A Thousand Coils
Dane came down from the attic. He passed one of the bedrooms and peeked through the cracked door to see Oscar in bed, Maisie reading to him. In the kitchen, Huff was hanging onto the edges of the island, in a deep squat, rocking his hips side to side and making careful, controlled exhales.
“Between contractions?” Dane said.
“Get me an epidural, stat.” Huff came to a standing position, then slowly lowered again. “Oscar asleep?”
“Almost.”
“Another beer?”
“I’m good for now.” Dane slid onto a stool and watched Huff stretch.
He’d changed into track pants and a white thermal top and could’ve just stepped out of a Patagonia catalog.
He was glorious. Rugged and handsome. Even creaking and groaning and struggling through his aches and pains, Dane would never tire of looking at him.
Any freshman psychology major would call Dane’s mild obsession transference.
Huff had been one of the therapists at Kingpoint Academy, an institute for troubled teens where Dane was sent to finish high school.
Starved for wise, kind, older male figures, of course Dane fell in love with his shrink.
You couldn’t turn around at Kingpoint without seeing a kid who adored Huff Jensen.
He was impossibly adorable, but something in Dane took it a step further. Latched on for life.
Take me. Claim me. Adopt me.
I want to belong to you.
Dane didn’t possess the nerve or savvy to hint at his feelings, let alone declare them or flirt with the professional boundary.
He suspected only firm rejection would result, and he’d die if he had to switch to someone else’s counsel.
Huff was Dane’s lifeline, his savior, his shepherd into adulthood.
Huff was irretrievably off limits, which allowed Dane to fall selflessly in love.
I will love you forever. Without purpose. Without an end goal. Something in me wants to adore you. Nothing will ever come of this and that’s fine. Just don’t ever ask me to stop.
Dane had no matchmaking intentions when he innocently introduced Huff to Maisie. But maybe his subconscious knew his two champions were meant for each other. Now they were married and Huff would be around forever for Dane to benignly adore.
A satisfying pop of a cracked back and Huff groaned deliciously. “There it goes. Good lord.” He stood up and tilted side to side.
Or malignantly adore, Diane said archly, chin on her hand.
“How are you doing?” Dane asked.
“Me? I rotate between supernatural gratitude for being alive, followed by frustrated pissiness that recovery takes so long. I crow about the milestones, then bitch about the setbacks. I went for an innocent walk around our neighborhood and I practically crawled back home because the sound of every passing car made me freak out. A truck drove by with the gears grinding and I almost shit myself.” Huff ran a hand over his face and blew out his breath.
“We’re slowly working through that in therapy. ”
“The shrinker has become the shrunk.”
Huff smiled. “Telling you, man, the smell of a Pier One will straight-up make me cry. I’m not kidding.
You know how those stores smell, right? I can’t even walk into one.
Anyway, I deal with the PTSD, then I’m back to being grateful for my life.
Which is when the recurring nightmare of the cab hitting me likes to show up.
I’ll bolt awake and wrench my back and the circle of life continues. But hey, glad to be here.”
How do you know Liko Greenman, Diane thought, and Dane was about to ask when Maisie staggered in, yawning.
“He’s down. He’s out.” She put hands on Dane’s shoulders and kissed his head. “Good work, coach.”
“He’s a piece of cake,” Dane said.
“He makes us bicker,” Huff said.
“Who?”
“Me and Maze. We never bickered. Now whenever Oscar is over, we get all snippy with each other. Things like, not so loud, you’ll wake him up. Or, don’t get him all riled up before bedtime.”
“Don’t feed him chips,” Maisie said. “We’re about to have dinner.”
“You can’t run the bath water that hot. Are you trying to scald him?”
“What the hell is he wearing, did you pick those rags out?”
“You’re not using enough expression when you read to him.”
“Who taught you how to wipe someone’s ass?”
“Don’t say ass in front of him, you ass.”
“Don’t call your dick your johnson. Say penis like a normal person.”
“Don’t talk about my penis, you dick.”
They cracked up, Maisie putting her laughing face on Huff’s chest, Huff laughing into her hair. Giving Dane no choice but to laugh along and adore them.
After dinner, they hung out in the den, where Oscar had two big bins full of Thomas the Train parts.
Maisie read and Huff worked on one of his steampunk bug models.
The kits had a gazillion little parts: screws and washers and bolts and gears and wires.
Huff worked with needle tweezers under a magnified lamp, and his desk had a set of flags he raised to signal accessibility.
Green meant anyone could approach and watch him work.
Yellow meant Oscar could not approach. Red meant no one could approach.
The yellow flag was up now, and Oscar stayed with Dane, building an elaborate track.
Dane lay on his stomach and put his chin on his crossed arms, watching the miniature train loop around and chug past his eyes.
He glanced at Maisie, brows furrowed over her book, the other hand running through her hair.
He looked at Huff, engrossed in his work, tip of his tongue held in his teeth.
“Maze?”
