CHAPTER 6

“Is this it?” Alma was barely understandable through the tissue she had pinched around her nose. She turned her computer screen so Jane, sitting at the other end of their station, could see the spider Google had found.

Jane glanced at it and quickly turned away. “That’s him.”

“Did it bite you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“You’re supposed to be making me feel better.”

“There’s no info on how to kill it. Maybe hire an exterminator?”

“So he can charge me a hundred bucks to move the crap around under my bed and tell me there’s nothing there?”

“At least you’d know.”

Jane glared at her. “I can take care of it myself.”

“Those ‘day three of sleeping on the couch’ bags under your eyes say otherwise.”

“I’m working up to it.”

“Uh huh. I think—” Alma doubled over and sneezed.

“You should go home and rest.”

“It’s allergies. I’ll be like this the whole month unless I can find an antihistamine that doesn’t hate me.”

Jane pushed back from the desk in preparation to do the last round of the shift. “Maybe one of our patients will have a way to solve my spider problem.”

“You’re making this too complicated,” Alma called after her.

Jane started with room six. The lone survivor of a three-car wreck had plowed through an intersection while texting. He was on a ventilator, in a chemically induced coma. A patient who belonged in the ICU, but there hadn’t been space. A kidney was on its way even though he only had a fifty percent chance of survival from the other injuries. He had money, or his parents had money. Someone was paying a lot to prolong his life.

She kept the lights dim as she worked, checking his vital signs, preparing to change the dressings on his burned legs. She talked to him while she worked, asked him if he liked spiders. She thought someone like him must like spiders. The humming machines that kept him alive seemed to answer in the affirmative.

When Jane had worked in the Cardiac ICU, death had been so near, the sounds of machines so omnipresent, that she and the other nurses had made up dances to the beats of the ventilators. Now, she did a tense jig-step as she walked down the hall, leaving the machine sounds behind.

The other patients were all asleep except for Rhea. Jane found her greedily devouring a meatball sub sandwich.

“The food here is godawful. Don’t judge me.”

Jane held up her hands in surrender. “That’s two nights in a row you’ve had visitors after hours. Our security guards must be lazy.”

“The rules don’t apply to my son. Everyone loves him. They want to make him happy. He does the schmoozing to get Daniel in the door with my contraband so he doesn’t have to come up himself, which is fine. I wouldn’t voluntarily visit a hospital unless last rites were needed.”

“Daniel was here?” Jane tried to sound casual.

“You just missed him. He’s on Italian time, makes it hard to visit during the day, or I’m sure he’d be following the rules. He’s my little stickler.”

Jane had been listening for Daniel’s arrival the whole night. No one had come up in the elevator. She would’ve heard the West 7 nurses greet him. But she also hadn’t heard the latch on the stairwell door. She’d thought maybe Daniel would stop by the nurse’s station to say hello, maybe marvel at the coincidence of her again. Knowing he’d already come and gone felt like a much bigger disappointment than reasonable. Maybe he hadn’t remembered her. Or worse, he’d remembered her and wanted to avoid further interaction. Maybe he hated her for not coming to meet him at the park like they’d planned.

Her mother’s voice echoed in Jane’s head. Hate is a strong word, Jane. It will ruin you. As she finished her shift and made her way downstairs to the parking garage, Jane chastised herself for judging Daniel’s avoidance. She had no reason to expect anything from him.

She’d almost reached her Jeep when she saw him, her dream of Daniel turned flesh, leaning not quite casually against the side of a black Prius. He still wore long sleeves and long pants even though the temperature at sunrise had been ninety-degrees.

“Do you have a minute?”

She stopped just before the front bumper on the opposite side of the car from where he stood. She waited. He didn’t speak. The radio was on inside the Prius. Classical music. Jane smiled. She expected nothing less from him. The piece that had been playing ended. The announcer gave a brief introduction of the next one, a Sibelius symphony. Still, Daniel didn’t speak.

It occurred to Jane that perhaps Daniel couldn’t figure out what to say to a woman he’d once spent one afternoon with almost a decade ago. She decided to take the lead.

“I never thought I’d see you again.”

“Me neither. But I’ve thought a lot about that day and what would’ve happened if …”

There it was. The not quite spoke question of: Why didn’t you meet me? Jane carefully stepped around it. “Considering you had hordes of screaming girls chasing you around just a few months after that, I don’t think we would’ve made it very far.”

“Because you would’ve been jealous?” A tentative teasing smile.

Jane had been trained not to evaluate people by their looks, but it was impossible not to notice how beautiful he was, especially when he smiled.

