Bad Things

Finally I turned and walked up to the house. One of the older vacation homes along this stretch, it has wide, overgrown lots either side and consists of two interlocked wooden octagons, which must have seemed like a good idea to someone at some point – I'm guessing around 1973. In fact it just means there are more angles than usual for rain and sea air to work at – but it's got a good view and a walkway over the dunes down to the sand, and it costs me nothing. Not long after I came here I met a guy called Gary, in Ocean's, a bar half a mile down the road from the Pelican. He'd just gotten unmarried and was in Oregon trying to get his head together. One look told you he was becalmed on the internal sea of the recently divorced: distracted, only occasionally glancing at you directly enough to reveal the wild gaze of a captain alone on a lost ship, tied to the wheel and trying to stop its relentless spinning. Sometimes these men and women will lose control and you'll find them in bars drinking too loud and fast and with nothing like real merriment in their eyes; but mostly they simply hold on, bodies braced against the wind, gazing with a thousand-yard stare into what they assume must be their future.

It's a look I recognized. We bonded, bought each other beers, met up a few times before he shipped back east. Long and short of it is that I ended up being a kind of caretaker for his place, though it doesn't really need it. I stay there, leaving a light on once in a while and being seen in the yard, which presumably lessens the chances of some asshole breaking in. I patch the occasional leak in the roof, and am supposed to call Gary if the smaller octagon (which holds the two bedrooms) starts to sag any worse over the concrete pilings that hold it up on the dune. In heavy winds it's disconcertingly like being on an actual ship, but it'll hold for now. In theory I have to move out if he decides to come out to stay, but in two years that's never happened. I last spoke to him three months ago to get his okay on replacing a screen door, and he was living with a new woman back in Boston and sounded cautiously content. I guess the beach house is a part of Gary's past he's not ready to divest, an investment in a future some part of his heart has not yet quite written off. It'll happen, sooner or later, and then I guess I'll live somewhere else.

Once inside, I opened the big sliding windows and went out on the deck, belatedly realizing it was a Friday night. I'd known this before, of course, sort of. The restaurant's always livelier, regardless of the season – but Friday-is-busy is different to hey-it's-Friday! Or it used to be. Perhaps it was this that made me grab a couple of beers from the fridge; could also have been the half-joint floating around my system, coupled with a feeling of restlessness I'd had all day; or merely that I was home a little earlier than usual and Becki and Kyle had, without trying, made me feel about a million years old.

I decided I'd take the beers down onto the beach. A one-man Friday night, watching the waves, listening to the music of the spheres. Party on.

I walked to within a few yards of the sea and sat down on the sand. Looked up along the coast for a while, at the distant glow of windows in the darkness, listening to the sound of the waves coming up, and going back, as the sky grew lower and matt with gathering cloud.

I methodically drank my way through the first beer and felt calm, and empty, though not really at peace. To achieve that I would have needed to believe that I had a place in the world, instead of standing quietly to one side. I'd been in Oregon for nearly three years. Floating. Before the Pelican had been bar work up and down the coast, some odd jobs, plus periods working the door at nightclubs over in Portland. Service industry roustabout work, occupations that required little but the willingness to work cheaply, at night, and to risk occasional confrontations with one's fellow man. My possessions were limited to a few clothes, a laptop, and some books. I didn't even own a car any more, though I did have money in the bank. More than my co-workers would have imagined, I'm sure, but that's because all they know about me is I can hold my own in a busy service and produce approximately circular Italian food.

Finally it rained.

Irrevocably, and very hard, soaking me so quickly that there was no hurry to go inside. I sat out a little longer, as the rain bounced off the waves and pocked the sand. Eventually I finished the second beer and then stood up and started for home.

As Friday nights go, I couldn't claim this one had really caught fire.

Back inside I dried off and wandered into the living room. It was nearly two o'clock, but I couldn't seem to find my way to bed. I played on the web for a little while, the last refuge of the restless and clinically bored. As a last resort I checked my email – another of the existentially empty moments the Internet hands you on a plate.

