Chapter 8: Hot Lava

7 October 2015

The day had come and I could no longer avoid it.

I’d spent most of September around Seattle getting my necessary checkups, spending time with Maddie and even with Treasure, meeting with friends. And writing. I kept looking at my outline for Becoming the Storm, which I had originally titled Sins of the Father. I knew what was going to happen and I hated it. I kept putting it off. It wouldn’t be this chapter. But then I saw the writing on the wall, as it were.

It was about to happen.

I left Seattle and towed my trailer out to the Coast. I was camped where I could hear the Pacific crashing against the shore. It was time and I knew who was going to die. I’d known since I introduced the character. It was why I introduced her. It was how I’d built her character. Only there was a problem.

I’d fallen in love with her.

I was camped in a rustic park that was all but closed for the season. Power and water were still connected and I chose the site farthest away from other campers and the host site. I would need a place where I could scream and cry without being interrupted. I was plagued by nightmares. Samantha frowned at me in my dreams, unwilling to have someone else make her sacrifice. Hannah turned her back on me. Even Valiant Endeavor looked mournful. I woke up each morning in tears and even set the manuscript aside before I finished the chapter. I couldn’t go on.

I went for a long walk on the rocky beach listening to the crashing waves and letting them drown out my sobs. People don’t really understand what it means when I say my characters are more real to me than some of the people I know. I remembered writing the scene in The Prodigal in which Kate left Tony and Wendy and disappeared. I’d been a wreck for a week, even though I knew she was coming back. I’d fallen in love with her, too. Losing her reflected the final days of my marriage to Treasure. Only after three impossibly heartbreaking chapters, Kate came back. This time, there would be no miraculous return.

Dead was dead. I’d proven that in For Money or Mayhem. A fellow author I’d met told me her book club read it and argued most of the evening until they finally agreed she had to die. But writing that scene had hurt enough to trigger the events that left me out here on the shore alone.

Thursday morning, October 8, I wrote the scene and then continued for another five thousand words so I wouldn’t have to stop and dwell on it. A miracle had happened. Someone else had died. It was still sad. I still hated it. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t kill my love. She was far too precious to me.

I closed my computer and didn’t write again for two weeks. I sat in that wilderness where I could hear the ocean crashing against the shore and watched my fire. Even writing it as ‘just’ a memory makes me want to open another bottle of wine and live in it.

A Long Time Ago: Not Just Sorrow

I don’t know when or why I became such an emotional person. I guess I always have been and my emotions are nearer to the surface with each year that passes. But that is not to say that all my emotions are sorrowful.

Treasure and I were ‘older’ when we got married. More experienced. Wiser. I’d been married twice before and couldn’t remember ever being so much in love. Treasure had one behind her and a couple long term live-ins. The smile on her face matched the one on mine. Dan, one of my groomsmen, said I looked drunk. Nicki giggled each time she looked at me.

Being older and wiser, we rationally discussed our relationship—especially, whether or not we wanted children. We agreed we did, but we shouldn’t rush into it. We used protection for the first year while our bosses pushed us to move to Seattle. Treasure thought it was a temporary move and we’d be back in Minneapolis in a year. I thought I’d never shovel snow again. We were both wrong.

We stopped using protection.

And nothing happened.

I mean, even when we were making love and trying to get the baby started, nothing was taking. Since we were older and it didn’t seem to be happening, we pretty much resigned ourselves to not having children and had ‘the talk’. That’s the talk that says, ‘I’m getting too old to safely have a baby. We should stop trying and make sure we don’t get pregnant by accident.’ It was serious. I was going to go get snipped.

An old friend visited town that summer and, of course, we wanted to show him all the wonderful things in Seattle. That meant taking him for a walk. Three miles up the side of a mountain. It was a little more rigorous than we’d planned. He did fine and took the lead. When I got to the top of the trail, he was sitting under a tree reading a book. Next to him was a beautiful, crystal clear lake.

“You been in?” I asked. The temperature was in the 80s and we’d been climbing for two hours.

“Huh-uh.” He shook his head. This was supposed to be an adventure. I stripped off my clothes and dove into the beautiful water.