“Maybe you wouldn’t have had time for me once you were a serious music student. Didn’t you have to practice like ten hours a day?”

“I didn’t end up going to Boston.” She watched Daniel’s face as he adjusted his expectations. She imagined there was a shade of disappointment he was quickly pushing away.

“Obviously, I’m glad you didn’t transfer,” he said. “Who knows if another nurse could’ve saved Mom the way you did.”

“My life didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.”

“Mine neither.” He laughed.

Jane moved closer, allowed her hip to slide forward and rest on the hood of the Prius. “I always thought I’d see you in the surfing world with one of those jobs where you travel all over the world and don’t have to wear shoes. For a while I followed all these surf news sites and the WSL so if you were ever doing something here I could ‘run into you’ on the beach—Wow it sounds creepy saying that out loud.”

“Steve has like a dozen serious stalkers. I’ve always felt a little left out.”

“I meant to go to one of the competitions, even if you weren’t going to be there. You made it sound so romantic—the ocean. That’s how I chose California.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Actually, I haven’t quite made it to the beach yet.”

“You’ve lived here how many years?’

“Almost five.”

“We should go.”

Jane could barely believe the words as she dared to say, “There’s a surf event this week in Santa Monica. Maybe you could initiate me.” She wasn’t usually so obvious in her desire. Everything she had been taught about relations between men and women reflected a reserved, desire-less feminine role. Surely Daniel had something better to do. She didn’t want to scare him away by being so demanding.

His expression seemed to confirm she’d overstepped. His lips pressed together in what appeared to her as disapproval. His posture stiffened. An eternity seemed to pass before he said, “Why don’t we start with breakfast? Or whatever meal comes next for you.”

“What, like now?”

“Or tomorrow, if you’re busy …”

“Now is good.”

He blew out what must have been a full lung of withheld air and laughed. “Where would you like to go?”

“Know any good sushi places?”

“None that are open this early. But I do know a twenty-four-hour kaiten-zushi that’s passable.”

A small thrill bubbled up through Jane’s chest. It hardly seemed possible after so many years of fantasies that Daniel in real life had somehow remained as interesting and as sophisticated as she had dreamed. Most impossible of all, he was interested in her.

Kaiten-zushi was Japanese for conveyor belt sushi. Customers sat at a bar around a conveyor belt filled with little plates of sushi color-coded by price. Customers selected what they wanted to eat and then paid at the end based on the number and color of empty plates.

“You can also order special items like noodles or soup and extra rice,” said Daniel.

“What do you usually get?”

“Soup and rice go with the manners I was taught.”

“Let’s do that. But you have to teach me,” said Jane.

Daniel had spent almost a month in Tokyo when Steve had been filming his cyber terrorism thriller Wireless. Jane had never met anyone who’d been to Japan. She had so many questions. The fact that Daniel seemed to enjoy talking about it, that maybe no one had ever asked him what it had been like or what he’d learned, encouraged her to ask more questions. He had a smooth, articulate voice. He knew how to tell stories without frustrating divergences or distracting details. When he described his difficulties being six-foot-four navigating a world where the average person was five-three, his laughter trickled out of him in a warm inviting stream.

He showed her how to hold her rice bowl with her four long fingers on the bottom lip and her thumb tucked around the rim. He demonstrated how to hold the cheap wood chopsticks. But when she failed miserably at scooping rice out of her bowl, he stood up from his stool, came around behind her, put his hand around her hand, and guided it through the motions. Even after she’d managed it successfully, he lingered behind her, so near she could feel the heat of his breath on the crown of her head. When he returned to his seat she felt his absence like the loss of a fortune.

They let an entire cycle of sushi roll by so Daniel could describe each kind. He wasn’t afraid to admit there were some he didn’t recognize. He recommended the tekka maki as a starter so Jane could decide if she liked raw fish. He separated a small slice of pickled ginger from the pile of it in a little dish beside the soy sauce and set it on her rice.

“You eat this first to cleanse your palate.”

“It looks like skin.”

“You’ll be fine.”

And she was. She loved the ginger, the tekka. She loved everything she tried, even the fish eggs wrapped in seaweed.

“You can’t imagine how many Japanese restaurants I’ve been to with men who had no idea what they were doing. This is fantastic.”

“Thank you.”

“When you were in Japan, did you go to any of their traditional theatre? What’s it called, Ka—something.”

“Jane?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been doing all the talking.”

“Have you?”

“You’re a professional interrogator.”

“I like learning new things.”

“I think you also like to hide.”

