Chicken and Sponge

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 45

4
Dear, dear readers!  It's been so long!  Petra has just heard that her mom, sister, and step-father are flying up to Pelican to check on her and drag her home.  Yes, I've been lazy.  Yes, I've been negligant.  Yes, I'll try to do better.  Sorry for the long pause.  At some point in time I'll post the first quarter of the book in one shot and then follow up.  Hey. thanks for hanging in there.

    “And they’re flying up here!  Up here, Malcolm!  Do you know what this means?”  I loudly whined on the verge of hysteria.

    Malcolm’s shoulders shook as he tried to contain his laughter.  He was mostly successful, but the grin would just not go away.

    He held his arms out to me and I flung myself into them.  A temporary safe haven from my own approaching hysteria.
    “There, there.  If there’s nothing you can do to stop them, you may as well stop worrying about what might happen.”

    “Malcolm, that all sounds very good, but you’ve no idea what you’re talking about.  You’ve no idea what they’re like.  I don’t want them here.”

    “Petra, you can’t stop them.  So just stop thinking about it.”

    “I can’t help myself.  I’m obsessed.  My brain will think of no other subject than my impending doom.”

    Malcolm’s sleepy eyes turned warm and a slow smile lit his face.  He took me by the hand and started to lead me down the hall. 

    “Petra, I think I know a way to get your mind off this subject.”  And he opened door number one.

    *********************

    Ferry day.  A big ferry day.  I was sitting on the boardwalk in front of the Wet Goods drinking a Club Drink, a brass monkey.  It was a little foul, but I was willing to tough it out.

    I hadn’t wanted to go down to the breakwater and mill around waiting for the ferry.  No place to sit, nothing to do.  All new hires would have to walk past us to get to either bunkhouse anyhow.  And I certainly wasn’t alone.  The benches in front of the Wet Goods were packed shoulder to shoulder with men.  The harbor entrance was also fairly congested, as well as the railing on each side.  There were lots of local men, fishermen who hadn’t left the harbor yet, and me. I was hanging with  Jaimie, Tim, Clark, and Enrico.  Most of the men wanted to see the two new girls they’d heard had been hired.  I admit I was curious, too, but I also wanted to get a look at the college boys.  Not that I wanted one for myself. Jaimie wanted one for herself, though, so I’d had to come to help her scout.  My current secret friend was suiting me just fine.  But Clark had been right and there’d been a pretty thorough mass firing of dead, new-hire weight, so while there was a new crew coming in, there was also about a dozen workers heading out.  No surprises there.

    There was something thrilling about watching the ferry slowly glide through the inlet and up to its dock.  It was so much larger and grander than any of the fishing vessels.  The weather was good, i.e. not raining, and I could see that people were standing on the deck of the ferry watching the town get closer and closer, just as we were watching them approach.  It always seems to take an eternity for the ferry to actually dock, get tied up, and have the ramp come down.  Twenty minutes or better of staring back and forth.  But that wasn’t the case with me today.  I felt ultra-relaxed and just kicked back, waiting for the parade.  Thank you, brass monkey.

    While townspeople rushed back and forth, coming off the ferry with their shopping, or preparing to board for a trip to town, a slow convoy of newbie slimers approached, Lauren leading them, laughing with her head tilted back, arm on a good-looking college kid , and turning to laugh and flirt with those following behind.  They all looked various degrees of smitten.  I counted approximately eighteen of them and bringing up the near-rear were two terrified, freaked out, all-natural, not-overly-washed, wannabe-hippie chicks.  Yes, terrified.

    “Hey, there they are!  Hey, beautiful, come have dinner with me, yeah, both of you!”

    “Nah, come down to my boat and let me show you around.”

    “Oohh.  Look at the scared little girls.  Don’t be scared, little girls, we won’t hurt you!”

    Luckily, my cohorts were silent, appraising, but silent, and it was the fishermen who were being complete ass-holes to the poor girls.  I turned and glared at a couple of them.

    “What?  You jealous?” one asked me.

    I rolled my eyes and looked toward Clark and we both laughed.

    “Oh, yeah, I’m jealous, because you are such a man and I wanted you for myself and now those two new girls are going to be fighting over you and I just won’t stand a chance.”

    “You should be a little nicer,” the guy told me, “or you’ll always be alone.”

    Clark and I both rolled our eyes and shook our heads.

    “You’re not jealous, are you?” Clark said under his breath to me.

    I shot him a look.  “Now I’m going to start getting paranoid.  Should I be jealous?”

    “No,” he said, “the odds are still in your favor.”

    “Somehow, that wasn’t exactly the reassurance that I was looking for, but thanks for pointing out the math.”

    He smirked and didn’t reply.  We watched as the group walked on toward the Cold Storage, the guys looking around with curiosity and the girls looking like they were going to hold hands and make a break for the ferry.

    “They don’t shave their legs,” Enrico announced.  “I can’t abide that.”

    I raised my eyebrows and whispered to Clark.  “I’m impressed.  I didn’t know he knew the word abide.”

    “And I bet they don’t shave their arm pits either.  Nasty.”  That, of course, from Enrico again.

    “I don’t care,” Tim announced.  “I wouldn’t turn either one of them down.  They were kind of cute.”

    “Yeah,” I agreed, “like finding Bambi in your headlights.”

    “Oooh, catty,” Tim said.

    I raised my eyebrows and shook my head in disgust, then turned my back to him.  Guys are too weird when you go girl-watching with them.  Except Clark.  He’s always just annoyingly Clark.

    I turned to Jaimie.

    “So, ok, did you pick one out?”

    “I don’t get to just pick one out!”

    “Why not?”

    “What do I do if he doesn’t want me?”

    “Geez Louise!  There were like, eighteen of them!  Pick out another.”

    Jaimie just looked at me for a second.  “How?”

    I stared back.  “We really have some work to do, girl.  I didn’t have much confidence when I arrived here, but I can’t believe how lacking in confidence you are!”

    Tim snorted.  “You didn’t ‘lack confidence’.  What a crock.”

    “I will have you know that I did too lack confidence and was a meek, retiring little wallflower until I met all of you.”

    Clark, Tim, and Enrico snorted in unison.

    I gave them a mild glare.  “So,” I announced, “you guys had better get to work.  It should be you guys who help Jaimie gain her confidence.”

    My words were met with looks that varied from disgust to panic.

    “Then you’d better teach her how to be a girl first,” Enrico told me.

    I looked at him in horror, unable to believe that he could be so callous of Jaimie’s feelings.  I glanced over at her and could tell that she was quietly mortified.

    “Don’t worry,” I told him, “No problem, piece of cake.  And don’t worry.  Jaimie needs men friends, not self-centered little ass-holes.”

    Clark and Tim exchanged glances with me and I realized that they agreed.  At least they were both intelligent enough to recognize just how uncalled for that was.

    “Let’s go, Jaimie.  Time to go do girlie stuff.”  I grabbed her and pulled her along, determined to give her a real make over, get her just a little drunk, and then practice her wiles on someone safe like Clark and Tim.

    “Tim, you and Clark come on down to the cabin in a couple of hours.  And feel free to leave that dog Enrico at home.”

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 44

    I’d waited until I’d heard hoards of people walking past the cabin on their way to the bar.  Clark had knocked and asked me to join them, but I’d begged off, showing him my book.  Being one of the rare readers around, he understood perfectly.  Or so he thought.  My book was a red herring.  I hadn’t started reading it yet and all I really wanted was the way clear as I headed up to Malcolm’s.

    It was only about 8:00 when I headed toward the Fish House.  There were still some people milling around right in front of the door I needed to enter.  I went to the phone booth instead.

    I tried calling Russell and got no answer.  So I took a deep breath and dialed the number for the Ranch.

    “Hello?”

    “Hey, Kitten, it’s me.”

    “Petey, Mom’s pissed!  Why haven’t you called?”

    “We’ve been busy and it’s not like I have my own phone.  A lot of other people use the pay phones and it’s hard to get one during break time and it’s a long way from where I’m staying.”

    “Well, you’re going to wish you’d called.”

    “Why?  What’s up?”

    “We’re up.  We’re coming up.”

    I didn’t say anything for a moment because Kitten’s words made no sense to me.

    “Huh?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Repeat.  I’m not understanding what you mean.”

