Tuesday
It’s not yet six, but as promised, Gabe has propped open the gate to the dock, and Frankie follows the steep incline of the walkway, grateful for the grip of the sandpaper strips on her smooth soles. The stretch of weathered wood planks at the end of the ramp is flanked with boats that are much smaller, and far less decked out (the latter can also be said of the people climbing on and off them), than the ones moored off the main pier. No velvet ropes or mobs with straining selfie sticks here. Frankie nearly collides with a man unloading an enormous cooler off a fishing boat, and he points her to the end of the dock. Even before she spots the curved black-and-gold lettering—The Great Escape—she sees Garbo. The dog is cantering across the deck, carefree until she detects Frankie’s advance, at which point she hops around and trains her soulful black eyes on Frankie for only a second before she thrusts her snout upward and lets out a series of hard, low barks.
In the next instant, Gabe emerges from the hatch, and the flurry of butterflies that charge up Frankie’s throat startles her.
She shifts on her heels. “You must not get a lot of surprise guests.”
“Who needs a doorbell,” Gabe says, slowing to rub Garbo’s head on his way to meet her.
She motions to the edge of the boat. “So do I just…?”
“Here.” He holds out his hand and she takes it, grateful for his strong grip as she climbs on and follows him carefully down the three shallow steps into the cabin. The soft light of dusk enters through a row of portholes, washing the cabin’s curves in a silvery blue. A single sconce glows above a box of built-in shelves, crammed with what Frankie suspects is mostly junk. Music plays faintly from a speaker buried somewhere in the clutter, something bluesy and slow. Old nautical maps cover the walls, wrinkled and yellowed with age. A crooked sign dangles above the tiny sink: JUST SHUCK IT.
Gabe moves to the wedge of kitchen space, his head brushing the cabin ceiling. “Get you a drink?”
“I’ll take some wine if you have any.”
She wanders the cabin while he pulls out a bottle of white from a metal bin beside the diminutive stove, fills a plastic tumbler halfway, and hands it to her. On the side of the glass, she sees the ghostly residue of a decal—CHOWDER’S ON THE PIER—and pulls in a ripe whiff of grapefruit just before she sips. The wine swims across her tongue, cold and crisp and tart.
He picks up a beer bottle from the cluttered counter. “Know anything about boats?”
“Not a thing.”
“Essie’s a ’79 Mariner Ketch. My dad got her when he was a teenager. But when I got her, she was a mess.” He leans to his right and runs his hand fondly along a panel of cherry-colored wood. “She’d been left on the ground for a year. Rotten thing to do to a boat—literally. Most of this teak I had to replace,” he says, sweeping his bottle in an arc. “But she’s getting there.” His dark eyes drift around the cabin, softening wistfully as he scans the space, his lips curving with unabashed affection, and Frankie doesn’t know why she should, but she wonders if Gabe Beckett has ever looked at a lover the way he looks at this boat.
Garbo barks, and they both glance up to see the dog in the opening, her tail swinging expectantly.
Gabe reaches down and flips up a hinged ramp, settling it easily over the treads to create a cleated ramp that the dog miraculously maneuvers her way down.
“Clever,” she says.
“You have to be clever on a boat. There’s not much storage space.” When the dog’s safely down, Gabe gives her a congratulatory pat and lowers the ramp back to the floor. “Garbo likes to move around as much as she can in the nicer weather. It gets slippery in the winter months.”
“You live on this year-round?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ve got a diesel heater, an electric blanket. Shrink-wrapping helps.” He offers up a small grin. “So does rum.”
She smiles. “I’ll bet.”
The boat rolls underneath them. Frankie reaches for the rounded edge of the galley counter to steady herself, catching a sugary whiff of overripe bananas. Beside her, the stretch of new, polished boards are interrupted by a foot of weathered wood, two carvings etched deep. She leans in to decipher them: Captain Mitch Beckett. 1st mait Gabe B.
Gabe walks over. “My dad carved that top one in there when he first got her. He let me carve the one underneath when I was a kid. As you can see, my spelling still needed some work.”
She runs her fingertips over the gouges. “So you didn’t replace this board then?”
He shrugs. “Seemed wrong to.”
She watches him take a swig of beer. She agrees, of course, but for someone so dismissive of the past, the gesture seems uncharacteristically sentimental.
Gabe catches her studying him before she can look away.
“How do you feel about oysters?” he asks.
“To eat?”
