Authors: Anne Argula
“What difference would that make?”
“I seem to be going back further than that.”
“Like to the time of the murders?”
“I think so.”
We drove back to the white part of the island and found a horsey shop that also sold clothes. All I wanted was a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and something heavier against the chill that would come with evening. They had a draped off corner for a changing room, and we took turns in it. The jeans were all Wranglers, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid back in Pennsylvania. My service shoes were black Rockports which went fine with the jeans. I got a t-shirt with a tribal bear on it and a hooded sweatshirt. I put it all on the Visa. I knew the Lieutenant would trash it as an expense item, but he was going to get it anyway. He could have the clothes too, if he wanted them. Odd also got jeans and a Shalish Island t-shirt and a light Eddie Bauer windbreaker that folded up into its own pocket. It was a great relief to get out of the uniforms, which we put on hangers and laid neatly in the trunk of the Lumina. We stashed our belts and pistols, flashlights and batons. I felt a ton lighter.
The cafe was across the street. I was thinking I might treat myself to pie. Odd was two steps behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw him taking it in, the cafe, in his dreamy way of having seen it all before. It wasn’t much to look at. Exposed to the salt air, it needed paint, like most of the structures we’d seen. There were a couple old-timey soda signs in the windows, like, “Moxie.”
Going into that cafe, we looked like mother and son in spanking new jeans, mom with a hooded sweatshirt. Which I quickly pulled off because the place was overheated. The T-shirt tried to come off with it, exposing my belly, and suddenly a dozen limp dicks at the counter were interested. Da frick. Half of them were old Indians, the other half maybe fishermen who didn’t go out that day.
Free of the sweatshirt, I saw Odd sitting down at a booth at the window. I followed him. We sat on opposite sides of the table. He gripped the edge of it and leaned toward me and whispered, “You’re not going to believe this, Quinn.”
“I’m ready to believe anything.”
“I’ve been here before.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
“On the island?”
“In this cafe, in this booth.”
My nipples popped again. Sweat trickled down my cleavage. I took a fingerful of T-shirt and pulled it away, fanning some air down over my chest.
The waitress was a woman in her thirties, but they were hard years. She asked us first if we wanted coffee.
“Iced tea,” I said. I was burning up.
“And for you?”
Odd shook his head, lost his voice.
I watched him until she came back with the iced tea, but he never said anything. Soon, a pleasantness came over his features. They softened, relaxed.
“So…what will you have?” asked the waitress.
“You bake your own pie?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said proudly.
“Apple?”
“Fresh today.”
“That’s for me, a la mode.”
“I’ll have a black ‘n tan,” said Odd.
Both the waitress and I looked at him and
huh
?
“A what?” she asked.
“A black ‘n tan.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“He’ll know,” said Odd.
“Joey,” she called to the kitchen. “Do you have a black ‘n tan?”
Joey, a recovering alcoholic in his late twenties, poked his head through the pass-through window. His head was covered with a Harley Davidson wrap. He yelled back, “Say what?”
“A black ‘n tan.”
“Never heard of it.”
An old Indian man at the counter said, “They used to make them here. Long ago. The Stauffers owned this place then.”
“Right,” said Odd, “like when the Stauffers had it.”
“A black ‘n tan,” said the old Indian, “is an ice cream sundae. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on the bottom. Then carmel. Crushed up peanuts. A blossom of whipped cream. A cherry on the top.”
“That’s it! Thank you, sir,” said Odd.
My nipples had not gone down. On the contrary, the rest of me was straining to pop out as well, like my whole body was on a countdown to explode. I wanted to go screaming through the rain.
“I’d like to try that,” said the waitress, and for a second I thought she had read my mind. No, Odd had inspired her. She was like a cynical bartender who had discovered a new drink.
After she left, I said, “Odd,” and there was a quaver to my voice, “what the hell is going on here?”
“You know how something happens and you say, whoa, all this has all happened before?”
“Yeah, it’s called deja-vu, which is about all the French I know.”
“This isn’t like that. I
know
this place. I
know
these people.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I used to sit in this booth. How can that be, unless…?”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I was one of them once.”
“So, who’s the old guy, then?”
I nodded to the old Indian who had remembered the ice cream sundae. Odd looked at him hard. I was about to tell him he didn’t know shit, when he called out, “Mr. Drinkwater!”
The old man turned on his counter stool. “Yes, sir?”
“Thank you very much!”
“You’re welcome.”
I held my head in my hands, much like Stacey’s mother had when I first saw her, like events had overtaken her, and now me, and things were spinning out of control, and maybe if I squeezed my head very hard everything would get forced back to normal. I felt columns of sweat worming over my ribs.
