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by jackie thomas
a sequel to ensorcelled
part one - palpitations
josh
Josh stepped carefully down the sloping path to the beach, his feet sinking into fine white sand. His gaze took in the curve of the bay but he saw only a few early dog walkers.
The ocean was a grey slice today, seaweed smelling under an unbroken cover of cloud. Southern California never suited Josh. To him its unrelenting Summer lacked shadow and texture. Its sprawling angel city was an alien place shooting up from the ground without beginning or end or centre. Its wide sky giving up Sun and smog in equal measure.
He was always the out of town business tripper when he came West. The guy in a suit looking for a last sniff of the Pacific. The guy in a suit getting sand in his shoes and sweating too much under his tie.
He was not even sure why he’d come. He’d had a few meetings yesterday but he could have got a flight straight home after. Could have avoided the night in the air-conditioned hell that was LA.
Walking on sand was harder than it looked and he finally toed off his shoes and pulled off his socks, wobbling gently as he balanced on each foot. He put a sock in each shoe and, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he trudged on with one in each hand.
At last he saw a distant figure, an approaching runner, following the shoreline close to the incoming tide. As he came nearer Josh could define Sam’s easy grace as he ran. All in black, his dark hair longer than it used to be.
When he was close enough he looked at Josh, looked again and came to an abrupt halt. “Josh. God.”
He was doing well. Josh saw it immediately. He was fit looking and hardly out of breath from a run that would have finished Josh off for good. He took Josh in with a clear, even gaze and then smiled.
“Where did you come from?”
“I had a couple of meetings yesterday. Finished too late to fly back. Your mom told me where you’d be.”
Sam’s smile turned wry. He would be imagining how that conversation went.
They hugged with Josh’s shoes knocking together behind Sam’s back. Sam smelt salty. Like he used to when he came straight from sailing, into Josh’s bed. Like he had been formed whole from the sea.
“Did you stay near here?”
“No. I got a cab from the city.”
Sam wrapped an arm round Josh’s shoulders and they started to walk up the beach. “Have you got time to get breakfast?”
“Sure.”
The place was almost on the beach with an open area looking out on to the slate Pacific. A spiky haired kid mixed some long carroty orangey concoction for Sam. Josh regarded it suspiciously. “What are they doing to you here, Sam? You’ve got to come home.”
He had honestly meant it as a joke but it came out like the whole point of the trip and Sam’s eyes became fluid as he searched for a reply.
“It’s got vitamins in. It’s a West coast thing.”
“Some kind of caffeine substitute?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “That’s it.”
The kid poured coffee into a solid white mug for Josh. It was milder than he usually took it and hopefully wouldn’t give him the weird heart palpitations he had been getting lately. He pulled a strip off the Danish he had ordered with it. It was soft and yeasty but left his fingers sticky so he regretted it anyway.
The paper napkin stuck to his fingers instead of helping and he was aware of Sam watching the process.
“Ah dammit,” he said balling the napkin.
“You’re a pretty suave guy, Josh.”
They laughed at this and then fell silent.
“But Sam,” he said finally. “You should anyway.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“Come back. Your jobs open again. Come back. Toby’s pining.”
Sam shook his head, though Josh was reasonably sure it was an unconscious gesture. “Josh, have you come to get me again?”
Perhaps he had. Josh thought about New York in the rain. He thought about the peculiar kind of innocence he and Sam had once shared despite the accumulated grime of all they had done and seen and felt.
“You know,” Sam said, his voice low. “It might be easier to telephone if you’re going to make a habit of this.”
“You never called me back,” he returned gently.
Josh felt out of place in this Tshirt-and-shorts beach shack. The sweaty old guy long-passed forty, with his brown shoes and brown socks on the floor under his chair and a shaving kit in his backpack. He would have sworn that the four years between himself and Sam was really twenty-four.
Sam looked into his health drink and stirred it seriously with a straw. His hair fell across his forehead. If he let it grow more it would be in his eyes. He looked up.
“Did you come by before?”