    I could feel Kitten rolling her eyes, a bad family trait we all seemed to share.  “I mean, that Mom and Richard and I, against my will I might add, are flying to Pelican, Alaska.”

    “Why?”  I asked in horror.

    “To bring you home.”

    “But I don’t want to go home.”

    “Well, it sure would have been nice if you’d called once or twice to let Mom know that you’re alive and well and happy.  She saw some program on Lifetime or one of those networks about all the drugs in Alaska and she’s afraid that you’ll be sold into prostitution.”

    “Kitten, I clean fish.  For $5.75 an hour.”

    “Well, don’t point that out or she’ll think you’re brain-damaged from all the drugs.”

    We enjoyed a moment of silence while all this news started to sink in.

    “Ok.”  I said, trying to psych myself up, “Put Mom on the phone.”

    “Can’t do it.  She and Richard are away this weekend, some kind of ranchers’ get- together.”

    I groaned.  “When will they be back?”

    “Sunday night.  Monday morning.  Something like that.  You know how Mom is.  She never wants to give a definite time because she doesn’t want us to know what the window of opportunity is for doing anything she doesn’t want us to do.”

    “I hear you.  So you there alone?”

    “Kind of.  Not really.  Richard hired a new guy recently.  It was kind of strange. He just showed up right after Hal disappeared.”

    “What do you mean ‘Hal disappeared?’”  Hal had been working for Richard for years.

    “He didn’t show up one day and his stuff was gone out of the bunkhouse.  The next day this guy Ken shows up and asks for work.  He’s built like a cowboy, has the boots, so Richard is giving him a try.  He’s good-looking, but gives me the heebie-jeebies.  Also, he seems to know some stuff about working with horses, but I think he’s full of shit, so I don’t feel good about leaving him in charge while we fly up to Alaska, but Mom definitely won’t let me stay here with them so far away.”

    “Richard should ask someone else to watch the place.  Hell!  What am I saying?  Kitten, convince them they don’t need to come up!  It’s more important to stay down there.  I’m fine.  I’m fine.  Keep them at home!”

    Kitten snorted.  “Yeah, right.  Nice try.  Just prepare yourself because nothing is stopping Mom from coming up there.”

    “Great.  Just great.  I got to go, Kitten.  Do what you can.  Please.”

    “I’ll try, but you know it’ll do no good.  Ok.  Talk to you later.  Maybe I should say ‘see you later’”.

    “That’s enough of that.  Bye, Kitten.”

    “Bye, Petey.”

    And with that I hung up and headed up the stairs to Malcolm’s.

 

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 40-something or other

 In the previous installment, posted eons ago, Petra had finally signed up for a "volunteer" day and with Clark, Jaimie, and Loki, had worked for Creepy Bill in the Crab Plant for the morning and had then gone to the cafeteria  for lunch.  This installment takes place after lunch of the same day.

  

 

 

 

 

  My afternoon had been spent mostly with Clark.  Jaimie never showed up after lunch and when I spotted Loki, he was trailing after one of the engineers, looking puffed up and full of himself, according to Clark.

    So Clark and I hung out in the Crab Plant, pressured sprayed everything, lined up the cooker baskets and the chill-tank baskets, went upstairs and stacked more boxes, and then we generally screwed around.  We had sat on the back dock of the Crab Plant for some time, swinging our legs and staring out at the harbor.  Then it started to rain.  Just lightly, but wet, nonetheless.

    “Come on,” Clark said, “let’s get out of this rain.”

    “What are we going to do?”

    “Go to my room and hang out.”

    “Clark, I’ve made it this far.  I want to get at least eight hours in today.  I haven’t done volunteer work before.”

    “Hey, Baby, welcome to volunteer work.  We’re not clocking out, we’re just going to my room until almost 5:00.”

    I stared blankly at him for a moment, then nodded.  “Ok, then, let’s go.”

    I started toward the front of the building and Clark grabbed my arm and shook his head no.  He pulled me behind him as we walked on the water-side of the Crab Plant, around to the side and a set of stairs.

    “Quick,” is all he said, and we hurried up the steps, through the door and into a dark hall.

    The Ghetto…I’d been hearing about the Ghetto ever since I’d arrived in Pelican.  The guys who lived there whined a lot and were much more susceptible to depression.  Those who didn’t live in the Ghetto just shuddered at the thought.

    I was mesmerized.

    One long hallway ran the depth of the building and it was pretty dark and stark.

    “Up here,” Clark pointed up one step at the head of the hallway, “we have the restroom, affectionately known as the Shitter.  Two toilets, two showers for twenty-four guys.”

    “That’s crazy,” I said.  “That’s insane.”

    “Yes, it is,” Clark agreed with me.  “It’s also inhumane.  Now through this door is the Ghetto kitchen.  Enter at your own risk.”

    We walked in and I was properly horrified.  Dirty, dingy, worn-out filthy linoleum.  Holes in the walls in a few places.  Burnt on yuk on the stove.  Dirty dishes.  Gross, gross, gross.

    “Do people actually eat in here?”

    “People actually do.”

    We walked on.  “Through door number one is one group of guys.”  I started to walk in, but Clark held me back.  “Not that one.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because I’m your host and we’re going to my room, but they’re all basically the same.”

    “Here we are.  Through door number two.  Door number three contains the rest of the inmates, but my cell is through here.”

    I wouldn’t have understood if I hadn’t seen it for myself.  I hadn’t understood when guys had tried to describe the  Ghetto to me, but now I got it.

    “Woman entering,” Clark called out before we walked in.  Male heads popped out of doors one and three with startled curiosity.  “Make yourselves presentable…or at least quit masturbating for awhile.”

    I giggled.  Men came closer to view me, which was strange since I worked with most of them at one time or another, but it must have just been the novelty of a woman in the Ghetto.

    We walked through the door and it was dark, with four curtains hanging up and a variety of music drifting here and there, various smells, some extremely unpleasant like old, sour body odor, and some pleasant like after-shave and incense.  And drifting through the entire upstairs was the smoky green smell of marijuana.

    One of the four curtains abruptly parted.  “Hey, hey, Baby, you here to see Enrico?”

    I turned and glared accusingly at Clark.  “You didn’t tell me Enrico would be up here.”

    “He’s one of my roommates.”

    “Well, I didn’t know that.”

    “Baby,” Enrico purred, “come into my lair.”

    I obliged out of morbid curiosity, annoyance crossing Clark’s face.  “Don’t call it a lair, Enrico, that scares women off.”

    “Yeah, well you just walked in and that’s about it for women in this place.”

    “I hear you,” I said, “you can thank Lauren for that.  I have it on good authority that lots of women applied and Lauren didn’t want to hire any.”

    “Well, she hired you, didn’t she?”

    “Actually, no, Thelma did, and Lauren was not happy about it.  Come to think of it, Thelma hired the two or three women who will be here on the ferry on Sunday.  Lauren wasn’t happy about that either.”

    Both Clark and Enrico raised their eyebrows.

    Clark was getting antsy so I said my farewells with Enrico, who it turned out was on a supposed bathroom break from the Fish House.  He’d felt compelled to come up to his room and get high if he had to finish washing freezer plates.  His room had consisted of a double bunk bed and two small cabinets and a cheap wooden chair that held his boombox.

    Clark’s room had the only window in room 2.  Again, double bunk beds, two cabinets and this one had two chairs.  Clark had some cool Indian print cloth hung up on the wall and across the top of one of the cabinets.

    He put on some Tom-Tom Club and we laid back on his bed and listened.  He had the upper bunk.  Clark rubbed my feet for me and I could have died that moment and been content.  Rubber boots on concrete floors suck.  They do, they really do.

    “Who’s your roommate?”  I asked.

    He raised his eyebrow at me and didn’t answer.

    “Don’t you be raising that eyebrow at me and not answering my question.”

    “Petra, who do you think my roommate is?”

    “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

    “Tim.”

    I was dumbfounded.  It showed.  I didn’t know why I didn’t know that.

    “Why didn’t I know that?”  I asked.

    “Probably because we traded around to try to get a decent set of guys in this room.”

    “So why is Enrico in here?”

    “Come on, Petra, you don’t think he’s so bad.  You’ve gotten used to him.  He’s a druggie, but he’s not a complete derelict like some of the guys who’ve been hired, and he’s not a big baby like some of the college boys.  Things are going to change.  You watch.  A bunch of people will get fired immediately after Halibut, maybe before, and Jeff already has a large group of college kids arriving on the next ferry.  And they’ll get put in here and up at the New Bunkhouse.”