It thrilled her that he’d noticed. So many men were oblivious. They were flattered by her questions. They fell into pontificating, never noticing that they learned nothing about her while she learned everything she needed to know about them. Not Daniel. Of course not Daniel.

“Alright, what do you want to know?”

He turned sideways so he faced her, and thoughtfully tapped his chopsticks to his chin. “What happened to music school? It seemed like such a sure thing.”

Jane broke eye contact. She stared down at her second bowl of miso soup. It looked like mud, but it tasted like heaven. After only an hour together he had once again transformed her world. She had nothing of comparable value to offer him.

“My family really wanted me to be a nurse. That day we met, I was waiting for my older brother. He flew halfway across the country to pressure me into giving up the music school idea.”

“Wow.”

“Actually, he also had to be in New York for work, but I didn’t know that until later, so it felt like this big thing. It was stupid. I should’ve stood up to him.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid. Trying to be the right person to the people we care about is a thing.”

“But it’s so uncool. Like, you never see people in the movies being fulfilled and happy doing what their families want. It isn’t a legit thing to do. After graduation, I had job offers in New York, but I moved home because that’s what they wanted. I got married because that’s what they wanted, which of course was a disaster because I had no idea what I wanted, and it’s not possible to be in a relationship with someone long term where you only do what they—” Jane stopped.

Married. How had that popped out? Jane snuck a sidelong glance at Daniel. He was very studiously picking one kernel of rice out of his bowl at a time and eating them.

“I suppose it didn’t end well?”

“I left him six years ago.” Jane paused. She knew if she had a prayer of making it with Daniel she needed to be as honest as possible. “It was … abusive, not physically, but maybe that would’ve happened if I’d dared challenge him. We’re still legally married because I can’t—if he finds me. I mean, I don’t even know if he’s looking. We haven’t had any contact. I take a self-defense class once a week to try and be ready just in case. I changed my legal name, but I’ve heard that kind of thing doesn’t matter with technology the way it is now. So, I’ve got a duffle bag under my bed with a fake passport, a train ticket, and two grand in cash in case I need to leave fast. Hopefully, I don’t need it soon because there’s this giant spider hiding under my bed right now.”

Daniel had run out of rice kernels. He meditatively turned the bowl in circles by extending his fingers and lowering his hand like a claw around the rim of the bowl, rotating it, releasing, then retracting his hand.

“I suppose you’ve never gone on a date with a girl who has a fake passport.”

“Not that I know of.”

He had lovely hands. Large and powerful, but also graceful. She was sure he could reach over an octave on the piano without trying. It was all she could do not to reach over and grab his hand, and beg him not to be disappointed.

“I think I can help you with the spider,” he said.

Jane nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“The husband thing … I can’t imagine what that’d be like. You’d never feel safe. On the other hand, it must give you a lot of appreciation. You don’t take your life for granted.”

Jane laughed. “Sometimes I do. But yes, it’s hard to relax.”

“And you haven’t been to the beach.” He finally stopped adjusting his rice bowl and looked at her. “As the one responsible for instilling this idea of the romantic ocean in your head it should also be my responsibility to show you that the Los Angeles beaches are some of the ugliest, dirtiest, most commercialized beaches in the world.”

Daniel drove his Prius with his hands clenched at ten and two on the steering wheel, maintaining the exact speed limit. It was a strange contrast to his free-floating surfer lifestyle. Though on reflection, Jane realized his driving was more Daniel of now than of her memory. He still had that deeply thoughtful gaze that made her knees week. He still looked the same physically. But his energy had diminished or been contained somehow. Like his brain had tamed what before had been the wild power of an animal.

It made sense that he’d changed. They were almost ten years older. Knowing he probably had also detected changes in her that he might not have expected, Jane was determined not be disappointed. It was enough to be sitting beside him, in his car, staring but not staring at him because she was afraid that he would vanish at any moment and she would wake up on her couch in her spider-infested apartment.

There were too many cars to park anywhere near the beach. When he finally found a spot, Daniel braked a little too hard and lurched the Prius into a parking stall. He picked up his keys from the cupholder and began to twist them around his finger. “In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I don’t surf anymore. I haven’t been anywhere near a comp since before I met you.”

Jane laughed, then stopped. “You’re serious.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Let’s not do this today. We can come back another time.”

“We’re here now. We might as well.”

“Clearly you don’t want to.”

“I do, it’s just not that simple. You should be aware I might … wig out a bit. But you can probably handle that.” He tried to smile.

