“It’s amazing,” you say and you are not one of those girls who call everything amazing.
Peach announces that she is making kale smoothies and she would lock you up in here and throw away the key if she could and you don’t even realize it, do you? The loud blender is my savior and like a ninja I fly down the hall, down the back stairwell (just for servants) that leads to the hallway between the kitchen and the great room. Fortunately, there are saloon-style doors that block this stairway, because who the hell wants to look at a servant, right? I can see it all from here. You girls are in matching giant robes and you flop onto the couch and put a glass of scotch and the smoothie on the lobster trap coffee table. She nudges your tiny foot with her big one. “Don’t be sad.”
“I shouldn’t be sad,” you say. “He treated me like shit.”
“Oh, Beckalicious, it’s not your fault. Boys can’t help it. They’re intimidated by girls like us.”
“I don’t think he was ever intimidated,” you say and Peach sweeps her feet off the table and plants them on the floor. She rubs her hands together, generating some heat. “You, my sweet, need a massage.”
You laugh but she’s serious and she moves onto the floor and kneels and rubs your pretty little feet and you moan—you like it—and you tell her she is good at this and she smiles. She likes that you like it and she continues up your legs to your calves and I can’t tell if she pulls your legs apart or if you pull your legs apart but I know that your legs are apart and she is working on your lower thighs and you relax your head, back, you exhale, mmm, and your arms flop to your sides and she is getting in there, up there, moving up your thighs. You are moaning, you are.
She sits up and somehow gets herself between your legs. She parts your bathrobe and your body is naked under there and your nipples are popped and she rubs your hips and you say no but she tells you to be quiet and you are quiet and she kisses your left breast and holds your other breast, firm, hard. You protest but she quiets you and you obey and she is kissing your neck and moving one of her hands down you and you aren’t fighting her and you aren’t doing anything, you are taking it and she is wrong.
You are tipsy—whatever she gave you hits you harder in the daylight, after running—and heartsick for me and shocked over Benji and she is supposed to be your friend. Just moments ago you were a wreck, sobbing, and what kind of a friend responds to a friend in obvious emotional distress by taking advantage of her and sucking on her earlobe? You have yet to touch her but your body is open to her and I don’t even think you’re in there right now, you’re somewhere deep in your head, away and finally, you are back and your whole body flinches and your legs snap and Peach pulls back. You are on your feet, closing your robe. “I’m sorry.”
“Forget it,” Peach says and she drinks old kale smoothie right out of the pitcher. “I’m gonna have a shower.”
“Peach, wait. We should talk.”
“Beck, please,” she gripes. “Did you ever think this is possibly why guys can’t deal with you? I mean just let it be. We don’t have to analyze every stupid thing.”
She marches off with her kale smoothie and I can tell you feel responsible and this is not right. You call out to her and she responds by raising the volume on the Elton John. I hear a door slam. You cry and how dare she lay this all on you? You pass into the kitchen—fortunately, you don’t choose the path by the servant staircase—and you return with your phone. I am shaking. This is it. Here you come. Call me, Beck. Call me. But you dial a number and my phone doesn’t vibrate.
“Chana, I know you’re pissed at me but I need your help. Benji’s dead and Peach is upstairs crying and I never should have come and I don’t know what to do. Please call me.”
You go upstairs and pound on the door and beg her to come out and say you’re sorry until your voice is raspy. She ignores you and she is vile. She has you trapped and you don’t even know it. I push through the saloon-style doors and leave.
33
IT’S a shame that this beach is wasted on people like Peach. All these waterfront mansions are empty, even though it’s unseasonably, gloriously warm. (Knock on wood.) The beach couldn’t be more pristine, yet none of these fucking second-home owners drive to LC to pay their respects. What idiots. I, on the other hand, am a grateful beachcomber.
Yesterday, I followed the tracks you and Peach left all the way down to the jetty that reaches into the bay. This is a great place to hide, to wait. There are scattered boulders—KEEP OFF ROCKS—and there’s a weathered wooden walkway that ends in the sand. I dug out a foxhole beneath the walkway and I think it is warmer here than it was in either of the damn boathouses. Although, it’s impossible to compare, given how cold it was the night of my accident.
In any case, the sun is coming up and it won’t be long now. Soon, Peach will be here, alone.
Candace would love it here. The last time I saw the sun rise on a beach, I was with her. This is no time to be thinking of Candace, but how can I not? We saw the sun rise on Brighton Beach and as it got brighter, she tried harder and harder to break up with me. I asked her to walk down to the water with me. She did. She was cruel in that way; a nicer girl would have said no, and left me to cry on my own, but she wanted to see me at my worst so she stuck around.
“I am leaving you,” she said.
Then go, bitch. Go.
It wasn’t my fault that Candace followed me down to the water’s edge and it wasn’t my fault that I picked her up and held her down in the water and watched her pass on to the great beyond. She wanted to be there, or she wouldn’t have gone down there with me. She knew she was killing me and she knew that I was not the type to go down without a fight.
I don’t blame Peach for being so miserable, the same way I don’t blame Candace for wanting to escape her family. What a shame to be so angered by what you don’t have that you treat what you do have like it’s nothing. She’s not grateful to have an extra home in a place where the biggest danger is Taylor Fucking Swift. She’s a lot like Candace, who wasn’t grateful for her voice, her talent.
I have a little time so I walk a few feet down to the shore. I like the way the water comes and erases my steps. I think of that fucking poem from middle school where the dude walking on the beach isn’t alone because Jesus is carrying him on his shoulders and I smile. For years, I thought it was the other way around, that the guy in the poem was carrying Jesus, you know, the way a Hare Krishna carries his tambourine, the way a Jewish boy carries a Torah at his bar mitzvah. I didn’t think of Jesus Christ as being this guy giving piggyback rides to fuckups and I don’t even leave one set of footprints, so take that, middle school poem. I admit, I am kind of grumpy. The last food I ate was that Danish. I cross over the walkway built by some family with something against walking on white sand and return to my foxhole and wait.
At last, I see Peach emerge on the patio, a hot red speck in the distance. She stretches and she trots down the walkway and here we go. With each passing second, I can hear her more clearly, her breathing, her feet pounding, and the Elton John blasting from her phone. She passes me, swoosh, and I leap out of my foxhole like a jack in the box and run after her. She doesn’t hear me. She is fearless on this beach. I grab her by the ponytail. Before she can even scream, I ram her into the sand and straddle her back. She struggles, kicking, but her mouth is in the sand and Elton won’t stop singing—sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair—and I pick up the rock in my pocket.