It’s not that bad, she told herself. And, no, it wasn’t. But it wasn’t that good either. What had she been doing with herself—shopping, sleeping, laughing at the uselessness of everything and everyone around her, when all the while it was she who was useless, she who was doing nothing with her life, she who was simply marking time. She thought of Bree and Sam, tangled in Sam’s bed while they talked of nothing. Secretly, she thought, they all despised one another but were too afraid to admit it for fear that the other two might side against the one who committed such a treasonous act.

  And she really didn’t despise them. She was no better; it was just that she had woken up and they were still asleep, dreaming a world in which they were safe from experiencing anything other than temporary highs. Well, she would have to leave them there to dream. Unless, of course, they could shake themselves awake, which she doubted.

  She put aside thinking about what would come later and thought about what she would do now. She still had the rest of the summer to fill up with, well, with something. But what would that be? She would, she assumed, continue to work with her father. And then there’s Rhodes, she remembered.

  Rhodes. Had she really agreed to go out with him? It was such a strange thought. Yet she was looking forward to it, perhaps not with a sense of excitement but with a willingness to see what might happen. He might, she thought, surprise her. Or he might turn out to be as big of a nerd as he seems, she told herself.

  And then she realized—it didn’t matter. Nothing, none of it, mattered. The only thing that did was that she be willing to try. Whatever happened after that could be dealt with then. Even if she turned out to be wrong—wrong about whatever choices she would make, and she was sure that she would make many, probably even in the next few hours—she would at least have tried. And if she got hurt in the process, she knew now that she would get over it and move on, a better person for having allowed herself to be human.

  You’d better stop all this personal growth, she told herself. Otherwise there won’t be anything left to fix. Then she heard another voice, her real one, laughing at her. Don’t worry, it said, you’ve got a long way to go.

  Now she laughed, too, as she picked up her iPod from the bedside table and slipped the headphones over her ears. “That’s fine with me,” she said, turning the volume up and letting the music fill her thoughts. “I’m in no hurry.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Hudson tipped the bottle and watched as the whiskey poured onto the grass, where it was sucked up by the earth. “Here’s to you, Ed,” he said.

  He took a sip from the bottle, then handed it to Ben, who drank as well. Ben held the bottle out. “Want to leave him the rest?” he asked.

  Hudson took the bottle and set it on the ground, leaning it against the marble wall of the columbarium. “Enjoy it, buddy,” he said, patting the plaque that marked where the ashes of Ed Ricketts were interred. He stood and looked at Ben. “We should have poured more for John,” he said. “There’s still a lot left.”

  Ben put his arm around him. “I’m sure they’re sharing it,” he said.

  They walked together through the rows of graves in the Cementerio El Encinal. “Flora Woods is down that way,” said Ben. “Want to stop by and say hello?”

  “She’s probably busy,” Hudson said. “Let’s leave her alone.”

  They walked, connected where Ben’s hand rested on Hudson’s waist, through the quiet cemetery. Dusk was blooming, turning the oak trees that gave the place its name into giant, mute sentries keeping watch from the shadows. On three sides of them the green lawn of El Estero Park, and the lake beyond, separated the graveyard from the rest of the city, creating an island of the dead amidst the roads and houses. It would be, Hudson thought as he looked about him, a good place to spend eternity.

  Earlier they had payed a visit to Salinas and Steinbeck’s grave in the cloyingly named Garden of Memories. Unlike his friend, Steinbeck was buried in the ground, or at least beneath a concrete slab containing the graves of several other relations. Hudson and Ben had sat on its edge, paying their respects, splashing the whiskey they’d brought as an offering over the plaque bearing Steinbeck’s name.

  Now, exiting the Cementerio El Encinal, Hudson felt a door shutting behind him. He’d said good-bye to the two men who had been, along with Paul, the center of his life for so long. He thought he should be—almost felt he should be—sadder than he was. Instead, he found it a fitting end to their relationship. Having thanked them for their friendship and drunk to their health, he was leaving them to their rest.

  “I guess that’s it,” he said to Ben. “For that part of my life, anyway.”

  “Not quite,” said Ben. “We have one more stop.” He looked at Hudson with a mysterious smile, and try as he might, Hudson couldn’t get him to tell him what his secret was.

  He found out a few minutes later, when Ben parked his car in the Breakwater parking lot and walked with him down Cannery Row. They stopped in front of the plywood wall that still covered the front of the old Pacific Biological Laboratories. Ben looked up and down the street, then pulled aside a portion of the wall.

  “Go on,” he said, motioning for Hudson to slip through.

  He followed a moment later, making sure the wall was once more secured. They were standing in front of a small building, its walls covered with once-dark wood boards worn almost silver with age. A short flight of stairs led to a door. Ben went up them, dragging Hudson by the hand behind him.