Josh nodded. “Once. A year ago. No, I guess more.” He smiled. “Your mom tossed me out.”
‘Your fault,’ her eyes had said. ‘All this is your fault.’
“Don’t blame her. I lost it a bit, Josh.”
“I figured.”
“The job. The election. Us.”
“Yeah.”
“I wasn’t jumping off the roof or anything but it was pretty - grim.”
“I wish you’d called. Come back after the election.”
“I was better off here. You couldn’t have done anything for me. I mean,” he said. “With your job.”
“And with Amy?”
Sam shrugged. “You couldn’t put me back together on your schedule.”
“Why not? You did it for me.”
Sam looked up from his drink. “How are you doing, Josh? How are things back at the ranch?”
“It feels like nearly the end.” Sam rested an appraising gaze on him as if he wasn’t sure which question Josh was answering.
“I guess it must,” he said.
“What about you, Sam? You look – you look fantastic.”
“I’m good. I’m writing. Got an advance from a publisher and everything.”
Josh felt the tiny drumbeat of his heart again, subsiding quickly. “What are you writing? You’re not -?”
“A political text. Law, politics and power. How our system hinders good law making. You’re not in it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Josh smiled guiltily. Habits of mistrust were ingrained now. Even for Sam. He sipped the good coffee, looked away to a gap in the sky breaking through the cloud, blue like Sam’s eyes.
“Why aren’t I in it?” He demanded. “I make laws. I hinder good law making.”
“When I write my Washington political thriller you’ll definitely be in that.”
Josh was strangely satisfied with this. “Really? Thanks, Sam.”
A car drew up at the lights outside, the sound of the Supremes momentarily filling the room before fading away. Josh tugged his tie loose and rolled it into his pocket, unbuttoned the top two buttons of yesterday’s shirt. The collar felt grimy and he became conscious of this too.
“But you’d be better off writing in DC, wouldn’t you?” He tried again. “That’s where your sources are, right?”
“We do have telephones in California now. The postal service, the World Wide Web. Books even. The last century brought many innovations, undreamed of in the age of the gold rush.”
“Okay, okay.”
“And I’ve bought a house,” Sam said quietly. A gentler explanation.
“A house. Right.” If he had come with a plan it would have been ruined. “Where?”
“Just down the beach. I’m renovating, it was kind of a wreck when I bought it.”
“You’re not with your mom anymore?”
“Sometimes. The rewiring and the plumbing are just about done so I’m at the new house most of the time now.”
The spiky kid refilled Josh’s coffee and he tried again with the Danish pastry. His heart was making itself known again. Palpitations. The word always made him feel like an elderly aunt. Arrhythmia sounded manlier. But also sounded like something you would have to take to a doctor. He couldn’t face all that again.
“Are you still with Amy?” Sam’s voice broke into the silence.
“Nah,” he said. “It fizzled out.”
“How come?”
“Just the usual really.” Whatever that was. “How about you, are you with anyone?”
Sam hesitated. “No. Oh, but I came out to my mom.”
“Wow, really? How did she take it?”
“You can imagine.”
“Is that why she hates me?”
“No, she doesn’t know about us. She hates you for turning me Democrat.”
As the day brightened the shack began to fill with breakfasters, tourists in cut-off jeans and Venice Beach T-shirts coming in from LA.
“Hey,” said Sam. “Do you want to see my house? We can walk from here.”
Sam waited while Josh put his shoes and socks back on. Then they walked along a street of small shops and further along a grassy roadside with a feel of the countryside about it. They finally came to a sign announcing ‘Kowalski’s Dental Surgery’ and turned into a long sandy path where the sea could be heard but not seen. Sam opened his mailbox which seemed to be full of samples of dental floss.
“Dental surgery?” Josh asked as he waited, appreciating the sudden cool of the shaded path.
“It used to be a dental practise. Then Kowalski died while drilling.”
“You’re sure you haven’t moved in with a dentist? Because I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Sam smiled enigmatically and led him along the path to the house.