    “Why didn’t you get to live in the New Bunkhouse?”

    “I didn’t want to.  This isn’t so bad if you get decent guys in your room.  Plus, this will clear out soon and have more privacy than the New Bunkhouse.  Plus I just don’t like it.  Totally lacking in character.”

    “Well,” I said, looking around, “plenty of character in here.  What?  Four double bunk beds, so eight guys to a room?”

    “Yeah, when we’re full to capacity.  And it makes the bathroom situation unbearable, and you saw the kitchen, but I eat in the cafeteria most of the time.  I’d like to live in the Old Bunk house, but I didn’t have enough seniority.”

    “Yeah, I’d like to live in the Old Bunk house, too.”

    “What exactly happened there?”

    “What do you think?  Lauren happened.  As usual.  I thought I’d hate living with her, but she’s almost never home so it’s ok.  I just don’t trust her.”

    We visited, listened to music, gossiped about any bit of dirt we’d heard on anyone.  Clark filled me in on Jaimie’s family—old hippies as suspected, kind of a crazy, loving, drug-saturated up-bringing.  My mother would shudder in horror.  Clark told me about his family.  I shared a little about mine, and then it was time.

    “Come on,” Clark said, smacking my butt, “time to go clock out.”

    I did so with very little guilt, since I saw so many of the guys who’d been in the Ghetto all afternoon also emerging and going down to clock out. 

    “Will I see you later?” Clark asked me.

    “I don’t know.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet.  Lauren’s home on Sunday so I may just want to enjoy the space before she gets back.  If you go out, stop by and pick me up.”

    “Ok.  I may just read tonight.”

    “Me, too,” I said, thinking of Malcolm and not reading at all.  “If I don’t answer I may just be doing some recreational sleeping.  See you.”

    And I sauntered away.

    Right before the harbor entrance was Pelican’s lone apartment building.  The ground floor, boardwalk-facing apartment had the door open, people spilling out and music pounding.  Big party.  Lots of fishermen.  And Creepy Bill.  He saw me and smiled.  Then he crooked his finger and tried to entice me in.  I just smiled and shook my head.  His smile slipped a little and the coldness in his eyes emerged.  I slipped on past.

 

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 42

It's been awhile since I'd posted the story.  The holidays had made it kind of hit and miss for working on it, but I'm still plugging away.  Just remember, this is not only a first draft, but a rough draft at that.

   

 

 

 Bill never showed up for the rest of the day.  Jaimie was as useless as predicted.  I harassed her some and got her to help me clean up the rest of the upstairs at the Crab Plant.  No idea if my organizational skills made sense to anyone else.  I’d never worked up there before packing, so I didn’t know the drill.  However, with Halibut before Dungies, there was plenty of time to fix my mistakes.  We were done by lunch break and I decided to call my dad before I ate lunch.  If I ate first, the pay phone would never be free.

    I settled myself in to the booth.  Malcolm walked by and we smiled at each other-genuine article and I could tell he’d like an after-hours’ visit.  Sneaking around could be fun when all you were doing was keeping a secret and not cheating.  Everyone in Pelican always thought they knew everything about everyone ( and usually they did), but it made the secret that much more satisfying.  And fun.

    I dialed and waited as the phone rang five times.  Then, the unexpected.

    A woman’s voice.

    “Hello?”

    “Uh…is Russell there?”

    “Uhm, well, no.”

    “Rebecca?  Is that you, Rebecca?”

    “Uhm, yeah.”

    “Oh, hey, sorry.  I was going to call you.  You’ve been on my mind.  That must have been why I dialed your number even though I was intending to call my dad.  So, how have you been?”

    There was a slight pause, then, “Well, I’ve been good.  You know, the usual.  Studying, more studying.  Not much to report.”

    “Did they stick you with a new roommate?”

    There was another long pause.  “No.  No, they didn’t.  Guess the freshmen don’t want to get stuck with someone who actually studies and wants to graduate.  Thank God.  Couldn’t take one of those twits who’s always going to the frat parties.”

    “Yeah, well, you need someone more mature than any of the frat boys I’ve ever met.”

    There was another pause in our conversation.  I never thought it would be this hard to talk to Rebecca.  Maybe my brief time in Pelican had already changed me more than I’d thought.

    “So,” Rebecca attempted conversation, “are you seeing anyone or are you taking a break from men?”

    Now the pause was on my part as I considered.  “Honestly, I’m not sure how to answer that.  This is a strange place, Bec.  I’m kind of seeing someone,” I whispered, “but I want to keep it kind of quiet.  Everyone is really nosy and gossipy and I’m kind of tired of everyone trying to mind my business.  Look, I should go.  Probably should eat some lunch before I go back to mind-numbing, time-wasting.”

    “Hey, you should call your dad.”

    “I’ll catch him another day.”

    “Seriously, Petra, just take a minute and give him a call.  You know he’d like to hear from you.”

    “Yeah, I will, maybe when I get off work.”

    “You should do it now.  It will only take you a minute.”

    I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the receiver.  This was a much stranger conversation than anticipated.  Usually I only got this kind of pressure from my mother.

    “Not to worry, Becca.  But I don’t have time to call him now.  I’ll do it later.  I’ll even call the Ranch and talk to my mom, if that will make you feel better.  Look, if you see my dad around, tell him you talked to me, I’m doing fine, and that I’ll talk to him soon. Ok?”

    Sigh.  “All right.  Petra, don’t blow it off.  I’m sure your family is worried about you being up there.  Be careful, seriously.”

    “Some things never change, do they, Becca?  Don’t worry.  No Steven Kane up here.  I’m doing fine.  I’ll talk to you later.”

    “All right.  Later.  Bye.”

    “Bye.”

    I hung up the phone and wandered back to the cafeteria.  Mercifully, it was clearing out.  Clark and Tim were sitting together by the window.  Loki was at the other end, sitting near the engineers.  He waved at me and tried to wave me over to sit with him.  I tried to look like a happy-go-lucky bimbo-nit-wit and smiled, waved, and plopped myself down next to Tim, across from Clark.

    “You’d better not sit with him,” Clark glowered at me.

    “Hey, I didn’t.  See.  I’m sitting across from you.”  He continued to glower, but relaxed somewhat.

    “Where were you?” Tim asked me.  “And that’s polite conversation, not being nosy.”

    “Did you listen in on my phone call?” I asked aggressively.

    “No.  What are you talking about?”

    “Just that I was talking to my old roommate on the phone and I’d told her that everyone here was unbearably nosy and gossipy.”

    “I resent that,” said Tim.

    “Can’t argue with that,” was Clark’s contribution.  Tim gave him a dirty look.

    “You probably need to be calling your family before you call your old roommate,” Tim said.

    I could tell this was one of those days where everything he said was going to irritate me.

    “Well, know-it-all, I had intended to call my dad.  I just misdialed.”

    “Yeah, right.”

    “I did.  Why would I lie?  It’s not like I need your approval.”

    Tim puffed up, ready to blast me when Clark reached across the table and grabbed my hand.  “Hurry up and eat.  We need to go clock in.”

    I glanced at the clock and he was right.  Loki walked past to put his tray away, touching his hand to the brim of his cap and making sure to have eye contact with me.

    “Ugh!”  Clark gagged.  “When will that twerp go away?”

    “You sound just like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls away the football at the last minute.”

    Tim laughed.  “I thought you sound more like Linus when someone takes his blanket away.”   Tim and I both laughed.  Clark gave us a look.  We were beneath his dignity.

    I took a couple of humongous bites of sandwich, impressing and repulsing my companions, then stood up, ready to go.  It took me a minute before I could talk, or even breathe for that matter.

    “Impressive.  Let’s go clock in.”  And we three walked off together, friends again.

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 41

As much as I'd like to respond to Mick's post of yesterday, today is Friday and that means novel installment.  So, perhaps Monday.  Or maybe I'll be nice instead, in honor of the holiday season.  And yes, I do realize that this installment, and a few others, seem to kind of meander around pointlessly.  And do you realize that this is a rough draft?  Yes?  It shows?  Well, I'll try to work on that.

    ****************************

    I awoke feeling very disoriented and like I was being watched.

