Intended for Harm

By C. S. Lakin

A powerful family saga like no other ...

 

At the height of the Vietnam War in 1971, Jake Abrams is desperate to leave his oppressive home in Colorado and begin a new life in college in LA, but his dreams are waylaid when he meets Leah, an antiwar protester who pushes him into marriage and family. Jake tries to juggle school, his job, and raising four children, but Leah turns to drugs and drinking, and finally runs off with her rock band, leaving Jake reeling.

 

When he falls for Rachel and marries her, his children rebel. And when Joseph, their love child is born, Jake makes the same fatal mistake his own father did--he shows favoritism to this divinely gifted boy who has the power of healing. After Rachel dies in childbirth, bringing Ben into the world, Jake turns his back on God and buried himself in denial. His children are wild weeds, and as they grow, the older sons' resentment of Joseph's gifts fester until they can take it no longer.

 

The family hides a dark secret of murder, which Joey threatens to spill out of righteous indignation and fear of God, and the only way to stop him is to kill him. The intend harm for him, but God has other plans for Joseph, and in a divinely orchestrated twist, years later Joseph confronts his brothers, who do not recognize him. True to the Bible story this is patterned after, Joseph is reunited with his estranged brothers, and Jake finally welcomes his long-lost son back into his arms, which brings closure and healing to his hurting family.

 

Written in a contemporary flash-fiction style, Intended for Harm covers forty years, each chapter a year, with a theme from a hit song for that year. Each scene is a fifteen-minute snapshot of the Abrams family, a "photo album" of Jake's life of wandering "through the wilderness" and coming home to faith at the end of his life. Anyone familiar with the Bible will recognize many similarities to the famous story of Jacob and his son Joseph. At the heart of this family saga is an exploration of fathers and sons, of loyalty and betrayal. And mostly, how we often intend harm to others because of wounds we carry in our souls, often without our knowing.

 

"The story of redemption and reunion is as touching and heartwarming as it is at times painful and heartwrenching."

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. S. Lakin
• Release date: Nov 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781507095300

C. S. Lakin

C. S. Lakin is an award-winning novelist, writing instructor, and professional copyeditor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lakin's award-winning blog for writers: www.livewritethrive.com provides deep writing instruction and posts on industry trends. Her site www.CritiqueMyManuscript.com features her critique services. She teaches workshops and critiques at writing conferences and workshops around the country. The Gates of Heaven series of seven novels are allegorical fairy tales drawing from classic tales we all read in our childhood. Lakin's relational drama/mystery, Someone to Blame, won the 2009 Zondervan First Novel award, released October 2010. Her other suspense/mysteries are Innocent Little Crimes (top 100 in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest), A Thin Film of Lies, and Conundrum. And sci-fi enthusiasts will love Time Sniffers: a wild young adult romance that will entangle you in time! She also publishes writing craft books in the series The Writer's Toolbox, which help novelists learn how to write great books! Follow her on Twitter: @cslakin and @livewritethrive and like her Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/C.S.Lakin.Author

Book preview

Prologue

The highway of holiness is a toll road.  

No one had ever warned him. Never would he have guessed that the barren desert of silence and separation would serve as balm for his soul. Or more importantly, that it would take his old bones to the last place he expected: the far-off promised land—the proverbial land flowing with milk and honey. The land of reconciliation and restoration.

Never.

Healing had always receded on the horizon, dropping farther and farther back, like a wavering mirage, teasing with its promise of life-giving water. He thinks, We are all thirsting wanderers, desperate for a drop of soothing water to cool our tongues as we aimlessly traverse this earthly hell.

There is no alternate route. None.

A glint of light catches on the metal’s edge as he turns the lightweight blade in his hand. He squints, pauses. His sense of hearing is unusually heightened. The room pulses and takes on a life of its own; a ticking clock becomes a rhythmic heartbeat, causing surges of perspiration to trickle down the sides of his neck, soaking the cotton shirt as he stands, hesitates, holds the object up to study its smooth surface, finely polished, noticeably sharp.

He’d never before considered how small and innocuous this thing felt in the palm of his hand. Yet so capable of slicing through flesh with precision, severing blood vessels, separating muscle from bone, tissue from tendons, all with the slight pressure one might use in peeling an apple.