Hey world, want to talk?

No? Well, maybe later.

Invitations to invest in Chinese industry, buy knock-off watches and stock up on Viagra. Some Barely Legal Teen Cuties had been in touch again, too. As was their custom, they were keen to spill the beans on how they'd got it on with their roommate or boss or a herd of broad-minded elk.

I declined the offers, also as usual, hoping they wouldn't be offended after the trouble they'd gone to for me, and me alone. I'd selected all the crap as a block and was about to throw it in the trash when a message near the bottom caught my eye.

The subject line said: PLEASE, PLEASE READ

Most likely more spam, of course. One of the Nigerian classics, perhaps, the wife/son/cat of a recently deceased oligarch who'd squirrelled away millions that some lucky randomer could have twenty per cent of, if they'd just send all their bank details to a stranger who'd spelt his own name three different ways in a single email.

If so, however, they'd titled it well. That combination of words is hard to ignore. I clicked on it, yawning, trying and failing to remember the last time I'd received a message from someone in particular. The email was short.

I know what happened

Nothing else. Not even a period at the end of the sentence. The name of the apparent sender of the email – Ellen Robertson – was not that of anyone I knew.

Just a piece of spam after all.

I hit delete and went to bed.

Chapter 3

Next morning started with a walk up the beach, carrying a big cup of coffee. I've done that every day since I've been living in Gary's house. Far as I'm concerned, if the beach is right there and you don't kick off the day by walking along it, then you should move the hell inland and make way for someone who understands what the coast is for.

I was up early, and the sands were even more deserted than usual. I passed a couple of guys optimistically waving fishing rods at the sea, and a few people like me. Lone men and women in shorts and loose shirts, tracing their ritual walkways, smiling briefly at strangers. Sometimes when the sun is bright and the world holds no shadows at all I imagine what it would be like to have a smaller set of footprints keeping pace with mine. But not often, and not that morning.

I walked further than usual, but it was still only eight-thirty when I got back to the house. There was already a message on the machine. It was from Ted.

‘Christ,’ he'd said, without preamble. ‘Look, I hate to call you like this. But could you come lend a hand? Someone's broken in. To the restaurant.’

His voice went muffled for a few moments, as he spoke brusquely to someone in the background.

Then he came back on, sounding even more pissed. ‘Look, maybe you're out for the day already, but if not—’

I picked up the handset and called him back.

Rather than wait for me to walk, Ted came down, arriving outside the house ten minutes later. It's always been evident where Becki acquired her driving style. Ted turned the pickup around in the road without any notable decrease in speed, and drew level with me. I was leaning against the post at the top of my drive, waiting, having a cigarette. I leaned down to talk through the open passenger window.

‘You need me to bring any tools?’

He shook his head. ‘Got a bunch in the storeroom. Going to have to go buy glass and wood, but I'll get on to that later. Fucking day this is gonna be.’

I climbed into the truck and just about got the door shut before he dropped his foot on the pedal.

‘When did you find it?’

Ted's face was even redder and more baggy-eyed than usual. ‘One of the cooks. Raul, I think. Got there at seven with the rest of the crew, called me right away.’

‘Which one's Raul?’

‘You got me. I think they're all called Raul.’

‘What happened to the alarm?’

‘Nothing. It went off like it was supposed to. It was still going when I got there.’

‘Isn't someone from the alarm company supposed to come check it out? Or phone you, at least?’

Ted looked embarrassed. ‘Stopped paying for that service a while back. It's eight hundred a year, and we've never needed it before.’

By now we were decelerating toward the right-hand turn off the highway.

‘How bad is the damage?’

Ted shrugged, raising both hands from the wheel in a gesture evoking the difficulty of describing degrees of misfortune, especially when however much ‘bad’ is still going to cause a day of fetching and form-filling and expense that a guy just doesn't fucking need.