    I was.   I jumped when I realized that Loki was sitting on the fiber behind me, watching me and Jaimie.  He chuckled at my discomfort, but said nothing.

“Jaimie, wake up, we have company.”

“Hmmm?”

    “Come on, wake up, we have company,” I said urgently.  I just didn’t know how to take this Loki character.  I’d worked with him a few times, but he spent so much time playing the enigmatic guru-type that I just didn’t know what was real and what was contrived. Most of it was contrived, I suspected.  The guy always answered a question with a question. I also didn’t know if he could be trusted or not.

    “Don’t wake her up on my account,” he said.  “But it’s almost 10:00 break, so I thought you might want to be warned before the wrong person stumbled over you.  Want to get a little work done, just in case Bill checks on you soon?  Now, it’s unlikely, but better to be prepared.”

    “Uh, sure.”  I kicked Jaimie awake and she got up with a scowl, then looked mildly apprehensive when she saw Loki.

    “So,” he said, “what were you girls supposed to be doing?”

    “We’re supposed to sort all this fiber,” I gestured around the room, “by size and then when done with that, make up a bunch of 50-pound boxes.”

    “Hmmm,” Loki said as he looked around.  “Most of this right here seems to be 50-pounders.  Why don’t I make up a bunch of boxes and you two try to straighten up the piles.  It’s mostly just two sizes, so it should be easy.  If you’d got straight to it, it would never have lasted you even till break time, but I think Bill’s too messed up to realize that.  Ok.  Let’s bust some of this out.”

    Jaimie and I both looked disoriented, but did as Loki suggested and sure enough, the mess really wasn’t that unorganized.  It was just falling over.  So we straightened.  He built boxes and within twenty minutes we’d finished almost half the upstairs.

    “There’s the bell.  See you, ladies,” and Loki touched his hand to his forehead in salute and ambled down the stairs.  

    We met Clark at the bottom of the stairs as he was coming out of the processing room.

    “Hey,”  I said.

    “What did he want?” Clark asked.  He looked disgruntled.

    “Well, I’m not sure.  He just showed up upstairs and helped us for a few minutes.”

    “Let’s sit outside.”

    “See you, “Jaimie called as she headed toward the bunkhouse.  Great, she’d continue to be useless and drowsy after break.

    “So what’s up?” I asked Clark.  It wasn’t raining so we sat and hung our legs over the side of the fuel dock.

    “Something’s not right about that guy.  I can’t believe I’m having to work with him.  Give me Enrico any day.”

    “Ah, come on, Loki isn’t that bad, is he?”

    “A complete phony.  I detest him.”

    I examined Clark’s profile and noticed that his jaw was clenched and set.  He looked grim and that made me realize that Clark never looked grim.  Superior, mischievous, disgusted, bored, mocking, yes, all those qualities were normal for Clark, but not grim.

    “Loki really got to you,” I remarked.  “Just what did he do?”

    Clark shook his head and starred out at the water.  “Nothing overt.  But he’s up to something.  I’m not sure what it is with him, but he isn’t what he tries to appear to be.”

    I said nothing, but I felt chilled and Steven Kane popped unbidden into my brain.  Crap.  Didn’t need to obsess about him.  “Do you think he’s using an alias?”

    Clark gave me the ultimate look of disgust and reluctant humor.  “Petra.”  He deadpanned.  “Petra.  The guy calls himself Loki.  Loki.  Do you really think his mom named him Loki?”

    I hit him with an impatient sigh and eye-rolling.  Two could play at this.

    “Clark.  Clark.  Don’t be deliberately obtuse.  Yes,  I’m pretty sure his mom didn’t name him Loki, but you never know.  People name their kids all kinds of weird stuff.  I meant do you think that this whole persona he’s presenting, do you think that he’s hiding who he really is?”

    “First, he’s too old to have a hippie mom who would have named him Loki.  But he’s old enough to be an old hippie and named himself that.  God, he’s so pretentious.”  The contempt just dripped from each syllable.  “I don’t know if he has a criminal past or not.  With the missing eye he might have.  Then again, there might be an eye under that eye patch, pretentious ass that he is.  Personally, I think he’s just really lame and mediocre and all this Loki crap is his attempt to make himself interesting.  Phony!”

    “Hmmmm.”  I replied.  I really didn’t know what to make of Clark’s reaction.

    “Promise me,” Clark said, looking all serious, “I mean it, promise me you won’t sleep with Loki.”

    My mouth dropped open in horror.

    “I mean it, Petra.  I want you to promise me you won’t sleep with that phony.”

    I should have blasted him and told him to mind his own business, but I was too repulsed at the thought of his fear and horrified that he had so little faith in me.

    “Don’t worry!  Not that it’s any of your business, but that just would never happen.”

    “Good.”   Clark nodded, still looking grim, but satisfied.  “I’d rather you slept with Tim than with that two-bit hustler.”

    That made me laugh.  “Two-bit hustler.  What crap have you been reading lately?”

    Clark smiled and didn’t answer.  “Come on, you lazy wench.  Back to the salt mines.”

    Clark helped me up and we moseyed back into the Crab Plant, no sign of Creepy Bill anywhere.

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 40

    The next day I decided to work.  Money was money and I hadn’t done much “volunteer” work yet. “ Volunteer” because it was optional whether we worked or not.  At first when anyone talked about the volunteer list, I was afraid that they were talking about working for the sake of working and that didn’t interest me at all.

    I’d snuck out of Malcolm’s apartment a little before 5:00 a.m. and made it down to the cabin, crawling back in bed for a couple of hours.   To my great relief, no Ted from the Charger.

    I had a piece of toast at the cabin, grabbed a coffee at the cafeteria, but didn’t stay to chat with anyone.  I wasn’t feeling so much anti-social, but just not ready to argue, debate, or defend my position.  Unfortunately, I had no idea how this volunteer crap worked.  So I’d have to ask.

    I clocked in and then loitered out front with other workers, waiting to be assigned some task.

    “Hey,” Tim said to me, “you actually going to do volunteer work?”

    I raised my eyebrows, “You actually going to speak to me?”

    He looked away and gave a twisted smile.  “Yeah, guess so.”

    “Good,” I said, “I wasn’t enjoying how things had changed between us.”  Tim didn’t respond, but just nodded.

    Thelma and Scary Bill approached, clip boards in hand.  Malcolm was walking behind them, eyes on me, a warm smile, and not a single person in the crowd picked up on it.

    Thelma started in, “Tim, Enrico, Clark, David, John, and yes, the other John, and Mike…go get your freezer suits on and get those tunnels cleaned out.”  This announcement was met with a group groan.

    “Petra, you and Jaimie can—“

    “No way, Thelma, “ Creepy Bill said forcefully, “You don’t get to just start taking every worker you want and leaving me with nothing.  I’ve got work that needs to be done in the Crab Plant. “

    Thelma turned to Bill, her hands on her hips.  “Bill, halibut is before crab.”

    “Yes, Thelma,” Creepy Bill said with strong sarcasm, “But the Crab Plant needs a lot of work done to it before Crab season opens.  The engineers stored stuff in there all winter and it’s totally wrecked.  I need workers, too.”

    “So what did you do all during Black Cod, Bill?  I never noticed you in here helping us but you still managed to collect a paycheck, so what did you do?”

    Malcolm walked past, gave me a small wink, and only I noticed.  Of course, Thelma and Bill were beginning to make quite an entertaining spectacle of themselves.

    “Don’t give me shit,” Bill’s voice was cold and threatening, “don’t even try it.  Now I’m going to take Petra, Jaimie, Loki, and Clark.”

    “I already called Clark.”

    “Uncall him.  I’m taking him.”

    “It’s nice to be loved,” Clark chirped in, a pleased, evil smile on his face.

    “Shut up,” Thelma told him.  “Fine, take Clark then.  See how much work you get out of him when he’s in the bathroom all day.”

    “Hey, I take exception to that,” Clark protested.

    “Sure, go ahead,” Thelma said rather unpleasantly and stalked off.

    Bill watched her leave, hands on his hips, and a smile on his lips that never reached his eyes.

    “Come on, you guys, get to the Crab Plant.”

    So we ambled along.  Then we loitered in the alley way inside the Crab Plant, just outside the cafeteria door.  This was about as much of the Crab Plant as I’d ever seen.  I’d poked my head inside  the door of the actual processing room once, but couldn’t see anything, because as Creepy had said, the engineers had stored crap in there all winter.