Hardly innocuous. For even a surgeon’s scalpel must tear open flesh and draw blood before it can do a healing work.

Pain precedes healing. This truth has taken him a lifetime to learn.

But there is a wash of relief that follows ablution, and the soul thus rid of a lifetime’s burden of contamination becomes keenly aware of a glorious sense of freedom.

He can taste it; he is that close.

A glance at the clock tells him it is almost time. Soon will come the culmination of his story, the point to which all the divergent paths of his life have unknowingly led him. All the hurtful, agonizing moments he thought were intended for harm God actually intended for good, for the saving of life. But how could he have known? When immersed in pain, there is only pain. He feels as if he has roamed the wilderness his entire life, clueless, directionless, exhausted. Depleted not just in body but in spirit, yearning for a word that might lift him above his circumstances and whisk him away from his life.

He hears the sound of car doors slamming, voices overlapping. The air is charged as if an electrical summer storm has just blown in. The hairs on his neck stand alert.

His sons.

He sets down the tool he is gripping; he forgot he still had it in hand. He lays it tenderly alongside his finished sculpture, the sculpture he had begun carving for Rachel, all those years ago. The eagle’s eyes are now void of judgment; they stare out vacantly, almost as if listening too.

Finished—after all this time. He cannot fathom the import of his accomplishment. Not yet.

A line from one of Leah’s poems drifts into his head. He had memorized them all long ago, to where they fastened like barnacles onto his limbs and sinews, grown crusty and impermeable with age.

I am a foreigner in this wet desert of twisted coral and pulsating sponge

Where Creole wrasses swarm in neon blue,

Each movement of my hand makes them dart in dance.

I conduct a ballet on the edge of the precipice.

He feels a smile inch up his face. That is how he sees her still, dancing on the edge of a knife—a knife so much like the one he just now set down.

The kind that cuts both ways.

Exuberant voices—like a choir of angels singing—rise in volume. His sons are coming around the house toward the garage. His knees buckle as he tries to stand. He collapses back onto his stool. He listens intently, sifting through the sounds, his attention riveted in anticipation of the one voice that will both break and mend his heart.

Joseph.

His son, always a blur, a skew of light that struck the eyes and caused you to squint. The kind of glare that cast a long shadow on everything in proximity. It was only by his light that Jake saw everything else clearly.

Why hadn’t the tremor in Joey’s voice that day set off an alarm? At the time, he didn’t think anything of it. Maybe Joey had picked up tension from listening to those hushed conversations, Jake’s worry over Rachel’s health. Joey listened, noticed everything.

He chided himself. It was too late, far too late for recriminations, for what ifs and if onlys. But still . . . He wishes he had stopped, laid a hand on Joey’s shoulder, and asked, What do you mean? Who has to die?

A tear splashes onto his cheek, containing that one tiny wish. He wipes it away with the back of his hand.

He lifts his tired head in the direction of her abandoned garden and remembers the prodigious greenery, the potency of life bursting from the earth, escaping over fences. How everything Rachel’s hands touched became infused with vitality. Oh, how he misses her.

He turns and studies his sculpture on the shelf before him. For years, as that piece of wood sat unfinished, those unformed eyes watched him stumble through his life, silently laughed in judgment from a dusty cobwebbed shelf. He did not touch metal to that wood for nearly thirty years, not until life had dug a deep enough groove into his heart and punctured the wellspring, freeing his captive spirit. Not until now.

It is time.

His sojourn through the wilderness is over. He turns his head toward the door. Tears fill the pools of his eyes, but through the distortion of his watery lenses he can make out the distinctive shape approaching him, carried on a bier of jubilant voices. A mirage materializing in the heat waves of time.

He fears his heart will break.

Joseph, my Joseph . . .

Part One: 1971–1974

Exodus

Exodus: origin—Greek exodos, from hodos: way. A going out; a departure.

1971

Hit Song: Smiling Faces

by The Undisputed Truth

––––––––

If God’s voice had boomed from the heavens, it would not have been any more compelling than Ethan’s irritating pronouncement in the dark hushes of night.

Get up, college boy.

At the sudden shattering of sleep, Jake fumbled for his alarm clock and pushed the button that displayed the uncivilized hour of four a.m. The green numbers on the clock face blinked at him impassively.