And died! Not literally, but I thought I was going to die. It was like diving into an ice bath. My heart stopped. My balls crawled up next to my liver. I turned blue. I managed to get out of the water just as Treasure was arriving at our stopping place.

“You swam?” she asked. I nodded. I couldn’t say anything. Treasure stripped off all but her bra and panties and dove into the water. “Ack! Fuck!” she screamed. “You bastard! Get me out of here!”

We had makeup sex that night. It had been a couple of weeks because I’d had a project I was on and then my friend came to visit. The next day, Treasure had to fly back to Minneapolis for a family meeting. Then, when she got home, she was sick. I nursed her back to health and she complained that she thought she was going into menopause. She’d missed her period.

The doctor gave us the real news. She was pregnant. It wasn’t difficult to fix the exact date and time of conception. I’d even made a mention of the incredible sex we’d had after our hike in my journal. I almost never mentioned sex in my journal. We figured our bodies had suddenly woken up screaming, “They’re going to kill us! Quick! Reproduce!”

Nine months later, I held my beautiful daughter in my arms.

I tried to write about the experience in the last chapter of The Prodigal where Tony holds his children for the first time. There simply are no words that I can think of that describe the intensity of that moment. Every single emotion that I’d ever had in my life rushed through me when I cradled her in my arms. Every synapse in my brain exploded. Tears and laughter and love and fear and fierceness all competed in my shrunken brain. There was room for nothing but to marvel at the tiny miracle in my arms.

It’s not just sadness and despair that make me cry. I’m wiping the tears away now as I remember that moment and look forward to when she’ll visit me for Thanksgiving.

Back to the Flight Time

I stood back and looked at my truck and trailer. Everything had been emptied out of them. They were parked on blocks. I had canvas covers sealing them up. I was leaving the home I’d been in for twenty-eight months. I stopped in the office and told them I’d be back in somewhere between four and eight months. I’d let them know.

I was going on an adventure.

“You’ve got your ticket,” I said. “I’ll meet you in Hilo and we’ll have ten days to just run around and explore the Big Island. Don’t forget your bathing suit this time like you did in Florida.”

“Dad! Take it easy,” Maddie laughed. “It’s you who’s flying out tomorrow. I’ve got a month yet.” My daughter was driving me to a cheap hotel next to the airport from which I would begin my great Hawaiian adventure in the morning. In twenty-eight months, I’d been in forty-four states and three Canadian provinces. I’d traveled 55,000 miles. I’d had nine lovers. And suddenly it felt like I was just starting out. Everything I needed was in my backpack and computer bag.

Maddie hugged me and kissed me on the cheek in front of the hotel.

“Someday, I’m going to be just like you, Dad,” she said. I groaned. “What?”

“Don’t grow hair on your chest, honey. It’s just not fun,” I said. We both laughed. She got in her car and waved as she drove away. Hawaii beckoned.

I arrived in Honolulu and took a room in the least expensive hotel I could find downtown. Which is not to say it wasn’t expensive, but it was still half the price of the hotels two blocks away on the beach.

Waikiki.

My flight got in too early to check in, but the concierge checked my bag and I headed to the beach. In my rush to get the trailer buttoned up and under cover, I’d left my Panama hat on the bed. It would still be there when I got back, but that meant I could buy a new hat. One of the first shops I saw had various beachwear, souvenirs, and hats. I grabbed a white raffia trilby and I was ready for Hawaii. It cost $12. I could replace it with a good Panama later if I needed to.

I got to the beach and walked in the sand until I reached a stretch where hotels were built right out to the water and you couldn’t cross their private section of beach. Then I turned and wandered downtown. My memory of Honolulu was considerably more rustic than what I found. The entire downtown looked like an upscale fashion mall. I suppose tourists buy crap they could get at home just to say they got it in Hawaii. At three times the price. I found a craft market that reminded me more of what I’d seen on that first trip. And, of course, being reminded of the first trip also reminded me of Allison.

