“I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to say.”
Couldn’t he see how embarrassed I was? I should have worn a sign around my neck that said: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE SKITTISH ANIMAL, AS IT IS UNACCUSTOMED TO HUMAN CONTACT, AND WHILE IT MAY HAVE SEEMED FRIENDLY THE LAST TIME YOU VISITED, IT HASN’T QUITE ADJUSTED TO ITS GROWING HABITAT.
After a moment Daniel said, “What about fate?”
“What about it?”
“Don’t you think it’s really strange that we ended up being coworkers?”
“I think it’s random,” I said. “Like life.”
A loud beep startled both of us. Two beeps. They came from our walkie-talkies.
“Uh, guys? We’ve got a problem. I think another pipe busted in the garage,” Joseph’s voice said, crackling over the radio. “It smells like sewage, and it’s dripping on someone’s BMW. Piss and shit everywhere.”
“Not again,” Daniel moaned. He set the rubber band on the counter and slid it toward me. “Please don’t leave. We’ll talk later. Right now I’ve got to find a pair of gloves and a hazmat suit. Who knew driving a hotel van would involve so much feces?”
He jogged away, and I was unsure how I felt about our conversation.
Maybe I should give this fate thing a second look.
Because I was pretty sure karma was doing its best to make me pay for what I’d done.
“The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.”
—Bertie Wooster, Very Good, Jeeves! (1930)
4
* * *
The leak in the hotel garage kept everyone busy for hours. I saw Daniel only twice more, briefly, when he logged a couple of trips for the hotel van. And then, before I knew it, the morning-shift people—the “Roosters”—were filing into the hotel to take over. In the shuffle, I locked myself in a restroom stall and stayed there, rereading a dog-eared Elizabeth Peters paperback; I always keep a comfort mystery book in my purse for emergencies.
I know. It was cowardly. But the first ferry back to Bainbridge Island wasn’t for another hour, and no way was I going to do what I’d planned: hole up two blocks away in the Moonlight Diner to wait. Not when Daniel was so eager to talk.
I needed the Moonlight to be my refuge after work. Seattle may be sleepless, but it wasn’t open all night. And downtown was severely lacking in early-morning havens for commuters. I couldn’t hole up in the hotel’s restrooms every morning after work, three days a week, for the rest of the summer.
But that was a problem I’d deal with later. Right now I pinned on my proverbial Coward’s Badge—waiting until I was certain Daniel had gone—before power walking all the way to the ferry terminal and boarding the Wenatchee. Then I collapsed in the first free seat I found, wrapped myself up in my jacket, and promptly fell asleep.
I used to think that was my superpower—being able to fall asleep almost anywhere, anytime. I’ve always needed a lot of naps to get through the day, probably because I have trouble staying asleep at night. But then my grandfather, a retired Coast Guard detective who shares my napping ability, fell asleep while piloting a boat three years ago. He crashed the boat and messed up his leg. That’s when he got diagnosed with narcolepsy.
My grandmother was shocked. She’d always joked that we both had lazy genes and that it didn’t come from her side of the family. Grandpa’s doctor gave her a list of possible symptoms: Always sleepy. Irresistible and frequent bouts of sleep during the day, sometimes in the middle of working, eating, or conversation. Dream imagery and hallucinations before falling asleep or after waking. Temporary paralysis after waking. Occasionally losing muscle tone and seemingly “passing out” for seconds to minutes immediately after experiencing strong emotions, especially laughter.
Knowing that was all well and good, but there isn’t a cure. All you can do is manage it. And if Grandpa could live with narcolepsy for fifty-plus years before it became too bad to handle, then I figured that if I had it too—and maybe I didn’t—I had plenty of time to sort it out. It was only sleep, after all. And I wasn’t piloting boats or even driving a car. What was the worst that could happen? I’d fall asleep at the hotel registration desk? Hopefully not. I just needed to make sure I had plenty of sleep before and after work.
I’d be fine.
Like now. After sleeping through the half-hour ferry ride across the water, I promptly woke when the boat’s melancholy horn blew. We were entering Eagle Harbor.
Home. I’d made it through work, and I’d made it through Daniel.
Sitting across the bay from Seattle, Bainbridge Island is an idyllic community that could be considered the Nantucket of the Pacific Northwest, dense with evergreens on land and sailboats on water. It’s a sleepy, laid-back island—nightlife includes a couple of bars and a grocery store that stays open until eleven p.m.—but we get our fair share of photographers and style bloggers who like to use us as a romantic backdrop for pretty pictures. And every day tourists take the ferry over from the city to stroll through the harbor village of Winslow, our downtown area: waterfront seafood restaurants, local wine, art galleries, and a darn good ice cream shop.
There’s not much else to see or do here. But if you’re lucky enough to live on the coast like we do, you get top-notch views of the harbor and, in the distance, Seattle’s skyline.
Those views were not to be underestimated. By the time I disembarked from my ferry and hiked the ten-minute stretch of sidewalk around the harbor, the sun was rising over blue water scattered with sailboats, and it was a welcome sight.
Our waterfront home sat five steps down from the coastal road, through a tidy yard with a greenhouse and a lily-surfaced koi pond with no koi. We used to have a giant white-and-red koi named Clementine in the pond. She was as big as my forearm and lived there since my grandma was a little girl. My grandma took care of her, then my mom, and then me, when I moved in here after Mom died. But Clementine got sluggish after Christmas, and then I found her floating in February. Sometimes koi can live a hundred years, but Clementine only made it to fifty. It was as if she knew Grandma died and didn’t want to go on.
Grandpa and I weren’t ready to replace her yet. Some people think fish are unemotional pets, but they get to know and trust you. Clementine would not only eat watermelon and orange slices from my hand, but she would circle the pond and stay near me when I’d help Grandma weed the flower beds outside the greenhouse. Fish have personalities; they’re just quiet ones. I guess that’s why I liked them. I could relate.
Our house has been in our family since it was built in the early twentieth century. Sometime before I was born, my grandfather painted it sky blue and updated the kitchen—except for the black-and-white checkerboard floor that I crossed now to set my keys in a little bowl on the counter.
After calling upstairs and getting no answer, I padded through the kitchen to look for Grandpa out back. Most of the homes around us had been extensively renovated or torn down and replaced with modern million-dollar masterpieces built by eco-architecture firms. Compared to them, our old Craftsman was an eyesore. But on a clear day, we had the same glittering views of the Seattle skyline and Mount Rainier, the same narrow rocky beach for a backyard—which was where I found my grandfather that morning.