Reunion at Red Paint Bay (19 page)

“Paul,” Simon repeated. “I don’t remember any—wait, you mean Paulie, Paulie … Walker?”

“I’m Paul now.”

Simon searched the man in front of him for a hint of the skinny kid buried in his memory but couldn’t match the two images. “You delivered papers for the
Register
one year when I did, right?”

“You have a good memory.”

“I just flashed on you for a second—you wore a bandanna all the time, a red one, sometimes you pulled it over your face.”

“That was me.”

Of all people he knew on earth, Simon couldn’t think of a more unlikely person to be facing at this moment of his life. “So you’re the one who’s been sending me those odd postcards.” It was a bit disappointing that there wasn’t a more interesting person behind the mysterious correspondence. On the other hand, he felt safe finally knowing the identity of the sender, a former schoolmate, little Paulie Walker, almost a head shorter than him, not threatening at all.

“That would seem obvious.”

“Right, since you’re here.” Simon swept his hand in
the air to create some movement to this situation. “Why?” He waited for the answer, some hint of blackmail.

“As I told you, I want to repay you for teaching me a lesson.”

“What lesson is that?”

“How to keep a secret.”

“A secret?”

“What you haven’t even told your wife. Graduation night. You brought your date here. Jean Crane.”

Simon felt his fingers tighten into fists. He felt his brain churning through recent events, forging the links. “Then you did marry Jean?”

“Another logical deduction.”

He didn’t like the condescending tone, or the way Paul kept staring at him, not looking away even for a moment, barely blinking. “I was sorry to read she died,” Simon said.

“Jean.”

“Yes, Jean. She was a very nice girl.”

“She
was
a very nice girl. How easy it is to slip into the past tense.”

“I just thought, since she’s dead …”

“We’ll all slip into the past tense one day,” Paul said. “She
is
, she was. He
is
, he was.
Dead
is such a nondescriptive word. Why don’t we just say, ‘She ceases to exist’? That’s all there is to it. You exist, then you cease to exist. Happens to everybody.”

Simon understood now the references to mortality in the postcards. Paul had death on the brain, which wasn’t a comforting thought. “Look, it’s kind of hot out here for a philosophical discussion. If you want to go up to the inn, I’ll buy you a drink and we can talk things over. I have a half hour before I need to be home.”

Paul laughed, an irritating little sound. “You’re willing to share thirty minutes of your remaining existence with me? That’s very generous. But I think we’ll just stay here and see how long this takes. Maybe only twenty.”

“Suit yourself.”

Paul set his shoes on the dock, squaring them next to each other, unnecessary precision it would seem. His socks were bunched up inside. He looked out over the water for a minute, then said, “How do you think the people of Red Paint will react when they know that the editor of their beloved
Register
got away with rape?”

Simon noted the wording—
when
they know, not
if
. Paul intended to expose him. “I didn’t get away with anything.”

Paul walked past Simon, brushing arms, a purposeful touch. Perhaps a provocation. He would not respond.

“This is exactly where you did it to her, isn’t it?”

“Why are you asking me? You seem to know everything.”

“I don’t know how you could rape her.”

Simon grabbed Paul’s arms. “Stop saying that! I didn’t do that.”

“That?”

There was no communicating with this man, no use trying to reason with him. The only thing to do was get away from him as quickly as possible. “Look,” Simon said, “did you bring me out here just to make a point, or do you intend to do something?”

“What I’ll do I’ll do,” Paul said. “You’ll know then. And so will I.”

“That sounds like a threat. There are laws against threatening people.”

“There are laws against a lot of things. That doesn’t stop them from happening, does it?”

Simon couldn’t disagree. “What do you want me to say, that I’m sorry what happened upset her? I am sorry. Okay?” He listened to his words, an apology on the fly, and knew it wouldn’t be enough.

“
Upset
her?” Paul said. “You think being raped
upset
her?”

Simon looked out over the water for a moment, as if they were having a casual conversation and he could be distracted. “Substitute whatever word you want—
devastated, shattered
her. Teenagers have sex all the time and it doesn’t ruin their lives.”

When he looked back Paul was still staring, his
eyes fixed on him. “Jean didn’t have sex all the time. She was a virgin.”

“I knew that,” Simon said. “She told me when we were talking about doing it.”

“You talked to her about raping her?”

“We talked about having sex, Paulie. It was my first time, too.”

“But you got the chance to decide when to do it. She didn’t. She was a sixteen-year-old virgin.”

The number jumped out at Simon—sixteen? That couldn’t be right. “No, she was just a year behind me, so she had to be at least—”

“Just turned sixteen,” Paul said firmly. “She skipped a grade before she moved to Red Paint. She was a barely sixteen-year-old junior who thought it was wonderful to be asked out by a senior, the captain of the wrestling team, from one of the best families in town.”

“I thought she was seventeen.”

“So seventeen, you wouldn’t have raped her?”

“Shut the hell up!” Simon felt the anger coursing through his veins, massing for some action.

“There are laws against an eighteen-year-old having sex with a sixteen-year-old,” Paul said. “It’s called statutory rape. So that means it was one kind of rape or another. And you got away with both. That’s a neat trick.”

Rape. Statutory rape. One or the other
. “It wasn’t any trick,” Simon said. “I told you, she never went to the
police. She didn’t even tell her cousin anything had happened.”

“Jean kept quiet because you threatened her. She was scared.”

“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t threaten her.”

“You kept calling her.”

“She was my date for graduation. I liked her. I called to find out why she wouldn’t see me. When she told me I apologized—”

“You apologized for raping her?”

“Stop saying that—I didn’t rape her.”

“What do you call having sex with a person who doesn’t want it?”