‘It's not so terrible, I guess. I just don't get it. There's signs on all three doors – front, back, kitchen – saying no money's left on the premises overnight. So what the hell? Huh? What kind of fuckhead comes all the way over here in the middle of the night, just to screw up someone else's day?’

‘Maybe they didn't believe you about the money,’ I said. ‘Fuckheads can be strange like that.’

As the car slowed into the lot I saw Becki's car ‘parked’ down the end. ‘Don't tell me Kyle's here already?’

Ted laughed, and for a moment looked less harried and disappointed with mankind in general.

‘I had to call Becki to work out how to get your phone number off the database. I told her she didn't have to do anything, but she came right over.’

He pulled the pickup to come to rest next to his daughter's vehicle.

‘You called the cops, I assume?’

‘Been and gone. They sent their two best men, as I'm sure you can imagine. Not convinced either of them aced the “How to pretend you give a shit” course, though. And I've comped a lot of appetizers and drinks for both those assholes in the past.’

We got out and I followed Ted to the restaurant. He led me around the side to the back door, the one you'd enter if you'd been out on deck with a drink before coming in for dinner.

The remains of the external door there was hanging open, most of the panes broken. The slats that once held the glass in place lay in splinters on the floor. Becki was hunkered down in the short corridor beyond the doorway, working a dustpan and hand brush.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘It doesn't look so bad.’

‘Not any more,’ she said, straightening up. She'd evidently been at the job a while, and a couple of blonde hairs were stuck to her forehead. She looked pissed off. ‘The guys are still working in the back.’

I went through the second door – which had been more gently forced – and into the main area of the restaurant. The Pelican's register and reservations system runs on a newish Apple Mac with an external cash drawer. The latter had been unsuccessfully attacked with a chisel and/or crowbar. I looked at this for a while and then headed into the back, where the brigade was tidying the kitchen.

‘They messed it up some in here,’ Ted said, unnecessarily, as he joined me. It looked like one or two people had really made a meal of throwing things around. ‘And it seems like we got a machine missing.’

‘Juicer,’ confirmed one of the cooks – the guy who'd stared at me on the way out of the lot last night. He looked less moody now, and I could guess why. He and his fellow non-Americans would not have enjoyed the police visit earlier, most likely spending it on an extended cigarette break half a mile down the road. They would also be very aware of being high on most people's list of suspects – either for doing the job themselves, or passing the opportunity to an accomplice, along with the information that any alarm would go unanswered.

‘Kind of a dumb break-in,’ I said, directly to him. ‘I mean, everybody knows there's no cash left here, right?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ the cook said, nodding quickly. ‘We all know that. But some people, you know? They think it's fun, this kind of thing.’

‘Probably just kids,’ I said, looking past him to the anteroom off the side where staff changed and hung their coats. ‘Anyone lose anything out of there?’

‘Well, no,’ Ted said. ‘Nobody here in the middle of the night, right? The lockers were empty.’

‘Duh,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

I turned, and saw Becki standing out in the restaurant looking at me.

I have no formal training in fixing things, but common sense and good measuring will get most of the job done. My dad had game at that kind of thing, and I spent long periods as a child watching him. Ted and I measured the broken panes and the wood that needed replacing, he listened to my instructions for a couple more items, then drove off to get it all from a hardware store in Astoria. Meanwhile Becki headed out to get a replacement cash drawer from a supplier over in Portland that she'd tracked down on the Net.

Ted was gone well over an hour. I sat on deck and slowly drank a Diet Coke. I was feeling an itch at the back of my head, but didn't want to yield to it. I knew that if I was back at the beach house, however, as normal at this time of day, then I'd already have done so. I also knew it would have been dumb, however, and that it was a box in my head I didn't want to open. The smart tactic with actions that don't make sense is to not do them the first time. Otherwise, after that, why not do them again?

Nonetheless I found myself, ten minutes later, at the till computer. The web browser Becki had been using was still up on screen. I navigated to my Internet provider's site and checked my email, quickly, before I could change my mind and fail to yield to impulse. There was nothing there.

That was good. I wouldn't be checking again.