Ethan didn’t wait for Jake’s response—the moan buried under bedclothes, hoping to soften the blow Jake knew was forthcoming. Jake jerked intuitively and tipped his head left. Ethan’s fist glanced off the pillow. A lucky guess. This time. This last time, Jake told himself with some sense of comfort. But dread filled that space quickly as the well of promise ran dry in the harsh confines of his dark bedroom. He rolled to the floor with a thud, instinctively untangling blankets and jumping to his feet in one swift motion, arms at the ready, protecting his face. His eye throbbed from the smack Ethan had given him two days earlier as they stacked wood together. Jake had already forgotten why his brother had swung his way. It didn’t matter though. Never did.

I don’t have time to go with you. I still need to pack.

You’ll have plenty of daylight left for that. You don’t want to upset the old man, do you? He wants to give you a proper send-off.

Clothes flew at him. His thick flannel shirt, the green-and-blue checkered one his mother had given him for his birthday, caught on his shoulder. Jeans whacked his ribs. He bent over to pick up the pants and a boot grazed his face; laces tickled his nose. Send-off? A joke; rather, a punishment. For what? Following a dream? For having ambition to be more than just an insipid carbon copy of his father? Think you’re such hot stuff? You’re bigger than your britches and that big wide world out there is going to bite you back. Just what in the world do you think some college degree is going to give you that you can’t get here?

Jake’d had to bite his lip to keep from flinging the obvious answer at his brother: Distance.

Jake rubbed sleep from his eyes. Get out and let me get dressed already.

No whining and woosing out. Or I’ll aim better.

The door closed. Ethan knew not to slam a door at that hour. Jake heard floorboards squeak below—their dad fixing breakfast, gathering gear. His mother had years ago stopped waking early on hunting days. The Abrams boys didn’t need coddling, according to his father. You just go on and sleep in, get your beauty rest, he’d tell her. We men can take care of ourselves. You’d think they were living back in the pioneer days, the way the two of them carried on, running their hunting and fishing guide business as if it were a religion and they the clergy.

However, they only preached to the choir. The soft city men who paid them exorbitant compensation to drag them up mountains, loaded down with heavy packs and burdensome rifles they’d never operated before in their lives, fixed their eyes in worshipful adoration upon such capable and worthy specimens of real men—men who could trek up a steep rock face at twelve-thousand-foot elevation without breaking a sweat. Jake knew his father took advantage of men who felt somewhere deep in their hearts the need for penance for their sorry excuse for a life, for the selling of their souls to the corporate machine or a life of ease. Was it some primal urging, Jake wondered, that pressed these men to spend their hard-earned paycheck on suffering? Just what was so thrilling about shivering in bone-snapping cold while squatting behind snow-encrusted brush, waiting to shoot some harmless buck intent on scrounging for a few bites of grass peeking through swollen mounds of winter? His father didn’t understand why Jake failed to get a thrill from toes so frozen they felt brittle in your boots, from damp breath that coated your lips with stinging ice, from cramped arms and shoulders that dragged dead-weight carcasses of three-hundred-pound mule deer over a ridge to a freezing jeep, where the vinyl upholstery felt like a sheet of sheer pain against the backs of your legs.

Jake pulled aside the curtain draping the frost-laced window and soft light from the setting moon spilled over the ledge and across the hardwood floor. The mountains, stark and austere and stacked beyond the outstretched prairie, did not beckon. August, and already below-freezing temperatures. In Los Angeles, he’d be able to walk down a street in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, in a T-shirt and shorts. The thought astonished him. Maybe his light frame, his inability to put a surplus of flesh on his bones or even to feel warm on a balmy summer’s eve, had led him to choose a school in a city where it never snowed. He recited the statistics in his head. Mediterranean climate. Three hundred and twenty days of sunshine, forty days of rain, average winter temperatures between forty-eight and sixty-five. Sixty-five in January! He hummed the song California Dreamin’ and a few words tumbled out as he collected his strewn clothing: . . . on a winter’s day . . . I’d be safe and warm, if I was in LA . . . Yes sir, he planned to be—as soon as he could sever this constricting umbilical cord and head west.

