I brought it in, grabbed it by its broad, hard bottom lip, and walked it around the bank to where she was. It was at least a six-pounder. Now its big round eyes seemed to take in the whole world, and we were insignificant in it.
“Ooo!” she said, looking up. “What a fish!”
“I know what we’re having for supper tonight,” I said.
I tethered the fish on a stringer tied to a log at the water’s edge, and we had our picnic on the blanket, cool fried chicken and potato salad and a couple of cold beers. We climbed into the back of the VW and partially closed the doors and had us a little midafternoon play, sun-dappled leaves winking outside the old windows. We lay there awhile and had a deep nap. It was late afternoon when we woke, feeling sleepy but rested.
I laid the fish in the cooler we’d brought, on top of the melting ice, and drove us slowly home, down the dirt and gravel roads as far as they would take us, then on the old two-lane blacktop, and we pulled into the driveway of the house with the attic apartment and went upstairs and went immediately to bed and to sleep again.
I WAS SETTLING INTO THINGS, it seems to me now. Shaping up our little world a bit at a time. A modest measure of the American dream. I spent the next day just goofing off, resting, and in the afternoon I filleted the fish, marinated it in lemon juice, sliced some potatoes for frying, and made a salad.
“Oh, fantastic,” Olivia said. “I’m starving again.” She stood in the door to the tiny kitchen, cupping her little belly in both hands and grinning.
We went out onto the deck. Low thin clouds to the west hugged the horizon, glowing a strange and bloody blend of deep pink and fiery orange, as if distant lands were engulfed in a vast chemical inferno.
I fried the potatoes while the coals were burning down, then cooked the fish steaks on a little grill on the deck, and we ate out there in folding lawn chairs, the plates in our laps, and washed it down with some cheap wine from the liquor store that I’d put in the freezer for a while to make it cold and drinkable. The icy alcoholic coldness made frozen lumps in our brains, so we walked it off over to the mental hospital.
It was twilight, the strange glow gone from the horizon. No one was about on the hospital grounds. We strolled onto the broad front lawn, with its old magnolias limbed and leafed so low they covered the ground beneath them like huge mutant shrubs, and ancient live oaks, their massive limbs like the knotted arms of giants bent and lowered to lift some smaller creature into the sky.
We had our arms around each other’s waist, and I kissed her on the cheek, and she stopped and we kissed there in the failing light beside one of the magnolias. She had a strange but pleasant musky taste I’d never noticed before. We knelt and crawled beneath the magnolia’s sheltering low limbs, pushed aside the soft, fallen cones, and got lost in one another, everything around us disappearing, ceasing to exist, and we were a long few minutes catching our breaths in the dank, earthy air beneath the limbs and thick waxy leaves and letting the warm rushing feeling slowly leave our blood. It was as if time had changed, somehow, and we were alone in the world. I heard something outside the leafy cave we were in, and in the next moment something startled us pushing its way through the lowest limbs, too dark to see just what it was, but God what a stench. Olivia sucked her breath in surprise, and we lay very still because the broad, stinking muzzle of the lion was snuffling us, pushing its warm dry nostrils against our hair and our cheeks, running them down our bodies and back up to our mouths, a low quiet growl like a basso purr in its throat, and I dared to look into its burning yellow-green eyes, and when I did that the lion jerked its head up and backed rapidly out of the sheltering leaves and was gone.
I couldn’t speak. It took me a moment to get my breath back. Olivia said, “My God, oh, my God. That was fantastic.”
I realized I was excited, on fire. She had me in her cool slim hand. We went at it again, immediately, just as lost in it as we were before. I don’t know how long it was before we made our way back to the apartment. I can’t even remember that we did.
I WENT BACK TO my job the next day. I hadn’t really thought about it for a while.
Curtis was there, on the site, standing in a foundation ditch with a shovel. This was a job I was supposed to be handling, shaping up the ditch started by the backhoe, which he’d operated.
“I’m sorry, Curtis,” I said. “I hope Arlo’s not mad.” Arlo was the young contractor we worked for.
“He’s not,” Curtis said, and I realized that Curtis didn’t seem angry, either. Normally, after such a stunt, he would be. Then again, normally he’d have come to the apartment the day I didn’t show to see what was keeping me. But he hadn’t even called.
I decided not to say anything more about it, in case I’d break the spell of good luck. I found a shovel and hopped into the ditch and we worked at trimming and shaping the ditch all morning, and in the afternoon we laid and tied off the rebar, and when we were done the foundations were ready to pour the next morning.
“Are you coming in?” Curtis said, meaning the next morning. He was asking, as if there were an option.
“Sure,” I said after a moment.
“Okay, buddy,” he said, climbing into his green Bronco. “See you at seven.” He headed off to his fiancée’s place.
I hadn’t seen or heard from my parents since we’d broken the news, either, which suddenly seemed very odd, and so I thought I’d drop by the house on my way home, check in.
They were both at home, although my little brother was out with some friends. Mom was watching the news from the big lounge chair while she let a casserole cook in the oven. Dad was out on the back patio, sipping a bourbon and water. He held up the glass in salute when he saw me through the plate-glass window to the patio. I leaned over and kissed my mother on the cheek and she kissed me back on my cheek and said, “Hey, hon.”
I sat on the sofa and watched the news with her for a bit.
“Listen,” I finally said, “are you doing okay?”
She turned her attention from the news to give me a nice warm smile.
“Of course,” she said. “How are you? How’s Olivia feeling?”
“Oh, she’s fine, I guess,” I said. “I mean, she’s been fine. We went on a picnic.”
“That sounds like fun.” And she turned her attention to the news again.
I went out back onto the patio.
“Hello, son,” my dad said. He wore an old pair of dress pants with a sheen worn into the thighs, his favorite high-top sneakers, and a guayabara shirt. “Drink?”
He’d never offered me bourbon before. He’d let me have a beer before, the previous year, and that had been a big deal. I guess the idea was I was grown up now, for all practical purposes.
“Sure.”
He went in and came back out with a second drink, handed it to me.
“Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
We drank the bourbon and talked about golf. He’d been watching a tournament that day, at one of the local country clubs, following the leaders in a cart and drinking beer. I remembered how I used to go to the tournaments as a kid and put together long, elaborate strands of beer can pop tops and wear them around like primitive necklaces.