The Highest Tide (17 page)

“Names?” the bouncer demanded.

“Seymour Butts,” Phelps said, then giggled as Mr. Thick started jotting down
Seymour
. The bouncer suggested we fuck ourselves and beat it before he rang the cops.

We strutted down the middle of Capitol Way, feeling the way Butch and Sundance no doubt felt h e r a little run-in with the authorities, with Phelps crowing about simultaneously making out and getting stoned, although he later admitted he didn’t really feel anything from the smoke and was so startled by her lips he hadn’t kissed her back.

“So what’d it feel like?” I reluctantly asked.

“You know how that first sip of Pepsi fizzes in your mouth?”

“Yeah.”

“Kinda like that.”

I doubted it, but what did I know.

“Could feel her knockers rubbing against me when she laid that smoochy-smooch on me,” he added.

“No you couldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“The story’s good enough without exaggerating.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“She definitely liked me,” he said, running his hand through his hair the way he did when he thought hard about something.

I didn’t tell him I saw her filling all kinds of people with smoke, but I did boast that I helped Angie come up with the song she was singing when we got booted. Phelps surprised me by how thrilled he was for me.

“Maybe you and me are gonna be a band, Miles. I’ll be the lady-killing guitarist and you’ll write lyrics, although there are probably only so many songs people are gonna wanna hear about barnacles and starfish.”

“I read a book last night,” I said, “called
Tankra: The Art of Conscious Loving
.”

Phelps digested that. “What’s that all about?”

“Sex, basically, but it’s also about yin and yang and goddess energy and chakras.”

“Slow down,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“Borrowed it from that old lady friend of mine.”

Phelps laughed. “’Hey, Granny, can I borrow your sex book?’ How many pages?”

“Hundred and twenty-nine. It was weird. They called the G-spot the ‘sacred spot.’”

“Like it’s got some religion to it?”

“They had crazy names for everything.”

“Like what?”

“They call a dick a ‘wand of light.’”

A Starburst flew out of his mouth. “You gotta be making this shit up. What’d they call a pussy?”

“The ‘precious gateway,’” I said, “or the ‘golden doorway.’“

Phelps roared. “My lady, may I brighten your golden doorway with my wand of light?”

“There’s all kinds of tips in there too,” I said. “Like you’re supposed to always keep your eyes open when you’re making love.”

“Doesn’t that depend on who you’re with?”

“You’re supposed to breathe together too.”

“Come on!”

“Why would I make this up?”

“What else?”

“You know how I was telling you that G-spot book talked about women ejaculating?”

“You said it was gross.”

“Well, it’s not so gross the way the Tantra people talk about it. They call it ‘divine nectar.’”

Phelps giggled himself off balance.

“They say it can come out of their precious gateways like a mist. Sometimes it’s even like a fountain that shoots divine nectar six feet into the air.”

“Stop!” Phelps choked. “Enough!” He found his breath. “What else?”

“They say men should ejaculate less often.’’

“What?”

“Yeah, they say we should orgasm within ourselves sometimes.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I don’t either, and I read the thing.”

“How are we supposed to stop ejaculating?”

“By focusing on the higher chakras in our chest and neck.”

“That is some outrageous bullshit.”

“They say the best way for men to attain higher spirituality is through long periods of no sex.”

“So we must be fucking saints already!” Phelps bellowed.

“Yes,” I agreed, “we must be.”

We took the longest route imaginable to the bikes, talking in circles about the sneak-in, the smoky kiss, the songs, the Seymour Butts line, the golden doorways and the divine nectar, recycling it, refining it and reliving it, each of us, in our own way, flattered beyond recognition.

CHAPTER 20

I
’
D ALREADY BIKED
to the library and read everything I could find on oarfish by the time my mother informed me that Angie Stegner had her stomach pumped earlier that morning at St. Pete’s hospital.

“She almost OD’d,” Mom said, as if Angie deserved it.

I tried to picture a stomach pump, but all I could see was the little bilge pump I carried in the kayak.

“That girl’s crazy,” Mom said, while updating her to-do list. She was sitting cross-legged, her bare left foot bouncing noticeably from the thump of her oversized heart.

