"The Real Samaritan Jones" by Tracy DeBrincat
- Roi Fainéant
- Jun 29
- 26 min read
The naked woman in the glass stall slathers on liquid soap, a bridal train of foam swirling at her feet. At the adjacent sink, I swipe my pits and crotch with a washcloth. A bird bath, we called it when I was little. I’m grateful for my friend at the front desk who sneaks me into the Malibu Equinox twice a week. A lady behind me sucks in her breath and steps gingerly onto a scale. Amid the mirror’s reflections’ reflections’ reflections, I realize I am staring at the naked woman. She catches my eye, and I look away. I hate getting caught.
I can feel her staring at me as I towel off. It’s a soft stare, not threatening like the ones I sometimes get when people suspect I don’t belong wherever I am.
Pipes groan as she shuts off the water. “I’ve seen you here before.” Her silky voice echoes against the tiled walls and floor. “Are you homeless?”
I pretend not to hear. Coil my braids atop my head like a crown and dress quickly. Drag denim across my damp skin, wrestle with a thermal shirt, fold into an oversized Army jacket, slap on a watch cap.
“I don’t mean to pry. I asked if you’re homeless.” She emerges from the shower in snowy towels that she’s wrapped and tucked into a toga and turban. Her eyes are clear, with light purple shadows beneath. Chiseled cheeks, like most club members. From the rich diet or the skinny pills or some plastic surgeon’s signature slice.
“Oh, I thought you said ‘Are you hungry?’” I crouch down, lace my boots. There’s a discarded scrunchie on a bench. I don’t like it, so I leave it. I stash a handful of soaps, then another, into my duffel. This gym goes all-out on soap. Robust foam, mild scent. There are also soft-bristled toothbrushes, mint ribbon floss, designer hand lotion. The lighting in this place is to die for. Not like the fluorescents in the Hollywood gyms, which flicker and buzz. Everyone there is cranky, and they don’t realize it’s because the illumination is in-fucking-humane.
The woman, now dressed in a blouse, slacks, and flats, stops on her way out, combing her hair. “Are you hungry?”
I tighten drawstrings, buckle straps. Try to assess if she’s a turn-the-outsider-in type. My intuition says she’s not. I get cocky. “No, honestly, I had a big lunch.”
She hands me a folded bill. “Here’s a little something.” Her smile is like a frosted strawberry Pop-Tart: overly processed and sweet yet comforting, nonetheless.
I unfold the bill. A twenty. “Oh. Wow. Thank you. I’m really OK, though.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad to help.” She’s walking again.
“I didn’t ask.” I have certain rules.
“My pleasure.”
I treat myself to fish tacos and beer at a cantina with twinkle lights, then head to the shore. The song of the waves is primal. Like my own blood, cresting and surging. There’s a teenage couple ahead of me. She holds a fistful of daisies and wears a long dress, its open-weave fabric like a fishnet. His jacket is silkscreened with waves. They laugh, tear apart, then come back together to kiss every now and again. I wouldn’t mind something like that. It’s been a while since I’ve auditioned a new sidekick. A while since I’ve wanted to.
I ramble the length of the beach and back, cross the Pacific Coast Highway, and return to Spindrift Lane. That’s what I call the spot where my #vanlife van resides in the parking lot of the Smile Center mall. I strip to my undies, smoke half a joint and mess around on my phone. Thank you, Smile Center Wi-Fi password “BrightWhite123.” The sunset is reasonably spectacular, so I throw open the back doors for a portrait sesh. My selfies are amazing. My single goal in their composition: surrender no personal details.
No brown eyes like my dad’s, wherever he is or isn’t. No “flaxen” hair like my mom’s; her word, not mine. No beauty spot in the crook of my left nostril, like my aunt’s. I am a stark silhouette against slate ocean and tangerine sky, a dark shadow of my physical self. I download a fresh dating app and create a new profile. I like this part best: creating a new character for the next entertainment. I imagine actors feel like this when they research a new role.
