Beneath the Lake Page 3

  Well, adult Ray consoled himself, at least summer is here. Long days to spend indoors, cranking the air conditioning, binging on a TV series about people leading awful (but awfully exciting!) lives.

  Then the drop-dead heat of July came beating around, and with it Uncle Gaspar. The Mercer family lawyer broke their quarterly schedule and paid Ray an early visit, bushy gray eyebrows wiggling with mischief, bad thing #3 issuing from between his elderly-cherub lips.

  ‘Now there’s a man who looks like he could use a vacation,’ Gaspar announces, finding Ray in his booth and clapping his hands with a Scoutmaster’s glee. ‘Pack a bag. Meet at the old camping ground. You father will handle the rest. Food, supplies, equipment, gear, fireworks. You know how he loves to prepare for the eventualities. Your siblings are already on board. Just make the drive. Wednesday, ten days from next.’

  ‘Have you lost your mind? Has he?’

  ‘Bring Pam. How is Pam these days? She always wanted to meet the whole clan. This is your chance to —’

  ‘Pam’s gone.’

  ‘That’s, well, quite unfortunate. Can she be salvaged? Your father is still hoping for a male heir. From the next generation, of course.’

  ‘Can she be… forget it, Gaspar. Pam’s out. I’m out.’

  The lawyer grins and wags a finger.

  ‘Tell Warren and Francine I’m busy. Better yet, that I refuse.’

  ‘Mm. No.’ Gaspar glances at his watch.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You cannot refuse.’

  ‘He talks to his board of directors more often than he bothers with me. Leonard is MIA and Colt sends a card at Christmas. I’m supposed to jump at the chance to spend a week pretending I still have a family? Roasting marshmallows at some redneck paradise in Nebraska? Does he really believe that’s going to happen? They won’t miss me, Gaspar. And that’s a fact.’

  Gaspar leans back, scratching his formidable belly, as a bus boy delivers his usual ice water hold-the-ice. He swirls the glass but does not drink from it.

  ‘It is a funny thing, you know. People in Colorado, they want a beach vacation, they fly down to Cancún, Puerto Vallarta, all the way the hell out to Hawaii, and for what? Paying thousands just to sit on a beach, swim in the ocean, soak up the sun. But Blundstone, this is only six hours away. The water is clean, far safer than the ocean. And the sand is like something stolen from Thailand. As with that South East Asian delight, anything goes at Blundstone. Or so it was, back in the day. Before the secret got out. In the seventies, those first few years when I stumbled upon it and convinced your father to give it a go, there were maybe one or two park rangers for the whole lake. Forty miles of beach on each side, a thousand places to camp and start fires and race your boat, roll a dune buggy, spend the entire day in the nude. Lawless. People did it too, they did everything out at that lake. We knew a family, they caravanned out onto one of the sand points with about two dozen campers and tents, maybe seventy people in all. Put on a bacchanalia of a wedding that lasted four days and nights. Dance floor, hallucinogenics by the trash bag, couples swinging from tent to tent like owl monkeys, and when it was over more than a few of them claimed to have seen God. Can you imagine such a thing being allowed these days? Of people even trying? Well, the times they are a-changed. But family tradition lives on, yes?’

  ‘Good closing argument, counselor. I’m not going.’

  After a long, uncomfortable silence, Gaspar removes his tinted spectacles, revealing moist eyes ringed red with grief.

  ‘He didn’t want any of you to know until you were together, out there, but… Your father’s heart is failing. Inoperable. Valves are too weak. He waited too long, and now even Labor Day will be a stretch, the cardiologist tells me.’

  A dizzying heat pulses up through Ray’s neck, pressing behind his eyeballs.

  ‘His last wish,’ the lawyer says, hushed as a priest. ‘To spend one more glorious afternoon with his family, on the soft sands of Lake Blundstone. It was his, you know. It was always his. He called it the Big Lake. With that gleam in his eyes.’

  Ray blinks.

  ‘My read on this? The trip is what’s keeping him going. He’s swimming to the shore, and once he reaches it, there will be nothing left.’ Gaspar smiles forlornly. ‘The Big Lake. You see?’

  Ray nods, bested as well as ashamed.

  ‘Good. Because everything is at stake now, Raymond.’ Gaspar rises from the booth. ‘Everything your father built, including his family. It’s a fortune and a life, and who knows how we all walk away.’

