“I’m glad,” I said. “You’re wearing them up to the cashier.”
“Can I get another bag of Chex Mix while we’re here?” he asked. “Someone ate the rest of the one with my name on it.”
It’s a good thing Nick liked his shoes, because the next morning he was certainly using them. There were quite a number of stairs to the Sea Lion Caves, not to mention the elevator we took down to the bowels of the earth. It’s the biggest sea cave in the world, and as soon as the elevator doors open, you know it. The cave itself is open directly to the ocean, with a viewing platform overlooking the vast interior that sometimes has up to five hundred sea lions hanging out on the rocks. And, believe me, there’s no mistaking the fact that something that eats fish is living there. Or that a lot of things eating a lot of fish are living down there. Like a town that eats nothing but fish and just throws the carcasses out the front door to ward off evil. It’s a powerful, encompassing smell. I’m sure on the odor meter it’s officially a “stench,” and I was trying my best to ignore it and enjoy myself, but really. Really. It cost the three of us thirty-two dollars, which is a lot for someplace that smells like a Morton’s processing plant, and if I’m going to pay that much to take an elevator to a cave that was already there, a cave that the earth made but forgot to equip with a ventilation system, all I’m saying is that a couple of Glade candles wouldn’t hurt.
And certainly, once you get to the viewing platform and see the expanse of the cave before you, it really is breathtaking. That’s especially true when at the moment you get up to the front of the platform, the biggest male sea lion—roughly the size of an Escalade—lifts himself up to show his full, incredible stature, roars the loudest wildlife noise I have ever heard, pounds his flaps on the rocks a couple of times, and then shoots a tunnel of vomit from his cavernous mouth as if it were a fire hose that lasted a good four to six seconds, throwing up all over the other sea lions lying within a twenty-foot spray radius. I don’t know how many stomachs one of those things has, but it’s more than one. And it’s not just vomit but fish vomit, just a Jacuzzi’s worth of sea barf, the smell of which hit us like a pyroclastic flow from the guts table on Deadliest Catch.
The response of revulsion from the crowd hit the mark at the same second; a collective “Ewwwww!” traveled around the cave like rumors of an unplanned pregnancy on a field-trip bus. I can’t speak for the other witnesses, but the sea lion magic was clearly gone. This was particularly true since the other sea lions didn’t appear to realize they had been hurled on, and it seemed a little Tijuana-ish to simply stand and watch mammals roll around in someone else’s puke. It turns out that the way you clear out an underage party is the same way you clear out a sea lion cave, and it’s always the fattest guy who does it. Needless to say, the ride back up in the elevator wasn’t nearly as full of smiles as it was going down; we all had to be very still and focus, because if any one of us gagged, we were all going down. The splash zone in an elevator isn’t very generous, and if one person heaved on another, most of us were far enough up the evolutionary ladder to know it.
After driving for a couple of hours, we found ourselves on the main street of a small mining town and spotted what looked like a cute little diner. We stopped and decided to have lunch, thinking it wise after our recent history concerning fast food.
We ordered hamburgers and fries (we all agreed: no fish and chips) from a middle-aged man who seemed very friendly, and as soon as he took our order, he went behind the counter to the grill and started cooking. While the restaurant wasn’t exactly hopping, several groups of people finished their lunches and paid the man, who was the only one working there, and pretty soon we were the only people in the diner. When we were finished, we got up and together went to the counter to pay.
As soon as we got to the counter and the man came over to ring us up, the door opened, the bells on the door chimed, and three young men who looked to be in their late teens came in. Immediately, the man behind the counter pointed to the tallest of the guys, the one who came in first, and shouted, “Out! Get out! I told you to never come back in here!”
The guy stood there in front of his two huge friends, all of them small-mining-town kids trying to dress like gangsters.
“You’re going to regret it!” the kid yelled at the man. “You think you can fire me and get away with it? You’re going to pay for it, you goddamned wetback!”