On the first app, I was Sandy Johanson. Sandy was finishing her dental assistant certification (that part was true) when she met Riverside Danny, who taught her a few things about credit cards and kissed like he meant it. Shortly after she completed her cert, Danny was convicted of fraud (dull story). Selena Johnson used the card tricks to make her way to Los Angeles, where, after a few days on a new app, she moved in with Brentwood Bart, a nepo baby with a healthy habit. Selena became his live-in housekeeper slash personal assistant slash drug caddie slash mixologist. When that blew up, luckily without jail time, Sylvette Jonas dropped her savings on a pre-loved #vanlife van, whipped out her dental assistant credentials, and signed on at the Smile Center. It’s a fine job as bullshit jobs go. Handing sterile instruments to Dr. Fish, soothing youngsters afraid of the drill, preaching the floss manifesto. I’ll do anything as long as I’m near the ocean.
Cut to six months later, to now.
I wave my fingers over the phone’s tiny keyboard, conjuring my next incarnation. I look for a signal, a sign. The sky is just dim enough for the tritest of lucky things to appear. Starlight Jackson. SWF, doing fine. Don’t want much, just a good time. Walks on the beach, Coca-Cola on ice. Daisy bouquet and tuna sandwich nice. The rhymes are pure Seuss but that’s the point. They’re meant to attract the kind of guy who doesn’t realize Starlight is the hook, not the worm. I change Coca-Cola to Champagne and hit Send. Stoned and satisfied, I lock up, draw the blackout curtains, and turn down the futon. The waves sing me to sleep. I am quasi-ocean adjacent, quasi-living my dream.
* * *
Two weeks later, on a Storm Watch Wednesday, Crash makes his entrance from a matte black Charger in ironic seventies prom: velvet suit with a ruffled shirt and flared slacks. Shoulder-length dirty blond hair combed back. He is blandly handsome. Like Val Kilmer’s before days.
“Nice look,” I say. Riverside and Brentwood had muscle cars, too.
“Not bad yourself.”
I’d purchased one of those fishnet dresses at the surf shop and tucked in the tag to return later, then artfully posed near the Smile Center door. His sky-blue eyes caress my body in a way that suggests an internal licking of chops. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a white girl in cornrows, but on you they look good.” I laugh at the sideways compliment. The gym shower was closed for re-grouting, so I’d plaited my salt-air hair and smoked my scalp with incense to mask the funk.
We head north toward the gathering clouds. He parks at the far end of Paradise Cove, near the bluffs. From the Charger’s trunk emerges a small bistro table and folding chairs, a fringed umbrella, tuna sandwiches and chips, plus a silver stand and bucket filled with Champagne on ice. “A glass of champs, a tuna sam and thou,” he says, bowing with a flourish. He thrusts a daisy bouquet in my direction. “That’s the closest I get to Shakespeare.” Crash is no William S. but he gets points for reading comprehension.
He makes no fatal errors while we dine. Nothing spills, no food collects at the corners of his lips, he doesn’t laugh or talk too loudly, which isn’t easy surrounded by bombastic waves and scavenging seagulls. Afterward, he wraps a wool blanket around our shoulders and, champagne in hand, we stroll along the surging tide. Decorum quickly disappears as our limbs wheel and wing in the sucking sand, champagne splashing, the blanket cast aside. Soon we’re laughing and panting like kids. “Up for a swim?” He lifts me under my arms and swings me around as if to toss me in.
“Don’t!” I scream. Too shrieky. Too panicked. Too loud. Too much.
“Sorry, I’m sorry.” His tone shifts and he plants me on the ground. “I was just fooling around. I would never do anything you didn’t want me to. I promise.”
I wrest away, shaking my head. How did I lose my composure so quickly? The clouds have swirled into dramatic pillars rising from a threatening gloom. Suddenly serious, he grabs my shoulders and turns me to face him. His sky-blues are dark gray. “I swear to God. You’re safe with me.”
“You can die at the beach, too, you know,” I blurt, breaking another of my rules: Never show your fear.
“The beach is the best place to talk about your dreams.”
“Maybe some other time.” My teeth are chattering. The rope dress hangs heavy.
“Listen.” He puts his arm around me and reels me in. “The sound of the waves makes you have to yell, and by yelling, you’re closer to making them come true. I’ll go first.” He squeezes me tighter. “I dream of making money by managing talent and content and manifesting other people’s dreams,” he yells.
A guy jogs past. “Good luck with that.”
Crash gives a goofy grin. “See? Easy!”
“Take me home!” I dramatically twist away and plunk into a knee-high wave. I lose my balance for a long second, teetering on the edge of a face-plant, until he stabilizes me. “You really don’t like the ocean, do you? And yet you love the beach.”