  Hudson stepped into a small room. “How did you get in here?” he asked Ben.

  “Al came through,” Ben said. “I thought you still might want to see it.”

  Hudson was walking around the room, touching the books and ledgers, the typewriter on the desk, the glass jars filled with specimens of starfish and octopus swimming in the cloudy brownish-yellow baths of formaldehyde. “Was this all his?” he asked, looking with awe at the phonograph sitting on a small table. A record—Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige—rested on the turntable, and several dozen more were stacked on the shelf beneath.

  “Most of it,” said Ben. “I think they’ve replaced some things over the years. But this is basically what it looked like when he lived here.”

  Hudson turned around. “I feel like we’re trespassing,” he said. “Like he just ran out to get some more beer at Wing Chong’s and will be back any second.”

  Ben sat in one of the two armchairs in the room. Hudson remained standing, examining the rest of the room. In one corner there was a cot covered in a red and black, plaid wool blanket. One corner of it was turned back, and there was a dent in the center of the lone pillow, as if its owner had just recently risen. Hudson touched it, expecting to feel heat but feeling only cool cotton.

  “This is where it all happened,” Ben said. “The parties, the all-night conversations, everything.”

  Hudson took a seat in the other chair. The seat gave beneath him, and he wondered who else might have sat there before him. Joseph Campbell, maybe, come to talk to Ricketts about the White Goddess and the archetype of the Everyman. Steinbeck, of course. Maybe Sparky Enea, first mate and cook from the famous Sea of Cortez journey aboard the Western Flyer. Any of them—and many more—could have, almost certainly had, visited Ricketts.

  The light was fading, but Ben had turned on a small lamp. Its glow filled the room, spilling across the floor like honey, warm and intimate. Hudson and Ben, contained within its reach, sat silently for a long time, until Hudson said, “What are you thinking?”

  “Ad astra per alia porci,” Ben replied.

  “To the stars on the wings of a pig,” Hudson translated. “I’d forgotten about that.” He laughed, thinking about Steinbeck’s personal logo, a winged pig he called Pigasus. It had appeared in letters to friends, drawn by Steinbeck himself, and it symbolized what he saw as his role as a writer.

  “He didn’t think much of himself, did he?” Ben said.

  “No, not much,” Hudson agreed. “I don’t think he had any idea how good he really was.”

  “Most really good people don’t,” said Ben thoughtfully. “It seems to be the ones who aren’t good who celebrate their own genius.”

  “Meanwhile,” Hudson added, “a real genius like Ricketts is sitting in a shack like this actually working.”

  “Maybe I should ask Al if I can move my office here,” Ben said. “Maybe it would inspire me to new heights.”

  “Where would you put Angela?” asked Hudson. “There’s no room.”

  “I guess I’d have to add on,” Ben said. “I feel like that sometimes,” he added a moment later. “Like Pigasus,” he clarified when Hudson, confused, looked at him curiously. “Trying to get off the ground with only a tiny pair of wings.”

  “I feel like that most of the time,” Hudson told him.

  “Maybe everyone does,” said Ben. “Maybe we’re nothing special.”

  “I think you’re pretty special,” Hudson told him.

  Ben looked at him for a long, lingering moment. “You have to leave soon, don’t you,” he said.

  “Janice and Renata come back on Saturday,” he said, not wanting to answer Ben’s real question. “I should probably get back to New Haven.”

  He thought of Marty. What would he say when Hudson told him he’d abandoned the Steinbeck manuscript? And that reminded him, he had to remember to take the original out of the freezer and mail it to Helen Guerneyser. Then there was the decision to be made about what—if anything—he was going to do about a dissertation.

  He’d managed to forget that there was a life waiting for him back in Connecticut. Now, when he thought about it, going there felt more like leaving home than it did coming home. He knew, too, why that was. He looked at Ben, who was watching him, and knew that he was looking at the reason.

  “I have something for you,” Ben said. He reached into his shirt pocket and took something out. “Here.”

  Hudson reached across and took what Ben handed him. It was a card, small and plastic, like any one of the many cards already in Hudson’s wallet. Only this one had a picture of a diver on the front, along with the words “Open Water Diver” printed in blue.

  “Turn it over,” Ben said.

  Hudson did, and saw his name and an ID number. Below that were the words “Certifying Instructor,” followed by Ben’s name. Hudson held the card up and moved it back and forth in the light. “I’m official,” he said proudly.

  “It came this morning,” Ben said. “Just in time.”

  He means just in time for me to leave, thought Hudson. It’s almost as if he’s rushing me out the door. He was hurt by the idea that this might be true. Did Ben want him gone for some reason, maybe so that he could start his new life without complications? Was he now regretting what had happened between them?

  “Are there many places to dive on the East Coast?” he heard himself ask, the deliberate implication being that he would soon be living there again.

