Spring Tide (22 page)

“I’m not an alien or a mutant. I’m a guy with abilities. I’m the way I am because,” he looked to the water, “I sorta pick up on a power source. But for the most part, I’m just as human as you.” He took my hand. “I promise that a time will come when you and I make perfect sense, and all of this,” he waved two fingers in front of his eyes, “will be a distant memory. So, can you accept me?”

“I accept you.” I had to. I loved him.

“Glowing eyes and all?”

“Yes. I don’t understand how connection works or even what it is or why it makes me feel like you’re with me when you’re not, but when it comes down to it you’ve never been anything but good to me. I can see past your eyes. The spark gets on my nerves. How temporary is temporary?”

“Hopefully not long.”

The beach was empty. He was watching the waves again, following the movement with his eyes. I did the same, timing how long it took for one wave to die away before the next took its place. It wasn’t that he surfed. He was allied with the tides. His calm was similar in nature, high and low.

Tides had an effect on the feeding and spawning habits of fish. There was a link between the tides and killer whales. Birds used air currents produced by the tides to rise up or quickly drop. Asimov theorized that from an evolutionary perspective, without the tides, life would have stayed in the sea. The salt content of human blood is the same as that of the ocean. And there were species of algae and jellyfish that had a fluorescent protein that made them glow.

I had to ask. “Can you talk to fish?”

He laughed, coffee dribbling down his chin. “You think I talk to fish?”

“Do you?”

“Oh man, they could give me primo intelligence on mysto breaks … That would be so cool, but no, I can’t communicate with snapper or red fish or any of those guys.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She parked, got out, and slammed the car door four times.

“Hello, Kris.” His voice came from behind her.

Gloss overlaid her eyes. She turned, went toward the street, then sat on the bench at the bus stop next to him.

He lit a cigarette and gave it to her. “Did you miss me?”

She took a drag and coughed. “Yes.”

“He’s always with you. How can I protect you when you’re with him, Kris? Where is your fear, Kris?”

“Locked away.”

He frowned and took the cigarette from her. “When you hear my voice, when you hear me call for you, you’ll come to me, won’t you, Kris?”

“I have been.”

“Yes you have. Jericho must not know that you are coming to me. Can you remember that? Can you remember that when I call for you, you will come to me alone, Kris?”

“Yes.”

His mouth swept over her neck and her head fell back, her body shaking.

_______

J
eff and I made a substitution in one of Jermaine’s recipes and the tantrum that ensued nearly brought me to tears. He screamed for a long five minutes, but didn’t hold a candle to my dad. Jeff, of course, was totally unaffected.

Since it was turning into one of “those days,” I decided to get errands out of way after work. As I drove, I evaluated my domestic situation.
I must weave yarn like the madwoman I am, but I can’t knit with him around. It’s my geek secret. Somethin’s gotta give.
For the last two weeks Jericho was always at the house or on the beach staring at the ocean, worrying about God knew what. Loved him, loved how he loved me, but could I not have an hour alone once in a while?

I parked at the far end of the lot at the grocery so I could walk off frustration. I got out and slammed the car door four times.

“Hello, Kris.”

A green bus, number 1742, pulled up and opened its doors.
What am I doing? I came over here to … what?
I brought my forehead to my knees.
Get it together, Kris. Eyes on the prize.

After buying food, I dropped by the condo office to pick up a few things that Sarah had left behind. On the way home, I was at a stop sign when I saw gray hair and a white shirt. Sylvia’s boyfriend, Joel, was standing on the corner, puffing on a coffin nail and talking to three or four teenagers. He looked in my direction. My body went cold and I turned the volume on my stereo way down. When I glanced back to the sidewalk he’d disappeared. He was there and then he was gone, but the smoke from his cigarette was still hanging in the air. I slowly drove through the intersection, looking all around but he was nowhere. I checked the rearview. One of the teens, a boy, was wearing a gray baseball cap and a wifebeater, a cig hanging out of his mouth.
Not Joel, must chill.

I got home, went in the side door, the hinges shrieking at me to oil them, and put three bags on the counter.

Jericho walked into the kitchen and slapped his forehead. “I forgot to go to the store yesterday. I’m sorry.”

“Do you work anymore? What’s up with your job?”

“Things are slow at the marina.” He gave me a quick kiss and then stared hard at my eyes. “You smell like smoke.”

“You know I don’t smoke.”

“You taste like it and your hair smells—”

“No pack, no fire.” I patted myself down.

He put his head a few inches from mine. “Why were gone so long? Your shift ended two hours ago.”

“I got off late, had to run by the condo office,” I motioned to the sacks on the counter, “and we needed bread and produce real bad.”

“You run into anyone while you were out?”

“No. What’s this look you’re giving me?”

“I uh, was waiting for you, thought you might’ve run out of gas.” His fingers lightly travelled my face and fell to my neck, his right hand stopping below my ear. “You’re not very good about filling up regularly.”

“I know you’re compelled to top off the gas tank like every other trip, but I like to wait until the little light comes on. It saves time.”

He ambled the room, his forehead a mass of wrinkles, one hand clenched into a fist. I’d had a plenty long day and didn’t even want to try to figure out why he was being weird, so I started unloading veggies into the fridge. As he passed me, I handed him a bright orange package.

“You got me cheese twists! Rock out!” He began emptying another brown bag.

“Dude, I don’t know how you can eat them. They’re made from garbage.”

He got to the bottom and tossed me a pack of cigarettes. “So are these.”

