Jen pictures Jimmy Wu and Polo in their gleaming Cigarette boat.
“Pirates,” she says. “They threatened to kill Casey’s dog. They threatened to burn down the Barrel.”
“They will not kill Casey’s dog,” whispers Belle. “They will try to burn down the Barrel. I see the Barrel bar now, just as you do. A woman argues with Casey. I don’t think they know each other.”
“Bette Wu.”
“Yes, Bette. I saw this Bette Wu on the beach here in Laguna,” says Belle. “Below Heisler Park. Posing in fashion clothes. Reclining on the rocks. Sleek like a seal, glossy black hair.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, Jen. But you know me, and you know my cosmic reality—tomorrow, yesterday, today—all the same.”
Jen opens her eyes and Belle does likewise. Her racoon eyes are sloppily drawn and the exhaustion Jen sees in them always follows a psychic excursion into their pasts, presents, and futures.
“I know this is hard work for you,” says Jen. She pulls her hand from Belle’s, patting the sun-wrinkled skin lightly.
“It’s always been,” says Belle. “Other people’s emotions and thoughts get mixed into my own. It frightens me when I can’t tell them apart. Even someone I’ve never met. But especially someone I’ve known so well and so long, who has powerful vibrations. Your past haunts and confuses me.”
“Have you ever been betrayed, Belle?”
Belle studies Jen sidelong and hard, a suspicious racoon.
“Never. I’ve felt love and loyalty from my friends and family all my life. They’ve been angry and afraid of me. Ashamed and confused. But they never betrayed me. Have you been?”
“No, the same.”
Belle points a jagged-nailed forefinger into the air between them. “I see your words here in the space between us—‘no, the same.’ They’re bright, lemon yellow. They wobble and fade. This is the color of a lie.”
Which Jen continues. “If I was betrayed I didn’t know it.”
“So much happens to us that we never see. Or admit to seeing.”
Jen holds Belle’s gaze again, detects a lack of sanity in her flat gray eyes, her botched makeup, her mane of filthy hair. Replaces all that with the memory of the beautiful girl she’d known and loved and hugged and argued and rode waves with. Nothing kicks you harder than time, she thinks.
“There I am,” says Belle. “As you see me.”
Another long look shared, eye to eye.
“Jen? I don’t see your latest friend. Mark.”
Which of course brings Mark to Jen’s mind, duly intercepted by Belle.
“Ah,” she says. “Where has he been?”
“We didn’t work out.”
“Why? You were so interested in him the last time we talked.”
“He’s a little too loose and a little too young. NMR.”
“No man required, hmmm. After all these years, that’s where we end up. Your mom and dad good?”
“Dad’s retired. Playing golf and kind of bored. Mom’s still hyperactive, running the girls’ watersports programs at the high school.”
“I always loved those two.”
“And yours?”
“They’re still in Montana when it’s warm. Dad’s thinking of selling his practice and retiring.”
Jen comes around the little table and hugs Belle. Wonders for the millionth time if this is really good for either of them.
“I’ll see you later, Belle.”
“But which me will you see?”
Belle’s old joke from when they were kids.
At home on Castle Rock, Jen changes into a one-piece swimsuit and warms up for her hour of breath-control training in the high school pool.
Stands for a moment at a window and looks across the rain-greened, unspoiled hills, Laguna Canyon Road a winding black ribbon bustling with cars, the blue sky holding wispy clouds.
Loves this canyon. Loves these beaches. Loves this city.
In the kitchen she pours the last half of her black pepper vodka down the sink.
In the upstairs bathroom she flushes the Xanax pills down the drain.
