Deadman Bay Read online

  Deadman Bay

  PATRICK WAYLAND

  For Karen

  Copyright © 2015 Patrick Wayland

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. First Edition.

  Table of Contents

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  ~~26~~

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ~~1~~

  Edward Tache would be homeless in three weeks and no one cared. After years of talking about it, his parents had finally sold the house and moved to a retirement community in Sarasota. Edward hadn’t even known where Sarasota was until his father said Florida – and was it really possible to sell a house in New York, pack and move there in six weeks? His father had warned him, but it was one of the many wishful thoughts he always had like promising to buy a Leer jet after winning the lottery. Edward, needing to see it with his own eyes, had taken the train up to White Plains from Brooklyn.

  The denim blue trim of the two-story colonial was more faded, weathered than he remembered it being when he had last seen it six months earlier. Stabbed into the lawn, an orange real estate sign with the word SOLD across its top bar swung in the February wind as if waving him over, as if the vacant house needed his company. Edward walked around to the back, peeking through windows. He couldn’t remember it ever being so tidy. Empty. The house he had lived in since he was six was now dark inside, but he could see that the furniture, the paintings, and the shag carpet that he’d rolled on with his old dog Gremlin were gone. He stood on his haunches looking through the dining room window before turning and squatting on the back patio. Edward cursed his father as he took out his cell phone to call him for the second time that day.

  “You really sold the house.”

  “Well,” his father said in the form of a long sigh. “I’m sorry about the timing.”

  “I thought you’d keep the house for me.”

  “No, it doesn’t work that way. You need a job if you want to live in the city.”

  “I do have a job, volunteering at the WCC,” he said, a spark of pride warming him over the coldness seeping through his coat. For six months, he had worked at the Women and Children Center. There he spent four hours most days of the week, teaching painting to boys and girls while their mothers worked, and helping prepare lunches at the charity’s day shelter. He got to teach art to children and cook and his boss was appreciative of the simple fact that he showed up every day. For Edward the work was ideal except for one detail. It didn’t pay.

  “Son, I do commend you on that and I think it’s wonderful that you like it, but at some point you need a job that pays the rent. What about Uncle Lew’s offer at the warehouse?”

  “What? What are you saying, Dad? Are you joking? You’re joking, right? A warehouse job? That’s what my master’s degree has earned me? Stacking crates, carrying bags of rice like some Shanghai dock worker. You want me to act like some peasant coming in from the fields—”

  “Ed, he pays over minimum—”

  “Dad.” Edward’s voice broke. “Over minimum by, like, two bucks – it’s like you don’t know anything about what I do.”

  “Ed, I do know what you like to do. But…” Something clanked like a gong on the other end of the phone line. His father might have been preparing a pan for cooking or filling a pot with water. He could hear the phone rubbing against material as if his father had it pinched between his shoulder and chin. “Sometimes it’s about getting down to the nitty-gritty and doing what needs to be done.”

  “What needs to be done, huh? I have to be out of my apartment in three weeks – can you at least keep the house a few more months for me to live in?”

  “That house no longer belongs to us.”

  Edward pressed his palm hard into his temple before wiping it down over his cheeks and chin as if he were removing something plastered over his face.

  “What am I supposed to do?” He repeated the question, raising his voice.

  There was a long silence before his father answered. “Son, you’ve sung all summer, and you can dance all winter.”

  Edward knew the quote. It was from one of Aesop’s Fables – The Ant and the Grasshopper. The story had been in a thin children’s book filled with woodcut print pictures and, until he left for college seven years earlier, the book had been in his old room. After he got an apartment in the city, his mother had packed it in a box with a number of his things and put it in the attic. He had never asked her where all his books, cards, magazines and toys went, but he had run across them while looking for an old art magazine he needed for a class. Now, he wondered where that particular book was. Had they carried it down to Florida, sold it during a garage sale, put it in storage or thrown it out?

  “Dad, I’m going to be living on the street. Does that bother you at all?”

  “Edward, you can find a job—”

  “I’ve looked. There are no teaching jobs right now.”

  “Have you looked at other jobs?”

  “Other jobs? I have a masters in art – there are no other jobs.”

  “There are. Call your uncle.”

  “Are you joking? You really don’t give a shit, do you?”

  Edward looked out across his old backyard at the tire that hung from the leafless oak tree in the middle. The tire used to be bigger. In eighth grade, Carla Bruestein and he had played on that swing. She had kissed him on the lips before running away. The next day, he told everyone at school that they had ‘done it’. A week later, he’d gotten into a fistfight with her older brother. Next to the porch was the brick grill that he had helped build. His parents and he often skipped church on Sunday, but Friday night, no matter what the weather, was barbecue night… every Friday night Edward stood beside his father in front of that grill. He remembered the smells more than anything. Barbecued briskets drowned in sauce, hotdogs, corn cobs rolled in aluminum foil, sweet onions, sautéed chicken, buttered garlic bread crisping.