I realize my fingers are clamped on his biceps, and quickly let go.
“Starlight Jackson, you are beautiful and strange.” He turns my head left to right, kissing the corner of each eye where my signature liner wings up. My knees buckle. “Whoa!” He catches and holds me. “Now you. Yell it out. You’ll feel better.”
“Raincheck.” I stumble away.
And then the stupidest thing happens. Rain splatters our faces and hands, the flutes, the already wet blanket. “Ha!” he shouts. “Nature has spoken.” He kisses me on the mouth this time and I break another rule: I kiss back. “Now you.”
I imagine yelling about how I’d do anything to have my own place on any beach. The thought of it leaves me terrified, breathless. The rain stops. The clouds part. The sun is low, and the sky is crazy spectacular, deep purples and reds, like bruises and blood. “That’s not how rainchecks work,” my strangled voice says.
* * *
Sobs resound from the waiting room, where my next patient—hysterically uninterested in Highlights or comic books or crayon drawings of smiles and teeth done by other girls and boys who are quiet and don’t cry—waits with her mother.
I straighten the Sylvette Jonas nametag and smooth my hands on my dancing teddy bear smock. My head pounds. Aftereffects of last night. I chug water, then open the door to the waiting room. “Hi, honey,” I say to the still-crying girl, “How are we today?”
She continues to cry down the corridor, then in the padded chair. When I snap the paper bib’s chain around her neck. When I ask if she likes her teacher at school. When I flick on the overhead lamp and swing it close to her face. “Yell it out,” I say. “You’ll feel better.” I flush when I realize I’m parroting Crash.
She whimpers, as though tears-time might be ending, then howls with renewed energy. I leave the big light shining in her eyes and straighten the instruments on the tray. I absentmindedly reach for my phone to see if he’s texted, then jam it back into my pocket.
I’d invited Crash into the van last night. For that, I blame my dead mother.
The rain was slanting sideways as we drove south on the P.C.H. Visibility was crap. I told Crash he was driving like an old lady, and he agreed, said he wanted to be safe. Said to do that, we needed old lady music. Real golden oldies. “The Great Pretender” came on. The first “oh-OH-oh, yeh-hes” opened the floodgates. Mom nursing morning coffee in a yellow kitchen. Reading me fairy tales at night in her bed. Planting kisses on my fingertips.
Through more “ooh-wee” tunes and “la-la-la” melodies, the memory tsunami continued. Holding my hand as we galloped through waves at the beach. Crying to old movies in the blue TV glow, an empty bottle of wine at her feet. Smoking on the front stoop. I thought of the last time I saw her, that day at the ocean.
The Charger roared into the Smile Center lot. I pointed to Spindrift. His eyebrows lifted as he parked alongside my van. “You got so quiet,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
The only way I knew to shut down the memory channel was to disengage my brain and disappear my body into someone else’s. Once our clothes were off, Crash was animal, vegetable, and mineral. An all-you-can-fuck buffet of sexual comfort in one unironic bikini brief. He kept asking what I wanted, so I kept demanding. Here, not there. Softer. Faster. Harder. Tongue. He earned additional points for following instructions.
Dr. Fish enters the exam room, bringing his signature wave of cologne, mouthwash, and antiseptic. This is my favorite part of the appointment: right before the grand oral opening. What bizarre grind patterns, chips, and anomalies had DNA, night terrors, and sports wrought since the last check-up? Most of Fish’s patients subscribe to the family package. The father who refuses to let Fish touch his baby teeth. The mother who whitens diabolically. Fish tells her again and again her enamel will be destroyed. But it looks so good, she says, returning monthly on the day he plays golf. The son whose teeth slant top-left/bottom-right, the mirror opposite of his sister’s—today’s crying girl—whose teeth slant top-right/bottom-left. Her crying has become soft whining. I give in and check my phone. Nada. I pat the girl’s hand. “There, there, honey. Everything will be fine.” Sometimes this bullshit job makes me a liar. Three cavities, big and deep. Oh well.
As I’m locking the deadbolt on the Smile Center, my phone rings. It’s Crash. “What?”
“Hi! I waited until you were done with work so I wouldn’t interrupt. Am I bothering you?”
Bothering me? The very silence of him listening makes me wet.