    “Ok, you girls wait here for a moment while I get Clark and Loki started.”  The two guys followed Bill into the processing room.

    “Come on, let’s go into the dry room,” Jaimie said.

    “That’s too far away, “ I said, “he said to wait here.”

    “Not the Fish House dry room, stupid, the Crab Plant dry room.  It’s behind that door that you’re standing right in front of.”

    “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”  Crap.  Jaimie had me on edge and feeling defensive already and it was only five minutes into an eight hour day.

    “Come on.”  So we walked into the tiny, smelly room and were hit by a blast of hot air.

    “Holy!  Talk about hot!  Why isn’t the Fish House dry room this hot?”

    “Too big, too cold,” Jaimie replied.  “Crab is warm to process.  We’ll just wear t-shirts when we work crab.”

    “Really?  Truly?  I can live with that.  Don’t know if I can live with Bill, but I can live with being warm.”

    “You’re not going to have any choice but to live with Bill.  All the new hires end up in the Crab Plant because of the wage difference.  Once you get up the scale, you make less and less if you work here, so the workers with seniority insist on the Fish House.”

    “Why do they get less money over here?”

    “Some stupid compromise during the last contract negotiations.”

    “Oh.”

    “Girls!”

    I opened the dry room door to find Creepy looking around, hands on his hips, looking as though he were afraid we may have ditched him.

    I gave him a smile.  “Yes?  You called?”

    Oh, big revolting grin.  Note to myself:  don’t say anything that Creepy may interpret as flirting.  I hid a shudder.

    “This way, ladies.”  Bill led the way up the staircase.  I was curious, never having been up here before, but honestly, not much to see.  More stacks of crap, most of it unmade boxes, also known as pallets of fiber.

    “Over here,” Bill led the way, meandering past cascading piles of fiber.  “Start over here in this corner and get as far as you can today, moving that direction.”  He pointed to the way we had just come.

    “Get started doing what?” I asked, baffled.

    “Get all this fiber sorted out by size and re-stacked.  Then if there’s time, I want you to start making 50-pound boxes and stacking them over here by the shoot.  I want to be totally ready when the crab hits.”

    I probably still looked stupid and blank, looking with curiosity at the hole in the floor through which I could see a small portion of the processing room.  Bill looked at me and shook his head.  Then he looked at Jaimie and she was nodding as though she had it all under control, so Bill seemed reassured.

    “Don’t screw off just because you’re up here by yourselves.  I’ll be checking on you and I’d better see some progress.  Got it?”

    I nodded without confidence and Bill shook his head in disgust again and ambled off.

    “God, where to start?” I asked Jaimie as I perused the chaos.

    “I say over here,” Jaimie said as she lay down on a big pile of fiber.

    I stared in silence for a moment, waiting for her to say she was just joking.  But she didn’t move except to make herself more comfortable.

    “Jaimie, Bill will blow a gasket if he comes up here and finds that we’re sleeping and doing nothing.”

    “Petra,” Jaimie said with her usual impatient sarcasm, “Bill isn’t going to show up for hours.  Bill just went home to snort a whole bunch of coke up his head and listen to music.  Plus a couple of boats pulled in this morning and he will be entertaining coke clients for at least a couple of hours.”

    I stared at her.  I kept staring at her.  Finally Jaimie lifted her eyebrows, willing me to say something.

    All I came up with is, “Are you serious?”

    Jaimie sighed.  “How old are you?  Did you come here straight from a convent?  I mean, can you really be that dense?”

    “I’m not sure if that was intended as a rhetorical question or not, but I’ll answer anyway.  Yes, I am apparently that dense.  How does he get away with it?”

    “The V.P.S.O. is a childhood friend who does coke.  A lot of fishermen buy from him.  He sells pot, too, but right now he’s sitting on a bunch of coke.  Jeff either doesn’t know or is turning a blind eye because he doesn’t want to piss off any of the fleet by canning their dealer, but he did make Bill move out of company housing.”
    “Ok.  Next question.  How do you know all this?”
    “What?  Do you think I’m so unpopular that no one will tell me anything or invite me anywhere?”

    “Whoa!  No offense intended.  I’m merely curious.”

    “I was visiting some of the fishermen I grew up around the other night and they wanted to score some and I just tagged along, hoping to get some beer.”
    I made a face at the mention of beer, my least favorite beverage.  “So what happened?  Did you see anything?”

    “Would you come sit down so I don’t have to look up so far?”  Jaimie was the rudest, most impatient little thing, but I obliged and stretched out on the fiber and we turned and faced one another—a Cold Storage daytime slumber party in the making.

    “I saw everything.  They snorted a bunch of lines and offered me a couple, too.  No one questioned it.”

    “Bill was right there?”

    “Bill was right there,” she confirmed.

    “Weird,” I said, not knowing what else I could possibly say.

    Jaimie agreed.  “It was weird.  I kept expecting him to tell me to get lost or to tell the guys I was with that it wasn’t cool and to come back later along, but no, he just laid out some lines, everyone snorted, listened to some music, and did some more lines.  He must have a shitload of that stuff.”

    I was quiet for a few moments. “How do you know that’s what he’s doing right now?”

    “Oh, there’s no doubt.  He is high as a kite and was starting to jones.  He’ll be there awhile.  Remember Thelma’s snotty comment to him?  The coke is why he didn’t work at all during Black Cod.  He was  too busy dealing and using.  Plus he thinks he’s really something now that he’s a foreman.  My dad says he won’t last long, though.”

    “Huh.”  Too much to ponder.

    “So I say, let’s take a nap, and then we’ll get up and bust some of this stuff out before lunch and no one will be the wiser.”

    “Ok.”  I agreed.  I wasn’t sure if I could actually sleep, but to my surprise, I drifted off to be plagued by very strange dreams.

 

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 39

The stairwell and hallway appeared to be lit with a 25 watt bulb.  I wouldn’t call it gloomy, but moody.  A door ahead and to my right was open, dimly lit with soft reggae music drifting into the hall.

    A dark, curly head poked out and grinned at me, then a hand beckoned.  I smiled and followed Malcolm in.

    Long hallway, with two doors to the left, leading to the bedrooms, one to the right which was the bathroom and at the end of the hall was a living room and kitchen.  All were worn, but clean.  All décor, except for art work, appeared to be from the 1970s.

    “Have a seat,” Malcolm gestured toward his huge, ugly brown couch.

    I sank in and snuggled into the corner.

    “I hadn’t seen you in awhile.  Thought maybe you were gone.”

    “No, just lying a little low.  Do a lot of my work at night.  We’re about done on Second Floor so it’s just been a really small crew.”

    “Hmmmm.”  I didn’t really know what to say.  My need to sleep was overwhelming and interfering with my usual sparkling repartee.

    “So some fisherman showed up, crying over Lauren?”

    “That’s about it in a nutshell.  I’m just not feeling as tolerant as usual.”

    “Lauren has that effect on people.”

    “What?  Aren’t you one of her groupies?”

    Malcolm laughed, a good deep laugh.  “No.  Definitely not.  Got her number a long time ago.  I don’t relish all the drama.”

    I sighed.  “Me either.  But she didn’t give me any choice but to move in with her, so I get some drama by default.”

    “She screwed up.  You could get her in a lot of trouble, you know.  Jeff isn’t very happy with her work anyway, and you should be able to have a bunkhouse room if you want one.”

    I shrugged.  “We’ll see.  I’m going to let her know that I want one when one opens up.”

    “I’d let you move into my extra bedroom, but due to another Lauren screw-up, I think the new Japanese egg tech is going to be my roomie.”

I just smiled sleepily at Malcolm and he smiled back.

“Hey,” he said, “want some popcorn to go with the movie.”

“Sure,” I said, “sounds great.  What are we watching?”

“One of the Lethal Weapon movies, not sure which one.”

    “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

    Man he had a nice smile.  Wondered how old he was.  “My thought exactly.  Won’t even matter if you fall asleep.”

    Malcolm sat down on the couch next to me then put his arm around me and snuggled me under his shoulder.  I rested my head on his chest and gave a contented sigh.  He pulled an afghan of every imaginable color over the both of us and then I drifted off to the comforting noises of car chases and gun shots.

