H2O: The Novel Part 11

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

FIVE DAYS LATER.

"SUNNY TOMORROW?" I wondered aloud. "On Friday?" I stared out the office window, its commanding view of the Seattle harbor always a welcome rest for weary eyes. Sleep had escaped me this past week, supplanted by constant worry.

"Yes. For one day. Then rain all weekend. Don't you hate that?" Andrea asked, leaning into the doorjamb of my office. "We'll be stuck in here drafting presentations for our boss and selling seats to airline companies on the day the sun finally decides it's going to bless us." She huffed. "The wrong day."

I shrugged, hoping Andrea would find something else to talk about. I felt like Hester in The Scarlet Letter. I just knew that everyone could see the giant red label on me, flas.h.i.+ng like a Las Vegas billboard: Crazy! Dangerous when wet!

Sunbeams, a Seattle rarity, radiated their "come hither" call to the outdoors, beckoning me to the safety of their embrace. No wet. I'd find some excuse to get out tomorrow-if for no other reason than to get home in one piece. Memories of last Sat.u.r.day's deluge and my mental collapse had not faded. I came to Seattle to soak in the water that fell from the sky year-round. I loved rain. That is, I used to love it. These days, water had become my enemy.

"You listening?" Andrea asked with a knock on the jamb. I'm sure she reads minds. At a minimum, she could read mine. Or read energies. If my vitality had a color, it had become black as coal. Nothing shone bright in my life these days. When you don't know where your head is, it's hard to get a grip. My mind tripped out on water, and that made no sense.

"Yes. I'm listening," I replied, but I lied. Andrea could have been chatting for an hour, and I might not have heard her. My mind ran on a single track today, a total focus on staying dry. And sunbeams meant sanity.

"You're staying late tomorrow?" She probed again, her question some kind of code for a more pointed unspoken query: "What about Xavier? Aren't you guys going out or something?" Everyone knew he'd been gone all week, and maybe they just a.s.sumed I couldn't live without him.

I could. Live without him. For good. I'd turned over a new leaf. I just hadn't told her yet.

"I'm too far behind. Lots of work to do," I said, turning around in my chair. My back faced her when I looked out the window or worked at my station. I liked that; people weren't always trying to make eye contact when they walked by my office. "E-mail's a mile deep, and I've got briefings to build." I took a deep breath. "And then there's the issue of the j.a.panese. I'm still working to sort out that mess. My mess."

The e-mail glut could only be blamed on me. I'd spent so many hours trying to sort out this stupid problem with the pictures in my head that I'd let many customers and contacts lie fallow for too long. I had to get notices out tonight to the key buyers and customers whose invoices kept me fed.

Andrea stiffened and stepped back into the hall. For a brief moment, I wondered what I'd said to offend her. But her body language gave it away. Xavier was headed our direction.

"Boss man on the prowl, and he looks mad," Andrea whispered, then backed out of the office as if headed to another. "See you."

I nodded in silence. Xavier never came to my office unless he wanted something; my boss was certainly the last person in the world who'd drop in for a chat. I felt the dull thud of his shoes approach in the hall, a wooly mammoth stomping down the corridor to our showdown.

I could always feel his mad strides . . . and this one promised trouble.

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply again. Moments away from a reckoning.

The invoice fluttered to the floor. Surely, Xavier didn't think he could throw a sheet of paper at me and have it fly across the room like a knife. But that's the way he launched it when he stomped into my office. If the sheet had some ma.s.s and a sharp point, it might have impaled me. But it fell harmlessly at my feet.

I picked up the printout, a ma.s.s of numbers and names. Somewhere in this jumble my credit card data and company employee number lay hidden-the source of his great distress.

"So you did use the corporate credit card, right?" Xavier chewed me out in my own s.p.a.ce. My boyfriend, soon-to-be- "ex," played the bad cop in a routine we both knew very well. But no pretense here. His shaved head glowed crimson, and wiggle-worms did backflips under his temples. His forearm bulged beyond the cuff of a rolled s.h.i.+rt, arteries throbbing under the silvery band of his "power watch."