“I had a life before this one,” Odd said, “and I spent it here on this island.”
“That ain’t the way it works,” I said, “not where we come from.” Meaning basically, I guess, from good Catholic and Lutheran families.
“When I was a kid, I was told a lot of stuff about life and death that turned out to be lies.”
“Yeah, well, me too,” I admitted, “but you’re talking…” I could hardly bring myself to say it. “…reincarnation. Are you really ready to believe that stuff?”
“I never thought about it before, but one life does sound like kind of a short deal, doesn’t it? Just about the time you get your poop in a group, it’s over. Why shouldn’t we get another crack at it, keep trying ‘til we get it right? That would make some sense.”
“That doesn’t make
any
sense. What would be the point of living?”
“No, otherwise, what would be the point of
dying
?”
Woi Yesus. Was this ever a conversation I didn’t want to have.
“I knew this place before we ever landed on it. I knew about Frank’s boat, Jimmy crewing…”
“We don’t know if that’s true.”
“Oh, we know, we know.”
I knew I wouldn’t bet against it.
The waitress came back with my pie and his ice cream sundae.
“Whaddaya think?” she said.
“That’s it,” said he. “That’s exactly it.”
I was slow to dig into my pie. An uncharacteristic sudden loss of appetite. I watched as Odd began his approach to the sundae, the black ‘n tan. He ate a couple spoonfuls and looked up at me.
“Well?” I asked.
“Too sweet and gooey. I never did like desserts and sweets much. I like salted stuff.”
“This time around,” I said, a little sarcastically.
“Don’t bust my balls, Quinn.”
Enough guys say that to me enough times, and one day I’m likely to believe I am a ball-buster, but that day hasn’t come yet.
“Let’s say you were one of these yonkos, in your other life. Which one were you? I mean, what if you were the old hermit, who lived on the hill? What if
you
killed those kids, I mean, in that life? You gonna turn yourself it? They gonna prosecute you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous…but if I am, then don’t I have to find a way to remove the stain…somehow?”
I gave him a withering look, and he snapped at me.
“Look, dammit, if it’s not that, what is it?”
“Intuition, good guesses, a little psychic stuff working, everybody’s supposed to have some. ESP and all that.”
“This is way beyond ESP. Way. It’s like we were sent here by somebody or something for a specific reason.”
“We were! Da frick! We were sent by the lieutenant to bring home Charles T. Houser. And, by God, that’s what we’re gonna do tomorrow morning, if I have to sit next to him and hold the bucket while he pukes.”
“We still have ‘til then,” said Odd.
9.
In the ladies’ room, I pulled off my bear T-shirt and wiped myself down with moist paper towels, trying to lower my whacked-out thermostat. I said a few
Hail
,
Mary’s
and
Our
Father’s
by rote but not without sincerity. The soul is not something I never thought about before, even doubted after a particularly bad day on the job, but I always wound up accepting the trajectory as laid out by the church: it comes into being at conception, occupies a vessel for the blink of an angel’s eye, and then ascends into heaven or descends into hell or gets lodged for a million years in purgatory. The recycling of the soul was the stuff of tabloid papers and cheesy TV shows, not something to be taken seriously. And yet, at a certain level, it sounded good. Who ever gets it right in just one lifetime? And what better way to walk in someone else’s shoes than to walk in someone else’s body? But do the math. There are five billion people in the world, soon there will be six billion. Where do the extra billion souls come from? Unless it’s not one soul each. Maybe we all share the same soul matter, and share it with all living things.
By the time I came out of the ladies, the lunch crowd was filling the cafe. More idle fishermen, more old Indians, some retirees in for the specials. Odd had given up our table and was standing at the end of the counter, talking to the old man who had remembered the Stauffers and the sundae thing.
I was on my way to collar him, when I saw Frank wheel in Angie and head for the last vacant table, where Angie’s chair would replace one of the cafe’s. They didn’t recognize me until I was next to them.
“Well, look at you,” squealed Angie. “Don’t you look cute? Now, you’re fitting right in, aren’t you?”
“Where’s your…’partner’?” asked Frank. I was beginning to think a leer was his permanent facial pattern.
“At the counter, makin’ friends.”
They swiveled around and found Odd.
“Oh, doesn’t he look good too? Isn’t he a hunk?” said Angie.
“Old man Drinkwater,” said Frank. “He’ll talk your ear off. Have you had lunch? They have a killer tuna melt here. Join us.”
“We already had something,” I said. “What’s the word on our cottage?”
“Well, the word on your cottage is…it’s yours,” said Frank happily. “Go for it.”