  “Some,” Ben answered. “Mostly wreck diving, but that can be interesting. There’s a great book about some divers who found a German sub from the Second World War off the coast of New Jersey. You should read it.”

  For Hudson, the magic seemed to have been leeched out of the room. He and Ben could be sitting in any living room in any house anywhere in the world. Whatever had been left of Ed Ricketts was gone now, and with it had gone the feeling of hope that Hudson had been carrying around with him, however uncertainly, that maybe Ben wanted something more from him.

  He slipped the certification card into his pocket. “We should probably go,” he said. “Before it gets any later. Caddie’s probably wondering where you are.”

  Ben stood, as did Hudson. They were facing one another, a space of less than a foot between them. Ben reached for the lamp to turn it off; paused; and, without looking at Hudson, said, “Do you think they were lovers?”

  Hudson looked around the room. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Ben, still not looking at him, said, “But what do you think?” he repeated.

  “I think they were,” Hudson answered. “But I also think it doesn’t matter if I ever know for sure.”

  Ben turned around. The lamp was still on. “Stay,” he said.

  Hudson looked into his eyes. The light was reflected in them, and in the center of that light he saw himself, in miniature, as if he were on fire. “Stay,” he repeated, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Stay,” said Ben. “With me.”

  They stepped into one another’s arms. Hudson found Ben’s mouth, kissed him, shook from the sudden release of fear he’d been holding inside of him, as if he’d been holding his breath and had now reached the surface. Ben, too, was shaking, and Hudson clung to him, trying to stop it even as they stumbled, together, toward the waiting cot.

  His head touched the pillow, fit neatly into the hollow that was already there, as if it had been he who had lain there night after night dreaming of the warm waters of Baja and the snow-dusted shores of Alaska; he who had fallen there, joyously drunk, and laughed while the room spun in dizzying circles around him; he who had sat there, lost, while the voice of Coltrane’s sax had soothed his soul for as long as the song lasted. The cot embraced him, took him in its arms while Ben, above him, fumbled with buttons and underclothes, buckles and shoes, until both were naked and their hands were touching bare skin.

  The light—still golden, but now suffused with something else that made Hudson feel that he was looking at the world as through the haze of the longest, warmest summer afternoon—touched Ben’s back and transformed him. His fingers stroked and kneaded, coaxing from Hudson a longing that quickly traveled along the hidden byways of his body and filled every empty space with want. He pulled Ben to him, his lips whispering his desire.

  Ben, seemingly driven by whatever strange power the bed on which they lay gave up, was quick to comply. Hudson had only to guide him to the place of his need. Then came the breaking open of a door, the momentary loss of breath, the indescribable ecstasy of being taken. Ben’s hands on his thighs, pulling him in, the heavy beating of flesh against flesh. Above him Ben’s face, haloed in gold, containing everything he’d ever wanted.

  He reached down, finding the expression of his joy where it sprang up from between his legs. His fingers caressed it, drawing up from its root the light that poured from Ben and into his belly. He ached with the fullness of it, cried out in surprise and wonder as he felt the joy rising, rising, rising, until it broke over him and he called out to its creator: Ben! Ben! Ben!

  As he rode the wave up toward the sun, there was an answering call. Ben plunged once more into his center, his breath catching in his throat as he released. The pulse that rippled through him like a stone dropped into a still body of water expanded ever outward, growing in strength as it sought the shores of Hudson’s insides, gaining speed and rising up to a great height until, crashing against the rocks, it burst into a million shining drops. Then Ben fell, covering Hudson’s body with his own, holding him as they both tumbled once more to the earth.

  Neither spoke. Hudson stroked Ben’s hair as he would that of a child he loved. After some minutes, Ben raised his head and kissed Hudson tenderly, covering his mouth, his face, his throat with the lightest of touches. Hudson wrapped his legs across Ben’s, holding him there, never wanting to let him go. From outside came the sounds of laughter as unseen travelers walked by the house, oblivious to the wondrous thing that had just occurred beyond the graffiti-scrawled wall.

  Hudson closed his eyes, and the voices on the street became those of men walking through early morning fog that smelled of fish and boiling oil and the sea. He heard, too, the shrill, high sound of the whistles, the coughing and sputtering of engines, the barking of dogs. He heard all of these things as if they poured from the mouth of Cannery Row itself, a song born of struggle and forgotten dreams, but mostly a song of joy and life. He heard this song, and he knew then that he loved this place more than any other, loved the sweet, stinking beauty of it and its people. And although much of that beauty was gone now, there was still enough of it left—in this room, in his heart, and in the heart of the man in his arms—to keep the song alive.

  Knowing this, he opened his eyes and looked into the strong, bright face of his future.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2007 by Michael Thomas Ford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2007926733

  ISBN: 978-0-7582-8679-6

 

 

  Michael Thomas Ford, Changing Tides

 

 

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