    I didn’t sleep for long.  Warm lips and breath ruffled my hair as Malcolm spoke into my hair.  “Boy, you didn’t last long.  Thought you wanted some popcorn?”

    “Malcolm, you have a very comfortable body.”

    I kept my eyes shut, but his rueful chuckle jiggled my body.  “I’m not so sure that that’s a compliment.”

    “Quit laughing.  You’re disturbing my rest.”

    “Well, I have to admit that I find you a bit disturbing, too.”

    That made me open an eye and look up at his face.

    “Does that mean you’d like me to go?”

    “No, that doesn’t mean that at all.”

    He lowered his face to mine and gently and very slowly kissed my cheek, below my ear, my jaw line…I gave a contented little shiver and didn’t feel nearly so tired.

    “Um…” I said.  He just smiled at me and waited.

    “I…I’m not sure what to say,” I said, “but I have a feeling this may not be such a good idea.”

    “Undoubtedly,” Malcolm agreed, “and yet…the idea is pretty appealing, don’t you think?”

    “I’m not sure if appealing is the right word.  Maybe tempting.”  I was speaking with my lips resting against the base of his very warm throat.  He smelled so good and masculine.

    “You know,” I continued, “you don’t smell like fish at all.”

    Malcolm gave another small laugh.  “That’s because I work with the frozen fish.”

    “Malcolm, I suspect that you don’t work at all.”

    Bigger laugh.  “Ssshhh.  That’s supposed to be a secret.”

    I pulled back and looked at him full in the face.  I can usually read people pretty well, when I want to.  My problem lies in my willingness to be lied to, but it was time to get over that.     “So what do you do all day?”

    “Now, that, Petra, is a secret.”

    “Really?”

    Malcolm nodded and leaned down and kissed me softly, lingering, very tantalizing.  I snuggled closer and put my arms around him, leaning in.  We continued with what we were doing.  Conversation on hold for several minutes.  Then Malcolm pulled back.  His hand cupped my head and he gently pressed my head against his chest again.  He reoriented us toward the tv.

    “What?”  I said, “you really want to watch Lethal Weapon again.”

    “No,” he replied, “but we’re going to anyway.  You can fall asleep, but you’re going to be good and keep your lips and hands to yourself.”

    “Did I offend you?” I asked, stealing myself for the dreaded affirmative.

    “Not at all.  But before this goes any further, we’re going to actually have a conversation or two.  So just relax, go to sleep, and get up here earlier tomorrow.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah.  Probably a terrible idea.  But yeah.”

    “I don’t know,” I said, ready to drift asleep again, “doesn’t seem to be that bad an idea.”

    “Trust me, it is.  But there is something about you, Petra, that makes me think ‘what the hell’ and I want to anyway.”

    “Want to what?” I asked with mock innocence.

    Malcolm sighed.  “Petra, just be a good girl.  Just for tonight.”

    And with that I stretched out on the couch, my head in Malcolm’s lap, and burrowed under the afghan into a contented sleep.

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 38

    “Lauren?”

    I scrunched down in the covers and sighed.

    “Lauren?  Hey, Lauren, wake up, sweetheart.  I’m back.”

    I sighed again, but this time a sigh of disgust.  I rolled flat onto my back and stared at the bottom of the upper bunk.  With Lauren never home, I saw no reason to climb up into the upper bunk.  I became aware that there was a large man sitting on a chair next to the bed.  Calling me Lauren.

    “I’m not Lauren,” I said.  “She’s not here right now.”

    “But where is she?”

    “She’s up in Anchorage with her fiancée and her ex-boyfriend.”

    “Fiancee?   No, she doesn’t have a fiancée.”

    “Look, pal, I don’t know who you are, but I’m not Lauren, she’s not here, it’s the middle of the night, and this isn’t cool.”

    “But she said she loved me.”  And then this large, very large, balding man began to sob next to the bed that I had been trying to sleep in.  This was the craziness of Pelican.

    I waited, still staring at the upper bunk, striving for patience and sympathy.  Sympathy was in short supply and my patience would soon run out.  I could tell that I wouldn’t be able to see this one through.

    “Who are you?” I asked.

    “Ted.”

    “Ted who?”

    “Ted on the Charger.  I’m a crabber.  I bring more crab into this plant than any other fisherman.”

    “Well, Ted on the Charger, Lauren isn’t here and isn’t going to be here any time tonight.  You need to go.”

    “You’re mean.  Why are you being such a mean bitch?”

    I didn’t answer him, but just stared at him.  If he wasn’t over six feet and over three-hundred pounds, I might have taken a swing at him, but I stared daggers at him instead.

    “My marriage is over!  I told my wife about Lauren and she kicked me out.  And now you’re telling me that Lauren is engaged?”

    I got out of bed and got dressed, not caring at all that Ted on the Charger was in the room.  He was boo-hooing too hard to be any kind of a rapist.  I just wanted out.  I got some boots on, a cool knit hat and gloves to go with my leggings and huge sweatshirt.  Definitely not concerned with my sex appeal right now.

    “Where are you going?” the cry baby demanded.

    “I don’t know,” I replied, “anywhere but here.”

    “Why?”

    “Look, I don’t know you.  I don’t care.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  You interrupted my sleep and I don’t even know you.  Don’t you get that?”

    “Not really,” he replied.

    I just let out a big gust of air to punctuate my disgust and I headed out the door.

 

 

************************

 

    The night was as lovely as that afternoon in the skiff had been, but now the moon was out and the mountains were reflected in the water.  Everything still had that quiet, mysterious aura.  Bar noise was a distant hum, but I had no interest in returning there.

    It was a little hazy in my mind, but after leaving the Flats, Joy and I had made our way to the bar.  I’m not sure if we actually drank anything.  Sam eventually found us, bawled us out for a few minutes and then he and Joy started devouring each other’s faces again.

    Big D. had given me a disapproving look for being drunk in the bar again, I guess, and then he’d placed a cheeseburger and fries down in front of me and sternly said, “ Eat it.”

    I had, but then nothing sounded so good as going home and crawling into bed.  So I did.

    Then Ted from the Charger had to come around and ruin it for me.  What was up with Lauren and these men?  Not to sound like a prude, but that woman was like a walking cyclone leaving destruction in her wake.

    I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do.  I just wanted to sleep, but of course, the more I walked, the more awake I felt.  I was walking toward the bunkhouse, but not sure if there was a door I would feel ok knocking on.  I didn’t want to turn into Lauren Jr.

    Maybe I’d just keep going until I got to the pay phones by the store.  I could call Kitten or maybe Rebecca.

    I decided to call Rebecca because there was no way I wanted to end up talking to my parents at this hour, whatever this hour was.  It was dark, so it was sometime between 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.

    I settled myself into the phone booth and dialed Rebecca’s number.  I hadn’t talked to my old roommate since I’d reached Pelican so this would be fun.  Except that her phone rang and rang and there was no answer.  Weird.  Was she over at one of the study lounges pulling an all-nighter?  She usually studied in the room.

    I sat there for a moment, leaned my head against the wall of the phone booth and just rested.  But no, I couldn’t stay here.  I pulled myself up and opened the door, stepping out into that lovely still night.

    I hoped it was safe to go back to the cabin.  Hopefully Ted from the Charger had returned to the Charger where he belonged and hadn’t passed out in the cabin.  Though if he had, I could just sneak up into my own bunk and he wouldn’t even know.  God, he looked like a snorer, though, like a big, fat walrus of a man who’d snore obnoxiously.  But there was no help for it.  I turned to head back up the boardwalk.

    “Hey,” a disembodied voice said softly.

    My head whipped around like an owl, trying to locate the source of the voice.

    A soft, warm chuckle drifted over me.  “Up here.”

    I looked up.  Above the phone booth, above the store, were some windows.  They were dark, but I could see a man’s head leaning out one of them.

    “Petra, what’re you doing?”
    “Who is that?” I called in a whisper.

    “Malcolm.”  I wracked my brain trying to remember who Malcolm was and then it hit me.  The Second Floor foreman that almost no one ever saw.  I’d thought he’d left or something.

    “Malcolm?  What are you doing up there?”

    “I live up here.”

    “Really?”

    “Yup.  So what are you doing?”

    “Some big fat guy looking for Lauren is in the cabin bawling and I couldn’t take it.  I just wanted to sleep, so I decided to take a walk and try making a phone call.  No luck with that, though.  I’m hoping that I’ll be luckier and find that Lauren’s suitor is gone.”