This is not protocol. Not okay. I don’t entertain memories of my mother. I don’t allow sidekicks in the van. I don’t fuck on first nights. Feelings are verboten. “You could have texted like a normal person. In like a week.”
“Fuck normal.” He laughs. “I can’t stop thinking of you. Can we get together?”
I blink hard. The beach is there, across the highway. The sky, the waves. Nothing and everything has changed. “I’m busy.”
“Tomorrow?” The hope in his voice is total torture.
“Ditto.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you don’t want to see me.”
“Maybe you don’t know better.” I lock myself in the van. I want to drive, to find another dental office, another parking lot. Instead, I light a joint and hit my tunes. Give myself the talk, review the rules. Tell myself to play him like Riverside and Brentwood. Stay cool, keep him hanging, remain focused. Find his weak point and yank off the scab. For some reason, when Crash swung me around, I panicked. And he called me out. And he stayed. Spent the night. Honest truth, I am wet again. I remove my ear buds so I can hear the song of the waves and put one hand on the traitor between the V of my legs.
* * *
One thing I love about #vanlife is living my #life #outdoors. Early weekend mornings at Spindrift, beach world is my oyster. I feel like “Little House on the Prairie” as I rinse my braids with lavender oil and water straight from a bucket. Seabirds cackle and scream while I scour my teeth. So, I’m caught off-guard when the Charger roars up and Crash climbs out rocking sweats and a T with a spectacular fit. “Good morning, Starlight,” he says.
I suddenly feel naked in my oversized T. Idiotically, I try to wriggle into sweatpants and brush my teeth at the same time. He reaches toward my face. I pull back and spit into a hedge.
“Chill out.” He touches a finger to a blob of paste on my upper lip and puts it in his mouth. “Peppermint. How are you?”
I grab my phone and start making up shit. I don’t talk before coffee, I text.
He sets a white bakery bag and a tray of to-go cups on the roof of the car and texts back. Chocolate croissants and double-shot lattes, no talk.
Dammit.
The beach is empty save a few joggers with their dogs. I’ve never eaten a croissant so slowly or let a latte go cold, but he says nothing, shows no signs of impatience, seems to actually savor the slow-mo show. After an hour of convincing myself I know what I’m doing, I slap flaky crumbs from my hands, drain the dregs of my cup, and stand. My phone dings.
He’s texted. Talk now?
It’s only fair. “Okay. That was delicious, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He extracts an oblong leather box from the paper bag. Inside is a gold necklace with “Starlight” spelled in rhinestones. “Just like mine,” he says, hooking his thumb on a chain that spells his name in rhinestones.
He doesn’t know Starlight’s not my real name. Like his mother named him Crash. “That’s so Pretty Woman of you,” I say, hooking it around my neck.
“I knew you’d get it.” He tosses our trash into a nearby can and takes my hand.
When we reach the water, my shoulders relax. The lines in my forehead erase themselves. The chilly salt air makes me feel alive in a way that’s better than almost all other ways of feeling alive. My wet braids slap at my cheeks.
He laughs and sweeps my hair from my face “Do you want to be happy?”
It smells like a trick. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“What does happy mean to you?”
“You’re being a dick.”
“I’m not. I sincerely want to know. Why can’t you answer?”
“I am happy,” I insist. My shoulders hike up.
“No judgement, but living in a van makes you happy?”
I stare hard into his eyes and notice spots dotting his cheekbones that could be freckles, could be sun exposure. Maybe he knows more about #vanlife than he’s letting on. “Living in a van makes me ecstatic. In Mali-freaking-bu Beach. I come and go as I please. I meet interesting people on my own terms.” “Is that your dream come true?”
This dream bullshit again. “My dream is to live near the ocean. I’m living it.”
“What if there were a better option? Also, near the ocean. With an easy way to earn income, lots of fun people around, plenty of freedom. Plus, me.” The damp has made his hair stick out in crazy angles and he’s so effing cute, his marketing tagline almost sounds like an earnest invitation.
I manufacture my best unimpressed face. B.F.D. Still, I wonder who I might meet. The potential is exponential.
“We have indoor plumbing. And outdoor, if you prefer.”
I’ll let the beach decide. If the next three waves in a row reach my feet, then with Crash I will go.
