NELL HAD BROWN HAIR and green eyes and a dimple in her nose the size of a pea. She worked in film as a freelance wardrobe assistant but she wanted to make her living as a musician. For the past couple of months she’d been opening for a band named Carlos Carlos de Carlos, who had heard her play at a house show in the city and invited her on their tour. It was the longest tour she’d ever done, from San Francisco to Atlanta, but it was finally over and she was back at her place in the city and coming up to see him in Talinas.
The day she visited, they hiked the trail that ran along Sausal Creek and down to Miller’s Point. It was a warm day, with no fog, and all along the trail there were orange monkey flowers and sweet-smelling sagebrush. Berg brought sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, and a couple of bananas. As they walked toward the point, they passed a group of young men who were fishing. Nell greeted them and asked them what they had caught.
“Rays, mostly,” one of the men said.
“What are you trying to catch?” Nell asked.
The man thought for a moment. “I guess… whatever,” he said.
“Whatever,” Nell repeated.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said, shrugging.
They walked past the men, out to the point, and sat down on the grass with a crunch. Berg looked out at the water, which was full of small pale waves. Nell inspected her arm.
“I think I might have brushed some poison oak back there,” she said.
Nell was extremely allergic to poison oak. She seemed to get it every other time she went on a hike. When she was a junior in high school, she got it all around her mouth because she’d rubbed her face with a mango skin, which, it turns out, has the same toxin as poison oak. She toured colleges like this, the allergic skin red and swollen, ringing her lips like a goatee. Berg had seen photos.
“Seems okay to me,” Berg said, looking at the arm in question.
“It can take days to show up,” Nell said. “It’s okay. I’ll just wash myself with the poison oak soap when I get home. I brought some.”
Berg handed Nell her sandwich. She took a bite and looked back toward the fishermen.
“People fish over there a lot,” Berg said, following her gaze.
“I get it,” Nell said. “It seems like a great place to hang out. Bring a few beers, sit in the sun, catch some whatever fish.”
Berg laughed. “Lean this way,” he said. “I want to take a picture of you. The light is so good.”
“With or without sandwich?”
“With.”
He took out his phone and aimed the camera. Nell pursed her lips, opened her eyes wide like she’d just heard something very surprising.
“Relax,” he said. “You always make a weird face.”
“I can’t help it.”
She tried to strike a different pose but only looked stiffer, more self-conscious.
“Don’t be weird,” Berg said. “Just be yourself.”
“I’m weird in photos,” Nell replied. “That is myself.”
After their picnic, Berg drove Nell over to Talinas and showed her around town. They bought a fancy cheese and stopped at the bakery for a cinnamon bun. They were heading to the car when Berg saw Lapley. He was standing on the other side of Main Street, next to the Station House diner, and leafing through the local paper. Nell would know what that friendship was about right away. Berg lowered his baseball cap over his eyes and picked up the pace. They were in the car and on the road before Lapley looked up from the news. Berg took a deep breath and put on a new podcast he’d been listening to.
“Have you heard this show?” he said to Nell. “I think you’ll like it.”
That night they cooked sausages and drank beer. When Berg drank he always wanted opioids and, at one point, he snuck off to his secret stash in the bedroom. He swallowed three Lortabs and then immediately felt a wave of shame. He’d come so far over the past couple of weeks but here he was, taking three pills at a time. If Nell knew, she’d be so disappointed. She smoked and drank but she’d never had a problem with substances. She always knew how far to push that kind of thing. It seemed intuitive for her. Nell had good intuition when it came to many things. Her best friend Jo often said that she‘d “been born knowing how to live.”
They went to bed early, slipping into boxers and T-shirts. Nell lay on her back and smoked a joint while he kissed her neck. People always described opioid users as taking pills and then collapsing into the couch, their tongues lolling out the side of their mouths. But that’s not how it felt at all. Berg’s whole body surged with an overwhelming sense of well-being and energy. He was able to feel his feelings in a pure, unmediated fashion, like he could when he was a child.