Eventually Ted got back with the materials and I started work. The external door had been pretty solid, and so kicking the panes out had badly splintered the frame around the lock. I levered the damaged side off under Ted's watchful eye.

‘You know what you're doing, right?’

‘Kinda,’ I said. ‘More than you do, anyhow.’

‘I get what you're saying,’ he said, and went inside.

I worked slowly but methodically, which is the best way of dealing with the subversive ranks of inanimate objects. Ted proved to have a thorough selection of tools, which helped, as did having gone through the process of figuring out how to replace Gary's screen door a few months back. Security and good sense dictated replacing the door with something more robust, but Ted was adamant it needed to look the way it had, for tradition's sake. I'd specified that he at least buy super-toughened glass, also some metal strips that I intended using to strengthen the off-the-rack door.

While I was working through that portion of the job, Becki returned. I was ready for a break from hammering and sawing so I went to give her a hand with the cash drawer, which was not light. In the end she let me carry it by myself, though she hovered encouragingly in the background and went off to fetch me a soda as a reward, while I levered it into position and bolted it in place.

She got sidetracked with some issue in the kitchen, and I was back at work on the door by the time she returned with a Dr Pepper stacked with ice.

She stood around for a while and watched me working, without saying anything.

‘That was a nice thing you did,’ she said, after maybe five minutes.

‘What's what?’

‘You know. Signalling to the cooks that you thought they didn't have anything to do with it.’

‘They didn't.’

I concentrated on manoeuvring a pane of glass, making sure it was bedded properly before screwing a piece of the metal brace-work securely into place. When I turned round, Becki was still looking at me, one eyebrow slightly raised.

I smiled. ‘What?’

‘You haven't always been a waiter, have you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But it's what I am now.’

She nodded slowly, and walked back inside.

* * *

Midway through the day, the guy from the kitchen brought out a plate of food. I hadn't asked for this, or expected it. It was very good, too, a selection of handmade empanada-style things filled with spicy shrimp and fish.

‘That was great,’ I said, when he came back for the plate. ‘You should get Ted to put those on the menu.’

The cook smiled, shrugged, and I guess I knew what he meant. I stuck out my hand. ‘John,’ I said.

He shook it. ‘Eduardo.’

‘Got the dough ready for the young maestro yet?’

He laughed, and went back inside.

It took over six hours, but eventually everything was done. By four o'clock I'd replaced the frames on inner and outer doors, and fixed the other damage. Becki had the register back up and running, something I was surprised she was capable of doing. Her entire demeanour during the day had been something of an eye-opener. I hadn't figured her for capable and businesslike. The guys in back had meanwhile returned the kitchen to its spotless and socked-away state.

Ted came on an inspection tour, pronounced it good, grabbed a couple of handfuls of beers and took them out on deck. We all sat together, Ted, Becki and me with the guys out of the kitchen – and Mazy too, when she wandered in as if fresh out of some flower-scented fairy realm – and drank slowly in the sun, which wasn't very warm, but still pleasant. Fairly soon Ted got his head around the fact that though more than one of the cooks was called Eduardo, none was actually called Raul.

After a while Becki got up and went and fetched some more beers. She dispersed them around the crew and then offered one to me. I looked at my watch, realized it was coming up on five. I'd been working in direct sunlight half the day and my shirt was sticking to my back.

‘I need to get back to my place to change,’ I said. ‘Pretty soon, in fact.’

‘I'll give you a ride,’ she said, as I stood up.

‘This is good of you,’ I said, as we walked together to her car. She didn't say anything.

She waited out on deck while I took a shower. As I came out into the living room, I saw she'd taken a beer from my fridge and was sitting drinking it, looking out to sea. I sat in the other chair.

‘Going to have to head back soon,’ I said.

She nodded, looking down at her hands. I offered her a cigarette, which she took, and we lit up and sat smoking in silence for a moment.

‘How much trouble is he in?’ I asked, eventually.

She glanced up. The skin around her eyes looked tight. ‘How did you know?’