It was a Stucco house, vaguely Spanish looking in the way they used to build them in the middle of the last century. It had a new red-tiled roof and new windows but was obviously in the throws of building work. Piles of supplies and equipment were scattered around the front among the dusty palms which grew there. The walls needed a new coat of white paint and the curved steps to the arched doorway were waiting tiling. But it was a beautiful house.
“Okay, Josh, there’s a big hole just inside the doorway. Watch your step.”
Sam opened the front door and edged around a hole in the floorboards. Then he took Josh’s arm to guide him around it too. “Is that a design feature?” Josh asked.
“There are holes all over the place. So look where you’re going. I fall in one a day.”
Josh smiled. “I can imagine.”
They were in a small hallway with several rooms and a winding staircase coming off it.
“There are bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. Or I keep believing there will be. I live downstairs at the moment. Come and see the selling point.”
He led Josh into one of the ground floor rooms. It was large and would eventually be a living room. It was as unfinished as the rest of the house with wires showing in the unplastered walls and significant holes in the floorboards.
Here Sam had set up a futon, a rack where some of his clothes hung, an old chest of drawers and a desk with his computer. Books and papers piled on the desk and on the floor next to it. There were four boltholes in the boards in the middle of the room presumably where the dentist’s chair had once been fixed. Josh could easily imagine how the chaos would be driving Sam to distraction.
There was a large pair of French doors encompassing all of the side of one wall and as Sam pulled back the makeshift curtains that covered them Josh noticed the ocean just outside.
“You’re kidding,” he said taking in the view.
Sam opened up the French doors and the sound of the sea echoed through the room. Newly laid decking outside led from a porch area straight down to the water. Going outside, Josh followed it to its end where sea washed up at its sides.
Virtually all that was visible from here was a wide empty expanse of ocean, bluer now the cloud had lifted. Far down to the left he could see some buildings of the town but a deep planting of trees and bushes mostly concealed these. To the right all he could see was sea.
Sam had followed him down. “What do you think?”
“Its practically a ship. You’ve bought a semi-aquatic house.”
He turned to look back at Sam standing in front of his house. It was a languid beautiful thing of arches and balconies and asymmetrical lines. It was unpretentiously beautiful and belonged, like Sam, to the sea. He thought of Sam’s place in Washington, painted blue, rather desperately in retrospect.
“It’s perfect,” he said sadly.
He suddenly felt Sam’s hand on his arm. “Josh, are you okay?”
He realised he had become dizzy and gripped the rail. “Er, yeah.”
“Did you just black out?”
“No, no, I’m fine.”
Though there was, now he thought about it, a moment or two unaccounted for. Sweat prickled at his temples and he fought a wave of nausea. His heart pounded in his chest and then, as it usually did, quietened.
Sam was leading him into the shade anyway and helping him into a sun chair. He disappeared and came back a moment later with a glass of water.
Josh sipped the water and claimed to be fine a few times. Sam drew up another chair. “Sit there for a while anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I am all right. I never do well in California, you know that.”
“And how have you been doing in DC?”
He shrugged in reply. Once when he was alone in his apartment in the middle of the night he had woken up on the bathroom floor with no idea how he had got there. But he had gotten up and gone to work. It was okay.
A movement caught his eye and a moment later a giant dark ginger and black ball of fur hurled itself at him. At first he thought it was an interesting new symptom and then he realised it was a cat.
“Jesus Sam, what the hell is it?”
Sam reached out and scratched the cat’s head and it nuzzled his hand.
“It’s a cat. He is, in fact, my cat.”
“This is an astonishing development.”
“Well, he was here when I moved in. I think he was the dentist’s. He lives under the floorboards and keeps the mice company.”
The beast stood on four paws and clawed Josh’s legs industriously.
“He likes you,” Sam observed.
“Is that why he’s tearing me to shreds?”
“I think so, but it was six months before he came anywhere near me. And he’s really against anyone else who comes here.”