“You think everybody’s crazy,” I mumbled.

“
What?
”

I didn’t say anything.

“She has no regard for her father’s reputation. She has no personal accountability. She has no cares for anyone but herself, and her only concern there is apparently to see how many illegal drugs she can consume. I’d call that crazy, Miles.”

“Why are you so mad,” I asked, “at someone who’s sick?”

“I’m not
mad
. Who said I’m mad? Did I say I was mad?”

“She’s bipolar,” I said. “Lots of people are.”

“
Bipolar?
Who told you that?”

“I don’t need to be told everything.”

“Of course. I forgot you’re a psychiatrist
and
a marine biologist already.”

“She cares about
me
.”

That surprised her. “Angie Stegner cares about you?”

“We talk lots.”

My mother rolled her eyes and something flickered inside me.

“What?” she demanded.

“You shouldn’t talk about people you don’t know,” I said.

There must have been something in my tone because her lips paled. “I’ve known Angie since she . . .”Her voice rose, then halted. “Dammit.”

Whenever she sputtered my instinct was to apologize and get past it. I’d seen her ignore friends for months because of one imagined insult. But anger was blowing through me too. “You call Angie crazy. You call Florence crazy. You call all the cult people crazy. You think you’re the only one around here who’s not crazy?”

“’Just because you got on television,” she barked, then said, “Dammit, Miles!” and stopped again.

“I hated being on television,” I yelled, “and if you don’t know that then you don’t even know your only kid.”

With that, I marched out of the house, my feet making a whole lot more noise than usual, my thoughts shouting in my head to the point that I couldn’t make out her words behind me.

My stomach burned all the way to the Stegners’ door, which was open such that I could see Frankie Marx slouching on the brown leather couch.

“Hey,” I said.

Frankie glanced up, then popped upright as if I outranked him. “Miles! What’s up?”

I couldn’t come close to matching his enthusiasm. “Angie around?”

After some shuffling overhead, the judge leaned over the balcony, his face a heavy mask. He didn’t have his glasses on, and he was squinting, a vein swelling diagonally across his forehead. “Mr. O’Malley,” he purred, starting for the stairs.

I looked back at Frankie and almost felt sorry for him. He didn’t look anything close to cool. He wasn’t sure how to sit or stand, much less what to say.

“She out of the hospital?” I asked.

He hesitated, then glanced upstairs, and we listened to the judge’s leather soles tap down the steps.

“She okay?” I asked.

Frankie’s circular head movement, neither a nod nor a shake, alarmed me.

The judge extended his hand as if it were still a gift. Then I heard more stepping behind him and Angie’s oldest brother descended. I shook Brent’s hand too, as if we were all agreeing to something important, before the judge quietly explained that it probably wasn’t the best time to visit.

I’d never heard Stegner men whisper before. Back when all the boys lived at home, I could overhear their daily conversations from our yard. It wasn’t that they yelled at each other in a combative way. The house was just so big, and they were so sure of what they wanted to say, that there was a whole lot of shouting.

“You’ve grown up a good bit,” Brent said.

“Not really,” I said, “not as much as you have.” That shook a grin out of all of them. “Just want to tell her about this fish I saw.” I wished my voice didn’t sound so insignificant.

The Stegner men swapped eyebrow shrugs, then the judge cupped my shoulder with his warm hand. “Give it a try, young man, if you’re up to it, but don’t be offended if she’s not a gamer today, understand?”

Stepping into her bedroom disoriented me. I’d obsessed over it so much that to actually be inside it was like standing on the deck of a ship in a bottle.

It smelled like beer and smoke mixed with old stuffed animals, although I didn’t see any. Her head was propped awkwardly on two pillows and her body lay flat beneath girlish flowery sheets. A poster of Chrissie Hynde hung behind her. I recognized her because Phelps spent an afternoon educating me with a stack of his brother’s
Rolling Stone
magazines. All I knew about her was that she played guitar and growled like a bobcat when she sang about doing
it
in the middle of the road. Everything else on the walls looked dated, including faded gymnastics ribbons and a dusty painting of a wedding procession in which frogs held up the sweeping train of some rabbit’s dress.

