2. 5
Julia shoved Alison’s belongings into her arms and pulled her away. When they were a safe enough distance from the group, she said, “That guy has probably been inside more vaginas than a gynecologist. What is wrong with you?”
“Right, Saint Julia; I should make Mom and Dad proud and be a frigid cocktease like you.”
“Better than getting a direct injection of the clap.”
“I know you’re sexually frustrated, but it’s your own fault. How many different ways does he have to throw himself at you? Pretty soon he’s going to figure out he’s a sex god and move on. Meanwhile, don’t take it out on me!”
Alison stalked back to the bonfire, and Julia fled the other direction, toward home. She could not decide whether she was angrier at Alison or herself. She looked back long enough to see William give Mike a shove and to hear Mike’s cretinous laugh, like a jackhammer.
And then she heard William’s footfalls shuffling across the sand, and he was shouting, “Hey!”
She did not stop or turn around. He caught up, and his hand was on her arm, spinning her around.
“I want to go home,” she protested, snatching her arm away.
“Okay,” he said, his hands in the air. “I just…” He gave a huff of frustration. “I made him leave your sister alone.”
“It’s fine, William,” she said. “Nothing and nobody can help my sister.”
She turned to go, but he touched her arm again. “Will I still see you tomorrow?”
Amid everything else, Julia had almost forgotten about their planned excursion on his uncle’s boat the next day. But she said, “Quit trying to get out of it.”
A trace of a smile played at his lips, and she turned to go.
The next morning, Julia’s father drove her to the pier and walked her through the dark to the slip that William had directed them to. They spotted it in short order because it was one of the few slips with human activity on it.
The boat was less than fifty feet long, and looked even smaller up close than it did from a distance. William and his mother were already on board, helping to make bait. William wore his yellow foul weather bibs over a gray sweater. They spotted Julia and her father, and Ann beckoned them with a wave and an easy smile. Then she shouted into the cabin, “Frank!”
William’s uncle emerged a moment later, and they all ascended the ladder to meet Julia and her father.
“Paul, Julia, this is my brother, Frank Cardone,” said Ann. “He’s the captain.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Frank. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks for letting me come with you today,” said Julia.
Frank grinned at Julia’s father, who peered back apprehensively. “We’ll take good care of her.”
Ann slapped Frank on the back. “I trust my own son with him.”
“We’ll be back by sunset,” Frank said, descending the ladder again. “Will, come on down and let her hand her stuff down to you.”
William complied, descending the ladder onto the deck. Julia dropped her backpack down to him, and he said, “Now come down the ladder.”
Julia’s father supported her while she got her footing on the ladder, and a moment later, she found herself accepting William’s offered hand of support as she stepped down onto the deck. Both his eyes and his hand lingered just a moment on hers before he turned to go help his uncle.
Her heart fluttering, she looked back up at her father, who said, “You be careful. Listen to Frank and do whatever he says.”
Julia gave him a reassuring smile, and then he was gone.
She spotted Ann nearby and asked, “Can I help with anything?”
“I think it’s best if we just stay out of the way. Bring your stuff inside. Have a cup of coffee.”
Sheepishly, Julia grabbed her bags and followed her into the main cabin. Ann led her to the galley in the back of the cabin. She found two mugs in the cabinet and poured a cup of coffee for each of them, then gestured to the table in the middle of the cabin. Julia took a seat on one of the benches.
A few minutes later, Frank came into the cabin. “Are you girls ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” said Ann.
Frank took his seat in the captain’s chair. Julia got up and watched out the front of the cabin as William untied the boat from the piling. Frank put the boat in gear, and pulled away from the dock.
William returned to the cabin and pulled on his hat and foul weather jacket. “Do you want to come out now?”
Julia put on her own hat and jacket, and followed him onto the deck. Ann, she noticed, lingered not far behind, obviously determined to faithfully execute her chaperone duties.
It was five o’clock, and a faint light glowed in the east. Frank, however, steered the boat west toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Julia, William, and Ann stood on the bow of the boat and watched the bridge approach.