  “Ed, you got to do what you got to do,” his father finally said.

  “OK. Is that so? Well, dad, I need to borrow some more money. That needs to be done.” Edward looked down the edge of the patio. There where the icy grass met one wood plank, a cats-eye marble lay half buried in the dirt. One forgotten item. One piece of evidence that there had once been a boy living and playing in this house. Edward could hear his father breathing. He had stopped working on whatever he had been preparing. A few seconds passed. Edward began to wonder if they had been disconnected until his father clicked his tongue.

  “No more money. Edward, your mother and I believe in you. We love you. And we know you’ll do the right thing.”

  Two seconds later anger pumped through him. It was like a car switching gears.

  “What? You’re not listening – you never listen to me!”

  His father took his time answering. “Goodbye, son—”

  “You don’t give a shit about me!”

  But his father had hung up already.

  Edward leaned his head back against the wall. He sat there for twenty minutes. Then he got up and started walking, heading for the place he had avoided since graduating.

  ~~2~~

  Five fresh graduates sat in orange fiberglass chairs facing a wall painted with wavy rainbows a la Sol Lewitt. Just like him, they once had schedules, tests to study for, classes to attend, assignments to complete, career plans to fulfill. Then they finished everything. Now, like him, they were free. Now, like him, they had a wide-open abyss of nothing around them and they stared into it, and all they could see were their own worries about how to pay the bills. Graduating was like being pushed out of an airplane.

  The more he looked at it, the more the Sol Lewitt rainbow wall added to his frustrations. The corny waves didn’t belong in a university career office where people faced real life. Real life wasn’t childish crayon colors. Real life was soiled with pollution. Rust was a real color. Decaying wood was a real color. The flaking avocado green of his apartment walls was real. Shit was a real color.

  Edward entered the restroom and relieved himself into a toilet that wouldn’t stop running. After he washed his hands, he stared into the mirror, listening to the toilet hiss, looking over the reflection of a broke, 26-year old man. He touched the metal of the faucet, running his fingers over its smooth surface, needing the assurance of a solid object. Without thinking, he turned it on and off several times, desperate to prove to himself that there was something he could actually control. The toilet continued to hiss. Edward cupped his hands and brought water up to his face, yanked out two paper towels and dried his face. Finally, he turned toward the toilet.

  He removed the reservoir tank’s ceramic lid, and laid it across the seat. He examined the workings inside. There was one missing hinge screw allowing the water to leak through the flush valve. He reached down int
o the water, found the dislodged screw and picked it up. He pushed it back into place, turning it tight with a thumb and forefinger. The flush valve now closed properly, and as he watched as the water level rose until the intake stopped. He replaced the lid, washed his hands again, put back on his jacket and opened the restroom door.

  To his surprise, the career counselor was standing in front of him. A large woman in a noisy butterfly-print blouse, her hair tied into a pile on her head making her a few inches taller than him. A massive turquoise teardrop pendant dipped into her bulky cleavage as she stretched her neck to see over his shoulder, eyeballs bulging under drawn eyebrows. She suspiciously surveyed the inside of the restroom, taking stock of all its items. After she was sure all was well, she spoke.

  “Mr. Tache?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “I got you in for four o’clock, but someone cancelled, so you can come on in.” She looked back over his shoulder. “Did you do something to the toilet? I heard you doing something – did you mess with it?” Her voice rose to end in a squeak. “Did you fix it?”

  “I’m really sorry. It was driving me crazy—”

  “Well! We’ve been waiting for the janitor to fix that for two weeks. Every time I see one, I tell him, but they say, ‘fill out a form – fill out a form.’ That’s it. ‘Fill out a form.’ I haven’t had time to find the right form, so we’ve been living with it. Anyways, I thought your major was art—”

  “It is.”

  She led Edward into her office, a mess of folders, self-help books and human resource manuals. The woman settled into an office chair that creaked under her. She swiveled to face him across a stack of papers.

  “You’re mechanically inclined. Not afraid to get dirty.”

  Edward gave the best smile he could. “Spent three weeks at the city dump looking through the trash to get stuff for my final art project.”

  “That’s good, dear. Real good. In this market, you need to bring forward all your skills, even the ones you didn’t learn in a classroom. That’s what I tell everybody. Maybe you like driving – that’s a hidden talent right there. You need to be open to any jobs.”

  “I’m willing to work high schools and below.”

  “I know, dear. You told me that on the phone, but high school and other school positions are like the college positions right now. They’re few and far between. Mr. Tache, I know you have a picture of an ideal job sitting up there in your head.” The woman tilted her head to the side, and tapped her temple three times with a polished fingernail. “And I need you to broaden that image. Do you understand?”

  “Like elementary schools?”