A Long Time Ago: One Woman Show

I went to Honolulu in ‘89. That sliver of time between Belle and Treasure when I was still trying to be a playwright becoming a novelist and earning most of my money as an editor and book designer. The truth was that I’d already quit writing plays, but an old friend tracked me down.

“Ari, I’m ready for you to write my first act,” she said when I picked up the phone.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“How many women have ridden on a bus with your hand in her panties while she asked you to write a play for her?”

“Um ... Oh! My god! Allison?”

“You are one hard dude to track down,” she laughed.

“I’m glad you found me. But how did you do it?” I asked. “It’s been something like ten or fifteen years.”

“Yeah. If anyone should ask, you are crappy at keeping track of your lovers. I called your high school. They had a really nice woman who wasn’t associated with the school give me a call back and listen to what I wanted. It turned out she was some kind of judge! I almost hung up and went into hiding. But she said she knew your mother and would pass along the message.”

“My god! Judge Carson is looking for me?”

“No. She said she knew your mother and would give her a message. Your mother is very nice. You should call her,” Allison laughed.

“I suppose you had to tell her how we met,” I sighed. My poor mother. Since Dad died, she’d become lonelier and more conservative. She was still teaching, but she said it made her tired.

“I didn’t tell her everything. Just enough to let her know that I really did know you. When I started talking about your one-man performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she started laughing and told me that you were single and I should get in touch with you right away.”

“My dear mother can’t believe that I’ve made two bad choices and is certain that the right girl is one I went to school with. I guess you are close enough. So tell me what inspired this nationwide search to find a broken down writer.”

“Ari, you promised to write the first act for my one-woman show. I’ve got a place to perform and even enough of a following that I should be able to draw an audience. As soon as the director heard my proposal, he jumped all over it. He kind of jumped all over me, too, but we worked that out. Will you do it, Ari?”

Hell, yeah!

We did a lot of long-distance work that spring. Allison was in New York and I was in Minneapolis. She had a sharp wit and could fire lines back at me almost as fast as I could write them.

“We need to work together where my shoulder isn’t cramping from holding the phone to my ear,” Allison said. “Ari, let’s get together and have some facetime.”

“I suppose I can come to New York, but I’m on a pretty tight budget, Allie. I don’t think I could afford a hotel.”

“Is that a way of inviting yourself to sleep with me?” she giggled.

“I hold our little time together as a treasured memory,” I said.

“After I reminded you. Let’s meet halfway.”

“What’s halfway between Minneapolis and New York?”

“Our Town.”

“What town?”

“In Chicago, Ari. Do you remember the Goodman Theatre School?” she asked.

“Yeah. It was on my list of colleges to go to, but I couldn’t afford it.”

“I went there. Only it changed and was absorbed by DePaul University. I wasn’t happy about it, but it came out okay. But last year, they got a new theater and they’re performing Our Town this month. Just before I leave for Honolulu. I’ll spring for a room in the Blackstone,” she said.

“Are you suggesting that I come to Chicago and shack up with you?” I laughed.

“Yes.”

“Oh! Allie, I don’t even know what you look like now.”

“You’ll recognize me. I’ll be wearing a white dress and a veil.”

“Al-li-son?” I said.

“And I weigh three hundred pounds,” she laughed. “Just come and bring me a script, Ari. We’ll have fun!”

We did have fun. She didn’t weigh three hundred pounds. We enjoyed the show. We enjoyed Chicago. We didn’t get married. We worked on the script and made edits. I promised to have them finished and waiting for her in Honolulu next week.

And in that rather drab and worn hotel room, I listened to Allie present her version of the Molly Bloom speech in Ulysses. Naked. Lying on the bed. With me lying next to her.

I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

And I entered her. Yes.

A month later, I joined her in Honolulu for the final dress rehearsals and opening of her big show. That was where we were late on the night of November 8, 1989 when the house manager interrupted Molly’s speech to tell us the Berlin Wall was coming down. I’ll never forget.

Allie and I spent ten days together. Her opening got good reviews, though perhaps not the raves we were hoping for. I think people came just to see her lying on that bed naked. I know I could have watched it over and over.

It was only one weekend, but she fulfilled her dream.

