Chapter 10
Julia
Gerry had picked up the lunch tab. That alone almost made him worth dealing with. Almost.
Otherwise, lunch would have completely depleted our cash. I don’t like being grateful to such a blowhard, but thanks to him, I have almost forty dollars in my pocket. Judging from Tony’s face when Dan tells him about Enron, we’re gonna need it.
“What do you mean by ‘defunct’?” Tony asks with half the sandwich tucked in his cheek. He’s really cute in this uptight-slash-casual way. I can’t figure out if he’s laid back or neurotic.
“Enron was part of some big scandal in the early two-thousands,” I say.
“You gotta be more specific.” He swallows. “A company that big doesn’t just disappear.”
He’s so confident, I wonder if maybe he’s right, but Tonya shakes her head. “Boy, you got a lot of learning to do.”
“Here.” Dan hands Tony his phone. He and Tonya turn their backs to us and lean over the rail, talking, while Tony reads about Enron.
I remember Caspian said he’d watched the development of technology as a screwdriver.
Tony seems to have had the same experience.
He takes the phone and holds it eight inches away to read it.
He’s not surprised by the phone’s functions, but seems unsure how to handle it physically. He’s stuck on how to scroll.
“New fingers,” he says with a smile that could light up a stadium.
“Here.” I lean into him and move the screen up and down.
“Thanks.” When I pull away to sit, he puts his arm around my shoulders and holds me close. “Stay here where I can see you.”
I do, because he feels nice, and I want to read it. Maybe there’s good news, because if the company was as big as he says, it probably just rebranded itself.
As Tony scrolls the Wikipedia page, the news gets worse and worse.
“This is when I got in,” he says. “Right at deregulation. I got a tip from a permits guy that they were gonna buy up local utilities, and see, they did. Boom.”
“Is that insider trading?” I ask.
“Shh. We don’t talk about that.” He scrolls. We read about them expanding into broadband. He moves the half-eaten sandwich off his lap as if he’s lost his appetite. “And this is when I would have gotten out. Fuck.”
He’s reading it like a novel, muttering curses as the story goes completely down the drain.
A handful of greedy men lied, then lied to cover up their lies, and lied more while they made millions.
They spun off the profitable parts, made more money, then put Enron itself into bankruptcy protection, which failed because of all the lying.
Everyone was fucked but the liars. The women executives ended up posing nude for Playboy to make some money.
“All gone,” he says, putting the phone screen-down on his thigh. He turns his face up to the sky. “I would have gotten out.”
“Well, I would have stayed because I wouldn’t have known any better.”
“Everything. We had everything in there. My broker probably called and I couldn’t answer from a fucking toolbox.” He closes his eyes. “You got me out to help and now I can’t. I would have given it all to you. I am so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t agree or disagree. His expression is too complicated to unravel.
Tonya and Dan turn around.
“Is it bad?” Dan asks, taking his phone.
“Apparently.” I put my hand where the phone was. Tony squeezes it.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he says.
“You don’t have to.” I turn toward Tonya. “We go do the job. Get money. We have a lawyer look at this stupid lawsuit and figure it out from there. For now, we gotta sleep on the boat if that’s okay with Dan.”
“Fine by me,” he says. “But there are two beds and I’m not sleeping with this guy.”
“Me neither. I just met him,” I add, half-joking.
“What are you trying to say?” Tony asks Dan, as if offended. “There something wrong with this?” Tony moves his fingers up and down, indicating his body generally. He’s let go of his guilt long enough to torment Dan. Caspian would have done the same.
“Nah, come on, man. You know what I mean.”
“You scared? Not that I’d blame you. Don’t worry. I’ll make it nice.”
“What’s with you guys?” Tonya asks. “Are all four of you like this?”
“Handsome and charming?” He’s still joking around.
Tonya isn’t. “Assholes to Dan. Shit. At least Caspian didn’t have my name.”
“I had it first.”
“You live in a toolbox, buddy.” She leans down to face him. “And you can’t see shit. My foot would be in your ass before you knew I was in the room.”
I wouldn’t say Tony’s intimidated by Tonya, but I would definitely say her confidence has earned his respect. They’re on the same page. No more jokes.
“Okay,” Tony says. “I’ll sleep wherever the captain tells me to sleep.”
“Atta boy, Levelio.” She nods, pleased with the name she made up, then stands straight. “Now, Dan honey, lay it out for them.”
“Right.” Dan clears his throat. “I can get the pump in an hour. That spot Gerry got us is a private dock. We gotta vacate at sunrise when the owner comes back. I was gonna fix the Skrilla’ there.
