s an ice luge in the next clearing!”

“A what?”

“You know—a big block of ice with a channel cut out of it. Someone pours in a shot at the top, and you wait at the bottom with your mouth open.”

“Lovely.”

“I thought it sounded fun. Chip said it makes whatever you’re drinking super cold.”

“Did Chip say that?”

Silence fell between us, drowned out by the chatter of people at the bar and the thump of music from the next clearing and the muted squeals and shouts coming from the ski jump. Even in the darkness I could feel Sasha staring at me.

“Hey...how are you doing?” she asked finally.

I rubbed my suddenly throbbing temples. “Fine.”

“Let’s go check out the ice luge!”

“No, I’m okay.”

I heard her sigh, and then she leaned back in her chaise. “Okay.”

“You can go if you want, Sash. I’m fine.”

“No, I’ll stay here with you.”

“No, really.” I could feel my mood darkening, and all I wanted right now was to be by myself. “Go ahead. I’ll come find you later.”

I heard the creak of her chair and saw her sit forward. I knew she’d been dying to check out the rest of the party ever since we got here. “Are you sure?”

I made myself chuckle—she wouldn’t leave if she thought I was upset. “It’s not like I’m scared of the dark.”

She just kept looking at me, and then: “Well...okay. Don’t be too long or I’ll come stalk you.”

“Okeydokey. That’s your specialty.” I said it singsong, like a joke, but even I could hear the mean undercurrent. What was the matter with me?

Sasha didn’t say anything, just picked up her drink, shot me an uncertain smile that brought up a fresh current of shame, and walked away.

  

When you are overflowing with self-loathing, the last thing you want to do is inflict yourself on anyone else. So I couldn’t have picked a worse place to be tonight: surrounded by people everywhere I turned.

I tried to find places to sit by myself, nursing the drink Sasha had brought me, but every time I stumbled upon a vacant seating area, it wasn’t long before I was joined by more partygoers making cheerful, friendly, drunken conversation that I couldn’t summon the energy or inclination to respond to.

Finally, I headed away from the clearings and into a forested part of the property, slashing my way through undergrowth in a way that reminded me—painfully—of creeping into Kendall’s complex through the saw palmettos. I wished I had the car keys. I could leave a note in the tent, let Sasha know I’d come back tomorrow and help her load up.

In the darkness of the new moon, I almost stumbled into a small drainage pond when the trees and greenery ended abruptly. The sounds of the party were distant enough now that I felt pretty sure no one would follow me out here, and I dropped down to the grass, tucking my legs up under me and staring out over the dark ditch of the pond.

The sudden scrape of metal made me jump with a girly little yip of surprise, and I saw a flame pop up just a few yards away.

“Who’s there?” I barked, my heart pounding.

“Sorry. Didn’t know anyone else was here.”

I knew that gravelly rasp. “Chip?” I said in disbelief.

“Who’s that?” His tone was suspicious.

“It’s Brook Ogden.”

I heard the crunching of dry St. Augustine grass, and a silhouette came clearer out of the darkness. Now I could see a reflection of the scant light off his shiny shaved head.

“Doc?” His voice rose at the end, making him sound young, like a kid caught by the principal behind the gym during math class.

I stood up, brushing off my jeans. “Hi.”

I could see him clearly now—plain T-shirt keeping close acquaintance with the muscles underneath; cargo pants that skimmed his athletic thighs; running shoes; the cigarette held, unlit and forgotten, in one large hand. He was on a slight incline, one leg bent and hiked up higher than the other, and the pose made him look like the Marlboro Man. I scrounged for my professional detachment.

“Nice to see you again, Chip.”

“Yeah, you too, Doc.” I didn’t know if Chip always called me “Doc” because it made him feel he was in more capable hands, or if he was somehow having a secret jibe at me. “What are you doing here?”

I made a gesture back toward the party. “Friends of mine. I come every year. You?” I added belatedly, remembering he didn’t know I’d already seen him.

“Work. I’m bartending.” He retrieved the pack from his back pocket and held it toward me. “Smoke?”

“Nah. Stunts your growth.”

He laughed, then lit his. The ember glowed bright at the end of his lips, silence stretching long enough to make me uncomfortable, punctuated only by the sound of his breath as he drew on the cigarette and exhaled. Why couldn’t I think of anything to say? It was always a little awkward seeing clients outside of work. But with Chip it was downright unsettling. Out here in near-total darkness, on the edges of a forest of palm trees and scrub pine and oak, I felt unbalanced, unprotected, as if he were a half-wild animal.

“I guess I’d better head back,” he said finally. “There’s only one other guy working with me. Your friends are keeping us pretty busy.”

I wheezed out a chuckle. “Most of us aren’t usually quite this wild. This is sort of a special occasion.”

“I figured.” Chip twisted the butt between his fingers until the smoldering tobacco fell out. He ground it out with his shoe and put the filter in his pocket. An environmentally conscious smoker. “Well, see you.”

“I hope so.” I cringed in the dark as his chuckle drifted to me over his shoulder. “Chip.”

He stopped and angled himself toward me, his features again blurred into shadows. I was very, very conscious of the fact that it was dark, we were alone, and the party was far behind us.

“How’s...” I wanted to ask how his work with his new therapist was coming, but that was bad form. “How’s everything?”

“No complaints.” His tone sounded amused.

Silence fell between us again, and for some reason I was desperate to break it, to keep him here.

“I, uh... I’m sorry I had to terminate our work together.”

“Don’t worry about it. I get it. It’s good to see you, Doc. Enjoy the party.” He turned and walked back toward the lights and the music and the noise, skirting the overgrowth until he turned a corner and was out of sight.

I scrubbed my hands over my face, wishing I could wipe away the whole encounter. It was bad enough that I was sinking deeper and deeper into behavior people came to me to learn how to avoid. But if I couldn’t keep my own issues separate from my patients’, then I wasn’t fit for the one thing I was still good at, the only area in which I felt competent.

I wished I’d taken Chip up on the offer of a cigarette. Or bought the whole pack from him. Right now, sitting in my sorrows with a pack of smokes and a bottle of booze sounded like the only way to escape my own head and get away from myself. I turned to go back to the party, knowing that if oblivion was what I wanted, I was heading toward the right place.

But halfway back to the crush of laughing, shouting, happy partygoers, I realized I couldn’t even summon enough social interaction to ask for a drink, or something—anything—to smoke. I turned and plodded back to Sasha’s and my tent, let myself in through the zippered front flap, and collapsed onto my sleeping bag on the ground, hoping to fall asleep despite the noise and get through the hours until daybreak.

And somehow, despite the incessant thumping of a bass line from the band, despite the occasional crack of fireworks and the frequent loud bursts of raucous laughter, the noise turned into a soporific hum of sound that did lull me into a restless drowse.

I realized I’d managed to lose myself in unconsciousness only later, when the scratching sound at my tent flap and a hoarse whisper of, “Hey, Doc...you in there?” brought me jolting back to awareness, along with the realization that Chip Santana was standing outside of the tent I was sharing with Sasha, calling for me to come outside.