His mother had wanted him close: CSU Boulder, or DU. She didn’t understand his need. Needs. He was twenty-three, way past time. He’d overstayed his childhood. Most students had already graduated by his age. But denied a scholarship and harboring a dread of incurring debt, Jake had stuck it out five long years, living at home and working under his father’s demeaning tutelage, his hegemony that permeated every crevice of Jake’s life and filled him with an intractable compulsion to move away. Far away. He’d stashed away every dollar he earned, found a cheap furnished studio apartment near the bus line that traversed Wilshire Boulevard from Santa Monica to Westwood. He’d worry later how he’d repay his state and federal loans, but he was hardworking if not ambitious. Despite the labels his father stuck on him.

Jake let his fingers run over the smooth, polished head of a fox he had painstakingly carved out of chestnut. His father had no clue about the many dreams simmering and bubbling to the surface of Jake’s imagination. Jake didn’t dare voice his dreams, exposing them to vulnerability, where both his father and Ethan could take potshots at them and hurl them speedily to the ground the way they took aim and fired at a flock of Canada geese passing overhead. He never let on that his hobby was so much more than that, that wood consumed and filled him, the scent intoxicating as he fashioned something nondescript into a work of art. Wood drew passion from his hands, the way a beautiful woman might draw a man’s attention from his task. Distracting. He saw trees not for how they stood in this world but for the other things they could become, not firewood, not furniture, but holding the potential to encapsulate his world, a way for him to interact and immerse, to make a dent—literally—and create transformation.

He dressed in layers, found his boots and laced them up. Took the stairs two at a time with careful footing. He hurried the day in his mind. A few hours on the open range, appeasing his father, dodging his brother. The requisite small talk, groveling, laughing at the appropriate moments, tolerating scurrilous language, sucking in denigrating remarks, smothering humiliation, choking down acerbic responses that longed to lash out but that would summarily be aborted. He’d learned his lessons years ago: when to speak, when to keep silent. When to calm his face with deliberation, erasing any telltale trace of disdain that might be answered with a backhanded blow.

He zipped up his coat and grunted. Just another day in the company of the Abrams men.

He found his father and brother in the dark kitchen, stuffing food and thermoses into packs, gathering rifles and ammunition, moving in efficient silence, measured routine from a thousand like outings. Jake caught his father’s scowl in the dim light broadcast by the hall lamp. By that unflattering illumination his father’s years wore heavy on him; shadows snagged in the deep lines around his eyes and mouth. But Isaac Abrams moved about like a man of fifty, not one creeping up on seventy. Jake chalked up his old man’s agility to stubborn fortitude, and used to think his deficiency of affection hailed from the mores of a bygone generation. But his father’s gruffness was nothing but nourishment to Ethan, infusing in Jake’s twin something that had mysteriously turned him into a man—in his father’s estimation. Seeing the dearth of results with Jake led Isaac to believe the only thing he could—that he just needed a heavier hand, needed to apply more pressure to squeeze out Jake’s frailties and harden him into something solid and worthy.

Coffee aroma permeated the room, soaking into Jake’s very bones the way coffee tended to do. A stale scent of cold bacon lingered by the stove from years of grease layered on adjacent walls, despite his mother’s fervent scrubbing efforts. Jake’s stomach grumbled as he reached for a bowl from the cupboard shelf.

No time for breakfast. Sun’ll be up soon. His father’s voice, perfunctory, lacking warmth. Why did Jake think this day would be any different—that some sentimentality would show through that tough veneer? He chided himself for hoping for an encouraging word, his father’s blessing on his parting. He chided himself for siding with that constant miserable companion of hope that never let up. Time and disappointment had taught him hope proved to be a fickle friend, promising then recanting. Would he never learn?

As Jake capitulated and closed the cupboard door, he caught the slight gesture from the corner of his eye. Laced with conspiracy, his father’s eyes met Ethan’s in understanding. In a thousand unspoken words that had at one time or another been spoken and needed no elaboration now. All the words that had been piled on Jake’s shoulders year after year such that they had driven him like a spike, over time, into the ground, pinning him in impotency. Words that had trumped his own, wrung opinions out of him until not even a drop of blood could now be had for the effort. He had bent so often to their collusion of denigration that his backbone now swayed as supplely as a willow in the wind.

Yet, he couldn’t help himself taking one last dangerous step.

He turned to his father. You two go. I’ll just be in the way. You know I never shoot anything anyway.