  The career counselor pushed her lower lip out. “Unh Unh. Dear, I have to be completely honest with you. Right now, school workforce is contracting.” She watched him with an oblivious smile, letting the reality settle in.

  “What about out of state?”

  “Dear, in six months the situation may improve, but right now we’re seeing the education labor force…”

  She continued, but Edward wasn’t listening. He was reading the book titles on the shelf behind her. Careers for Tomorrow’s Woman. Women Executives of Wall Street. The New Freelance Journalist. Trends in Marketing for Minorities. Eight Careers for Bilinguals. eJobs of the World. US Government Jobs 2007. Minorities in Engineering. The Nursing Jobs Source Book. How to Write Successful Résumés. Self-Employment Opportunities for Single Mothers. Where were the jobs for twenty-six-year-old, white males? He felt sweat forming under his jacket and his underarms became itchy. Edward moved his elbows around to try to relieve the irritation.

  “Mr. Tache?” the woman blurted.

  “Yes – what?”

  “Did you hear me? You need to get what you can right now. Short-term projects, restaurant work, anything. Maybe work for your parents for a while. Later on, you’ll be qualified for state assistance.” She said it with a cheery voice.

  “State assistance?”

  “You’ve got to be open to anything right now.”

  “But, I have a masters in art,” Edward whispered.

  “I know, dear. I talked with thirty people just like you this month.” She started typing into her computer. “Now, I got something this morning and you’re the first person I’ve shown it to. It’s an off-major job, but they really need someone soon and if we massage your résumé a bit, I think you might fit—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Real estate caretaker.”

  “What?”

  “It’s taking care of a property.”

  “Like mowing grass?”

  “Unh unh. A bit more involved than that. You stay at the property. Basically, you have to live there for a contracted term.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done that—”

  “Oh, but you have, dear. You have and you just don’t realize it. Have you watched your parent’s house? Have you cleaned up around your apartment? Have you worked in any type of store? It’s all in how we word your résumé, see.”

  “Where is it?”

  As she peered at her computer screen, the right side of her upper lip twisted up as it might if she were picking up a dead rat. Her turquoise pendant flopped back as she took in a breath, and then forward as she exhaled.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s not local. The managing company is here. Basically, they want a US citizen so they can sue you if you burn down the house or something. Probably not a good fit—”

  “No, I’m willing to move.”

  “Are you sure?” Her voice rose incredulously. “You need a clean police record. And you’ll need to relocate in two weeks—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  The career counselor smiled at Edward as she might smile at a retarded kid who had just pushed a peg into a hole.

  “That’s the right attitude, dear, but I need to tell you where it is.”

  He stopped himself from laughing. It boiled up his chest and he held it in his throat. Where was it? Who cares? Out of state was even better, because the idea hit him. He would not tell his parents – payback for pushing him to work at Uncle Lew’s warehouse. They wouldn’t know where he was. He wanted them fretting by the phone with tears streaming down their cheeks, huddling around their little kitchen table in their little gated-community condo filled with their disgustingly glossy furniture, unusable crocheted pillows and frames of wilting flower crap. He hoped they were plagued by hurricanes, alligators, mosquitoes, and invasive pythons, heat waves and Miami Vice drug lords – or whatever they had down there.

  “It’s in Tortola.”

  “Great.” Six months earlier, Edward knew the exact college he wanted to work at, the salary and benefits he required. Now, he didn’t know where he would be sleeping in three weeks.

  The career counselor looked at him with one drawn-on eyebrow raised. When he didn’t say anything, she looked back at her monitor.

  “Dear, you know where Tortola is?”

  “It’s in… no.” Edward blinked.

  “It’s the British Virgin Isles.”

  “Really? That’s fantastic.”

  “The last person quit after two weeks because he couldn’t take it.”

  “Take what? The sun?”

  “The isolation. That’s the biggest concern for me. The property is on an island near Tortola. It might be quite lonely.”

  “That’s fine with me. I can do my artwork.”

  She eyed him as she leaned back. The chair chirped.

  “And are you able to leave your home here? Do you have a lease? It says they need someone ASAP, so if you can sign up now, you have an advantage.”

  But that was the funny part. Edward wouldn’t have a home in three weeks and his childhood house had already begun a metamorphosis. The old drapes would be ripped down, his fingerprints would soon be painted over, new carpet would be put in. The house had started forgetting him. He wanted to wake up in his room and walk down the stairs to the kitchen where his mother was cooking pancakes, sit at that long table and watch his father tinker on a clock or faucet or lamp as he was always doing. Edward wanted to lie on the couch, and pet his long-gone dog. He wanted to climb the back fence and visit friends who had long ago moved away. He wanted to go back, but he couldn’t.

  He smiled, thinking it funny that a career counselor had no career for him. It seemed to him that she wasn’t helping him find a job; she was helping him find a place to stay. You should be called a Home Councelor. He bit back the words.