Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,42

weeks, that phrase—without family—had succumbed her to variations of loss that shamed what she’d associated with the concept before.

Her brother had been a surfer, world-class, and had trained every day. Their parents drove them to the beach—mornings before school and on the weekends—because when there’s manifest talent condensed in only one child, you spend all your time and money on that child and hope the other one knows you love her anyway. They were only one year apart.

His friends were surfers, too, a little older, and one day the eldest, who was fifteen, got fresh with Esme behind a shed of garbage cans, she gathering fish bones for a spell she wanted to try that night—Spirit of distaff and fertility, make my breasts grow now!—and he asking if she wanted to see something and maybe to touch something, and, wouldn’t you know it, she kind of did. At first she was shy, but she cottoned to it pretty quick. So did he, since he ejaculated on her bathing suit in seconds. Next thing, she was back to the fish bones when her brother showed up, taking her by the wrist and saying, “Ez, don’t be stupid, we are assholes,” and her thinking he was jealous because his friend liked her more than him. Probably, she said as much. Probably, he was hurt.

An hour later, they were in the hospital. The kid who saw him go down said he didn’t know, just that Chris seemed distracted. Took a bad part of the wave, but still, there was no way to know there was a sheet of fiberglass down there and that Chris would crack his head. Or that he’d stay under for the extra seconds that are the difference between relief, brain damage, and coma. The doctors did not bullshit around. Chris was indeed in a coma and, barring a miracle, would never come out.

In the twenty-four years he slept, Esme saw him six times, all in the first six months. Her parents? Maybe they saw him once. Was she to blame for what had happened to him? In a word: yes.

A tear dribbled down her cheek and settled at the base of her throat. People liked to say the greatest distance on earth was between your head and heart. And say it as if this distance were a problem. What problem? Esme would have been glad not to know anything of what went on down there. Because once in a while, a feeling would cover the distance, usually while she was on the job and stretched thin on emotional resources, so that when she got home: there it was, a feeling on her mind. Nine times out of ten, this feeling was about Ida, and the feeling said: You are ruining her life. And then she could not breathe. And the feeling, in triumph for having made it this far, would parade about her head, crush what forces she deployed against it, and lord over the place until another job came in. Which meant that, while she liked to think she was saving lives, it was really the job that saved her.

And so: Do not think; work. This was not work but rescue.

Olgo Panjabi, 2315 hrs: Nodding off in an armchair. Palm concealing his face because only old men nodded off in their chairs. He did not want Kay to come home to a drooling, narcoleptic husband. It was after eleven, and she was out. He did not know where. She had not returned his calls. She had not left a note. Still, he refused to worry. If he worried, he would call Erin, and that was a no-no. On the other hand, if he worried, it meant he still thought there was a chance Kay had been abducted, hurt, lost, instead of on a date. If that was what one called such a thing at her age. Could one still date after fifty? Of course. Every night with her had felt like a date, down to the weakness in his knees when she’d come out of the bathroom wearing a low-cut dress or black sheer stockings. He had always loved her legs. Lean and beautiful, and willing to part for him, always. They had had a wondrously sensual life together. He could not swear his experience had been a cut above the rest, but he guessed as much, given what people said about marriage over time.

He had stopped nodding off. Instead, he was pacing and producing reasons why a