And it was not for naught. Allie got a call Monday morning from a producer at a regional theater in San Diego offering her a prime role. We both packed our bags the next day and kissed goodbye at the airport. I wrote the character Allison Perkins in Model Student as a tribute to the beautiful actress I once knew.

Back to Honolulu

In my several trips to Hawaii over the years, there was one thing that I’d never managed to do. I’d never been to Pearl Harbor. There are tour groups all over the place. I chose one that seemed to be reputable and early in the morning, boarded their bus in front of the hotel.

I have objected to violence, including but not limited to war, all my life. When I write about violence it is physically painful to me. War, especially, is a wasted effort in which old men thin the herd by sending young men to battle. At least the elk in Yellowstone face their rivals in one-to-one combat. Our old and greedy men kill off the young, the disadvantaged, the deceived, and the uneducated with war. So, I knew I would have a hard time at Pearl Harbor.

Two things impressed me most. First, it is a monument that does not foster hatred. That surprises me. After all, it memorializes a “Day that lives in infamy.” In a surprise attack, 2,403 people were killed that day. Yet we are at peace with our enemies and both sides feel remorse. Our response killed between 90,000 and 130,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet both sides have apologized and become friends. How different that is from the Twin Towers, where 2,996 people died. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, 210,000 Afghanistan and Iraq civilians have died in our response—considerably fewer than the 1.5 million estimated by other sources. Yet the monument at the Twin Towers keeps hatred and suspicion alive and driving our political affairs fifteen years later.

The second thing that impressed me was that many veterans who did not die in the battle have had their remains interred on the Arizona with their comrades. We can speak of loyalty, comrades in arms, the depth of friendship. Or we can speak of the guilt felt by those who survived and felt they should have died with their fellows.

I don’t have an answer to either of the questions I pose here. Touring the monument, the ship, and later the cemetery, left me somber and even a little depressed. Such a waste of human life. Let us ban abortion for we need more fodder for our cannons.

I flew out to the Big Island the next day, happy to be away from the commercial center of Honolulu. I landed at Hilo and immediately looked for a rental car. $400 a week? For that? I paid a dollar and rode the bus to my hotel, then started looking for alternatives.

I found a cheap rental on Craigslist for $30 a day, which was still too expensive, but was closer to what a rental car should cost. It was an individual who kept three or four cars that he rented cheaply. I used it to drive out to the cabin I would be renting for the next four months.

Lehani gave me a tour of the property and welcomed me to Hawaii. I was far more interested in welcoming her than in the cabin itself. She was very attractive for someone not all that much younger than me. She met me in a bikini top and a pair of shorts that barely covered the bottoms. Of the bikini. They did not fully cover other bottoms. But this was a business for her. She showed me where the lights were, how the shower worked, and gave me instructions for using the composting toilet. Her guidance was exactly as she’d quipped in our email correspondence. “Poop in the toilet. Pee in the yard.”

She left. There was no exchange of keys. There was no lock on any of the doors. There were no windows. The cabin had a roof and screened sides. The composting toilet was about twenty feet out the back door. The shower hung from a tree in the jungle about thirty feet out the other side. It did have hot water if you waited for it.

Inside, it was a twenty by twenty room. There was a small loft above the kitchen where I intended to sleep, but after a week there, I moved down to the sofa bed on the main floor. It was getting out of bed in the middle of the night and trying to negotiate the ladder down the stairs before I lost the battle of the bladder that drove the move. I had WiFi, but no cell connection. There was a small stove, a kitchen sink, and a refrigerator. It was isolated enough that no one could see into the cabin unless they were approaching it and even then, it was raised on stilts so they looked up at it. The back and side yards weren’t visible from either the well-concealed neighbors or the street that dead-ended in front.

I loved it!

I’d never felt so isolated. I immediately went to town and stocked up on all the groceries I thought I could fit in the limited storage space and then drove back to Hilo to return my rental car. It was an hour and a half bus-ride back to the cabin. The bus ran twice a day. The road had a sign that said, ‘Narrow curving road.’ It didn’t mention the roller coaster aspect. I wouldn’t be able to make that trip very often.