Isaac Abrams narrowed his line of sight on Jake. He pursed his lips, which made his cheeks redden. You want a lift to the train station tonight, you’ll stop your whining and get in the truck.

Jake’s heart beat hard; he forced words out of his mouth that struggled to hide in his throat. I’ll just have Mom drive me.

The last two words broke apart and fled the room. The air quickened, as if the dawn was holding its breath in anticipation, in commiseration for the ax about to fall.

Like hell you will.

His father turned from him and hefted his pack. He stuffed a rifle under one arm and opened the front door with the other. Ethan threw a look at Jake on his way out, a look tangled up in the snarl of his mouth, while his boot steps stomped in similar fashion to Isaac’s, four feet sounding more like a herd, or a stampede. Or at the very least, an exclamation mark.

Jake stood in the kitchen, listening to the truck engine kick over, to doors opening into the welcoming arms of morning. He weighed what might happen if he stood there unmoving. Would his father come after him? Or would he drive off? Would his mother take the brunt of it if his father returned in the afternoon to find Jake gone without having said good-bye?

Jake’s spirit sank. Even if he scrounged a ride from a friend, or hired a taxi, his mother would suffer recrimination. Sides had been drawn long ago, before he and Ethan could utter intelligible speech. His father had loved the burly, aggressive toddler with the wild red hair, a child intent on grabbing the world with both hands and shaking it until every shiny thing fell around his feet. His mother wanted a son that clung, that needed affection and didn’t pull away from her kisses. Jake found safety in her orbit and learned early that although she was softer spoken than his father, her words could form salient walls of protection. He gravitated to the kitchen, her universe, and spent hours in refuge helping her with domestic chores, scrambling for excuses that relieved him from venturing into his father’s domain—the great outdoors—which constituted any and every step taken beyond the front stoop.

Their house—sitting at the end of a lane in an older neighborhood on the outskirts of Windsor, a tiny in-between community at the base of the Rockies and an equal stone’s throw from Greeley or Fort Collins—opened to an untamed world, one well-suited to both his father’s and his brother’s inclination to subjugate nature. By watching his mother, Jake learned early how to model the appearance of timidity and compliance. He’d watch how she shifted under her husband’s exertions of power, nimble as a mountain goat leaping on light feet from rock to rock on precarious inclines. Jake learned to move lightly too, perform a dance that distracted and assuaged. That sometimes forced him to keep to shadows, merge into backgrounds. In return for his mother’s protection and instruction, though, she demanded loyalty and alliance, and at times, unwavering devotion. It was the least he could do, but she knew it. She always wanted more than he could give.

Jake heard the horn blast twice, shaking him from his musings. Without further hesitation, he picked up the duffle he’d brought down to the kitchen and lugged it out to the idling truck. Icy air stung his cheeks and made his eyes water. Frosted pine needles crunched under his boots. The souped-up Ford 350 belched steamy exhaust from the tailpipe as a sliver of dawn smudged the horizon in vibrant pink.

The passenger door opened and Jake slipped into the backseat, glad for the heat blowing out the dashboard vents. He tossed his duffle on the packs piled behind the driver’s seat, where his father sat staring out the windshield, unblinking.

Ethan squirmed around in front to face Jake. He smacked Jake’s head with the back of his hand, knocking his wool hat to the floorboard.

Ethan grinned, but his eyes burned like dry ice. That’s for making us wait.

––––––––

Leah Sacks heard the bus rumble up to the corner and pop the front door open with a hiss. At that moment, she was squatting on the sidewalk with her back to Santa Monica Boulevard, picking up the few stray flyers the ocean breeze had lifted out of her hands and stuffing them back into her stack. When the unruly bunch of paper settled down, she pushed her tangled mess of hair from her face, kelp mangled in a strong surge. Grateful for the abatement of wind, she took advantage of the respite to sit on the concrete and pull out a hair tie. She ledged the flyers under one knee as she fed the swath of hair in and through the band, making a ponytail. Through stray strands, she watched the bus disgorge its passengers—her targeted audience.

She jumped to her feet and positioned herself next to the bench, then extended her hand, disbursed her papers, deliberately meeting the eyes of the tired commuters, who, at this time of day, gave her less resistance than the early morning crowd.