“Is he meant to be round?” The cat turned a few times and then curled himself up on Josh’s lap.
“Do you want to know his name?”
“No.”
“Its Toby.” Josh laughed hard until his chest tightened. “Seriously, they’ve got the same personality.”
They sat quietly, the three of them. Josh looking out to sea, listening to the gentle motion of the waves and to Toby’s rhythmic purring. Finally he said.
“There’s no chance, is there Sam. There’s no chance that you’ll come back to DC?”
Sam hesitated. “I’m starting again, Josh and think I could be happy here. I’ve got to give that a chance.”
Josh let Toby’s fur ripple through his fingers. “But I had to ask though, didn’t I?”
Sam nodded and they fell silent again.
Josh looked at his watch. “Late. Dammit. I’ve got to go or I’m going to miss my flight.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
The strange light-headedness had settled though his heart was a constant presence and for some reason his teeth hurt. “Yeah, I am.” He gave Toby a gentle nudge. “Move it, fat boy.”
This had no affect so Sam swept the animal off Josh’s lap and put him on the floor. He wandered off in a cloud of reproach.
Sam drove Josh to the airport and parked at the departure gate entrance. He wrote down two phone numbers and an email address then Josh knew he had to get out of the car. He wasn’t ill. His heart missing beats was a symptom from way back.
“You know, you could come and visit some time,” he said.
“I will and you should come and stay once the house is finished.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Take care of yourself, huh Josh.”
“You too.”
Someone honked a horn behind them as if in protest against these banalities before driving off to a more likely bay.
“Can I ask you something, Sam?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you come out to your mom, after all this time?”
“I had this idea,” Sam said. “That I wouldn’t always be alone in that house and I didn’t want it to come as shock to her.”
“Okay,” Josh said and then got out of the car.
sam
earlier
Sam was woken by the sound of Toby moving about under the floorboards. Webb’s arm was flung over his chest and he eased out from under it, rolling off the futon without waking him.
He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and crouched over one of the holes in the floor. He called Toby’s name in a loud whisper but the cat did not emerge. After a silence the scuffling noises resumed and Sam was sure Toby was there, returned after three days mysterious disappearance.
The kitchen, which Sam crossed into now, was the only part of the house which had started to look as it was supposed to. The Maple units and stainless steel appliances had been fitted in the last week, water flowed from the taps and a flick of a switch brought electricity. The floor, some plastering and lighting still needed to be done but the room already had a pleasing sense of completeness, which the rest of the house entirely lacked.
He opened a can of cat food and put half in a bowl on the floor. When this did not entice Toby he tapped the can with the end of a spoon. The cat finally emerged from a hole in the kitchen floor, dust balls attached to his fur. He flung Sam a look of profound suspicion and rushed to the bowl, eating energetically.
The kitchen, like the living room, overlooked the ocean. For several minutes as Toby ate noisily and he waited for coffee to brew he watched the sea begin to turn from blue-black to a misty grey as the sun rose and he was perfectly happy.
Finally Toby finished breakfast and began to nuzzle, purring at Sam’s leg. All was forgiven. Sam gathered him up in his arms to scratch him under the chin and dust him off.
The peaceful morning lasted only as long as it took for the scent of coffee to reach Webb and wake him. Sam heard him start to move about. First visiting the newly fitted guest restroom by the front door, edging past the hole in the floor there, and then finding his way to Sam in the kitchen.
At the sight of Webb Toby jumped from Sam’s arms and vanished into the nearest gap in the floorboards. It might have had something to do with Webb’s habit of walking about totally naked. A cat might not appreciate the finer points of a perfectly toned body. The truth was though, Toby tended to vanish even when Webb was clothed.
Sam sighed and crouched over the hole. Sometimes Toby would shelter near the entrance just out of sight but this time he was totally gone. The message was clear. Toby wanted him to choose between him and Webb. It was really no choice at all.
He had met Webb at the gym and had been drawn to his light brown curls. The astonishing body had been an added bonus, which he had discovered soon after.