* * *
We drive deep into the Santa Monica mountains to a gated promontory, then to a modern bunker, all concrete and glass. There’s a DJ playing music and people my age milling on the front lawn and around the pool. As though they’ve been placed there by an art director. You, tall boy with no shirt and white jeans, lean against the wicker chair and suck on that straw from a fruity cocktail while you gaze out at the blue horizon. Tall girl in floral gown with cleavage to your navel, yes, you! put your finger in your mouth and twirl your hair. Look at me! Now look away! Look back! Crash detours down a side yard to a place he calls the chalet. It’s filled with clothes, racks and racks. Tops, jeans, dresses. Swimsuits. Shoes. Sunhats and visors. “Pick something. Anything,” he says.
“Do I have to?” Defiant in my T and sweats.
He points to toothpaste stains on my T and wet sand on the ass of my sweats.
I find a simple silk dress with ties at the top and slits on the skirt to the tops of my thighs. I bun my braids at the back of my neck. This and flip flops feel right. I do look kind of amazing.
We enter the big house together, and the atmosphere palpably shifts. “Why do I feel like fresh meat?” I ask without moving my lips.
“Because you’re paranoid,” he whispers into my neck. “We’re all friends.” To the room at large he says, “Everyone, meet Starlight. Starlight, meet everyone. Mingle, eat, drink.” I am quickly corralled toward the bar by a group of smiling women with fluorescent teeth. My expert guess is Crest 3D White Strips. An older man turns his face away from me and leans into Crash’s ear. “Back in fifteen,” Crash mouths to me, and follows the man up a clear plexiglass staircase.
I make small talk while I study the hell out of the place. Everyone wears those rhinestone necklaces. With names like Butterfly, Kitten, and Sparkle. The men, too: Maverick, Bronco, Malibu. So original. The talk is loud because the music is loud. Everyone is chill and smiling, laughing, draping themselves nonchalantly across the furniture and each other, taking photos. Sometimes dancing or lounging but always drinking. And eating. The buffet is constantly refilled. I dance. I drink. Visit the buffet a few times. Snort a short line or two. Turns out everyone at the party lives in the house to save rent while they work on the business. “What business?” I ask. “Rhinestone necklaces?” They all laugh again with their white teeth. That’s just a side-hustle, an inside joke. Their main income comes from commissions for leasing the extravagant house for extravagant events at extravagant prices for the owner, the older man. Everyone who lives here works the events: music, food, light displays, fireworks, talent, team building. Today’s party is just for them. Everyone is so happy I’m here. What do I do? How did I meet Crash?
I excuse myself to look for a restroom. What I thought could be a viable con sounds more like an opportunistic game plan for ambitious dreamers. Not my style. I’m disappointed but not dissatisfied. You don’t know until you know. The restroom has a line, and someone mentions there’s another upstairs. I ascend the invisible staircase, hoping it doesn’t shatter. There’s a long corridor on the second floor, doors on both sides. I flash on a story called The Lady or The Tiger but can’t recall how it goes.
Behind the first door on my right is the bathroom, as promised. The walls are stripped to the studs, mid-reno. Thankfully, the plumbing plumbs. Back in the corridor, I peer over the plexiglass banister to scan the big room. Still no Crash. I’m starting to come down. I need a place to be alone.
Behind door number two I find glossy black furniture. Mirrors veined with gold. A white leather dish with five rings bearing one flashy initial each: H.R.A.S.C. The guy gets props for commitment. Without a twinge of guilt, I survey inside dresser drawers, rifle the closet. Athleisure, jeans, neutral basics, white athletic socks. I stretch across the bed, punching the pillows beneath me for support. Someone turns up the music downstairs, and I move to the muffled beat, snapping pics of myself lounging in that silly dress on black satin. Maybe I’ll use it for my next profile. Drop a sunset background behind me so it looks like I’m at the beach...
“Hey, there you are.” Crash leans against the doorway. His hand is tucked under his rolled T-shirt the way guys do accidentally on purpose to show off their abs.
“Hey you.” I stand and move toward him. “I was looking for the toilet.”
“You picked the wrong door.”
“Actually, I picked the right door and then I felt like I needed some quiet, so I picked the other door. But now that you’re here, maybe this door is the right door.”
He kisses me backwards onto the bed. His lips brush my ear. His breath is the roar of waves. “Right, left, right, wrong. Age-old questions too boring for a Saturday afternoon on my bed.” His hands slip inside my skirt.
