The pool water feels like warm, wet cotton around my feet. My legs swing back and forth at the edge, where I’ve sprawled in the boxers and T-shirt I planned to crash in before I decided I was too wired to sleep. I can just make out the Seven Sisters over the Tombigbee as I pretend every high-pitched “and” coming through my phone is another drop of much-needed rain instead of one more rambling bullet point from my self-involved boss.
“And I told Piper she needs to keep better records. I mean, how can I possibly keep up with what I talked about on Letterman over, what, two years ago?”
“Right.”
“So, did you think I looked skinny?”
“Hmm?” I say, stifling a yawn.
“Are you listening to me?”
Leaning up to take a sip of organic beer, I can just make out a yellow flicker of light through the hollow from one of the blank window spaces in Joe Tischman’s parents’ house.
“Phillip? Listen, I don’t pay you to not listen to me.”
“You’re not paying me much of anything right now.”
“One of my implants is crooked,” Frances says.
“Wow. Well. Not what I expected to hear at eleven o’clock at night.”
“You can see it. Crooked as hell.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Would these be new implants?”
“Yes. God, you’ve been gone so long I’ve already been through another set.”
How long have I been gone, a month? No, wait, six?
All I can think of is how badly I wanna jump in the pool and wash off every ounce of juju from this batshit narcissist. “Is this normal?”
“My surgeon says it’s not. But sometimes he says it’s like when you get a crown on your tooth, you have to go back in to get it adjusted.”
“He doesn’t sound like a very good surgeon.”
“Oh, God, why did you say that? Now you’ve got me worried.”
“I just mean, comparing breasts to teeth? That’s not—”
“Oh, who asked you?”
“I gotta go, Frances. I’m sorry about your—things. I’ll call you later.”
I press the End button and close the phone, an act of rebellion that makes my heart stop cold for a moment. Shaking off the residue of Frances’s late night panic, I toss my phone on the concrete and fall face forward into the warm, dark water.
* * *
I’d always found comfort in the fact that rattlesnakes sleep at night, especially since I climbed out my bedroom window more than a few times as a kid to traverse the creek banks without so much as a thought to what might lay under my feet. But presently I am recalling an Animal Planet special I’d stumbled across one sleepless night in L.A. that proved, via night vision camerawork, that darkness was their favorite time to move about and hunt. My second beer had given me a strong dose of curiosity, not to mention the courage to move about myself in the surrounding woods. I had to agree with the rattlesnakes. What better time to gather information than in darkness?
Walking cautiously through the bottom of the pitch-black hollow and across the grounds at the back of the Tischman house, I put my hand in front of my face to see if I can see it. For a moment, I can’t. Moving past the dark, lifeless tent near the tiny patch of creek beach, I take another sip of beer before climbing the sloping lawn to the rear of the site.
An electric lantern hangs from the ceiling of one of the upstairs rooms. Sizing up the giant aluminum ladder positioned to the left of the window space, I take another sip of liquid courage and begin to climb. I realize how crazy it is and how buzzed I am as soon as I start up.
Peering from below the ledge into what appears to be the skeleton of the master bedroom, I can just make out Joe’s bare feet suspended from the area between the downstairs ceiling and the upstairs floor. As his unseen hand hammers loudly on some second-floor surface, his dangling, muscular legs keep his balance, matching every blow from above with a pigeon-toed thrust.
Taking another sip of beer, I attempt to ignore the irritating buzz of a mosquito’s wings rising in pitch like a dentist’s drill in my ear. Joe’s hammering stops for a moment, and I’m almost positive I can hear him sob. One quick outburst of grief before the hammering resumes, but the blows come even faster this time. Grabbing the ladder with the same hand my beer is in, I take a swat at the skeeter with my free hand.
I feel my footing give way a split second before it does. The rung of the ladder sings out a dull, tinny ping as I fall, ass over tit, into the pittosporum bushes below.
Even though it was a drop from only three measly rungs, what feels like a good-sized oyster shell lodged in the small of my back tells me not to move. The sound of Joe’s feet landing with a thud stops my heart dead. I hear him scuttle across the wooden terrace beside me, and I am suddenly overcome with the smell of myself, soaked to the skin in Jake’s Hearty Farms Micro Beer. From the corner of my eye, I can see Joe’s shadow as he stops in the doorless rear entrance of the house.
“Shit,” he says, diving out of the house like a paratrooper. He kneels next to me and sets the lantern down by my head. This is going to be worse than I thought. “Are you okay?”
A shrill wheeze whistles from some place in my lungs that brings to mind my father rocking me on the edge of the tub during a bout with the croup.
Joe looks up at the skewed ladder. “Can you breathe?”
I cough. Joe sits back on his haunches, watching me closely with raised eyebrows. He nods and I nod back.
“How we doin’?”
I nod again. “I’m…”
“I’ve got some things in the tent.”
“What? No, I just—”
Joe holds up a hand. “I got some stuff, you’ll be fine. Just stay put.” He hops up and goes down to the tent. I pull my hands up behind my head to open up my chest, pondering all the awkwardness that comes with allowing yourself to be nurtured, even for the briefest time. A quick gust of summer wind pushes a bat trolling for bugs off its erratic course over the creek below. The cicadas in the surrounding pines take a big collective breath before jumping into their creekside hymn once again, like an animated bug conductor waved his wand from a nearby stump.
“Can I ask you what the hell you were doing?” Joe has already returned from the tent, arms filled with pillows and blankets.
My ears grow fiery hot. “What?”
Joe situates a pillow behind my head and a blanket over my body. “The ladder.”
“I was just—I thought I would—I heard you working—” I say, praying for him to interrupt me before I try again. Unable to come up with any respectable pretense, I stifle a nervous laugh. Behind Joe’s shoulder, the biggest full moon one is never able to see from foggy Santa Monica has risen over the outline of the house. “Wow,” I say at the moon, hoping the looming orb will take some of the focus off me. Joe twists around, studying it. He looks back at me, brushes off his hands, and takes a seat in the grass nearby.
“I need to go,” I say, coming to my wobbly knees before a wheeze sits me down again.
“Okay, brother?” he says.
I nod, pulling the blanket over me like a squirmy toddler.
Joe whispers something I can’t make out and lies down. He carefully positions a tiny foam pillow underneath his head, watching the sky for a moment before closing his eyes and exhaling a low, tentative groan like a dog somebody let in on a cold, damp night.
He would be in the same position when I went home quietly at dawn.