Angie didn’t look anything like herself. Even something as seemingly permanent as her eye color was off. They were
black
, not green, and her skin had lost its tan overnight. I’d heard about babies getting switched at the hospital, but never teenagers or adults. She sighed when she focused on me and said, “Ahhh, shit.”

“Sorry,” I said vaguely. “I can go.”

“It’s not you,” she rasped. “It’s that it’s all so repetitive. How
is
she? How
could
she? Over and over and over.”

“I understand.” My voice shook, but I kept going. “Just wanted to tell you about this oarfish I saw.” It sounded ridiculous, but it was part of what I’d set out to tell her—the easy part—and I didn’t know how to change course once I was that nervous.

She stared at me through crow eyes in a bloated face, her lips chapped and parted. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Quit saying that! What the fuck did
you
do? I’m the one who hcked up! And I, for one, am sicker than hell of saying
sorry
. The world is overflowing with sorry people, Miles. Everyone’s so hckin’ sorry.” A huge housefly buzzed my forehead, bounced off a window, landed on a curtain rod, then flew off again, buzzing louder than ever. “So tell me about your hcking fish.”

Her eyes, I realized, had changed from green to black because there was nothing left but pupils.

By then I definitely wished I hadn’t come, and I could tell by the way my stomach was still a hot fist that I wasn’t even over my mother’s words yet.

Still, I told her every last thing I knew about oarfish, how the one I saw looked like a shimmer of light drifting behind Phelps, how it lifted its head in a way driftwood can’t, how I didn’t want to scare him worse than he already was, but how I saw what I saw, even if I thought I saw it again and it turned out to be a Japanese street sign.

I took a breath then told her how seeing an oarfish was almost as crazy as finding a giant squid, how oarfish grow to fifty feet and swim almost vertically and dive like dropped swords. Then I told her that what I’d read earlier that morning had planted a seed in my head that was blooming out of control. I took another breath, then shared the revelation that some Japanese believe that if you see an oarfish it means an earthquake is about to hit.

There was no sign she heard any of that. I might as well have told her about my imaginary friend or my revelation that ice melts in the sun. I continued anyway, like an actor who wants to finish a scene he’s already bombed. “Angie, I saw that oarfish—at least what I’m pretty sure might have been an oarfish—just five days before that earthquake hit
right here!
”

Still nothing. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. “I didn’t really know what I was taking,” she said in a raspy monotone. “I mean I knew, but I didn’t know it could do what it did. If something feels good I want more. I don’t understand people who don’t want too much of something that feels good. I’m told I have an addictive personality.”

I started talking because I was afraid of what she’d say next. “A lot of coastal sea life is like that,” I said. “Razor clams and certain kinds of fish get addicted to the high oxygen levels generated by the crashing waves.” Now I really hoped she wasn’t listening.

“I mean I knew I was mixing things I shouldn’t,” she whispered, “but I didn’t know it could kill me.”

I couldn’t have scripted a better cue for me to deliver the hard part of what I’d come to say, but nothing was anything like I expected. Even the air wasn’t right. I desperately wanted to open a window.

“For guys, an abortion is like getting a tooth yanked,” she suddenly said in that same sore-throated drone. “And it’s not even their tooth. Even if they do stick around, it’s still not
their
problem.”

She looked at me, waiting. My mind scrambled and came up with this: “Not all males are like that.” I sounded defensive. “Male sea horses carry the eggs around in kangaroolike pouches that work like placentas until they’re ready to hatch. And by then, the females are long gone.”

She let my blush burn holes through me.

“Do you hate yourself much of the time?” she asked.

I didn’t say anything, because
no
didn’t sound like what she wanted to hear and yes wouldn’t sound honest. I peeled dead skin off my nose.

“I hate myself pretty often.’’ She tilted her face back on the pillow, damming tears and attempting to smile at the same time. “Pretty fuckin’ often.”

I searched desperately for something helpful. “Meditating might push those bad thoughts aside,” I said. “At least that’s what Florence tells me—not that I’m any good at it.”