“No, as friends.” He grins. “Yes, to eat.”
“I’ve actually never had them.”
Gabe grabs at his chest and stumbles back against the counter, like a shot gunslinger in an old western, and she laughs, startled by the playfulness of the gesture. Having come to think of him as reserved—if not even downright gloomy—she would never have imagined him capable of real lightness. She wonders in what other ways Gabe Beckett might surprise her tonight.
“Is that the wrong answer?” she asks.
“Hating oysters is the wrong answer,” he says. “Never having had them is good…” His dark eyes flash. “It means you can still be turned.”
Her skin flushes.
She likes the sound of that.
After she helps him draw up two leaves to create a narrow dining table between the banks of seating, he pulls a plastic grocery bag out of the icebox and unpacks large, gnarled black shells, loud as a pile of bricks when he lowers the oysters into a bucket of ice and carries them to the flip-top table with a small but formidable-looking knife.
“Don’t look so nervous,” he says, taking a seat beside her on the settee.
“You’re wielding a knife. It’s a natural reaction.”
“For the oysters, sure.” He takes one of the shells from the pile, gives it a quick wipe with the towel, then holds it up to her. “Shucking 101.” He settles it in his wide palm and bends his fingers around the textured shell. “You want to get a good grip on it. The key is to find the hinge and slide the point of the knife into it.”
Frankie shifts closer to get a better view as he works the tip of the blade into the fatter end of the shell and begins to rock it gently, the scent of warm sea water rising, reminding her suddenly and fiercely of an apartment she and her mother stayed in above a Tex-Mex restaurant in Venice Beach—how some nights the smell of fish tacos would drift up from the patio, hot and salty and tinged with lime.
A few twists of the knife point, and the shell gives with a startling pop.
Gabe leans in. “Once you’ve got it in, you run the blade along the top—gently,” he says, “since the oyster is still attached to his shell, and they can hold on hard before they let you in.”
Frankie looks up at him, prickles of panic firing across her scalp. “They’re still alive?”
He squints. “You’d get pretty sick if you ate the dead ones.”
She sits back, blinking dazedly between him and the still sealed—still living—shell in his hand, feeling dim for not realizing this sooner—but feeling queasy even more.
“It’s not like they’re wriggling around,” he says, carefully lifting the top and tipping the shell toward her. “Look.” The oyster, silver and cream and so beautifully silky, shimmers peacefully under a glossy film of brine. “See? You can’t even tell it’s still alive.”
The last two words do her in. Tears brim instantly, too fast to blink back.
“Oh shit,” he whispers hoarsely.
She swipes roughly at her eyes, her embarrassment only rising when she looks up to find him scanning her face for explanation.
“If this is because I said that about getting sick from the dead ones, I didn’t mean…”
She shakes her head fiercely. “It’s nothing you said. It’s me. Losing my mother, and then coming here. Finding out she had all this history that she never told me about…” She looks up to find him watching her. “It’s a lot.”
He nods, the dawning of understanding passes across his face, loosening the knot of his brow.
“Wait here,” he says, standing. “I have a better idea.”
Gabe emerges through the hatch with a pair of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a few minutes later, taking a seat across from Frankie in the cockpit where she’s come up, needing air.
“The meat and potatoes of the live-aboard,” he says, handing her one.
She sinks her teeth into the spongy white bread, the perfect blend of salt and sweet filling her mouth.
“Better?” he asks.
“Better.” She appraises him a moment while they eat, enjoying the way the wind blows his hair across his forehead, the way the lowered sun glitters against his jawline.
He swallows. “You should know that most of what I eat isn’t alive.”
She laughs, grateful for the sound.
Garbo trots over; Gabe tears off a stretch of crust and the dog snatches it up.
“Do you two always eat this well?” she asks. “Or only when company comes?”
He settles back against the hull. “You were expecting a more sophisticated menu, huh?”
“Considering your parents…” She holds up what’s left of her sandwich. “Let’s just say I can’t imagine your mother eating one of these.”
“My mother rarely ate—period,” he says, peeling off another piece for Garbo. “And when she did, it was always some horrible food fad she’d learned about from one of her Hollywood friends. There was this wheat grass phase when I was a kid…” He grimaces.
“I happen to love wheat grass juice.”
