house feels more familiar this time around.
Baker finds Cash collapsed in a heap in front of a basketball game. He considers slipping out the door—he needs to go to town; he needs to see Ayers—but he can’t just leave with Floyd asleep upstairs. “Hey, Cash?”
“Yeah.” Cash doesn’t move his eyes from the TV.
“I’m going out for a little while, man,” Baker says. “Or I’d like to. If you could just…keep one ear open in case Floyd wakes up?”
“Yeah, of course,” Cash says.
Baker lets his breath go.
“Are you going into town to see Ayers?” Cash asks.
Baker considers lying, but what can he say? That he’s going to the grocery store? Out for a nightcap? Cash will know better.
“Yeah,” Baker admits.
“She asked about you today on the hike,” Cash says.
Baker’s heart feels like a speeding car without brakes. “She did?”
“She said you didn’t call her after you left.” Cash pauses. “Were you really that stupid?”
Yes, Baker thinks, he was. There had been dozens of times when Baker thought to reach out, but, honestly, he hadn’t seen the point. He had been stuck in Houston…until Anna announced she was leaving. “I was that stupid,” Baker says.
“My guess is she has a thing for you,” Cash says. “Don’t mess it up.”
Cash’s tone indicates that he fully believes Baker will mess it up. It’s true that Baker’s track record with women hasn’t been great. He chose to marry a woman who didn’t love him, who may or may not have liked men at all. But Ayers is different. It’s as though Baker had been on a quest without even realizing it—until he found exactly what he was looking for.
He’s not going to mess it up.
Baker wonders why Cash is being so cool about Ayers. He seems relaxed and at ease in a way that is very un-Cash-like. Maybe it’s some kind of trap. Or maybe the island is working its magic.
“Thanks, man,” Baker says. “I mean it, Cash. Thank you.”
“Good luck,” Cash says.
Good luck. Baker turns up the radio in the Jeep; the excellent station out of San Juan—104.3 the Buzz—is playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Baker sings along, woefully off-key, but who cares; he’s got the windows open and the sweet night air is rushing in. Baker hasn’t felt this sense of freedom, this sense of possibility, since he was in high school. He’s nervous. He has butterflies.
He drives into town at ten thirty and things are still lively; it’s Saturday night. He worries that to see Ayers, he’ll have to go to La Tapa for a drink—he really wanted to be sober and clearheaded tonight—but then he spots her leaving the restaurant, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a T-shirt and a pair of Chucks, a suede bag hitched over her shoulder.
She reaches up and releases her hair from its bun. She is so strong and composed and self-possessed. Baker is dazzled. He has been dazzled by women before, of course—when he watched Anna pull a splinter out of Floyd’s foot with one quick, precise movement; when his old girlfriend Trinity knotted a cherry stem with her tongue (Baker still doesn’t understand how people do that)—but Ayers is different. She’s flawless.
Baker drives up alongside her and rolls the window down. He thinks about trying to be funny—Hey, little girl, want some candy?—but there’s no way he’ll be able to pull it off.
“Ayers,” he says. “Hi.”
She stops, ducks her head to peer into the car. They lock eyes.
“Baker,” she says. She holds his gaze and the two of them knit together somehow. He can’t speak so he nods his head toward the passenger seat. She runs around the front of the car, opens the door, climbs in, and fastens her seat belt.
“Wow,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Where to?” he asks.
“Hawksnest Beach,” she says. “I’ll show you the way.”
Rosie
February 22, 2006
I’m afraid to write down exactly what happened with Russ but I’m afraid not to write it down because what if I forget and my weekend with him is washed away like a heart drawn in the sand?
There was sex, a lot of sex, and it was the best sex of my life, but I have only Oscar to compare it to and if there’s one thing I can say about Oscar, it’s that he’s selfish and greedy and arrogant and any time I opened my mouth to ask him to change his style, he took offense and kept on doing things the same way because in his mind, he knew the