    “Hey, want to come up and watch a movie with me?  You can sleep on my couch if you want.  Actually, I have an extra bed, too.  This is a two-bedroom apartment.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah, really.  Come on up.”

    “How do I get up there?”

    “There’s a door right before the door to the office.  Come in that and then up the stairs.  Veer right and I’ll have my door open.”

    “Are you sure?”

    He laughed that warm, lazy laugh of his.  He was kind of cute with dark, curly hair, permanent five o’clock shadow and heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes as I recalled.  I guess I recalled him quite well, and favorably.

    I gave him my best mischievous smile and said, “Thanks.  I’ll be right up.”

 

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 37

Warning:  drunk characters ahead.

 

    We passed a group of guys at the top of the harbor.  They were drinking beer and sitting on the bench in front of the Wet Goods.  Co-workers, but not ones I talked to very much.  It wouldn’t matter, though, because since I’d moved out of the bunkhouse, I’d felt sort of a disconnect from the rest of my co-workers, a sense of no longer belonging.  A large percentage of the guys only hung out with each other and wouldn’t dream of socializing with anyone local or even anyone who wasn’t a slimer.  After spending twelve hours standing across from someone, cleaning fish and making small talk, whether easy or labored, I was ready for new faces.  Of course, being a woman in Alaska made socializing much easier.

    Sam and Joy walked with their arms around each other’s waists.  I followed behind with my water jug and the essential toilet paper.

    “What are you doing back there?  Get up here!”  Sam hollered back at me.  Joy waved me forward with her free arm.  I started to slide in next to Joy, but Sam grabbed me and whipped me around to his other side, arm glued around my waist.  Three dorks.

    “That’s better,” Sam said, “don’t be anti-social.”

    “I wasn’t being anti-social,” I protested, “I was being considerate and giving you some space.”

    “We’re not in bed,” Joy said, “we don’t need space.  Don’t be such a dork.”

    “Ok,” I said as we  awkwardly struggled down the ramp, still three abreast, “but I think it’s too late for any of us to worry about dorkdom.”

    Finally, at the bottom of the ramp, I let myself be pulled along.

    “Where’s the wine and beer?” I asked, since Sam seemed to have no free arms.

    “Hey, babe,” he said, “already thought about it, already loaded it.  Everything is under control.”

    I rolled my eyes and shook my head wordlessly.  Joy giggled.

    It was a beautiful day for Pelican.  This isn’t to be confused with a beautiful day anywhere else.  Those postcards of Alaska that show blue sky and the sun?  Rare, very rare.  Yes, they do happen, but so seldom that if you waited for one of those days to say it was a beautiful day, you’d only be saying that a couple times a year.

    No, it was beautiful, but in a much more subtle and mystical way.  It was high overcast, no wind at all, and a little mist was settling down slowly onto the water.  Ravens and seagulls watched us from the tops of the power lines, from the wheel house roofs, and some just stood on the dock.

    The skiff looked average-small to me, but what do I know?  I grew up in Montana.  Sam helped me in first  (does everyone assume that I’m a klutz as well as a dork?), and then he and Joy proceeded to step on me since he wanted me in the bow, Joy in the middle, while he drove from the back. 

    “Stern,” Sam told me sternly, “Not the back, the stern.”

    “It’s called the stern, even in a little piece of crap boat like this?” I asked.

    “Yes.”

    Joy and I smiled at each other knowingly and then we putted out of the harbor and Sam opened her up and we were off.

    Oh, so cold.  I huddled inside my coat, pulled a cool knit hat out of my pocket and pulled it over my ears.  I made myself into a tiny ball and tried to enjoy my surroundings as the wind made tears leak from my eyes.

    “Cold?” Sam shouted.

    “Yes!”  Joy and I screamed back in unison.

    “Too bad.  You gotta wait.”

    It was fascinating to see Pelican from this vantage point.  I realized that normally being in Pelican is like being stuck inside one of those snow globes.  You’re always in it.  Anywhere else you can get in your car and drive away or walk away.  Go far enough and you hit another town.  But not in Pelican.  The whole boardwalk is a half mile.  And then at each end, wilderness, mountains, water, but no roads, no connecting towns.  Isolation.  Suffocation.  God it felt good to be in that skiff and see Pelican getting smaller and smaller.

    Soon we couldn’t see it, but as we passed the small islands—three of them, First Island, Ing-land (named for the guy that lives on it) and Third Island—how original, I was surprised to see more houses.

    “What’s all this?” I asked, pointing.

    “Phonograph,” Sam replied, “Well, not really.  Not yet, but coming up is Phonograph.  People are just starting to call everything this direction Phonograph, though.”

    I decided against asking for an explanation.  Some of the houses were pretty nice, though.  I could maybe handle something like this.  It wouldn’t be as suffocating as being stuck in Pelican all the time.

    Then we were past all the houses and we kept on going.  A few minutes later, Sam cut the engine and then everything was still.

    “Babe.  Beer.”

    Joy and I both reached for the beer and I sheepishly subsided.  She grinned at me and shook her head in mock disappointment.

    “Hey, you two got to drink that wine, you know.”

    “Glasses?” Joy asked.

    I was shaking my head in refusal.

    “Paper cups, babe.  No glasses here.”

    “You know what I mean.”

    “Yeah, I do.”  More lovey-dovey smiles.  Was I still hung-over or were they causing my nausea?

    “Petra, you, too.”  Sam insisted.

    “Do you guys want to see me puke or something.”

    Sam shrugged.  “Whatever.  Won’t bother me.”

    “Not the point, Sam.  Would bother me.  I hate to puke.”

    “I just mean that it wouldn’t hurt anything with all this water out here.”

    I shook my head again.  Joy tried to hand me a very large paper cup of white wine.  I shook my head again.  Joy looked disgusted at me.

    Then she leaned over and obviously and slowly French-kissed Sam.

    “Hand me that damn glass if you two are going to be doing that.”

    I took a deep breath, started sipping and looked away from the two of them.  Definitely the third wheel, but I didn’t want to be included.

    It was so beautiful and mysterious looking.  Dead calm.  Still.  The water had a green cast to it.  Occasionally a fish would flip itself out of the water.  I watched eagles circling overhead, perusing the depths before launching themselves down at the water and snagging a fish.  I watched the tree tops and saw even more eagles.  I counted…twenty…thirty…something like that.

    I finished my paper cup of wine—thankfully, my two buddies had remembered ice—and I looked back at them to see if it was safe to get another.  They appeared to have paused in their groping to admire the scenery, too.

    Refilled, we just drifted, talking lazily about this and that, and watching the wild life.

    Second cup of wine gone, I handed it over for a refill and Sam obliged.

    “You two are dangerous,” I mentioned in passing.  “All my good intentions for naught.”

    “I can’t believe those guys want to sleep with you seeing how you talk,” Joy said.

    “You don’t see how a person talks,” I corrected.

    “Aa, they’d just plug their ears,” was Sam’s contribution.  “They don’t care about her vocabulary.”

    “And that’s why I won’t sleep with any of them,” I said mischievously.  “They must care about my vocabulary if they want to get anywhere with me.”

    “I’ll be sure to tell them that,” Sam threatened.

    “Don’t you dare or I won’t babysit you.”
    “Oh, yes you will,” Joy threatened me.

    I smiled at them both and realized that once again I was feeling pretty drunk.  Safe, though, but drunk.

    “Crap.  I didn’t want to drink today.”

    “Boo hoo, “said one or the other.

    I shared a finger and spared them my vocabulary.

    At that moment I heard a strange noise and propped myself back up, looking around.  Then I heard it again.  It was kind of like a woof, but not a dog woof.

    “What?” I asked softly.

    “Cool,” Sam said and pointed.  “Look.”

    Something grey and shiny was on the top of the water.  And then it wasn’t.  A moment later, a spout of water blew, then another, and another, and then three grey slabs of something were on the water and moving toward and alongside us.

    “Is that?” I started to ask.

    “Uh-huh.” Sam replied.

    We waited and just watched as three humpback whales traveled alongside us.  They were right at the surface of the water, instead of diving deep.

    “They must be done feeding,” Sam said softly, “there’s been herring up here for a few days.  They must have followed the feed in.”