Julia had never gone under the bridge at night. It glowed against the black western sky, and she watched in awe as it loomed nearer, the cars crossing it. It rose over their heads, and she craned to see the underside of it. When it passed over the top of the boat, William said, “Do you want to go see it from the stern now?”
Since there was nothing but black ocean ahead of the boat, she agreed. William led her along the starboard side of the boat, and Ann followed. Behind the main cabin was a ten foot tank, set into the deck, with ice in it. William saw her peering into it and explained, “This is where we put the salmon when we catch it. Or you can put live crab in it during crab season.”
He led Julia and Ann around the tank and down into the gaff hatch at the very end of the stern, where they could watch the Golden Gate Bridge and the city slowly fade away behind them. The sun rose, and the lights of the city slowly winked out by the time land disappeared over the horizon.
“Do you want to go up to the top drive?” asked William.
“The what?”
“Up there.” He gestured to a set of steps that led up to what looked like another cabin.
“Sure.” She followed him up there, shadowed by Ann, and remarked, “There’s another whole steering station up here.”
“That’s why it’s called the top drive,” William explained. “You go up here for better visibility, like when you’re driving onto crab pots, or when you’re driving into the harbor.”
“They used to call this Dago Heaven,” laughed Ann, “because of all the Italian fishermen that worked out of San Francisco, and because up there you’re closer to God.”
William cast Julia a sheepish look, but relaxed into a smile when she returned it with a good-natured laugh. She stood at the steering station and looked out across the water from this higher vantage point. After a while, she spotted a smudge on the horizon.
“There’s the islands,” she said. “My binoculars are in my bag.”
The cold wind whipped around them now and the water was much choppier out here. For extra warmth, they pulled their hoods up over their heads and descended the stairs to the deck again. Julia went inside the main cabin to retrieve her binoculars. William and Ann followed close behind.
“What’s the plan, then?” Frank asked William.
“We’ll do our sightseeing when we get out there,” replied William. “Give me a couple of hours. Then I’ll help you.”
Frank nodded and turned back to the front. William went to get his camera and pour himself a cup of coffee, then joined Julia on the bow. To Julia’s surprise, Ann stayed inside the cabin. She guessed Ann could adequately supervise through the windows, anyway.
“I’m sorry about my brother,” William said finally.
“Actually, after the story you told me last night, I have a whole new appreciation for Mike. Though not quite as much enthusiasm for him as Alison has. You’d better warn him.”
He looked embarrassed, unsure how to respond. He started to turn toward the islands and lift his camera to his face.
To hell with it.
She put her hand on his arm and nudged him to face her. Reached up to touch his face, and accidentally jabbed him in the eye with her finger.
“Ow,” he said, flinching.
Her stomach fluttering, she laughed and held him steady with her hand on his arm. Reached up more carefully this time, and caressed his cheekbone with her thumb.
His eyes widened as he realized what was happening. He took her hand and led her to a part of the deck where there were no windows through which his uncle and his mother could spy on them.
Bits of hair escaped from her hood, blowing wildly around her wind-chapped cheeks, straying into her mouth. He pulled her close to him. Slowly, one by one, he tucked the wisps of hair up underneath her hat. The unexpected, tender gesture surprised her with a flood of warmth that radiated from her chest through the rest of her body.
Looking at him felt a bit like staring over the edge of a cliff. If the look on his face were any indication, he was just as woozy. She remembered the electricity of her fingers brushing against his. How it kept her awake the rest of the night, thinking of it.
He clasped her face in his hands and gently touched his lips to hers, and all her layers of clothes were suddenly much too warm for her.
She had long since fallen over the cliff, and was dead gone.
He broke away and looked a moment at her face, as if to ask permission to do more. She smiled up at him encouragingly. Felt her pulse pounding in her throat. Felt slightly drunk. He closed his eyes, kissed her again. Put his tongue in her mouth .