“I didn’t buy those.”
Mistake at the checkout, second time this month.

He grabbed the pack out of my hand and chucked it into the trash so hard the can tipped over.

“J?” I turned the sea glass between my fingers.

“I’m sorry. It hasn’t been a good day.”

“Me either.”

He leaned against the counter and crossed his feet. “How come?”

“It’s Sylvia. She’s still gone. Her ex-husband cleared out her space and other than the cat, it’s like she never existed. Arnold, the security guy—a freakin’ saint by the way—found Bongos a home with a nice family.”

“No sister or brother or niece who wanted a cat that plays drums?”

“Arnold said she doesn’t have any family.”

He closed his eyes and then looked to the living room. “You need to forget about her.”

“Forget about her? She’s a person. She needed help.” I stomped my foot. “I should’ve done more. I should’ve tried harder with her. You should’ve told the police about Joel.”

“What would I have told the police about Joel? I don’t even know his real name.”

“You know what’s worse than that? I didn’t know her last name. It’s Montgomery. I should’ve at least known her damn name.” I put my phone in the charger and crossed my arms. “Something’s not right. She wouldn’t just up and leave Bongos. She’s had that cat since he was a kitten, taught it to beat drums, and he slept with her. And swear to God, I thought I saw Joel when I was driving home.”

“You saw him?” He uncrossed his feet.

“It wasn’t him. I’d talked to Arnold, was thinking about Sylvia, thinking about Joel, and mistook a troubled youth for him.” My cell rang and I scratched my head with both hands.
What!

I looked at the display, felt a smile coming, and picked up the call. “How’s it goin’, nimrod? I’ve been trying to get you for weeks.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Derek said. “Hard semester. How’re you?”

“Hard day. How’s college life?”

He rattled off a list of classes, all of them core curriculum or business. He briefly described the social scene and told me about his roommate, Roger, a computer programming geek. They were going to go into business someday, make millions on a software project.

“So I’ve been stressed with my course load and working most nights at the computer lab, making friends, involving myself,” he continued, “and then with everything going on with Mom—”

“What about her?”

“She has cancer.”

“Don’t joke about—”

“She has cancer, Kris.”

He’d called me by my first name and I was dumbstruck, my body numbing from head to toe.
No, God no.
I loved Mary Masters, had spent thousands of hours in her house and had talked to her about all the stuff I couldn’t talk to my own mom about. How could this happen? Why her?

“She’ll beat it. Hell, Derek, she raised you. What’s a little tumor?” I couldn’t believe I’d said it, but thankfully he laughed.

We talked for another couple of minutes and then he had to leave for study group.

Jericho plugged in his laptop and sat at the island. “So how’s Derek?”

“His mom has cancer.”

“That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”

After setting the oven at four hundred seventy-five and putting the potatoes in, I started a balsamic reduction for broiled asparagus, and then grilled the swordfish steaks. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mary, about the worry in Derek’s voice, about Sylvia, about the smell of tobacco that was in my hair, and about the teen on the corner. Thoughts and questions were banging around my head too fast, multiplying at the speed of sound.

The oven timer beeped.

“Kris! Don’t!” Jericho rocketed out of his chair.

I saw then that the oven mitts were lying on top of the stove. I thought I’d put them on. I yanked my hand back but I’d already grasped the pan. It hit the oven door and potatoes scattered across the tile. In my haste to turn on cool water and shove my hand beneath the tap, I knocked the swordfish onto the floor.

Any burn to the hands, feet, or face required medical attention in nearly every instance and I knew it was bad because it didn’t hurt yet. My right palm was snow white as were four of my fingers from the knuckle to the tip.
How am I gonna work? Wash my hair? Do anything? How could I have let myself get so distracted that I didn’t use a freakin’ oven mitt?

“Let me see.” Jericho took my hand.

Before I could get it back under running water, his palm bore down onto my baked skin as his eyes lit. My fingers itched and were then set on fire. The heat coming from him was a flare, melting the skin and cremating the bones. The flames increased and I wanted to scream but couldn’t get enough air. I gripped the counter with my good hand, sure I was going to pass out. The heat subsided and he let go. Pale pink stained my hand where the injury had been. I stretched and curled each digit.

“Pretend I didn’t do that for you.” He wrapped his arms around me.

I angled right and looked around his elbow at my hand. “It doesn’t hurt.”

He held me for another minute, his calm removing my panic over the event and the insanity that had followed.

He ran his fingers through my hair. “Tell you what, I’m gonna run out real fast, but I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Do me a favor? Just sit on the couch.”

I sat down and examined my hand for a couple more minutes and then cleaned up the kitchen floor and counters with cold water. As I was sweeping up the potatoes, I remembered the night Jericho had told me the story of his friend who’d gotten a surfboard fin stuck in his head, had a concussion. Dots finally connected and the little baby porpoise took its nose out of my ear.

He returned with a pizza, a six pack, and a bottle of water, and set them on the patio table.

I didn’t know where to start with what I needed to say so I opened the pizza box instead. “What’s up with the chivalry?”

“You had a bad day, you’re inordinately fond of pepperoni, and if pizza makes you feel better so be it.” He took a long swallow of beer. “The burn—that’s nearing the limit of what I can fix, so you know.”

“You called Derek,” I said quietly.

“Derek called you.”

“Right before I blacked out at The Bakery there was a flash of light. It was blue, your blue. I remember now. I also remember feeling a hand stroke my hair. My head was on your lap. You were there. I didn’t crawl out. You carried me outside. You called Derek.”