It had been a long time since he and Josh had broken up. A long time since his work and then the election had meant a night with a stranger was too great a risk. A long time since all he could do was stare at the ceiling at his mom’s house and sex had been the last thing on his mind.
But he was better now and freer and he discovered that sex was one thing Webb could do fluently. It was like a dam bursting on to a dry, dry land.
He had thought of it as coming back to life. Like working on the house, like getting fit again, like pouring everything he had learnt in the last ten years into his book. He had thought of it all as small steps forward.
The joy of discovering he was a physical human being after all expired when he made a discovery. He realised it was just not as much fun as with Josh. He was a guy, emotions were supposed to be an optional extra. But after a while, sex with Webb just made him miss Josh. That wasn’t moving forward, that was a step backward.
“Cat hates me,” Webb observed pouring himself a coffee.
“Yes,” Sam agreed absently.
Sam unconsciously averted his gaze as Webb turned to him. “Gym, Sam? Thought I’d put in an hour before work.”
“Not today, I’m going for a run instead.”
“Okay.” Webb took the coffee into the other room and when he came back to Sam he was blessedly fully clothed.
He was running his tongue over his teeth. “Feel like I ought to go and get my teeth cleaned. Might make an appointment.”
Sam had come to suspect that the dentist, Kowalski who had died while tending to a patient’s cavities was still here. A lot of people left with an urge to attend to their teeth. He had lost his electrician for an entire week when he had suddenly realised he had to have wisdom teeth taken out.
“Tonight?” Webb asked. That was the problem with Webb. He never used complete sentences. It was as good a reason as any to finish with him.
“Lets leave it for a while,” Sam said. “I’ve got to work plus I’ve got the bathrooms being fitted upstairs tomorrow.”
Webb shrugged. “Sure, whatever. Later, Sam.”
Webb left after asking Sam for dental floss. It was the easiest break up ever.
When he had gone Sam peered again into the hole in the kitchen floor. “Toby,” he called. “He’s gone.” But the cat was sulking somewhere and would probably not be seen for a while.
He poured himself a coffee and went through to the living room. Pulling on deck shoes he went outside through the French doors.
He followed the decking down to sit on the edge of the little jetty, where one day his boat would be moored, and sipped his coffee. It was a grey day. One of those rare mornings where the Sun did not sparkle a thousand diamonds off the top of the water.
Looking into the clouds for a trace of the Sun he thought of DC, of the fearful weather they sometimes had there. He thought of Josh coming to his apartment and bringing a blizzard one night. It had been right at the end of their relationship but even then they had sat close and he had fallen asleep with Josh’s hand in his hair.
He dismissed the dangerous thoughts and finished his coffee. Then he wandered back inside. He had intended to go to the gym but that was out of the question now and he decided to actually go for the run he had invented for Webb.
The other consequence of not going to the gym was that he had nowhere to take a shower. Brilliant. So, as he pulled on sweats, he called his mom and told her he would be round later. She was remarkably civil considering she had not really forgiven him for being homosexual and it had only been a few days since she found out. An announcement made in an excess of hope for the future shortly after discovering Webb’s brown curls and extraordinary six-pack.
He warmed up for a while and then took a path from the front of his house to the beach. In the sultry morning the air was rich with ozone and the beach was empty but for a few dogs daring the tide before their owners called them back. He ran hard and fast unhindered, the sea hushing at his feet, his mind focussed on nothing but the run.
He sometimes ended his run with a health drink at a small coffee place on the beach and as it came into sight he decided to head that way now.
At first he scarcely noticed the figure ahead of him, walking slowly in his direction. Then as he grew closer he briefly wondered why anyone would come to the beach early in the morning in a suit. Except to possibly commit suicide.
But then he found himself thinking of Josh again. He put it down to the effect of the break up with Webb. But as he approached, he made out his familiar size and build, the thousand unconscious registers of stance, mannerism and dress that identifies the one person you know from the other hundred who resemble them. He came to a stop.
“Josh. God.” He looked terrible.
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