Simon threw up his hands, unable to fathom what else to say. “What do you want from me, that I go to jail for something that happened twenty-five years ago? You think you can start this whole thing up again and testify for her in court?”

“There’s only one kind of justice I’m interested in—for you to tell the truth.”

Simon felt better—Paul wasn’t trying to get him arrested. All he wanted was the truth. That sounded simple enough. “I already told you what happened. We had sex, that’s all.”

“You were drunk, and you still think you know exactly what you did?”

“I know what I thought I was doing.”

“That’s not the same, is it?”

“You’re talking as if this happened last week. I don’t remember every little detail of what happened.”

“Jean did, the liquor on your tongue when you kissed her. The sweat on your face. She remembered how heavy you were on her, how she couldn’t open her mouth to take a breath. You smothered the words in her.”

Simon remembered the way she wriggled and bucked under him, and her nails clawing down his back. For days he twisted his head over his shoulder to look in the mirror, see the long red marks of her fingernails on his shoulders. It was obvious she wanted him. He even showed Brewer. It didn’t even feel like bragging then. “Look Paulie, Paul, whoever you are now, you better get yourself some serious help, because you’ve gone over the edge.”

“I am getting help,” Paul said quietly, “from a therapist right here in Red Paint. Therapists can be very understanding, especially the women. So perceptive, so hands on. I just came from seeing one, in fact. But we had a little falling out, you could say. She thinks she knows what rape is all about, but I didn’t think she
really
did.”

Simon grabbed Paul by the arms, held him there, inches from the water. “If you touched my wife I’ll kill you.”

Paul went limp in his grip, no tension at all, like a body without any life left in it. “
I’ll kill you
? That’s what any husband would say. You can do better than that.”

Simon let go with a little shove, and Paul laughed at him. The smirking face, the accusation, or maybe it was the silly mustache, but Simon jumped on him, rode him to the dock. Then what? What do you do to a person who doesn’t resist?

“This is how you like it,” Paul said, breathing up into Simon’s face, “being on top. You always have to be on top.”

Simon sat back, like a boy in a schoolyard fight, the victor who isn’t sure what he won. He got up carefully, wary of any sudden move to knock his legs out, spill him into the water. When he was clear he pulled out his cell phone and called Amy’s number, watching as Paul rose to his knees, then his feet. “She better answer.” The phone rang, and rang again. Then the recorded message. “Amy, where are you?” he said. “Call me if you’re there, call me right away!” He turned on Paul. “Where is she?”

Paul shrugged. “You’re lucky to have a beautiful wife like that.”

Simon’s memory triggered back to the Hall of Mirrors … 
You’re lucky to have a beautiful boy like that
. This man, Paul Walker, had been stalking Amy
and
Davey. Simon felt his fingers gather into a fist. The fist rose up and swung. Paul had to see it coming, but he didn’t duck, even seemed to lean a little to catch the full weight of the punch to his face. The force of it sent him stumbling backward, over the edge. He hit the water,
sending up a wave that drenched the dock, and went under. Simon watched the spot. A head started to break the water, then sank again. He began counting … 
one, two, three
, and by
ten
it seemed like an eternity had gone by. Why wasn’t Paul surfacing? One punch couldn’t have knocked him out. Simon looked over the opposite side of the dock, and then the far end, checking if Paul was holding on there.
Twenty, twenty-one
—how long could a man hold his breath underwater? Maybe he hit his head on a rock below the surface. That would explain the blunt trauma to his face. No one would suspect a punch. Simon rubbed his right fist down his shirt—no mark there, no blood on his knuckles, nothing incriminating. What was he talking about, covering up a murder?
Thirty, thirty-one
 …

The head bobbed up, the mouth spit water and gasped for air. Paul Walker was just a few yards from the dock, within reach of it almost, just a couple strokes away. His arms swatted at the water and then reached up toward Simon.
He’s drowning
. The thought of this was surprisingly reassuring—his accuser drowning, the man who was threatening his family drowning. Simon turned, looked toward the inn, the small parking lot, and around the bay, 360 degrees. Not a soul in sight. Paul’s hands were grabbing at the water now, yet his expression didn’t show any fear or distress. Was this what he wanted, to die? Would he be giving the man his wish?

The cell phone rang,
da-da-da-da
, the tone growing louder as he fumbled to pull it from his pocket. Amy.

“Simon,” she said, “what’s going on? Your message scared me.”

“You all right?”

“I had a little problem earlier, but it’s over with. What’s happening with you?”

“Nothing,” he said, watching Paul in the water. “I just was wondering where you were.”

“I’m at the office, but I need to talk to you.”

The head went under again, creating a little depression of water above it, then sank out of sight.

“Yeah, okay, but you’re breaking up. I’ll meet you at home later. I love you.” He pressed
OFF
and stared into the water. It was remarkably smooth, like a sheet of dark green paper, barely a ripple of disturbance.

After some time, he couldn’t say how long, Simon dove in himself.

He entered by the back
door and hurried dripping over the kitchen floor to the laundry room. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it in the dryer. Then he undid the belt to his pants, let them fall to the floor, and stepped out of them.

“Hey, Dad, what’re you doing?”

Simon whirled about and pulled his pants in front of himself, then felt self-conscious doing that. He had always tried to be easy about his nakedness in front of his son, and besides, he was still wearing boxers. He tossed the pants into the machine. “I’m just drying some clothes, Davey. They got wet.”

The boy pointed at his father. “You’re hairy.”

“That happens as you grow older. You’ll get hair on your chest, too, in a few years.”

“No I won’t. I’ll pull every hair out.”

“Good luck with that.”

Davey stepped into the laundry room and boosted himself onto the washer. “How did you get so wet?”