Lehani had mentioned that a neighbor was going to sell his car so I wandered around the area until I saw an old car for sale. I called up to the house and a guy came out to see what I wanted. The result was that by the evening I owned a 1989 Toyota Corolla with 215,000 miles on it. The total cost was $1,400. I figured that even if I had to give it away for $500 when I was done, it would be cheaper than any rental.

I opened my laptop and started writing.

A Long Time Ago: Lakeside Retreat

Not my finest hour. I’d just lost my teaching job for having an affair with a student. It was a very conservative University. It was also the end of any pretense that I was a Christian. They made that very clear. I was definitely going to hell and I was going to go there unemployed and penniless.

It made no difference to Anabel Lee. She was the student assistant that I’d become addicted to. I’d been out to see Carly in Denver in July, but in September she moved to LA and I didn’t know where. Rose and I had seen each other only a few times that fall. It seemed like she was on the road all the time. That’s why I was surprised to find her waiting in my living room when I got home with a bottle of scotch and a bag of potato chips, intent on drowning myself and hastening the trip to Hades.

“You look like hell,” she said.

“Gee, thanks. You look like heaven.”

“Planning a party?”

“No. I was planning to drink myself to death. I lost my job today.”

“Come here, sweetheart. Wouldn’t you rather drown your sorrows in me?”

“God, Rose! What am I going to do? It was that whole thing with Anabel Lee. The school frowns on it.”

“Relationships with students?”

“Sexual relationships. At all. I was doomed just for being with you. She’s going to hell, too, though they are keeping her on probation in hopes of redemption,” I said.

“Any chance?” Rose laughed.

“Not likely. We’ve agreed to lie low for a couple weeks.”

“Perfect. Then you can come with me for a long weekend. Pack a bag,” she said.

“Really? What will I need?”

“Warm clothes. I’m not sure if there is heat in the cabin. And your typewriter and lots of paper. You have to give my pussy a rest occasionally,” she said. “I’m going to go grab my bag. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Be ready.” I stood staring at her. “And Ari, it will be okay. You’ll see.”

It didn’t take all of ten minutes for me to pack. I grabbed up the necessary stuff for a long weekend in a cabin ... somewhere. I even grabbed my Chemex and filters and the bag of Ethiopian Harrar coffee I had. I stepped out my door at the same time Rose did.

“Wait,” she said. “Back inside.” I stepped back. She spotted the bottle of scotch and bag of chips where I’d put them when I came in. “I knew you’d forget those. Now open that bottle and pour yourself a shot. Then we’ll load it and the chips in a bag and take them with us.”

“You want me to have a shot of scotch before we leave?” I asked.

“It’s a long drive and I want you relaxed enough to tell me all about it. If we need to, we’ll stop at Hinckley and you can have another shot. Or a blowjob. It depends on what you want.”

I downed my shot of The Glenlivet and shoved the bottle and glass in my bag before following Rose out the door. By the time I reached her car, I was feeling the effect of the whiskey.

We talked right past the rest area in Hinckley. I didn’t need any more scotch with Rose sitting beside me and she promised much more than a blowjob when we reached the cabin. We were in heavy snow by the time we reached Moose Lake. It was dark by the time we reached Duluth with the snow showing no sign of letting up. Rose pulled into a Rainbow Foods and we made a quick trip through the store gathering up everything we could think of that we’d need for a long weekend.

“It’s not far now,” Rose said as we headed north again on 61 toward Two Harbors. It wasn’t far, but it was still long. The weather reduced visibility and road conditions were worsening when she turned down a dark lane and plowed through a low drift to come to rest in front of a cabin. “We’re here.”

“You must be exhausted from that drive,” I said. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm and I’ll give you a nice massage.”

“I like the sound of that. My shoulders feel like one big knot. Let’s cart our supplies in,” she said.