    They came almost within touching distance.  I made eye-contact with one of them.  It wasn’t scary, but it was awe-inspiring.  That intelligent eye looked back at me and I wondered what it saw, how it perceived us.  So beautiful.

    Then they passed us.  I sighed, deeply moved by the encounter.

    “Wow!  Let’s go!”  Sam started the engine and the next thing I knew, we were flying along on the water and moving alongside our humpback friends again.  They tolerated us for several  exhilarating minutes, and then they let us know that we were in their element.  They just disappeared, leaving us in their metaphorical dust.

    Sam cut the engine again.  “That was SO cool!”  And we all had a refill.  And then another.  We talked in circles over and over about the encounter.  It was its own kind of high.  I realized that we all three were pretty drunk.

    “I got to pee,” Joy announced.

    “So go, babe,” Sam said.

    “Here.  Just go in the bottom of the skiff.”

    “Don’t you even think of it,” I warned her.

    “But I really got to go,” Joy whined.

    “Hold it,” I threatened.

    “Petra,” Sam tried to reason with me, “as soon as I start the skiff up again, it’s all going to get sucked out the back.”

    “I’ve got to pee, too,” I said.

    “So pee!”  Sam sounded exasperated.

    “I can’t pee in this boat.”

    “Why not?”

    “I can’t pee in front of anyone.”

    Joy, for reasons known only to herself, thought this was hysterically funny and laughed until she nearly peed her pants.

    Gasping, she demanded, “Take us somewhere so Petra can pee.”

    “You two are stupid.”

    We giggled.

    Sam looked disgusted.  “Fine, but I have to pee now, so just wait.”

    And with that he turned his back to us and peed off the side of the skiff, both of us watching.

    “Yeah,” I said, “easy for him to be disgusted.  He doesn’t have to bare his butt and squat.  Peeing outside is so undignified for a woman, you know.”

    “Yeah,” Joy backed me up.  Sam just shook his head in disgust and started the engine.

    “We’re almost back to town,” he announced.  “Can you wait that long?”

    “No,” we said in unison.

    Again, he shook his head in disgust and beached the skiff on the Flats.

    “Have at it,” he said.

    “Where?” we asked, bewildered and a little outraged that he took us to such an open spot.

    “There!” he pointed.  “Go behind that big drift wood snag.”

    Joy and I stumbled out of the skiff.  Our feet got wet.  We laughed.  We held each other up.  We got our bearings and started to stumble toward the snag while holding each other and giggling helplessly.

    “Wait!”  Joy shouted.  “I forgot the toilet paper.  Bring me the toilet paper, sweetheart!”

    “Are you going to poop?”

    “For God’s sake, don’t shout ‘poop’.  No we’re not going to poop!” I shouted.  I turned to Joy and said, “hey, you’re not going to poop, are you?”

    She continued to laugh and managed to gasp, “No, but I think I’m going to pee my pants.”

    I started laughing harder, putting myself in similar danger.  We stumbled over to the snag, dropped our pants, hoped no one happened to be watching from a window with binoculars.  We accomplished our mission.  Amazing.

    “Hey!” Sam yelled, “I’m going to the harbor and tying up the skiff.  Meet you at home.”

    “Sure, babe,” Joy shouted.

    “Sure, babe,” I echoed.

    Joy and I staggered arm and arm across the Flats and to the bridge.  “Hey,” Joy said, “let’s stop at the bar.”

    “Great idea, “ I agreed and we were on our way.

The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World, installment 36

    Right.  Like anyone was going to let me read, or God forbid, take a nap.  A knock at the door, awakened me from a nap with the book lying across my chest.  Again, I ignored the knock.  Again, the knocker ignored my silence.

    “Come on, you lazy bitch, I know you’re in there!”

    “Joy!,” I called, “Wait  a minute while I move the chair.”

    I felt mostly human as I slid out of Lauren’s bed, moving through the curtain of beads to the tiny, dingy front room.  It was blazing hot, thanks to the necessity of keeping the oil stove burning in order to have any hot water.

    “I thought you were already gone,” I said.

    Joy moved into the room and sat in the best chair.  “No, we leave tonight to go anchor up.  I’ve been busy baiting skates.  That skipper is such an ass-hole.”

    “Joy,” I informed her, “I believe all the skippers expect their crew to do gear work.”

    “Yeah, but…”
    “Yeah, but,” I said.  “Don’t try to make excuses to me.  I’ve worked with you before, you great big whiner.”

    Joy looked indignant, but then shrugged and smiled.  “Yeah.  Well, he’s an ass-hole anyway.  So what are you doing?”

    “Mostly hiding,” I told her.

    Joy lifted her brows and waited for the explanation.  I sighed.

    “Nothing too interesting.  Some of it’s the same old crap attitude from the guys.  I went out by myself last night, believe it or not, and I would have made you go if I’d known you were still around.  I didn’t hear any sound coming from Sam’s at all.”

    “No, well, some machine or something at the plant broke down and he had to go in until some time this morning.  And that ass-hole made me bait skates until midnight.  Oh, I hate him!  So how was the bar?”

    “What I remember of the bar was ok.  You know how chicken I really am so I ended up drinking far too much.   The next thing I knew, I was suddenly on some big dude’s boat and he’s standing too close and being far too friendly so I got myself out of there.”

    Joy looked grim.  She didn’t say anything, but I felt myself shrinking down into my seat she looked so grim.

    “Not cool,” she finally pronounced.

    “No, it wasn’t at all,” I said, unable to look at her.

    “You ok?”

    “Yeah.  Big D. brought me Gatorade this morning, made me breakfast, and was just generally a good pal.”
    “No, Petra!  He’s so…so…greasy!”

    I nodded.  “He is, I know, but he’s fun to talk to and as long as I’m sober, my judgment doesn’t seem to be too bad.”

    “Well, that’s too bad, then,” Joy’s sarcasm tinged every word, “since you seem to be sober so seldom.”

    My mouth dropped open and I stared at her in disbelief.  “You big hypocrite!  You were my partner in crime and you work until midnight one night, one night, and now you go all righteous and judgmental on me?  How dare you?”

    “Petra, you need a keeper.  What do you think you’re doing going to the bar by yourself?  Remember that first time?  Do I need to remind you about Mitchell?  Do not go to the bar by yourself anymore!”

    I opened and shut my mouth several times as I searched futilely for an appropriate retort.  Finally I settled for, “Well, I didn’t want to go to the bar by myself, but I didn’t have anyone to ask.”

    Joy rejected that statement.  “Totally lame.  Almost any of the guys would go with you even if they are acting like a bunch of butts right now.  In fact, they’d probably start being a lot nicer.”

    “And then too nice and then if I talk to a fisherman they get all sulky and I hate it when grown men sulk.”

    “So stay out of the bar for awhile.  Actually, I have a favor to ask you.”

    I raised my eyebrows at her and looked at her silently, hoping my expression said, “fat chance I’ll do YOU any favors” and I waited.

    “You have to babysit Sam while I’m gone.”

    My expression turned to astonishment.  “What?  How do you expect me to do that?”

    “I mean you keep him away from other women.  You make sure he doesn’t cheat.  If he goes to the bar, you go to the bar.  Get it?  Clear enough?  That solves your problem, too, since you can’t go to the bar on your own anymore.”

    “Joy, I’m far too hung-over for this conversation.”

    “Liar.  You told me you were almost human.  You just don’t want to hear it.  That’s what true friends are for.  I’d do it for you if you’d ever just settle on some guy.  Why don’t you have a boyfriend yet?  What’s the matter with you?”

    I had a weird sense of déjà vu and I think it was because Joy’s comments made me feel like I was at a family dinner back at the Ranch.  Horror or horrors.

    “Well, will you babysit Sam?”

    My head shook no-no, but my lips, apparently said yes.  “Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed grudgingly.

    “Good.  Now get your shoes on, Chick, we’re going for a skiff ride.”

    “Really?”

    “Really.  Now get your shoes and you’d better wear a warm coat, too, it’s always colder on the water.  Sam has his beer and he bought us a box of white wine.”

    I’m sure I paled at her words.  I was going to protest, but all I said was, “Classy.”  Then I slid into my extra-tuffs, a hooded over-sized polar-tech coat, and I filled up a large bottle of water to take with me.

    From the front door Joy called back to me, “And be sure to bring some toilet paper!”