"Yes. I used it. It's a corporate card, and it gets me a discount on network access. I needed to do some research outside the office. Research that started when I broke my laptop."

"You're not being honest with me, Kate. I replaced that laptop long ago. Some of these expenses. .h.i.t as late as Sat.u.r.day. So-what gives?"

"I'm paying for some web searches, that's all. It's private, and I pay my part of the card off every month," I said, crossing my arms. "It's not costing you anything, that's for sure." I stood, determined to match him on this one. Xavier had a habit of backing down when someone got in his face. I'd try that, just for fun. I needed this charade to end; crowds had gathered within earshot, and I didn't need an office scene.

"Searches?" He fumed. "What's wrong with our network?"

"Nothing . . . I-" I cut it off, unwilling to tell him. Xavier would belittle these stupid visions of mine as some health issue, or try to convince me I really might be losing my mind. That kind of help I didn't need.

He stood in silence, his final stage before a mental meltdown. I'd seen it lots of times. If he stalked off, I'd gained the advantage, and a reprieve.

"Shut it down, Kate. No searches. No corporate cards. I have the audit department breathing down my neck and you've got a boatload of charges to some offsh.o.r.e account that's doing network activity. Far as the auditors are concerned, you're running a telephone or gambling scam. And it's obviously not work-related." He spun about, his hand hesitating on the door. He looked back and lowered his voice; it was the first time I'd heard compa.s.sion since the early part of our dinner at Canlis. "What's happened to you, anyway? I feel like I've lost the old Kate. I just don't know you anymore."

I had an answer ready, but Xavier didn't wait. He let go of the jamb and was gone in a flash.

"I'll deal with it," I said, loud enough for him to hear when he stomped down the hall. His thuds echoed in the wood-floored corridor. A few seconds later, I knew for sure he'd heard me, his voice carrying down the long hall past rooms filled with my coworkers. He set up a gauntlet of embarra.s.sment I didn't want to face.

"You'd better deal with it, Kate. For my sake. And for yours."

There are days when I hate a ringing office phone. On the back side of my confrontation with Xavier, I didn't want to talk to anyone. Nevertheless, I've never been able to adopt that time-management technique of ignoring a call. Somehow, ringing phones are too tempting when the number is unknown-some special business opportunity looking for a home, or a client calling from "out of the blue." In marketing, no matter how bad your day, you take every call. I stared through three rings at the number displayed on my desk phone, debating whether to run into the hall and throw something at Xavier. I answered.

"Kate Pepper, Consolidated Aerodyne," I said, dragging the last vestiges of professionalism out of some cranny deep inside my dry sh.e.l.l. I held myself together with both hands, and there weren't any grips left for another person. This had better not be another request for a charity dinner.

"Ms. Pepper? This is Gloria O'Malley."

Who?

"We met at our boat, the St. Jude. I'm Liam's mom."

St. Jude?

"Ms. Pepper?"

That was weeks ago, an eternity. How long had this curse plagued me? The dizzy spells. The images in my head. Xavier barking at every move like some mad dog behind a too-short fence, ready to leap out and get me.

Liam?

The name struck at some part of me that still felt good. It radiated warmth, a stark contrast to the mental blizzard that gripped me. I realized she'd been waiting on the line to see if I remembered her.

"Liam?" I asked, trying to connect. The past seemed a fog. I'd forgotten nearly everything other than my mental anguish and my search for peace.

"Yes. We sold you a few pounds of sas.h.i.+mi-grade tuna. I'm the lady on the boat. My son met you at the fisherman's monument." She paused. "I hope you don't mind me calling. You left your card that day, and I wanted to ask you something. Well, not for me. For my son."

Liam!

The synapses started firing again and it felt good. The little redhead at Fisherman's Memorial, the boy who'd always asked "why." The warm spot inside me caught fire and melted my coldest recesses, a memory of the boy, and our brief encounter at the memorial when I'd laid the flowers for Gramps.