The idea of a nice warm cabin exceeded the reality. It was freezing cold. The first order of business was to build a fire. There was a stack of wood next to the firebox. I checked and found a sheltered wood supply just outside the back door. I also heard crashing surf. We were on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

While I got the fire going and opened a bottle of wine, Rose heated a ready-made meatloaf dinner we’d picked up in the deli section of the store. It was simple, but we were so hungry and cold that it was a greatly appreciated meal. The cabin was slow warming up. There was electric heat in the baseboards, but it was only on high enough to keep the water pipes from freezing. We finally got our coats off after dinner and went to the bed. The whole cabin was one big room with a bathroom off to one side.

“How did you ever find this place,” I asked. “Or happen to have it on a weekend that I needed it so much? I’m so happy to hold you in my arms, Rose.” We pulled a blanket around us, each having a hand out to hold our wine. The other hand was wrapped around each other. It was becoming kind of dreamy.

“Well,” Rose said. “I was a bitch.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“There’s a coworker who thinks he is God’s gift to women. He has left a trail of broken hearts and he’s only beginning to understand that the path he is on is a dead end and there is nothing behind him to go back to,” she said. “This morning when I finished my presentation on the upcoming market year, he came up to me and put an arm around me. He pulled me close and whispered in my ear. ‘That was a great presentation. How would you like to spend a long weekend up at my cabin on the North Shore?’ I knew he was suggesting that I have the weekend with him and it disgusted me. I like to be kissed before I’m fucked. And he had the balls to make this suggestion where everyone could see us.”

“That is so gross! Are we expecting company?”

“No. God, no! He brought it on himself. He pinched my butt. I squealed. Everyone in the office turned to look at me. I started bouncing up and down like I’d just won the lottery. ‘Logan just offered me the use of his cabin for the weekend! My boyfriend is going to be so excited. I’m taking the rest of the week off and am going home to pick up Ari! Thank you, Logan! I really needed this.’ You should have seen his face when the women in the office started to applaud.”

“What would you have done if he’d told you to shove it?”

“He didn’t dare. When a predator is endangered, he tries to show his innocence, not his anger. Believe me, I’ve had to deal with a lot of them when I travel. He just turned and smiled, then spoke loudly enough for all those close to hear. ‘Let me get you the map and directions. You’ve worked so hard lately, why don’t you take the whole week? No one else is using the cabin.’ Then he went to get the map. He has no idea yet how much that boosted his credibility in the office.”

“I guess I’m glad I got fired. I’d hate to have missed this.”

“You wouldn’t. I had it all planned out to kidnap you,” she giggled. “I’m getting warmed up now, Ari. I don’t think I need all these clothes on.”

Rose and I spent a weekend that stretched into a week. I delivered the promised massage, several times. I massaged her neck and her shoulders. I massaged her back. I massaged her legs. I massaged her butt. I massaged her breasts. I massaged her clit. She was the most relaxed and attentive that I’d ever seen her. She welcomed my cock in her pussy and wept when we came together.

That wasn’t every time. Biology just doesn’t work that way. I tried to make sure she had orgasms as frequently as possible, but I wasn’t concerned if I came before I’d succeeded. Nor was Rose. Even if I wasn’t ready for another round, I was happy to make love to her. She was just as happy to receive my fingers or my tongue as my cock.

We bundled up during daylight hours and walked out to the shore, careful not to get too close to the icy rocks. Lake Superior is a fresh water ocean. It has tides and surf. My family history told me that my grandfather’s brother or his uncle, not sure which, died on Lake Superior when his boat or ship sank. I’d found his name on the same tombstone as my great grandfather and great grandmother in Eden Prairie. In the middle of winter surface temperature of the water is in the low 40s. The deep parts of the Lake maintain a constant temperature of about 39 degrees. With the air temperature close to zero, when the waves crashed on the shore, the water froze before it hit the rocks. We could feel the sting of slivers of ice hitting any exposed skin.

But the sound was incredible. If it wasn’t so cold outside, I’d stand out there and listen to the waves crashing on the shore all day long. And all night. Holding Rose in my arms at night, I could still hear the waves outside. I was beginning to think that maybe my whole infatuation with Anabel Lee was just that. I could be happy with Rose. I’d need to find a job. I’d have to put up with her travel, but life could be good.