She nuzzled the hair on the back of his head, pressed his mouth into hers. Gave him her tongue willingly.
When he broke away, he still held her face in his hands, and said, “Wow.”
“Yeah,” she laughed.
“I don’t want to go home after this,” he whispered. “I want to go somewhere else with you.”
It was hard to summon enough breath to answer him. “Where?”
He brushed his hand across her cheek. “Anywhere.”
A shuffling sound on the deck triggered her reflexes, and she sprang back from him. Frank emerged from the cabin, with Ann close at his heels. It was impossible to tell from the look on their faces whether they had seen anything. By silent agreement, Julia and William returned to the railing to pretend they had been looking out at the islands all along.
Frank clapped a hand on William’s back. “What’s next?”
Shooting a desperate look at Julia, William replied, “Can you bring the boat right up to the island and drop the anchor? Then we can have an early lunch and I can take some photos while we’re there.”
Frank nodded and returned to the cabin, but unfortunately, Ann came to stand between Julia and William. Reaching for Julia’s binoculars, she asked, “What am I looking at here?”
“Don’t you need to get lunch ready?” William tried.
“What’s to get ready? We all brought sack lunches.”
Ann lifted the binoculars to her eyes and peered out at the islands. Across her, Julia and William exchanged a long, woeful look.
Please God, Julia thought. Make her go back inside. Leave us alone.
“What am I looking at here?” repeated Ann, thrusting the binoculars at Julia.
Resigned, Julia accepted them. Every nerve ending in her body still scintillated, but there was nothing for it now. Now they were close enough that she could make out a colony of seabirds and sea lions, though they were still tiny specks, even in her binoculars. Not much was happening on the water at the moment, either. She heard herself talking, trying to provide interpretation to Ann, but she had no idea what she said.
“Let’s get a little closer to the islands first,” William suggested to Julia after a while. “Then I’ll ask Frank to stop so we can eat and you can ask him your questions.”
Julia nodded. They got close enough to really see the individual birds and sea lions through the binoculars, moving around, packed close together on the rocks. William picked up his camera again, and they went back onto the bow and gazed out, Julia through her binoculars, William through his camera. They were steering toward a sheltered cove, scattered with sea lions on the guano-strewn rocks. They were so close that Julia could hear their noises now. William snapped away, until Frank killed the engine and came out onto the deck.
“There you go,” Frank said. “Close enough to throw a can at the furbags.”
They really were just about that close. Frank looked at William and pointed to the anchor winch at the bow. “You want to do the honors?”
William dropped the anchor, lodging them in place. The noise and the smells of the animals assailed them now.
“We’d better go in the cabin to eat,” Frank observed.
Reluctantly, Julia followed them inside, where they washed their hands and retrieved their lunches. While they sat around the table, Julia pulled out her list of questions. For the next hour, Frank and Ann regaled Julia with tales of their hundred-year family history in San Francisco’s fishing industry, from their grandfather who arrived from Sicily in 1891, alone and penniless; to the first fishing boat he bought less than ten years later; to the fish processing plant his fourth son Frank Senior opened on the pier in 1947. William chewed his sandwich and listened quietly, but from the way his eyes shone, it was obvious that he himself took no small pride in the familiar stories. She liked him all the more for it.
After cleaning up from lunch, Frank turned to William and said, “Well, shall we get to work? Let the lady see what it’s all about?”
William raised the anchor, and Frank turned the boat back out to sea. Then William helped Frank bait the hooks and lower the outriggers. Six lines trolled through the water as they cruised along, mimicking a school of fish. Julia watched out the rear windows of the cabin as William and Frank took their positions in the gaff hatch and waited.
Soon, the springs on top of the outriggers bounced, signaling a catch. As soon as they gaffed a fish, they slammed its head against the gaff hatch to kill it, ripped its gills out, and bled it. Then they gutted it, cleaned it, and dropped it into the slush tank. It was a brutal, bloody business, but they had it down to an art. It was a noisy business too, as the gulls were having a field day overhead.
