settles into one long chain of events with little to connect the days except the fact that that's what they do.
Finally I turned and walked up to the house. One of the older vacation homes along this stretch, it has wide, overgrown lots either side and consists of two interlocked wooden octagons, which must have seemed like a good idea to someone at some point – I'm guessing around 1973. In fact it just means there are more angles than usual for rain and sea air to work at – but it's got a good view and a walkway over the dunes down to the sand, and it costs me nothing. Not long after I came here I met a guy called Gary, in Ocean's, a bar half a mile down the road from the Pelican. He'd just gotten unmarried and was in Oregon trying to get his head together. One look told you he was becalmed on the internal sea of the recently divorced: distracted, only occasionally glancing at you directly enough to reveal the wild gaze of a captain alone on a lost ship, tied to the wheel and trying to stop its relentless spinning. Sometimes these men and women will lose control and you'll find them in bars drinking too loud and fast and with nothing like real merriment in their eyes; but mostly they simply hold on, bodies braced against the wind, gazing with a thousand-yard stare into what they assume must be their future.
It's a look I recognized. We bonded, bought each other beers, met up a few times before he shipped back east. Long and short of it is that I ended up being a kind of caretaker for his place, though it doesn't really need it. I stay there, leaving a light on once in a while and being seen in the yard, which presumably lessens the chances of some asshole breaking in. I patch the occasional leak in the roof, and am supposed to call Gary if the smaller octagon (which holds the two bedrooms) starts to sag any worse over the concrete pilings that hold it up on the dune. In heavy winds it's disconcertingly like being on an actual ship, but it'll hold for now. In theory I have to move out if he decides to come out to stay, but in two years that's never happened. I last spoke to him three months ago to get his okay on replacing a screen door, and he was living with a new woman back in Boston and sounded cautiously content. I guess the beach house is a part of Gary's past he's not ready to divest, an investment in a future some part of his heart has not yet quite written off. It'll happen, sooner or later, and then I guess I'll live somewhere else.
Once inside, I opened the big sliding windows and went out on the deck, belatedly realizing it was a Friday night. I'd known this before, of course, sort of. The restaurant's always livelier, regardless of the season – but Friday-is-busy is different to hey-it's-Friday! Or it used to be. Perhaps it was this that made me grab a couple of beers from the fridge; could also have been the half-joint floating around my system, coupled with a feeling of restlessness I'd had all day; or merely that I was home a little earlier than usual and Becki and Kyle had, without trying, made me feel about a million years old.
I decided I'd take the beers down onto the beach. A one-man Friday night, watching the waves, listening to the music of the spheres. Party on.
I walked to within a few yards of the sea and sat down on the sand. Looked up along the coast for a while, at the distant glow of windows in the darkness, listening to the sound of the waves coming up, and going back, as the sky grew lower and matt with gathering cloud.
I methodically drank my way through the first beer and felt calm, and empty, though not really at peace. To achieve that I would have needed to believe that I had a place in the world, instead of standing quietly to one side. I'd been in Oregon for nearly three years. Floating. Before the Pelican had been bar work up and down the coast, some odd jobs, plus periods working the door at nightclubs over in Portland. Service industry roustabout work, occupations that required little but the willingness to work cheaply, at night, and to risk occasional confrontations with one's fellow man. My possessions were limited to a few clothes, a laptop, and some books. I didn't even own a car any more, though I did have money in the bank. More than my co-workers would have imagined, I'm sure, but that's because all they know about me is I can hold my own in a busy service and produce approximately circular Italian food.
Finally it rained.
Irrevocably, and very hard, soaking me so quickly that there was no hurry to go inside. I sat out a little longer, as the rain bounced off the waves and pocked the sand. Eventually I finished the second beer and then stood up and started for home.
As Friday nights go, I couldn't claim this one had really caught fire.
Back inside I dried off and wandered into the living room. It was nearly two o'clock, but I couldn't seem to find my way to bed. I played on the web for a little while, the last refuge of the restless and clinically bored. As a last resort I checked my email – another of the existentially empty moments the Internet hands you on a plate.
Hey world, want to talk?
No? Well, maybe later.
Invitations to invest in Chinese industry, buy knock-off watches and stock up on Viagra. Some Barely Legal Teen Cuties had been in touch again, too. As was their custom, they were keen to spill the beans on how they'd got it on with their roommate or boss or a herd of broad-minded elk.
I declined the offers, also as usual, hoping they wouldn't be offended after the trouble they'd gone to for me, and me alone. I'd selected all the crap as a block and was about to throw it in the trash when a message near the bottom caught my eye.
The subject line said: PLEASE, PLEASE READ
Most likely more spam, of course. One of the Nigerian classics, perhaps, the wife/son/cat of a recently deceased oligarch who'd squirrelled away millions that some lucky randomer could have twenty per cent of, if they'd just send all their bank details to a stranger who'd spelt his own name three different ways in a single email.
If so, however, they'd titled it well. That combination of words is hard to ignore. I clicked on it, yawning, trying and failing to remember the last time I'd received a message from someone in particular. The email was short.
I know what happened
Nothing else. Not even a period at the end of the sentence. The name of the apparent sender of the email – Ellen Robertson – was not that of anyone I knew.
Just a piece of spam after all.
I hit delete and went to bed.
Next morning started with a walk up the beach, carrying a big cup of coffee. I've done that every day since I've been living in Gary's house. Far as I'm concerned, if the beach is right there and you don't kick off the day by walking along it, then you should move the hell inland and make way for someone who understands what the coast is for.
I was up early, and the sands were even more deserted than usual. I passed a couple of guys optimistically waving fishing rods at the sea, and a few people like me. Lone men and women in shorts and loose shirts, tracing their ritual walkways, smiling briefly at strangers. Sometimes when the sun is bright and the world holds no shadows at all I imagine what it would be like to have a smaller set of footprints keeping pace with mine. But not often, and not that morning.
I walked further than usual, but it was still only eight-thirty when I got back to the house. There was already a message on the machine. It was from Ted.
‘Christ,’ he'd said, without preamble. ‘Look, I hate to call you like this. But could you come lend a hand? Someone's broken in. To the restaurant.’
His voice went muffled for a few moments, as he spoke brusquely to someone in the background.
Then