  Ray watches Gaspar do just that, exiting through the darkened cantina, out into the white glare of sidewalk. Ten days is not enough time to prepare. A hundred would not be. He will not be able to do it alone. He is afraid of what his family have become, what his father will make of his youngest child. Ray does not want to wake up the little boy, the one who was abandoned, locked inside of a suffocating camper all night while a terrible storm took his real family – the one he loved and thought he knew – away.

  But that was thirty years ago. He is an adult now, and all hope has not been lost. It’s a Tuesday, almost four o’clock, and he is in his father’s restaurant. Salvation may be a stretch, but there is one thing in the bar that never fails to soothe his nerves, a narcotic more potent than any drink.

  Her name is Megan.

  The Waitress

  Megan has been a server at Pescado Rojo for about fifteen months, and from the first time she waited on him, taking his usual order of lobster mole enchiladas and a sweaty bottle of Negra Modelo, Ray has sensed, in his slumbering ardor, that she is so much more than a waitress. She is the secret longing he has refused to admit to anyone. A workplace what-if he allows himself to indulge only when she is serving in the sections that do not include his booth. The strangely satisfying trade-off to admiring her only from afar being that, in her immediate presence, he can blame co-worker etiquette for his fear of rejection even as he suffers like a monk.

  The clock sweeps over 4:00 p.m. Her shift begins.

  Her tanned bare ankles and the smooth calves above a pair of bright yellow flats are the first thing he sees, and the jolt causes him to quickly look down.

  ‘Hey, Ray.’ Megan swings a hip on her way to clock in at the wait station terminal, pausing as she ties the strings of her red apron behind her waist. ‘Whatcha workin’ on today?’

  He counts to three or five, until he senses his blush has begun to fade, then looks up from his laptop as if too concerned with marketing budgets to have registered her presence until now. So many thoughts are swirling through his head that for a moment he cannot respond. His father’s heart. Pam’s goodbye. The investor who walked off the deal. Loss, loss, loss, and now the trip. None of those things matter during the uncomfortably long seconds he peers into her dark brown eyes, noticing as is his custom and secret pleasure the coal crescents under them, her inner brightness and friendly smile contrasted with the deeper shade suggesting a misstep or two with Eros. Some episode of heartbreak that stained her with traces of wisdom. Something of the tired scullery maid in her today. He is aware of the thread of chauvinism threading through such an observation, and he is aware that, even though it is she who serves him, he would gladly spend the rest of his life doing whatever she asked.

  Clearing her throat, Megan affixes two ballpoint pens to the pouch at her hip. ‘Ray? You a little lost there, buddy? You look like someone just told you your dog died.’

  This remark is close enough to reality, he can’t hold back a dark laugh. Out of bravery or desperation, he finds himself breaking whatever it is the monks agree to.

  ‘Actually, someone sort of did. But that’s not – listen, do you want to sit down for a minute?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. What’s wrong?’ She slides into the booth, bouncing her gaze from table to table, in case any are waiting for her to wait on them.

  ‘This might take a few minutes,’ Ray says. ‘If Rafael gives you any grief, tell him I borrowed you.’

>   She flashes a nervous smile. ‘All right.’

  ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘Isn’t that my line?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘Oh. Sure. Iced tea?’

  Ray is up to fetch the pitcher kept at the station near the hall to the kitchen. He scoops ice, pinches two tall glasses, carries everything back to the table. He pours, first for her and then for himself.

  ‘Thanks.’ Megan takes a polite sip, then a series of longer swallows. ‘It’s hot out again.’

  ‘More?’

  She shakes her head. Waits. So…?

  ‘Right, so, I don’t have anyone else to talk to. And I know we barely know one another, even though you see me in here four or five times a week, but I feel like I can talk to you. Or maybe I just want to. Whether there was, ah, someone else or not.’

  Megan seems less perplexed by this mess of an opening than he had any right to hope for. She almost says something, then tucks her lips between her teeth.

  ‘You always seem grounded to me,’ he says. ‘Like whatever it is, it’s all under control. Like you know something the rest of us don’t. It’s comforting.’

  ‘I don’t know about grounded,’ Megan says.

  ‘No? Then what’s your secret?’

  She stares into her glass, offers a listless shrug.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to cross whatever line exists, if there is – no, there must be some kind of line. We don’t have to do this right now.’

  She looks up, frowning. ‘No, it’s okay. It’s just throwing me off a bit. We always say hi and talk, but we never talk, you know?’

  Ray nods.

  ‘You’re always so polite to me,’ she says. ‘So formal. I was kind of starting to worry that I remind you of some… or I annoyed you?’