There was only so much that Julia could watch before it strained her attention. So she went back onto the bow to peer through her binoculars. She spotted Pacific white-sided dolphins and Dall’s porpoises, but not a single whale. For Julia, who had seen plenty of dolphins and porpoises in her time, it was turning out to be a disappointing day on the water.
When there was finally nothing left to do, and the boat was on its way back to shore, William cleaned up and joined Julia on the bow again with his camera.
“I hope you weren’t too bored out here all that time,” he said. “Or too grossed out by watching us work. I forgot to warn you.”
“You’re going to have to work a lot harder than that to gross me out. But I have to confess, I think you would do well in slasher films.” She could not help but laugh out loud at the incongruity of him ripping the gills out of those hapless fish.
“Do you want me to take a picture of you here?” William asked. “A souvenir?”
“Okay.”
He positioned himself in front of the cabin. She stood at the bow, the vast expanse of the ocean and the swooping seabirds serving as her backdrop.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
He looked through the viewfinder. “Just act natural.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Then act unnatural. That should come naturally to you.”
She laughed. The camera clicked, and he lowered it from his face.
She waited. “That’s it? Aren’t you going to try for a second one, just in case the first doesn’t come out?”
“No, I think that pretty much did it.”
She opened her mouth to express her skepticism, until she noticed him squinting off into the distance behind her.
“That’s a big one,” he said. “What kind of a whale is that?”
She followed his eyes, and her jaw dropped. For a few moments, no sound escaped her throat.
“Blue!” she finally yelped. “It’s a blue whale!”
His eyes widened at her, and she practically shouted, “Take pictures!”
But he had run out of film, so he sprinted back inside to retrieve more. He emerged from the cabin moments later, already snapping photos from across the deck. His mother followed close at his heels, and even Frank came out to admire the creature for a moment.
William stood at her side now, snapping photo after photo as the whale approached. Growing alarmed, Frank went back into the cabin in case he needed the steer the boat away.
It was yards away from the boat now. As they watched, the whale blew a powerful jet of spray thirty feet into the air, then dove into the water, its enormous fluke lifting above the surface. A moment later, its U-shaped head resurfaced, then it sprayed again. It repeated this pattern several times before plunging one last time into the sea, its giant fluke lingering one long moment as if waving goodbye.
Julia remained at the rail for a minute longer, waiting, hoping for one more glimpse. But the creature had plunged into the deep, and was gone. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and she knew she might never see it again.
“That,” she said finally, “was the best birthday gift I have ever received.”
William’s camera, which snapped non-stop while the whale remained, was still now, and so was he. He said nothing, so she turned to look at him. The wisps of hair that he had tucked up under her hat earlier had escaped and once again blew around her glowing cheeks. She beamed her pure joy at him.
His mother still lingered nearby, so William stepped closer to Julia, close enough that his fingertips touched hers. It was all the encouragement she needed to weave her fingers through his, to press her palm against his. He caressed her hand with his thumb, and Julia was insensible to everything except her body’s acute response to his physical presence and the relentless pace of her own heart .
After a minute, William whispered, “After my mom and I drop you off, I’ll come back over to your house.”
He hadn’t said where they would go or what they would do after that. Her plan for that night had been to finally start her admission essay to UCSB. If he asked to come inside the house, would she let him?
He was waiting for an answer from her.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Ann’s car, parked behind Cardone’s, was a remarkably well-preserved brown Oldsmobile Cutlass from the late seventies with an eight-track player in the console. The whole way home, Ann prattled on about how Jimmy and Mike had kept the Oldsmobile alive and running all these years. Had viewed it as their own private laboratory, in fact. But Julia did not care about Jimmy or Mike or their mechanical prowess. She felt William’s eyes boring into her from the back seat.
When he came over later, would she even put up a token resistance? Try suggesting that they go out somewhere, instead?
She would not. In fact, the first thing out of her mouth would be, “Do you want to come inside?”