“Speaking.”
“Who’s Liko Greenman?”
Maisie lowered the book and pushed her glasses up on her head. “Holy shit, I haven’t heard that name in months. Huff, when was the last time we saw Liko Greenman?”
“I don’t remember,” Huff said.
“Maybe New Year’s Eve twenty-fifteen?” Dane said.
“Where?”
“Here,” Dane said patiently. “You had a party. I was there. So was Liko. We met.”
“Oh,” Maisie said slowly, revelation dawning in her eyes. “That’s right.”
“How do you know him?”
“From when we were living in Norwalk,” Huff said. “He and his wife… Christ, Maze, what was her name? Jane? Janet?”
“Something like that.”
“Whatever. They weren’t our couple besties but just some nice, casual friends we’d go out with sometimes.”
“We moved here,” Maisie said, “and lost touch for a few years. Then Huff ran into him. Where was it again?”
“Totally random. I went back to Norwalk for a board meeting at Kingpoint. On the way out I stopped to get gas. There was Liko Greenman, filling up. He looked awful. Kind of beat down and exhausted. We grabbed a cup of coffee and I found out he was divorced. So I invited him over. It was our housewarming party, so that was summer of 2015.”
“You met him here on New Year’s Eve, Dane?” Maisie asked.
“Briefly,” Dane said. “But recently, we met again.”
“How?” Masie said. “Is he in New York now?”
“No, still in Norwalk. It was random.”
“Did he remarry?”
“He didn’t mention a wife or partner.”
“Fuck,” Huff cried over his work.
Maisie glared at her spouse and motioned toward Oscar.
Huff grimaced and slouched low in his chair. “Sorry.”
“I cheated,” Dane said to Liko on the phone.
“We haven’t even kissed, we’re at infidelity already?”
“I like to move at a brisk pace.”
“Apparently.”
“I asked Huff and Maisie how they know you.”
“Ah,” Liko said darkly. “So you probably know my wife cheated on me with our accountant.”
“Um, no. I just heard you were casual friends with the Jensens in Norwalk.”
Liko snorted. “Potato, potahto.”
“Huff ran into you at a gas station. You looked like hell so he invited you to their housewarming. Wait, your accountant?”
“Let’s move on at a brisk pace. Did I get a good character reference?”
“I didn’t ask for one. I’m my own judge of character.”
“Well, now you owe me one game clue, or your connection to the Jensens. You pick.”
“Maisie is my sister.”
“Oh. Didn’t have that on my bingo card. Where’d you guys grow up?”
“Queens, but Maze ran away from home when she was sixteen.”
“Why?”
“Because our father is a monster. Brisk pace that. We’ll wander back another time.”
“Okay,” Liko said cautiously.
“I was only four when she left. I had no real memories of her. But when I left home, I—”
“Left home or ran away?”
“Ran.”
“Because your father’s a monster? Rinse, repeat, wander back another time?”
“Yes. The only other blood relative I knew anything about was this missing sister. I tracked her down, took a gamble and went to her.”
“Did she remember you?”
“Well not literally. It was fourteen years later. But she took me in. Saved my life, but that’s another story.”
“Who is your mother?” Liko asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. Mary Schoenfeld.”
Dane laughed loud enough to startle Salma. “Points for creativity, but no. My mother died when I was in high school. Her name was Helen deWinter.”
“Hold on, let me get my Scrabble tiles.”
Dane went on laughing. God, if nothing else, he wanted to keep Liko around just for the banter.
“Hey, you’re not rushing to assure me her name isn’t an anagram,” Liko said.
“Ethan anagrammed everything. He had no interest in astrological bullshit, but the hidden words in names, the meaning and power of names, legends of names—that was his thing. Also John Schoenfeld’s thing.”
A beat of contemplative, breathing silence passed between the men before Liko spoke. “So when I rearrange Liko, I only come up with kilo. A thousand. Don’t know what to make of it.”
“I can pull oil out of Liko,” Dane said slowly. “Only thing to do with the leftover K is put it in front. Koil. A heavy metal coil?”
“A coil is any interconnected series of loops, but a kilo-koil is precisely one thousand loops.”
A long silence.
I wish you were here, Diane said, as Dane ran his hand up and down a spare pillow as if it were someone’s back.
“So, you called to tell me about the hares running the wrong way?” Liko prompted.
“I did. Got the game nearby?”
A bit of background noise. “I do now.”
“Go to the beginning in China. Cave 407.”
Through the phone he could hear the music of the game’s opening sequence and he hummed along dramatically.
“All right, I’m here,” Liko said, just as the voice of the Green Man narrator boomed in the background, Welcome, young explorer!
“Whats-his-face is here, too.”
“So sixteen caves at Mogao have the Three Hares motif,” Dane said. “In all of them, the hares run clockwise. Except for four-oh-seven, where they run counter-clockwise. The wrong way. Ethan started the game here because his mother also ran the wrong way…”