My nerve endings spark and snap as the full length of him presses against me, his weight a delicious blanket. I wrap my legs around his back. “Do you know the story about the lady or the tiger?”
“The Lady or The Tiger?” he muses. “If I remember eighth-grade English, I think that’s a question of reward and punishment marked by chance.” He lifts my hips.
“Not destiny?” I giggle at the sound of my voice, all breath and no tone.
“Destiny, schmestiny.” The smallest of grinds.
“Can we stop talking now?”
“I thought you’d never shut up.” Another grind. Then another, then the sensation like cresting waves.
“Oh-OH-oh, yeh-hes, I’m the great pretender. Oo-WOO.” Crash likes to sing in the shower. I wrap myself in the duvet; I’ll have a bird bath when he’s done. I smile at my mom’s turn of phrase. I’ve been allowing memories of her more often now. Back to when we two pulled off what she called “petty flimflams.” Shoplifting, but only things we needed. Nail polish, jewelry. A 100% real human hair postiche à cheveux chignon, couleur marron. I’d wait at the motel and promise not to unlock the door for anyone. She’d slink across the parking lot like a movie star, that bird’s nest of cinnamon hair tumbling down her back, in a black sequined sheath and high-heeled sandals, red nails flashing. She’d return late at night, tipsy and giggling. She’d tuck some cash into my pajama sleeve. I pretended to be asleep.
“Pretending that I’m doing well.” Malibu Crash has a nice singing voice. There. He has a nickname now. Does that make him part of my history or my future? I touch the handle on the nightstand drawer with my toe. It glides open.
Passport. Score. Charles Rayhill Ash. Brown military crewcut. The exact opposite of the way he looks now. From Orange, California.
Tablet. Score again. I type “lady or tiger” into the search. Apparently, that’s too much for Safari to handle. The crashed browser disappears into the lower right corner of the device. An open email remains.
To: Mr. Charles R. Ash, Esquire
Thank you for your kind note. I have been searching for my niece for the past five years in hopes of enticing her to reunite with the family. I appreciate your understanding regarding the delicacy of the situation and agree to pay the amount of $25,000.00 for you to escort her to the location below at the proposed date and time, after which I will arrange for the release of funds to your banking account.
Sincerely,
Miss Lucinda Traveler-Jones
There’s an address for the Travel Inn Motel at Traveler Beach in Laguna above a high-school yearbook photo of a beach girl. Tank top. Tanned skin. Long hair with blond streaks. Fairy-dust freckles, mascara-tipped lashes, and liner that wings up from her eyes like punctuation. Beneath the photo is her name: Samaritan Jones.
That girl is me.
“Well.” Crash stands nude in the doorway, dripping onto the shag, rubbing a towel over his head, looking at me looking at what I’m looking at. “This is awkward.”
Dots connect like mad in my head. “Is twenty-five grand, like, a lot or a little?”
“Ask me, it’s a bargain.” He dresses efficiently. “Walk on the beach? “I think not.” I stab at my phone for an Uber.
Crash sits on the bed. Wraps his hand around my dagger finger. “Don’t bother. They never find this place. No service.”
I jerk my hand away. “Fuck!” We sit for what might a long time or a moment. The atmosphere in the room shifts, as though the lights have dimmed, or a cloud passed under the sun. My feet are suddenly freezing, and I feel the way I did on our first date, like I’m about to face plant in a cold wave. I can’t stop the idiotic question that’s coming out of my mouth. “Did you know who I was when you tagged me on the dating app?”
“Of course not. How could I? Your photo was a shadow.”
“If my photo was a shadow, then why did you pick me?”
“I picked you because your photo was a shadow. I love a good mystery.”
“When did you know she was me? Or I was her. Whatever.”
“The day we met. The first second I saw you.” He snaps his fingers.
Off my look of disbelief, he says, “Your wings,” tucking his fingers under my chin and kissing the corners of my eyelids.
I pull my head away. “So, you were already looking for that girl when you accidentally found me?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You’ve done this before? Found people?”
He nods. “I have.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “It’s just something I do. There’s a Facebook page. You can help if you want. I think you’d be good at it.”
I’m shivering now, as though frigid water is rising up my legs to my thighs.
“It doesn’t have to be like...”
“Like what? Like you’re a fucking bounty hunter?” I’m shrieking and I don’t give a shit. The light in the room darkens more. The sound of the undertow swirls in my ears.