My adrenaline surged and I felt my entire body turn cold. I grabbed Nick’s arm and pulled him closer to me. I looked at my husband, and I knew he was feeling the exact same thing I was. Definitely unsettled. We were trapped at the counter; behind us was the only entrance and exit, which was blocked by the three guys, and on the other side of the counter was their target.
“Get out of here!” the man yelled again. “You stole from me! I’ll call the police!”
The guy shouted an expletive and then called the man a “spic.”
“I’ll beat the shit out of you,” the guy warned. “You’d better watch yourself. You’d better watch over your shoulder every minute of every day. You think you can start shit with me? I’m going to burn your shithole down.”
I was frozen; I didn’t know what to do.
“Get the hell out of here!” the man yelled in return. “I’m calling the cops now!”
“Go back to Mexico, asshole,” one of the other guys added, and then, cued by the tallest one, they all turned and walked back out of the diner.
“I’m not done with you!” the tallest one called over his shoulder as the bells chimed again.
It was silent for a while in the restaurant. The four of us stood there; no one moved. Then the man reached for the credit card my husband had put on the counter when we walked up. He slid it across the Formica and swiped it through the terminal.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head but not looking at us. “I’m sorry that happened.”
In moments like this in the movies, writers have had time to figure out what the right thing to say is, what the best way to handle it would be, how to offer some clarity to the situation or even a nugget of wisdom to wrap it all up.
But the truth is that in real time none of that happened. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing came out of my mouth. I couldn’t think; all I knew was that I had Nicholas with me and what had happened could have ended pretty badly. I was frightened. I was just glad the thugs were gone, and I was shaking, even though the incident didn’t take more than a minute or two. I didn’t know this town, I didn’t know these people, but I was terrified of them, and I’d never wanted to leave someplace so badly.
“That was terrible,” my husband said to the man. “You should call the police.”
He nodded, and we left the restaurant and headed directly across the street. I walked quickly, herding Nick in front of me to hurry up and get to the safety of the car. I couldn’t believe that those assholes put that in front of my nephew, just a little kid. Put that there and let him see that, let him hear it, a kid who, up until three minutes ago, thought tiny spiders on the ceiling were the biggest things to be afraid of. For what seemed like a very long time in that diner, I had the feeling that we might well end up as Flannery O’Connor characters on vacation. I didn’t know what these guys were capable of or if they had anything tucked into their waistbands or not. I had no idea how far their anger would take them. All I knew was if you could bust into a restaurant and start shouting blatant threats and racial epithets—not to mention doing it in front of a child—your range probably knew very little bounds and nothing was off the map.
“You okay, Nick?” I asked.
He looked at me, took a deep breath, and nodded.
“I thought I was going to poop my pants,” he said as he reached for the car’s rear door, and the honesty of my eleven-year-old nephew allowed the three of us to burst into nervous laughter as we got into the car.
––
My sister, her husband, and my younger nephew, David, flew into town a day after we re
turned home. I knew that Nick couldn’t wait for them to come, and I couldn’t blame him. I mean, here we had promised him this awesome vacation, and, instead, in the last three days I antagonized him into touching fake scrotum, he stood up to a huge wave because he believed he was already a dead man and the sea might as well take him, we ruined his shoes, made him go to the bowels of the Earth to see a giant sea lion hurl, and gave him a front-row seat to his first hate crime. Great vacation.
The first thing I said to my sister when she got off the plane was, “Nick started a tab,” and when I explained to her that she neglected to pack him more clothing than was required for a day, she looked at me like I was insane.
“Look,” I said, as I pointed to Nick in his Bigfoot shirt and new shoes. “Recognize any of that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He had so many clothes in that bag I almost couldn’t get it closed. Most of his clothes were in the big pocket. Didn’t you check?”