Gramps!

One memory sp.a.w.ned another. It felt good to be in the embrace of old thoughts, my grandfather's face in my mind's eye, his hand on my shoulder. My grandfather would know how to deal with all this-including the power-mogul boyfriend and boss who rapidly distanced himself from me. He'd have an answer to the source of the insane pictures in my head and the dizzy spells.

"Yes! I remember now. Thanks for calling, Mrs. O'Malley. I'm sorry; it took me a minute to make the connection."

"That's all right. Please, I understand, Ms. Pepper. I'm sorry to bother you like this, but-well-I needed to ask a favor, if I might."

Here it comes. The warm spot started to fade. Another charity, another dinner. I slumped in my chair, unable to shoulder yet another load.

"Yes?" I wanted to hang up.

"Liam brought me something. I feel terrible about this, because he's kept it a secret for weeks, and it's probably special for you. I'm so sorry . . ."

"I don't understand-"

"You left some flowers along with an item at the base of the memorial. Lots of people do, you know? Someone picks up the flowers when they're old, but, well, you see, Liam picked up the other memorabilia. Something carved, like a chain. He's kept it for a while, and I found it in his room last night and asked him about it. He told me where it came from, and I wanted to get it back to you."

The warmth came rus.h.i.+ng back, a big wave cras.h.i.+ng on my emotional beach, smothering me with hot tingles. I could imagine Gramps smiling at me in the doorway, dressed in an old wax-cloth rain slicker and his droopy fis.h.i.+ng hat. His hand extended toward me in that memory, a s.h.i.+ny whittling knife and a carved wooden ball-in-chain thrust my way. It all started there, on my ninth birthday, two decades ago. I wanted to reach up and grab Gramps again, to be smothered in his fishy arms-and to cry.

"I . . . I remember." My voice stuck in my throat.

"Liam is my creative one," she continued. "He's always doing something with his hands, you know? Everything nautical. He's been after his dad for months to teach him how to carve a ball and chain, and-well-I guess the temptation became too great when he saw yours at the memorial. I'm so sorry. We'd like to return it to you in person, if that's okay. I want Liam to learn a lesson from this."

I stared out the window at the Seattle harbor, imagining they were in a boat just beyond the wharf. The sun would be s.h.i.+ning Friday. I could go outdoors to visit them and remain sane.

"Yes. I mean, yes! I'd like to come see you."

"You don't have to-"

"No, please," I insisted. I had to get out of here. "And I want Liam to have the chain. As a gift. My grandfather taught me how to carve it, and I left it at the memorial in his honor." The words seemed to spill out of me, warm fuzzies flooding through me. It felt so good. "I'd really like to come see Liam again if that would be okay. So, please, don't apologize. I'm sure he meant well."

"If you insist-"

"I do," I blurted out. For the first time in days, I felt happy. A feeling I'd lost in the past weeks. I wanted to see the little kid, to tell him about my grandfather, to feel the warm sun, to smell salt in the air and remember days gone by. I wanted my life back.

"I'll come down Friday afternoon after school, Mrs. O'Malley. And I'll bring a present, if that's okay."

"It's Gloria, please. But you don't need to bring a gift. Not after what Liam's done."

"No. I need to do this. But don't tell him. I'll bring a whittling knife, if that's okay with you, and some balsa wood. I'll teach him how to carve the ball and chain. It's easy. Anyone can do it."

"Ms. Pepper, really. You don't have to."

"I need to do it, Mrs. O'Malley. I mean, Gloria. For my grandfather's sake. He'd want me to pa.s.s this skill on." I paused, wondering how much I should say. " And for my sake, Gloria. How about Friday afternoon? Liam's in school, right?"

"He is. This-this is so special," she said, her voice cracking. I heard her sniffle. "And thank you. For doing this."

"Great," I said. I felt a smile. Those were muscles I hadn't used in a long time.

"Four o'clock?" she asked.