He presses a warm hand on my back. “I was going to say, it doesn’t have to be like Brentwood or Riverside.”
Shit. He’s done his homework. “Meaning?”
“Meaning we can arrange this so both—so all—of us benefit. Profit. Thrive.” His lips are on my neck. The light fades a few more degrees.
* * *
The hardened cracked vinyl in the booth jabs my legs through my jeans, and there are dead flies on the windowsill. The diner at the Traveler Inn hasn’t changed a jot from the way it was when I was a kid, down to the pink and blue neon wall clock stuck at a quarter after one. In true SoCal spirit, Crash and I drove separately. We’re an hour early.
He rubs his hands together briskly. “Lunch?”
One of the flies is not completely dead. It buzzes wildly in fits and starts, trapped in a frantic bardo. I know how it feels. I never had any desire to reunite with Lucinda, but now that doing so is my destiny, I’m having so many emotions that I’m entirely numb. “I should probably have something to eat.”
He scans the menu. “What would you like?”
I cannot tear my eyes away from the break-dancing fly. “You pick.”
Crash claps his hands on the Formica top to get the attention of the teenager behind the counter. “What’s your specialty?”
“Kobe tomahawk and caviar,” she says, not looking up from her phone. Beachy, blond, tan. Me 2.0. My yearbook photo updated with eyebrow piercings and neck ink. I wonder what she knows about life, loss, leaving home.
“Two tuna sandwiches...” Crash says.
I interrupt, suddenly ravished. “Melts. Rye bread...”
“Melts with rye bread, side of fries. No, side of chips. And do you have any champagne? We’re celebrating.”
She gives him a dead-eye deadpan. “Let me run right down to the wine cellar.”
I’m starting to like her.
“Two Cokes.” Crash slaps his hand on the table again.
She tacks our order to the spinner, brings our sodas, and returns to her phone.
I clear my throat. “Anything I should read into that food order, Charles?”
He reaches inside his fleece jacket and presents me with a handful of bedraggled daisies. “Nothing in particular. Samaritan.”
I slit a flower stem with my fingernail and insert the stem of another, then repeat. Our plan, such as it is, consists of him presenting me to Lucinda, at which time she calls her bank to release funds into his account. Fuzzy family reunion ensues. Auntie and I make nice, Crash and prodigal niece return to Malibu, split the cash. Horizon T.B.D.
Beach girl brings our tuna melts and fries.
“I ordered chips.” Crash says.
“Oopsie.” She turns and leaves.
“Oopsie.” I loop the daisy chain around my neck.
“Oopsie.” He dips a fry in ketchup.
We eat in anxiously agreeable silence.
“How’d you get named Samaritan anyway?” he asks. “It’s kind of unusual.”
“It’s ridiculous! The story I was told, and I don’t know if it’s true...”
“Her parents named her that to piss off their parents and it worked,” says a familiar voice at my back. Miss Lucinda Traveler-Jones herself whirls a chair from one of the tables and sits at ours. She wears a burgundy crocheted hat, burgundy puffer. “Hello, Samaritan dear.” She extends a burgundy-veined hand.
“Hello, Aunt Lucinda.” I put my greasy tuna-melted hand in her cool one. She looks the same, only older. An alternate version of my mother, an alternate-universe version of me. Something about the line of her jaw. That beauty mark larger now, faded.
About a year after that high school photo was taken—the one she shared on Facebook, the one Crash recognized after meeting me—Lucinda and I were with my mom at the beach. I always picture that day with capital letters, like an episode of “Friends:” The One with the Last Day. Or: The One Where Evelyn Says Glug. The One Where I Never See My Mother Again. The One Where I Leave Childhood In The Sand. “Classic denial,” my ex-therapist said. We both knew I was deep into obfuscation, but she also said you can’t get past it until you get into it. Years of ramshackle detours later, there are still unanswered questions. Did she willingly disappear into the sea? Or was there an accident, a struggle, the water won? Was there something Lucinda knew that I didn’t? I’d often imagine she might have had a fling with my good-for-nothing father. Or maybe my mother was pregnant and didn’t know what to do. Maybe she just couldn’t swim. Maybe she didn’t want...
“Earth to Samaritan.” Crash stares with his concerned Botox brow.
