Ride wild horses again.
41
Belle Becket has her fortune-teller’s table set up near the sea wall just south of the Laguna Hotel. The wall has the painting of John Stonebreaker banking off a comically perfect wave at Brooks Street—just a few blocks south of here. For the first time, the painting shows its age to Jen: the gray cement divots, the weakening colors, John’s hair fading from yellow to white.
Belle has on the same tie-dye hippie dress she was wearing last month. Her hair is its usual tangled mess, her gray eyes piercing, the racoon makeup lurid.
The November day is sunny and blustery, and the breeze wobbles her sign. Jen notes that Belle has raised her prices. Now the short future forecast is five dollars and the long one ten.
Belle comes around and Jen hugs her gingerly, tries not to breathe. Since almost drowning she dares not hold her breath. Sends a panic through her—her body just won’t do it. She breathes in Belle’s sharp, wild-gourd scent.
Belle steps back, taking one of Jen’s hands in both of hers. Gives Jen an alarmed look.
“I’m sorry about the Barrel! I’m so glad they arrested Jimmy Wu! Good police work.”
With a lot of help from Bette, Jen thinks.
“I walk past it every day,” says Belle. “The rehab is going faster and faster.”
“I got the loan and the builders are good.”
“I see a beautiful Barrel there by summer.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right. Short or long today?”
Jen has five twenties balled up in the pocket of her jeans. Pushes them into Belle’s almost-empty mason jar.
“Long, Belle. Tell me what you see.”
“Sit.”
Belle moves the shadeless lamp that holds her handwritten grocery-bag sign, then takes Jen’s hands and stares at her as Jen closes her eyes.
Then Belle.
“Now I’m underwater with you, Jen. Seeing through you. Feeling what you feel. You are frightened and alone and rolling over a reef. You hit a rock but your helmet stays on.”
“It was terrible, Belle. I almost died.”
“I read your story.”
A long silence. Jen knew that Belle would read her piece. That was one of the reasons she wrote it.
“You push off the rocks for the surface. You break into the light. You gasp for air but the whitewater hits your face and mouth.”
Jen concentrates on this. It’s another memory that has stolen back into her. It’s like seeing it happen for the first time. She feels the terror again, those cold, bony fingers trying to take hold of her.
“Now I see nothing but black,” says Belle. “You have stopped seeing.”
Black indeed. Thoughtless silence, forever.
But now Jen opens her eyes to the breezy gray light of Laguna. Colliding with death has changed her. She can face the memories of it, and feel the fear—but she can also banish them from her inner eye. Replace them with the bright, living world around her.
“The black can’t hold me down anymore, Belle. I can make it. Make it to the surface and breathe.”
“It is the euphoria of survival. And congratulations on Casey winning. You must be proud. Your mother, too.”
They share a look over Eve Byrne’s invincible will to win. Especially for her surf and swim and water polo teams, of which Jen and Belle were once a part.
A long silence.
Belle opens her eyes and folds Jen’s hands to the tabletop, palms down. Pulls her tie-dye scarf snug around her neck. Crosses her arms and fixes Jen with a serious look.
“In your article, the New Year’s Eve party scene in Laguna Canyon was a real bummer. I could feel your heart breaking when you were in that bathroom.”
Jen’s imagination arcs back to that night. Over twenty-five years ago, in a flash. She closes her eyes again, lets the memory play.
“I saw and heard you in the words,” says Belle. “The people making love in an upstairs bedroom. You recognizing a voice. And a familiar moan. You, hiding in a bathroom and the door is cracked and the light is off. You waiting. John walks past. Moving with purpose. Then Ronna Dean. Your school friend, the singer.”
“I wasn’t planning on revisiting that today,” Jen lies. “It still hurts like the night it happened.”
“But why did you write it this way, Jen?”
“What way, Belle? What do you mean?”
Belle’s eyes are steel gray and unblinking, framed by the heavy black-and-white makeup. The breeze blows a tangled strand of hair across her forehead.