"Four sharp." I'd be out of here early Friday. Forget my plans for a late night at the office and e-mail. The time had come for me to reconnect with my past.

"We spent a lot of money to put this new carpet in," Xavier said an hour later, standing above me in the doorway of the office copy room. He didn't stoop over to help me, or offer to lift the black nightmare from my hands. It was just one sentence; another icy condemnation that stabbed me as I sat on the floor covered in black copy toner. He wagged his head as he left. A woman giggled in the background, standing just beyond him in the hall, unseen. I imagined my fingers, caked in powdery black, ripping out her eyes.

A crumpled sheet of paper ripped out of the inside of the copy machine lay at my side. My gray skirt, doused in dark powder, had become woolen midnight. No one came to the door to help. I sat alone, on my own, just like ten minutes ago when I left the office to get a copy made. No admin a.s.sistant would make a copy for me, presumably too busy with Xavier on a "special a.s.signment" to be able to copy the bill he'd thrown at me half an hour ago. And no technician came to repair the copier. No one offered to help me insert a new toner cartridge, or to help me up off the floor, covered in the impossible mess of a busted cartridge, my clothing trashed.

More giggles rippled down the hall, gurgling out of delicate throats I wanted to slit. I tried in vain to dust off the blackness, but it rubbed into my hands and the fabric of my clothes with an inky permanence. The harder I tried to distance myself from the dry stain, the more it spread, like a virus, a dark powdery cloud growing around me.

I headed for my locker, and a new change of clothes. The detritus lay on the floor, a black bomb exploded at the base of a white paper-eating copier and its toner guts.

This is going to hurt.

Hammered copper basins shone beneath polished gold waterspouts across the breadth of the granite bathroom counter in our executive washroom. A mirror the length of two people stretched across the room, reminding me that I looked like I'd been the only target in a paintball battle, or someone had dumped a bag of black flour on my lap and arms. I looked atrocious.

Granite stall dividers lay to my left, fancy walls of swirling red-brown rock grain. One more appointment in an overdone ladies' room complete with perfumes, mouthwash, puffs, soap and tissue dispensers. None of them any good to me at this point. Only the gold water spout could help, a menacing snake protruding from the granite, waiting to strike. My hand shook as I extended it toward the faucet.

I moved back, pressing against the fabric-covered wall behind me, careful not to place black hands on the expensive covering. My eyes never left the faucet, one of six golden serpents frozen in time over their metal basins. I imagined I was in Egypt, covered in the black of night, waiting to be sacrificed at the throne of Isis. The snakelike spouts beckoned me, hissing my name.

Sweat?

I could feel dampness under my armpits, a sensation I'd not experienced at work in years. My forehead beaded up; I resisted the urge to wipe it. Glistening sweat formed on my brow in the mirror eight feet in front of me. My hands shook, and I laced blackened fingers together over the worst of the damaged skirt, desperate to steady myself.

I'm alone.

I came to Seattle to get wet. Dry San Jose, with its stucco cookie-cutter homes and mind-numbing traffic, had been good to me financially. The endless dry horizon of buildings and eucalyptus trees stretched for miles, a flat land of technological wizardry, squeezed in between the mountains south of San Francisco and the coastal hills to the west. I used to escape to Santa Cruz and the towering redwoods for nature and for damp . . . until I came here, to wors.h.i.+p water in the land of wet. That all seemed so long ago now, with me plastered to the wall, petrified of the thought of a simple hand-was.h.i.+ng.

I must get clean.

Xavier is the germaphobe. I'm more sane, just a "clean freak"-in Andrea's parlance. I wished she were here; I felt desperate to share this incomprehensible fear of water with someone who might understand. I could tell her anything, and she'd rarely judge me. I wanted someone with me because I knew I had no other option. The stain on my hands was a powdery virus; it would spread wherever I put my fingers. The black had to go.

Was.h.i.+ng is the only option.

I advanced toward the sink, sweat running down the insides of my arms, trickling onto my elbow. More beads dripped from my brow down my nose. I couldn't wipe at anything, or the blackness would multiply.