  ‘No. Megan. In fact it’s just the opp —’

  ‘Sometimes when you work with people for a while,’ she interrupts, ‘it’s so easy to start thinking you know them. Like, you have this relationship. Not relationship, but it’s this thing. Quiet, but there, and things are being spoken even when nothing is. But it’s also like, what if it’s all in your head? You know?’

  Ray can only manage a nod.

  ‘But now we’re talking, like normal people,’ she continues, ‘and I don’t mind telling you something about myself. The change just threw me off, that’s all. So. You want to know why I’m waiting tables at thirty-five, right? Why am I coasting?’

  ‘I never thought that. Okay, maybe I used to. But I know about coasting. It’s hard. Maybe harder than putting yourself into something that matters.’

  ‘Until you give it everything and the “it” on the other side decides it doesn’t want your everything. Then coasting becomes very appealing.’

  ‘I must be working my way up to that part,’ he jokes.

  ‘Yeah, well, I had a high-pressure corporate job a few years ago,’ she says. ‘And maybe one day I will again. There was a guy, but we were too young. We should have ended it about three years before we did. I tried to pretend he wasn’t worth feeling so bad about. But suppressing all that gave me panic attacks. I tried therapy, taking the meds, I read all these books. In the end, I just decided to give myself a break. Drive around the country. Care less about what other people want from me, do what sounds good for a few months. Eat more chocolate. Pathetic, right?’

  ‘Has it helped?’

  She considers, but not for long. ‘I certainly don’t regret the past few years.’

  ‘Then I think it’s amazing,’ he says. ‘That you did that for yourself. In fact, I envy you.’

  Megan squints at him. ‘You should never say that about someone you don’t know very well.’

  Ray nods. ‘Fair enough. But I still want your advice.’

  ‘People say that…’

  ‘And never take it,’ he finishes.

  Their eyes meet in accord. She sips more tea. And then Ray leans forward, elbows on the table, and tells her everything that’s gone wrong lately. About his father’s approaching end. This sudden trip. Pam, whom Megan has seen many times in the restaurant but not for a while. About the loss of his primary investor. The sense of doom following his every move.

  Does he sound needy, a lost cause begging for a life preserver? It’s possible, but it doesn’t feel this way. Raymond feels as if he is talking to an old friend and, he tells himself, this is all he was hoping for. A brief connection. Someone on the outside to look in and understand. To console, if not advise, and lacking all else to simply bear witness.

  Along the way, studying the tapering fullness of her lips and the shape of her shoulders beneath her lilac-blue peasant blouse, he hears a voice inside calling himself a liar. The voice knows what he is really hoping for is to bring her along, on the trip or maybe just into his dying vision of a life, the one he has been feeling slip away, an existence of coupledom and harmony, home and love and sex and hosting dinner parties and Sunday morning coffee breath, children. Is that too much to hope for?

  ‘It is a little strange,’ she tells him near the end. ‘But all families are a little strange, aren’t they?’

  ‘Mine’s more than a little.’

  ‘I think you should go,’ she says. ‘Just make it your trip too. Whatever that means.’

  ‘I wish it was happening six months from now,’ he says, voice nearly cracking. ‘If I was really lucky, that might be enough.’

  ‘For?’

  Ray exhales. Might as well go all in. ‘After six months, if I’d played my cards just right, you might be my girlfriend, and if I begged and pleaded, you might consider going with me. I wouldn’t have to sneak away from them by myself, with no excuse. I’d just say, Megan and I are going for a romantic walk on the beach. My father would be so proud. And I would… wow, listen to me. Now, that was pathetic.’

  Megan is quiet, blushing, and he’s sure he just scared her off for good.

  Then, eyes holding his, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t wait. Sometimes when you coast too long, you miss out on something that could have been…’ She stops herself, shakes off the idea with a laugh, looks away. ‘I was just thinking how hilarious it would be if we pretended I was your fiancée, or girlfriend, whatever. That would show them, right? This could be helpful for you, or terrible? But no, it’s not something I would want to do alone, either.’

  Ray is stunned, then elated, then scared. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘I miss being around families,’ she says. ‘Mine are no longer with me.’

  ‘Your mother and father?’

  ‘I had a brother too.’

  He is afraid to ask how, when. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’

  He does not know how to proceed. She smiles, letting him off the hook.

  ‘It was a long time ago. Look, I think you’re making this a bigger deal than it needs to be, but I’m just a waitress who hasn’t had a vacation in three years, so you probably shouldn’t take me too seriously.’

  ‘I would love to take you seriously,’ he says, his mouth turning dry. ‘But I really can’t ask you to do this.’

  ‘I think you already did, Ray.’

  ‘I thought you asked me.’