And, as it turned out, that was true. There were shirts, pajamas, and pants underneath several pairs of socks and underwear, which, alarmingly, he never used enough of to see what was underneath. How was I supposed to know? I trusted the kid. I figured if you’re old enough to go to the bathroom for forty minutes with the door closed and you really are just reading a magazine, you’re old enough to figure out what a pair of pants looks like folded up.
We headed back out to the coast, where we had rented a cottage near the beach. When we’d unpacked, my sister suggested we take a stroll on the boardwalk that we had just driven past and mentioned something about seeing pedal boats. Frankly, I can’t say that I was fan of pedal boats, but if that’s what family vacations were made out of, I could use some schooling, unless there was a Nazi Youth rally or a cross-burning happening nearby that I could throw us into the middle of.
My husband and I were first and got into a tiny two-seater; we got a brief lesson on how to direct the rudder and were off for a twenty-five-dollar-an-hour pedal-boat ride. My sister and her family were slotted for the four-seater boat.
“Have fun,” my brother-in-law said, waving us off with a smile that was suspiciously too wide as the pedal-boat guy pushed our boat away from the dock. “Remember that I predicted this would be all my fault.”
Puzzled, we started paddling. It was a beautiful day, so we just sat back and made it to the far end of the inlet in about a half hour, then made our way back. My sister’s boat was nowhere in sight, but I assumed they had headed off in the opposite direction and were doing their own thing. I was pretty sure by the time we all got back to the dock, Nick would have told his parents what an awful time he had with us, how we ruined everything that could have been fun.
But as we got closer, it was clear to see that my sister’s boat was only about thirty feet away from the dock. Well, I figured, if you have four people pedaling, you can make way better time than two slowpokes can. My sister’s family was singing, and she was standing up and waving something, as if she was leading them in song.
Which I knew was absolutely implausible, given the fact that, on a good day, anyone with our DNA would rather eat one of their own than break into song. Additionally, I understand the call of my own pack, and it was clear that those hyenic yapping noises had a different sort of origin and a far more nefarious translation.
As we approached, it became apparent they were pedaling in circles, over and over again, a result of the rudder getting stuck in one unfortunate position next to my unknowing brother-in-law’s leg. My sister, still standing, was shrieking to her husband, who did not look amused, “Pedal harder, Taylor! You are not pedaling hard enough to go anywhere! Goddamnit! Pedal HARDER! Get us back to the dock!” In her hand was a large piece of blue plastic, which, when she had gotten into the boat, was the back of her seat—until it snapped off in one solid piece as soon as they’d floated thirty feet away. In the rear of the boat, David’s whole head was a brilliant red as tears streamed down his face as he repeatedly screamed and sobbed, “We’re sinking! We’re sinking! There are sharks in the water! We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die!”
And then there was Nick, who, as my sister’s family continued to pedal into another revolution, simply looked at my husband and me pedaling quietly by and mouthed one word to us: “Help.”
He just might be back again next year.
Please Don’t Call China
Dear Whoever Has My iPhone:
I’m sure you thought it was weird, finding an iPhone lying in the middle of the street last night, nestled in its tiny black leather case, just sitting there on the asphalt. I would have thought it was weird, too, maybe even funny. How often do you see something like that? It’s almost as common as finding a baby on the street, except an iPhone is a lot more fun to play with.
That’s what I would have thought, too, but when I woke up this morning and realized that my iPhone wasn’t in my purse, car, or coat jacket, I knew something was seriously, seriously wrong. I jumped into my car and raced back to where we parked last night, and I scoured the street. It was nowhere in sight.
Then my sister called me on the house phone, and apparently you butt-dialed her last night at 2:45 A.M. for three minutes while you walked around with my iPhone crammed in your pants somewhere. If it’s still there, kindly take it out. So, I’m sure the first thing you did this morning, aside from moving my iPhone away from your privates—I mean, I don’t know how much radiation comes off that thing, but if it’s possible that you can kill bees just by turning it on, do you really want to take that chance with things that should stay uncooked in your shorts?—was notice that there’s a listing under “Lost & Found” on Craigslist for my iPhone, in which I include not only my email address, so you can let me know that you have it, but the words “REWARD OFFERED.”