“Of course you do.” His squint is condemning, but his smirk is all play. Who knew he was capable of smiling so often? Frankie wonders fleetingly if it’s the beer or her reaction to the oysters that’s softened his edges before deciding she doesn’t care. Her own thoughts are light and breezy like the evening air. “But try being in third grade,” he continues, “and opening your lunchbox to find your mother’s packed you a bottle—neon green, you could have gone blind—and the next thing you know your friends are calling you Slime Boy.”
Laughing, Frankie can’t help recalling the photograph of him in Russ’s collection, the hard edges of his jaw soft and round, those hooded brown eyes so much bigger on a smaller face, the tanned, weathered brow smooth under a boy’s shaggy bangs, and the realization—again—that her mother knew that boy. And that boy knew her mother.
The rumble of a motor nears, drawing their gaze to the distance, where a boat purrs past.
Gabe points to her nearly drained glass. “More wine?”
“Please.”
He disappears below, and Frankie hears rattling through the cracked portholes, then the music turned up. She draws her bare feet up onto the bench, pressing her soles over the pebbled surface, and throws her head back to scan the pastel sky. The breeze is still warm but softer now with approaching night. She follows the ribbons of pink and peach clouds, thinking how different the sky looks here than in LA, where they are still hours away from dusk. She imagines Saul shuffling around his patio, Bogart on his heels, before he goes back inside to reheat whatever casserole he’s been gifted with today. In a few days, she’ll be back there. Back to the store her mother started, which she must now decide whether to keep or close.
Back home.
So why does she already feel a flicker of missing this place?
Gabe returns with the bottle of white and a thick sweater that he hands her. “You looked cold.” The wool smells like wet paper but feels wonderfully heavy as she tugs it on.
On the other side of the harbor, the twinkling lights of downtown glow with activity, the hum and pulse of festival after-parties. Garbo rises and begins to circle anxiously; small growls rumbling from behind her bared teeth.
“She hates the fireworks,” he explains.
“But the sky’s clear.”
“She knows they’re coming. The air starts to crackle.” Gabe pats the bench beside him until Garbo leaps up. “It was like this last night, too. I usually take her for a ride in the truck to calm her down.” After a few spins, the dog curls up against Gabe’s thigh, but her eyes still dart nervously toward the sky.
“So why not leave town for the week if she hates it so much?”
“I usually do,” he says. “But this year, I didn’t feel right leaving. Not with Lou being so busy, and Doc still so down—although he’s seemed in much better spirits since you got here.”
She’s not sure if Gabe means the comment as compliment or suspicion until she sees his smile.
In the distance, another cruiser glides past, this one nearly silent.
He draws up one knee and leans back against the boat. “Anyone waiting for you back in LA?”
She studies her wine, considering her answer in the pool of soft gold. “Not anymore.”
“Any chance you might work it out?”
When she shakes her head, he searches her tilted face, his brow bent in playful contemplation. “He was seeing someone else?”
“Worse. He raised the rent on the store.”
“You dated your landlord?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.” She takes a quick sip. The chop of the passing boat finally reaches them, rocking them gently and filling the inky silence with the even, lazy rhythm of the waves smacking the hull.
“Can you afford to stay open?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She swirls her wine, surprised by his question, doubtful he could really care. But when she meets his probing gaze and finds genuine interest flashing, a rush of pleasure fills her. “I suppose coming here was a way to avoid having to make that decision.”
Garbo shifts suddenly in her sleep, kicking her back legs hard against Gabe’s knee, as if to force the subject aside. He gives Garbo a comforting stroke along the dog’s jittery flank, the gesture remarkably tender.
“She’s just dreaming,” he says. “Probably chasing something through the marsh.”
Frankie smiles. “Do you think she has all four paws in her dreams?”
“I hope so.” He runs his hand fondly over the animal’s head. “Seems pointless to have dreams if you don’t get what you want in them.”
His eyes rise to meet hers, and Frankie feels her skin warm.
She brushes loose tendrils behind her ears. “I’m sorry I fell apart like that.” The prickle of tears threatens to return, but she sniffs them back, shifting her gaze to the water. “I never used to think about death before I lost her. Now I see it everywhere.”
“Because it is,” Gabe says. “We just have to pretend it isn’t or we’d never get out of bed.”
He finds her gaze again, and Frankie lets him hold it, her stomach plummeting when his eyes sink to her mouth, appraising it as if he’s trying to decide which lip to taste first, and heat floods her face.
“Come on.” He scoops up the bottle. “There’s somewhere I want you to see.”