It never ceased to confuse her—why anyone resisted what she had to say. This was California, 1971. Everyone was fed up with the war. The polls earlier in the year proved that over half of all Americans thought Vietnam was a bad idea and that we needed to get out. Now, with the Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers, it was only a matter of time. Troops were withdrawing, but not fast enough. There were still over one hundred and fifty thousand troops over there. Troops! Boys—her age. Younger. And the draft! Facts were leaking out how an inordinate number of December birthdates had higher call numbers. What did they expect? They’d dumped the number capsules in a shoe box in batches of months, for crying out loud! Obviously they didn’t mix them up enough. Leah’s throat started choking up again. Three of her best friends from high school were dead. All three had been inducted right off the bat; all three had December birthdays.

That was one of the travesties her flyer dealt with. Among others. There were too many to list on a single sheet of paper. But she knew words and their power. One sheet of paper, written with care, could sway the masses. She was a crafter of words. Words swam in her head until she speared them and pinned them to paper. Any poet could tell you how much could be said with few words. She’d read the cult classic, McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. She knew how the media manipulated minds with propaganda; how people needed shaking, waking up, to see through the lies they were being fed. Her generation would not be fooled again. "I get on my knees and pray we won’t get fooled again," she sang in her head, letting the powerful new song by The Who energize her as she pressed flyers into hesitant people’s hands.

One last person was trying to get off the bus, impeded by an uncooperative duffle bag. Leah summed up the young man squeezing his way down the narrow steps and tripping onto the sidewalk. He had to be either a draft dodger or had gotten a lucky lottery draw. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. One look in his untormented eyes told her he’d never been in country. And not the West Point, career-track-type either, for sure. She hung back and watched him descend, and those red-tired eyes fell into her net.

She smiled at him, took in the strong, tanned biceps carrying the duffle, the stature and clothing that heralded him from some place other. And that haircut. The first ears she’d seen on a guy that young in a long time—who wasn’t military. Yet, it suited him, gave him a childlike innocence. Everything about him—from the secret gleam radiating from his face to his expectant and pleased posture—told her he’d just arrived.

And that he had no idea where to go.

Hi, Leah said. You look lost.

The man searched left and right, checking the street signs. He shook his head apologetically. I think I’m turned around. He fished around in a pocket of the coat slung over his arm. I have a street map somewhere.

Leah sat cross-legged on the bench and brushed off the soles of her bare feet. She had nowhere else to go at the moment. No other corner in West Los Angeles looked as inviting as this one. I’m at your service. Know this neighborhood backwards and forwards. She held out her hand. Name’s Leah.

He shook it. Jake. Jake Abrams.

You look like you’ve been riding a bus for months.

When he narrowed his eyes in amusement, a dimple formed above his lip. Leah about melted. Well, first a train, then a bus, he said. Two days. Is it really that obvious?

Newcomer. Written all over your face. She pressed a finger into his chest. Also, written across your shirt: ‘I need shower.’

Jake rolled his eyes and Leah drank in his gentle features. She liked her men soft and cuddly like that, usually with a lot more hair, but his was a shimmering shade of polished wood. Driftwood brown. Apt for a drifting man.

I’m sure you’re right. Don’t stand too close to me.

Which was exactly what she longed to do.

Um, how ’bout you tell me the address you’re looking for. I can be your tour guide.

I didn’t know California provided tour guides at every bus stop.

That made her laugh. And blush. Not every bus stop. Just this one. Just today.

She couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. More brown. His irises were streaked with the grain of wood, a dozen different hues of rich color. The medley of traffic sounds murmured like the sea. With the wind’s retreat, the summer sun beat a hard rhythm against her shoulders and neck. She could smell the beach mingled with the acrid smog. Water was calling her. She shook her head to fling away the drops of thought.

He fumbled around in his jeans pocket and retrieved a piece of paper. She recognized the street name when he read it to her.

Follow me, she said. Your pad is only a few blocks west. She fingered the love beads dangling from her neck. Is this your first time in California? Where are you from—and why come here?

Yes. Colorado. I’m enrolled in UCLA. He answered her questions in a manner that made her think he was used to being interrogated.

She began trekking down the sidewalk, adjusting her pace to his. They walked with an easy gait; she liked the way he moved alongside her. She was sure he had to be a Virgo, and his aura radiated a dark muddy blue. That could be portentous. Fear of the future, fear of self-expression, fear of facing or speaking the truth. She studied him surreptitiously as they marched past storefronts and wove through pedestrian traffic. Cars sped by. He did look like he was carrying a lot of karmic baggage. Just her type.