She burned with the anticipation of it. And why not? Hadn’t she been taking Alison’s pills, just for this eventuality?
She had no condoms.
Surely she could find one in Alison’s room. If William was smart, he’d bring one of his own. Of course, what did it matter? She felt fairly certain he was a virgin, too. His reserve had never put her off, but that was probably exactly why he liked her – she didn’t give up on him like all the other girls did.
An unfamiliar, flashy yellow sports car, tended with obvious love, was parked in front of Julia’s house. Julia tried to place it, but she couldn’t.
As Ann steered the Oldsmobile to the curb, she said, “Hey, isn’t that Mike’s Camaro?”
From the back seat, William said nothing. Why was Mike’s Camaro parked in front of her house? There was no one home except –
“Alison.”
Julia clapped her hand over her mouth. Watched Ann and William exchange significant looks.
“Oh my God,” she said, out loud again.
The car stopped in front of her house now, and she scrambled out of it. At the front door, she stopped.
What, exactly, was she planning to do? Barge in there and pull him off of her?
Julia turned and stalked back to the sidewalk. Hesitated long enough to see the wary looks on Ann and William’s faces, still inside the car. Bolted down the sidewalk, headed she knew not where.
Ann’s passenger door squawked open, and her voice shouted after William. But the door slammed shut again, clattering the window, and Julia heard his footsteps running after her.
“Julia.”
He caught up to her in a moment and slowed to walk beside her. Thankfully, he didn’t try to say anything yet.
Back at home, Alison – David’s girlfriend this time yesterday – lay on her back getting humped by Mike Quinn, reigning horndog of the Outer Sunset.
Who was she to judge? Had she not just been prepared, hours after her first kiss, to lose her virginity?
William’s voice tore into her solitary brooding. “He’s not as bad as you think.”
She held up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Another long stretch of silence ensued before he said, “Let’s stop in here. Get something to eat.”
They were standing in front of the 46 th Avenue diner. She nodded, and he held the door open for her. He sat beside her in the booth, and after placing their orders, she leaned back in her seat and stared out the window.
After a while, his hand slid across hers. She didn’t draw away, but she faced him and said, “I have a lot going on these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was going to work on my essay for UCSB tonight. I haven’t even started on the application yet, and it’s all due by mid-November. And my grades… for the first time in my life, I’m not making straight A’s. That’s probably fine for most people, but not for someone trying to get into UCSB. I can’t put my mind to any of it lately.”
His fingers laced through hers, and he stroked her hand with his thumb, as he had on the boat. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
He didn’t add the word “either” to the end of his sentence, but he didn’t have to. How did he know exactly what she was talking about? And why did her heart and her body pull her so tenaciously in one direction, while her mind stubbornly anchored her in another?
He touched her chin, lifted her face to his. Leaned into her, and she yielded to the soft brush of his lips against her top lip, then her bottom one. To the slightly rough fingertips on her face. To the more angular lines of his own face, with its day’s worth of stubble, against her fingertips and her chin. As it had so many times that day, heat radiated downward through her body, and she was all but ready to take his hand, to lead him back down the few blocks to her house.
Where they would meet Mike and Alison on their way out.
She gently nudged him to break the kiss.
“This isn’t the best time for this.”
He searched her face for some clue to her meaning. “We can go someplace private after this.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what?”
She faltered, unsure how to explain this to him in a way he would understand. “You know how I told you my Uncle Rob and Tim practically raised me?”
He nodded.
“Well, Rob has always been gung-ho about education. He actually gets excited about touring college campuses. When I was fourteen, he took Alison and me down to SoCal for a week during summer, and we stopped along the way at UCSB. Alison yawned through the whole tour, but I decided right then – that’s where I’m going. And that’s been my one single focus ever since then.”
William waited for her to continue. When she did not, he prompted, “Okay…?”
She dropped her eyes down to their hands clasped together on the booth seat. “I have so many things I need to do between now and the middle of November. I can’t let myself lose focus any more than I already have.”
“I won’t get in your way.”