And then the visions returned. Even sweat discomforted my unstable mind. Mixed with my sight of the real world, I could see steam. Drops of rain. Soaked earth. Icicles. Snow. I shook the water free of my face with a snap of my head, and most of the dancing pictures departed, if only for a moment.

I stood over the hammered copper bowl, its snake-G.o.d spout poised above the basin in l.u.s.t for the coming sacrifice. That's what I'd become-a lamb led to slaughter at the altar of water. I reached out a shaking hand to turn on the flow, a lever each for hot and cold. I dared not sample the temperature of the stream. I wanted this to end as soon as possible.

Steam rose from the basin as it filled, fogging the mirror. Perhaps a blistering hot wash would hurt so badly that I'd never notice the crazy pictures in my mind. That was my only hope. I shoved my hands into the water, biting my lip hard as I did it, desperate to find some other focus than the insanity I knew lay only a moment away.

The snake bit me, striking with the force of a thousand vipers. Instantly, I became liquid in the mouths of soldiers, a blessed wet that doused the faces of dusty, sweaty warriors. I lost sight of myself in the mirror, and I bit harder on my lip to force blood, desperate to maintain a hold on reality, but aware of two worlds-one real and one imagined. I knew the basin lay below me, and its heat singed my hands. In my mind's eye, the part of me still sane, I could imagine my palms and fingers turning beet red in the scalding bowl. The serpent struck at me repeatedly as vision after vision drowned my mind.

A spring lay all about me, a half-moon of rock eroded out of a hillside above, and I gurgled from the base of a mountain across stones, headed into a dry, parched plain. Men dressed in ancient battle garb stood in me, all around me, dipping their hands into me. I ran cold and wet, gurgling from the rock into a pool.

Some men knelt in me, others squatted. They all came thirsty. Some drank fully, were satisfied, and left, while others took a brief sample of me, then shook me from their hands and stood to leave. I flowed all about them, was.h.i.+ng their sandaled feet with my coolness, slaking their thirst. In the distance, a shorter man, arrayed in fine armor, stood quietly and counted as they drank.

They all had beards, and I dripped from the black hairs of hardened warrior's faces. Some gathered me in their cupped hands and drank, while others knelt with beard immersed, sipping like an animal from my surface. But they all drank. The short bearded man counted each one, directing some to the left as they stood up, sending others to the right. There were so many splas.h.i.+ng in me, grabbing at me, drinking me in, yet I continued to flow, bubbling from the mountain, headed from the pool to the plain, into a stark dryness where I withered into nothingness.

Three hundred men stood in one group, many more in the other. The sippers were together in the smaller group, and those who'd cupped their hands to drink of me gathered in the larger a.s.sembly. The cupped-hand drinkers remained behind, and the three hundred sipping warriors departed, marching onto a dusty plain.

Next, I saw blood pouring from the golden snake before me, and I jerked my hands free. Instantly, I stood in front of the mirror, hands beet red, and the basin black as ink. As water dripped from my scalded hands, I could still see them, the three hundred men who'd marched into battle with swords and s.h.i.+elds raised, blood flowing all about them. But it was not their blood that flowed before me. I had filled these men, somehow. In my wetness, through my insanity, I could see that because of me they were protected. Even sanctified. They all lived.

The image vanished as Andrea burst through the door, her sweet voice a haven of rest. "Kate! You're a mess. How can I help?"

My knees buckled, and I reached out for the edge of the granite countertop, sinking into a pile of ruined clothes on the bathroom floor. Andrea caught me as I flopped onto the stone tile, lowering my head, arms around my knees, hands red with water burns.

For the first time since I was seventeen, I really cried. One of those deep, soul-shuddering sobs that flood the core of your being, bringing the flotsam of life to the surface. I didn't care how many more crazy pictures washed over me. Andrea's hand on my shoulder, then her warmth near me as she sat on the floor, arm around my blackness, were like a giant valve turning inside me, opening up a lifetime of bottled pain.