Nell put out the joint and rolled onto his chest. Boxers off, underwear off, slow at first, Nell on top, Berg’s feet and hands sweaty, Nell’s T-shirt still on, billowing before her like a kite. Then fast and hot, Mimi’s platform bed squeaking, Nell’s shirt off, Berg on top, his face buried in her hair, that Nell hair smell, ocean and honey and mint. An untraceable passage of time, perhaps elongated or compressed, who could say, certainly distorted, warped, sweaty and breathy and then, Nell coming, gulping in air, squeezing his arms, gasping. He finished with his head buried in the pillow, his heart beating thud thud thud, his chest uncorked.
Nell grabbed the towel next to the bed, arched her back up, and placed the towel beneath her. He slid out and she folded the towel over, wiped herself clean. She threw the towel onto the floor and rolled over onto a pillow. Berg looked out the window. A moth torpedoed into the glass, staggered backward upon impact, and then torpedoed once again.
“These are your sheets, aren’t they?” Nell said. “If we ever move in together we’re not using these flannel sheets.”
“Why not?”
“Because you always sweat so much in them.”
“I sweat in all sheets,” Berg said. “It’s just one my things. I sweat at night. I think it’s an Ashkenazi Jew thing. I know a lot of Ashkenazis who sweat at night.”
“Okay,” Nell said. “All I’m saying is you sweat more in the flannel.”
Berg disagreed but didn’t want to pursue the argument. “Maybe,” he offered. “Do you want any water?”
“Sure.”
He stood up and walked to the bathroom sink, filled two glasses. This took a long time. Mimi’s bathroom sink had terrible water pressure. The flow was so weak that it could not clear hairs from his razor when he shaved. He had to use the bathtub faucet instead, which was a cumbersome process, and made him shave less than usual. As he filled the glasses, he thought about how nice it was to see Nell, how much he wanted her to stay. If you had asked him a few weeks ago if he was lonely in Talinas, he would have said no. But now that Nell was here, he didn’t want her to go.
“It’s so quiet here,” Nell said as he handed her a glass. “I’m going to sleep so well.”
“I think you’d really like it up here,” Berg said.
“I do like it up here.”
“No, I mean, if you moved up here, with me. I think you’d like it.”
Nell sat up straight, brushed her hair out of her eyes.
“We talked about that before you moved,” she said. “I need to be in the city right now. This was our plan. I love coming up here to visit.”
“This is the first time you’ve come up.”
“And I’m loving it. I just got back. What do you want me to say?”
“I know it’s not what we planned,” Berg said, “but I guess it’s just… it’s lonelier up here than I anticipated.”
“So you’re saying it’s good to see me,” Nell said.
Berg grinned. He wasn’t sure what he was saying.
“You need to get out and meet some people,” she said, encouragingly. “I was talking about this with Jo the other day: how so many men I know seem to grow more isolated as they get older. My uncle, for example. I’m not saying you’re growing isolated. I’m just saying it seems like a challenge for men as they age, to keep friendships alive.”
Berg felt immediately defensive. Was she saying he was a loner? He was not a loner. He had lots of friends from college, and he’d had friends in the city. But when was the last time he called any of them or saw them? The only people he hung out with these days were Garrett and Simon and they were not exactly his friends. He thought about all the time he’d spent by himself the past couple of weeks, building Lansing’s coop. He was closing in on himself, Nell was right. Even when he lived in the city he hadn’t really had any close friends. A few coworkers he would get drinks with and a couple of guys, like Eugene, whom he partied with. Most of the time he hung out with Nell’s friends. They were his friends, too, but in a secondary way. He certainly hadn’t seen any of them since he moved to Talinas.
“Relax your brow,” Nell said, stroking his forehead with the back of her hand. “Your brow is all scrunched up.”
Berg tried to relax the muscles in his face, blinked a few times. Nell moved in to kiss him. It was a good, long kiss. When it was over she leaned back against the headboard, stared down at her shins.
“Man,” she said, “I really need to shave my leg hair.”