“This is going to take all of my time for the next month and half. You’ll never see me outside of work and at school.”
He let go of her hand and frowned down at the table top a moment. “This is all just because of Mike and Alison, isn’t it?”
“No, not all because of them. They just brought me back to reality.”
“What reality?”
“I was ready to cast aside every other part of my life, just for you.”
“ Just for me?”
He waited a moment for a reply that never came. Abruptly he scooted out of the booth, pulled some cash out of his wallet, and dropped it on the table top.
“Are you leaving?” she asked incredulously. “We haven’t even gotten our food yet.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Will. I didn’t mean it the way you took it.”
Will. His expression softened. He stood frozen a moment, staring out the window at the traffic on the street without really seeming to take any of it in.
“Will,” she tried again. “Sit down. Listen for a minute.”
Slowly, he resumed his seat beside her. She took his hand again and said, “Just give me a month and a half.”
The waitress brought their food then. William picked at his burger, and Julia shifted the French fries around on her plate. He leaned back in his seat and said, “Your uncle reminds me of my grandmother.”
“A gay man and a Sicilian grandmother. Not an analogy I would have concocted off the top of my head.”
William slid his arm around her shoulders. Picked up a French fry off her plate and inspected it. “Right before she passed away, she connected me with Father Molloy, at the church. He’s been trying to get me a full-ride scholarship to USF here in the city.”
Though Julia wasn’t sure if it was wise, she asked, “When did your grandmother pass away? ”
He dropped the French fry back onto her plate. “A year ago.”
Julia rubbed his back where the caged albatross – the one he had gotten a year ago – spread its wings underneath his clothes.
One Thursday in October, William touched Julia’s hand behind the cover of the lab table.
“Happy birthday, tomorrow,” he whispered. “Are you coming to our study session at my place today? There’s something I want to give you afterward.”
Her heart soared briefly at the prospect that he had actually gotten her a birthday present, but it promptly sank again. “I have so much homework piled up, on top of my application materials.”
He squeezed her hand. “It’s okay.”
“Will, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
But she did worry about it. After class, as she exchanged her books at her locker, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“I brought it today, just in case,” he said, handing her a 5x7 photo envelope. Then he quickly walked away.
Suspense got the better of her. She ripped open the envelope, reached inside, and flipped through photo after photo that he had snapped of the blue whale they had seen together on his uncle’s boat. The images were crisp and vivid, the colors even sharper than the reality.
She flipped through some more and found the photo that he had taken of her on his uncle’s boat. She had completely forgotten about it. She looked at it, and leaned against the locker for support.
It was quite possibly the best photo ever taken of her. And in the background, he had captured the blue whale. He knew he got it in only one shot. He didn’t even have to see it.
There was something else in there. She reached inside and pulled out a CD in a thin jewel case.
Inside the front cover of the jewel case she found a small, folded piece of paper, which she opened. A handwritten note read, “Listen to it all the way through. The whole thing. ”
Where and how could she listen to it here at school? She couldn’t, not without skipping lunch.
Lunch period found her in the library with the headphones on, listening to all surreal twenty three and a half minutes of her introduction to Pink Floyd, beginning with, “Overhead the albatross...”
That evening at the restaurant, Julia sought William out on his break from work and found him, as usual, on the pier.
“How’s prep cook going?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice. “Pretty good. Much better than washing dishes.”
“My sister and I are going to a Halloween party at Holly’s house. It’s not entirely legal.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means alcohol will be served to minors.”
“And her parents are okay with that?”
“My aunt and uncle will be in Hawaii, blissfully ignorant of the proceedings.”
He considered. “Halloween parties aren’t really my thing.”
“What?”
“I don’t do the costume thing.”
“Oh, come on!” She beamed her brightest smile at him; but even as she said it, she realized that she could never picture him in a Halloween costume. “Well, you know where Holly lives, in case you change your mind.”
He looked down at her apprehensively. Wondering, she knew, whether she had listened to his message yet.