That’s risky. Totally against the rules.
But if we’re pulling up to that monstrosity”—he thumbs at the Goddess—“tomorrow morning, and your job takes two days, we’re good.
I can do it on their fold-out. But we have to spend tonight on open water. ”
“Will the engine make it?” I ask.
“Little more spit, little more chewing gum. I give it eighty percent.”
We all agree on the odds. Tony squints at Dan. My vision has always been perfect. I have no idea how much functionality he loses because of nearsightedness, but this constant squinting, bumping, and close-reading doesn’t look like any fun.
There’s no money or time for a twenty-four-hour turnaround pair of glasses. He’d need an exam. Lord knows that Tony Lastnameunknown—who disappeared in 1994—doesn’t have insurance.
This has to be fixed. Watching him struggle over a disability that’s been manageable for over a hundred years is going to kill me. I check the map and finally find a little luck.
“We’ll meet you at the boat.” I stand.
When Tony found out that my idea to fix his eyes included almost a mile of walking in Caspian’s shoes, which are at least a size too big, he balked. But he was apparently the problem-solver of the gang. He stuffed the toes with napkins and we were off to the Goodwill.
The worker is a white guy in his twenties with long, brown hair that’s arranged itself into ringlets. He’s bringing out another bin of tangled-up glasses.
“You’re lucky,” he says. “We were getting ready to send these out for recycling.”
I don’t feel lucky. We’ve been through two bins and not one pair has helped Tony see more than two feet in front of his face.
“Last box though.” He pats the lid and walks back to the register.
Tony pulls out a pair of black horn-rims. “Thank you, Julia.” He puts them on and whips them right off. “I appreciate you taking time to do this.”
“Of course.”
“Whether I can see or not isn’t your problem.”
“It is. The squinting is going to give you wrinkles.”
“You broke my curse because you needed money, and it turns out I don’t have any.
” Aviators look incredible on him. “Just sunglasses.” He puts them back.
“I don’t want to let you down.” He rubs his fingers together, as if there’s something on them.
“I have to wash my hands.” He looks around for a bathroom, but there’s zero chance of finding one in a thrift store.
I lean over the counter and grab a canister of wipes—the kind people would have fought for during the pandemic. “Here. Disinfectant wipes.”
“Really? Cool.” He takes one and wipes his hands. Then another for the bridge of his nose.
“Easy there. Too much isn’t good for your skin.”
“Neither is whatever’s on these glasses. You make me forget to worry about it.”
He snaps out another wipe before I lean over to put away the canister.
When I turn back, he’s wearing a pair of rhinestone-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses with a silver chain attached to the arms. I crack up as soon as I see him.
“What’s so amusing, missy?” he says in a church-lady voice. “Maybe you’d like to share with the class.”
“Stop.” I slap his arm, still chuckling. “This is serious.”
“It is.” He takes them off. “Not being able to see you unless I’m this close…” His face is suddenly kissing distance from mine. “It’s torture.”
“Well, now you’re close enough to see me.”
“You’re really fucking pretty.”
“You trying to charm me?”
“Is it working?”
“Maybe a little.” I lean into him.
“I figure, considering the circumstances of our introduction, it might not be too forward to, uh…”—he moves another fraction of an inch closer—“ask if you’d like me to kiss you?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Really?”
Then his lips are on mine. I let out a throaty mm-hm as our tongues touch. He’s soft and warm. His hands are gentle on my face.
We’re jolted by a loud crack. Ringlet man slapped the counter.
“We’re closing in ten.” He taps his watch.
We mumble apologies. The worker walks back to the register.
I take a pair of wire frames out of the bin and hand them to Tony. “You heard the man. Hurry it up.”
He gives them a quick wipe and puts them on. I have no idea if he can see, but he looks like a slutty little nerd, and I like it.
“Wow.” He looks left. Then at me. Then he looks right. “Better.”
“They work?”
“Yeah. Close enough.” He puts his face an inch from mine. “Close enough.”
It’s hard to kiss when you’re smiling. We do it anyway. My hand drifts to the screwdriver in my pocket, and though I can’t know for sure how Caspian feels, I hold him to let him know I haven’t forgotten him.
We get back to the boat as Dan is wiping spit-and-chewing-gum off his hands. Tonya pulls me to the foredeck.
“Listen, I talked to my father.”
I root around my brain for information about her father. I remember telling her about my dad—an actor who was forced to retire and the previous owner of a red toolbox. But Tonya’s less forthcoming about her family. Parents divorced. One brother. Wait. I do know something.
“He’s a lawyer, right?”