And I’m serious about that. I could certainly spot you a breakfast for doing something very nice and thoughtful by returning my iPhone; in fact, I’d be delighted to.
How about breakfast and coffee? Even something complicated that Starbucks would charge extra for. Hey, my treat—after all, you’re doing me the favor, remember! No arguments!
But I just checked my email, and nothing. I realize it may be too early for you to arise and sober up a little—I mean, judging by the phone call to my sister’s, you were up pretty late. I’m sure it will take a couple of minutes for you to figure out you found my iPhone, discover that you desperately want to return it, then run through a series of logical deductions and immediately go to Craigslist, which would be the reasonable place that someone who had lost their iPhone would list a “Lost” ad. “Lost” ad with “REWARD OFFERED,” you know. Make sure you see that!
It’s okay. I have time. I know how it is. I was in college once and on occasion found myself wandering the streets at two forty-five in the morning, finding iPhones and whatnot that some unfortunate soul had dropped because she was too stressed to realize it was in her lap, not in her pocket, and she stood up and, well, you know the rest, right? iPhone in the street. Oldest story in the book.
So I just checked my email again and I guess you’re sleeping a little bit longer, which is fine, it’s fine. I’m cool with that. Because I’m sure as soon as you’re able, you’ll email me and I’ll email you back to ask you under what circumstances you found the phone and what my case looks like, because, after all, there is a REWARD OFFERED, and I can’t be running around, giving rewards to everyone who found an iPhone last night, you know. And I need to make sure it’s not one of those Russian mobster “Meet me at the gas station and give me the REWARD OFFERED first and then I’ll give you the iPhone” sort of deals, because you can’t be too careful. I have to watch out for myself, although I am quite appreciative of your potential willingness to even meet at the gas station, I sure am.
You’re a late sleeper, huh? Maybe you’re having dreams about returning the iPhone you found in the street to its rightful owner because that’s THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Because I think it’s probably pretty o
bvious that no one would just go out and throw an iPhone into the street and walk away, right? Right? I mean, it’s not like anyone has a fight with their boyfriend on an iPhone and gets back at him by whipping the phone out into space like an engagement ring or something. No one would treat an iPhone like that. It’s a treasure. I don’t know of one person who would. I took good care of it; why on earth would I throw it on the ground? I stood in line for hours to get it. I had my favorite songs on it. Seriously, I had 750 pictures of my dog on that phone, not to mention some private photos I took of myself in a hat I had custom-made for me by a girl named Paula on Etsy, in case you looked. I know. I know, it’s not a great photograph, I know that. None of them are. But I was trying to look tough and be funny; it’s a hunting hat, get it, with a deer embroidered on it? She did a good job with that hat. I still have the hat! That didn’t fall out of my lap onto the street. Still have the hat. So, no, that’s not what I look like regularly, not at all. I look like that mainly because it is hard to take your own picture with an iPhone; it is not like a regular camera at all. Did you know that? You just have to guess where the button is and keep touching it and touching it around the area you think it might be and, yes, it can get frustrating, and, yes, you can get hand cramps because that’s the hand where my carpal tunnel is the worst, so that’s why I was yelling in some of those pictures. But I was yelling at myself in those pictures, not at the iPhone and certainly not at anybody else, so it should not be an indication of my character or person, not at all. I’m a nice person most of the time. Eighty percent of the time. Maybe 76 percent of the time. In almost all of my iPhone pictures, I am being nice. In fact, if you flip through those photos, as I’m sure you might have—not saying that you don’t have any respect for the privacy of the person who was clearly careless enough to get out of her car with an iPhone on her lap, not at all, I’m sure you do, but curiosity baits us all—you’ll see that I take photos of happy, jocular things, demonstrating my multifaceted interests, hobbies, and things I see as curiosities.