Ex 7 - AJ

“Hey, hon, sorry I missed your call. I was, uh, busy.” Oh. So he was with a girl. He’s a fisherman, used to small coastal towns or the limited company of a gill-netting boat, but for the last month or two he has been blowing insulation, hanging sheet rock, and building cabinets for a house in the dark woods outside Seattle. She waited for the story. Someone who always had a story to be told, speeding up and slowing down, raising his voice and waving his arms as the excitement grows, his voice was flat, as though he’d bent and stretched, lifted heavy objects all day and just got off work. But if he’d been working, he’d have said he was working, not busy. How’s the family, when is your brother’s wedding, yes, the dog is fine, how are you liking it there. “I sat out on the hammock today. It’s hanging from a pecan tree that’s dropped blooms all over the ground.” There’d been snow on the ground the last time they spoke. They’d never crossed seasons without speaking before, and were only speaking now because it was the night of April 14th and she hadn’t done her taxes. He’d done them for her the last two years. Her hands on the keyboard, waiting for Turbo Tax to download its $45 update, she held the phone against her shoulder and thanked him for calling back. She’d already decided that if he didn’t she would slide that free-in-the-mail tax program into her computer and figure it out herself. She had over 24 hours. It’d be fine. It’d be better than him hanging up on her again. He admitted seeing her call come in the night before, but said he’d been unable to answer, he was caught up. “I don’t want to talk about it. The city is too real for me.” She was up pacing, pissed off that the stupid tax program wouldn’t promise her lots of money and be done. “Nothing happened to me, I was just there,” he continued. But again, “I don’t want to talk about it,” they we went on to talk about plans for the summer, when he heads out to Bristol Bay, whether or not she’ll be looking for whales. Turbo Tax was done downloading, and she was plugging in numbers as they spoke. She was well into the deductions section, trying to find a way to cheat without cheating. “It was down on the beach last night.” Again, her mind wandered. She remembered a time long ago when she was taking buses around Mexico with a blonde Canadian and “Sex on the Beach” was the cool new drink they were all ordering in night clubs. “Did you know her?” He knew what she was asking. There were now just as many W-2 slips on the floor as in her lap. She didn’t want to ask that, but how could she not. She had the taxes figured out, maybe they should just end the conversation. His responsibility went no further. Neither did hers. “No, I didn’t know her. I was just sitting on the beach. I don’t think she even knew I was there. I don’t want to talk about it.” They went back to her taxes. “Is there any way I could deduct my move?” she asked him. They’d both moved many times, but neither had ever been assertive enough to find a way to get the government to pay for it. Or random moves didn’t count. And he’d been sitting still for a decade now. “The city is just too real for me.” She reminded him that bad things happen back home, also. Crazy things. There are shoot-outs at the airport. Both this winter and the last someone had been accidentally drug, to death, under a car. A former stripper, a week ago, had been convicted of puppeteering the murder of a man who put her down as benefactor on his life insurance policy. A man had gone mad with a machete right before Christmas. “All I’d done is walk down to the beach, because I miss the water. I haven’t seen the water in a long time.” That rang true. When he’s home, he knew whether to pour a second cup of coffee without getting off the couch. The sound of the waves told him if it was too rough to cross the bay that day. There’s a tide table on the bookshelf, in the kitchen, on the bathroom floor. “The Loon,” his wooden skiff, was older than he was and beached well for clamming. “All I wanted was a little time alone on the beach.” “How old was she?” There were still some holes in this story, and she needed a few details worked out. “Thirty-seven. She has the exact same birthday as my good buddy Dave.” I did the math real quick, he’s 5 years older than me, I’m 32. “ I think now she’s glad I was there.”