“There’s no need to worry. She’s just in shock, Mr. Ash,” says Lucinda, her eyes locked on mine. Eyes so very much like my mothers’, maybe like my own. Her eyes make me feel suddenly, totally me. As I was before Sandy, Selena, Sylvette and Starlight.
She keeps staring, and I realize she’s seeing her sister, just I see my mother. “I saw you both here earlier. I’ve arranged for the transfer. You should be receiving a...” Crash’s phone pings. He reads the text and smiles. “Thank you.” He pockets his phone and leans his arms on the table. As if he’s actually excited for us, proud of consummating our family reunion, anticipating reconciliation or redemption. Or maybe it’s just the money.
How am I going to get rid of him?
Lucinda lays her hand on his arm. “Mind giving us some privacy, Mr. Ash?”
“Oh! I’m sorry! Of course.” He pats Lucinda’s hand, swipes his napkin across his face, and stands. Tucks in his shirt and kisses the top of my head. Runs his finger along my daisy chain. Leaves some cash on the counter. He stands in the parking lot and stares at the ocean for a long time before the Charger screeches away.
She stands up from the table. “Come on, honey. Let’s get some air.”
The shoulder across the P.C.H. above Traveler Beach is rocky, the hillside steep. Rusted metal rope lines the path. We hold hands as we make our way down the crooked steps. Trash litters the spiky brush. It’s the kind of beach where, once you risk your life to reach the shore, danger only increases. There’s hardly any sand, just piles of kelp under buzzing flies. Rocks occasionally leer up from haphazard waves, the coastline too treacherous for tidepools. I imagine the drop-off to the Mariana Trench begins right here. One step too far, and down you go, straight to the fishes that have no bones or color, no need for eyes.
“Did you really just shell out $25,000 to find me?”
“I did and I didn’t,” she laughs. The corners of her blue eyes branch into beautiful wrinkles. “I got a guy at the bank. We have an agreement.”
* * *
Most days I wake early enough to watch the sun rise. Lucinda likes me to move the van across the highway on days the motel is full up but lets me park in the lot at night. I get along fine with Darcy, the teenager at the diner, and on my days off, I take coffee and my phone to the water. To that rocky beach with its fly swarms and glass shards and one-legged seagulls. I swear, it’s like they reach a certain bird-age, and one leg just falls off. Every now and then, I think about Crash. Was he back on Facebook looking for another post like the one Lucinda deleted while we ate our tuna melts? Does he wonder where I am? Will he show up someday? I haven’t heard a peep since I blocked him.
One exceptionally cold afternoon, Lucinda and I cross the P.C.H. and pick our way down the death stairs. We huddle behind a dune and tear into sack lunches. She pulls a flask from her pocket. We both take sips, and whatever it is burns like hell. We cough until we laugh.
She offers to read my hand. “What with the glaucoma, it’s mostly by touch anyway.” She traces a bony finger inside my palm along the half-moon curve that grows straight up like a tree from the middle of my wrist then forks near my thumb pad and splits into two, three, no, four lines. “This is your past and this is your future,” she says. “I don’t know about the other two. Your Mount of Mercury indicates you are quite eloquent, but your Mount of Venus, that’s your love life, is flabby. In general, your palm is schizophrenic.” She looks out at the waves. “Long ago, you were a beloved oracle on the island of Atlantis. You were half god and half human, and the island people brought you gifts and sang your praises. They asked you for advice: when to plant their crops, whom to marry.”
“Great. The last thing I need in my karmic backstory is to be blamed for a lost civilization. What did I tell them?”
“I don’t know. You’re the oracle.”
I snort.
“This other line is your future. Do you want to know what I see?”
“Not really.” I’ve gotten used to this life for now, but it won’t last forever. Something will fall apart. It always does.
“Fine, then. I won’t tell you.” She tightens the puffer around her.
“Fine.”
We empty the flask and watch the reflection of sky in the vast bowl of sea. “Crash said the beach is the best place to talk about your dreams, because the sounds of the waves make you have to yell them and by yelling them, you’re closer to making them come true.”
“He’s cute but that’s hogwash,” she says. “Shall we give it a go?”
We fall back onto the sand. On the count of three, we open our mouths as if to yell, but neither of us says anything. Which makes us laugh and then cry. The waves sing their song and inch closer to our feet. We hold hands as we hike the steep trail to the highway, lifting each other up and up, crooked stair by crooked stair.
תגובות