Jane wanted to tell him no, she couldn’t handle him wigging out. He was Daniel, the man who had jumped into the bay to save a girl’s toy, the surfer, the invincible one. Instead she nodded and tried to look encouraging.

There were people everywhere. Most of them were young and tan and half-dressed. Jane and Daniel walked past a fleet of tents set up outside a skate park. Kids on roller blades and skateboards milled around checking out displays of gear and a virtual reality machine that imitated the feel of a half pipe.

The beach was full of spectators camped out with lawn chairs, and towels, and rented umbrellas stamped with the Hurley logo. From the boardwalk where Jane and Daniel paused to get their bearings, the two surfers out in the water were specks of color on glistening waves rushing towards the beach. Gobs of foam flew into the air and drifted like cotton on the breeze. A giant screen at the edge of the beach projected close-up footage of the surfers.

Daniel walked her through the rules of the event with stiff abrupt sentences that made Jane feel like she’d coerced him into talking. She had to fight her instinct not to take it personally. To assuage her discomfort, she tried looping her arm through his and drawing closer so that her left side brushed up against his right side. He flinched away.

The heat was almost over. Red was in the lead. Blue needed an eight-point ride to win. A wave came into the contest zone that seemed impossibly small to Jane, something a child would ride for practice. She knew eight points was a very good score and that, to get a good score most surfers needed a pretty good wave as a starting point.

As they watched, Blue coursed down the length of the wave, bobbing and weaving along its face until, just before it collapsed into foam, he shifted his weight and pointed the nose of his board upward. He flew straight into the air, rotating a full circle with his board clutched against his chest before coming back down and landing in the whitewash just ahead of the wave. The crowd went wild.

“I used to be better than that guy.” Daniel’s eyes searched the horizon as though he might find the answer to the riddle of how Blue was living the life he had wanted. “In my family, we—they—act like they can do anything.” Daniel’s voice was soft and husky. Jane had to lean in to hear him over the beach announcer. “You’ve seen what happens when my mother thinks she can do anything.” His attempt at a small wry smile was so sad it made her want to cry. “It’s been hard for me to recognize my limits aren’t the same as faults.” He drew a deep staggered breath. “It’s completely useless that my first thought when I see that guy is that I could be doing the same thing if I’d just tried harder. Like … I’m not allowed to feel sorry for myself because it’s my own fault for giving up.”

“I feel like that sometimes.”

He gave her a hard look, like she couldn’t possibly know what he was talking about.

“I gave up music. I mean, I play Elton John on a crappy keyboard at work, but I don’t have any discipline. My posture is crap. I don’t run scales. The Beethoven Sonata that got me accepted into that school in Boston? I can only play half of it now; it’s too difficult. But I know all that work wasn’t a waste. It taught me how to listen to music, which is like the only highbrow thing I know anything about. It counts. Just because it didn’t become my career doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. Besides, you’re much less likely to end up as my patient if you don’t surf.” She tried to lighten her smile with a teasing twist, but her surprise at his confession made it difficult to perform.

“You’re disappointed.”

Yes. “I’m just wondering what you found to replace it.”

Daniel made a face. “I’m Steve’s manager.”

“Besides that.”

He shrugged. “I read a lot.”

“What are you reading right now?”

“While Steve was filming his new Poseidon, I read all of David Mitchell’s books. I’m just finishing.”

“What do you like about him?”

“It’s just a pastime. You don’t have to pretend to be interested. Reading is nothing compared to this.”

“I don’t know anything about books. You could give me another list.” She reached into her purse and withdrew the old library checkout slip where Daniel had written his list of movie composers. “This list gave me the courage to leave my husband.”

“How do you still have this?” Daniel gingerly fingered the thin paper.

“You never know what’s going to make a difference.”

He looked at her, his face a mixture of marvel and disbelief. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for what?”

“For having breakfast with me, and coming out here.”

“Likewise. We should do it again sometime.”

“I could bring you dinner. You have a break sometime tonight, right?”

“Tonight would be great.”

On the drive back to her car, Jane curled up in the passenger seat of the Prius, and texted Alma: The dream of Daniel is real. Mere moments later Alma texted back a series of exclamation points and emoji kisses. Jane looked at Daniel, his driving more relaxed than it had been before, his expression full of cautious hope when he snatched glances at her. It seemed impossible that the universe had conspired to bring them together again. And yet here he was, a man who had walked out of the past almost exactly as she had imagined him. If only I’ d gone back to meet him at the park that day, she thought bitterly. Jane pushed the thought away. They were together now; nothing that had come before mattered.