‘Why steal a battered juicer and leave a computer? The mess in the kitchen was overdone, and the cash drawer looked like it was attacked by a chimp. No one came there last night looking for money. So where was it? In the locker room?’

She nodded.

‘Dope, or powder?’

‘Not dope.’

‘How much?’

‘About ten thousand dollars' worth.’ Her voice was very quiet.

‘Jesus, Becki. How stupid do you have to be, to stash that much cocaine in your father's restaurant?’

‘I didn't know it was there,’ she said, angrily. ‘This is Kyle's fucking thing.’

‘Kyle? How did he even get that much capital? Please don't tell me you gave it to him.’

‘He got a loan. From … some guys he knows.’

It was all I could do not to laugh. ‘Oh, smart move. So now he's royally fucked, owing not just the back end of drugs he no longer has to sell, but the money he used to buy them in the first place. Perfect.’

‘That about covers it.’ She breathed out heavily, drained the rest of her beer in one swallow. ‘And if you're thinking of getting heavy about drugs, I don't need to hear it.’

‘No, drugs are way cool,’ I said. ‘Moral imbeciles making fortunes from fucking up other people's lives, staying out of sight while wannabes like your idiot boyfriend take all the risks.’

‘Better get you back. Going to be a busy night.’

‘Take it I'm going to be on pizzas?’

She smiled briefly, crooked and sad, and I realized how much I liked her, and also how close she was to seeing her life veer down a bad track into the woods. ‘I'm not sure where he even is right now.’

We stood together.

‘And you can't just walk away from this?’

‘I love him,’ she said, in the way only twenty year olds can.

She drove me back to the restaurant, letting me out at the top of the access road.

‘Go find him,’ I said. ‘Get the names of anyone he might have told where he stashed his gear.’

She looked up at me. ‘And then?’

‘And then,’ I said. I tapped the car twice with the flat of my hand, and she drove away.

The front door to the restaurant was open, other front-of-house staff busily arranging chairs out on deck, but I walked around the other way and went in through the portal I'd spent most of the day replacing. I reached out as I walked through, and gave it a shove. It felt very firm.

There's something good about having rebuilt a door. It makes you feel like you've done something. It makes you believe things are fixable, even when you know that generally they are not.

Chapter 4

What can you do, when things start to fall apart? Let us count the ways …

Not panic, of course, that's the main thing. Once you start, it's impossible to stop. Panic is immune to debate, to analysis, to earnest and cognitively therapeutic bullet points. Panic isn't listening. Panic has no ears, only a voice. Panic is wildfire in the soul, vaulting the narrow paths of reason in search of fresh wood and brush on the other side, borne into every corner of the mind by the winds of anxiety.

Carol wasn't even sure when it had started, or why. The last couple of months had been good. For the first time she'd started to feel settled. The apartment began to feel like a home. She got a part-time job helping at the library under the dread Miss Williams, tidying chairs and putting up posters and helping organize reading groups. Work more suited to some game oldster or slack-jawed teen, admittedly, but gainful employment all the same. She walked to the library and back and yet still managed to put on a few pounds, having regained something of an appetite. She made acquaintances, even put tentative emotional down-payments on a couple of potential friends, and generally quit acting like someone in a Witness Protection Program.

Sometimes, she even just… forgot. That had been best of all, the times when she suddenly remembered – because it proved there had been a period, however short, when she had not.

At some point in the last few days this had started to change. She woke feeling as if she had sunk a couple of inches into the bed overnight. Instead of vigorously soaping herself in the shower she stood bowed under the water, noticing flecks of mildew between a pair of tiles and wondering how she could have missed them before, and if she'd get around to doing something about it – or if it would just get worse and worse until she was the kind of woman who had grubby tiles and nothing could be done about that or the state of the yard or her clothes or hair. Chaos stalks us all, gaining entrance through cracks in trivial maintenance, the things left undone. As soon as you realize how much there is to do to keep presenting a front, it becomes horribly easy to stop believing, and start counting again instead.