UCLA, huh? I’m from Washington State. Escaped from my uptight, rightwing parents and tried college for a couple of years. But I had to drop out.

He shot her a perplexed look, as if she had lost her marbles. She didn’t plan to tell him she had—long ago. Why’d you drop out? he asked.

She stopped and turned to face him. A dreamer, this one. Idealist?

This close she realized he had only a few inches on her—maybe five foot eleven. Sunlight streaked him bronze. The moist salty air gave her a heady rush, standing there as if she and Jake were the only two people left in a world of metal and concrete. What’s your birth date? she asked.

July 6. Why?

Cancer. Probably with Virgo rising. All those cancer men—needy, dependent, unsure. Easily swayed, easily pleased. Just wondering how you evaded ’Nam.

I pulled 327 in the lottery. Doesn’t get much better than that, I guess.

And I take it you’re not so patriotic as to enlist and volunteer to die for liberty, justice, and the American way.

Jake gave her a wry smile. I’m plenty patriotic. And I guess I’d be happy to enlist in a war that threatened our country—

You don’t need to elaborate. Leah waved her remaining sheaf of flyers in front of his face and resumed marching down the street. I’m on a mission. That’s why I dropped out of school in April. Mass demonstration in DC. Over two hundred thousand protested the war at the Capitol. She pouted good-naturedly. "You did hear about that in Colorado, right? I mean, last I heard it was still part of the good ol’ US of A."

He tipped back his head and chuckled. His throat gleamed. Yeah, I heard about it. We get the ten o’clock news there too.

And then when we marched in May, we all got arrested. Twelve thousand strong.

Arrested? I guess that makes you the first criminal I’ve met in person.

Leah gave an exaggerated bow. I’m honored to be your first.

So . . . what now? You park yourself at bus stops and pass out flyers? Until you find someone lost and confused, like me. Then, of course, you switch roles and put on your tour guide hat.

Leah laughed. Yeah, something like that. She gestured at the next corner. Here’s your street. What’s the number again?

She watched him, this man soaking everything in, a dry, thirsty sponge whose soul seemed in need of hydration. A kindred spirit. As they climbed the stucco stairs that led to a lone door at the side of a two-story apartment building, she laid her hand on his arm. He stopped midstep and questioned her with his eyes.

Have you ever seen the ocean?

He shook his head.

You’re kidding, right?

Well, I’ve seen it in magazines. And on TV.

She threw her arms in the air and her jaw dropped. It’s only, like, six blocks from here.

He shrugged and set the duffle down. I figured I’d see it at some point. It’s inevitable.

But—aren’t you excited? Thrilled? How could you not be itching to run barefoot through the sand and stare at all that water?

I am kind of itching. But more from needing a shower. And I think I picked up some fleas on that bus.

Leah could hardly contain herself. She just had to be there to see his face when he first gazed out on the sea. It would be like watching a blind man whose sight was suddenly restored. The beauty would overwhelm him.

She tugged at his T-shirt sleeve. Okay, seize the day, as they say. A quick shower in your new pad and then a run to the beach. You game?

A laugh blurted out. He seemed to study her with new eyes, as if she were some unexpected country he had run aground on after years of plying an endless sea. Okay. Just let me get inside and wash up. He cocked his head, weighing something. I suppose you can come in and wait till I’m ready to go.

Uneasiness rippled outward from his face.

I promise I won’t bite. Or steal your stuff.

Well, I don’t even know you. I’m not accustomed to letting strangers into my house.

What’s to know? She spread out her hands. Look, what you see is what you get. I’m an open book.

He actually blushed. His shyness endeared him to her even more. She stood back while he located a set of keys in his pocket. One opened the deadbolt and the other the knob. He swung the door open and walked inside; she gave him some space to examine his apartment. The air sweltered with heat and anticipation.

She started working her way around the room opening windows. The place had been painted numerous times; the window latches were nearly gummed shut. The slight breeze circulated but did little to cool things down. Leah knew it would take more than a summer breeze to cool her. She was sizzling.

Hurry, she said under her breath, her foot tapping the threadbare tan carpeting.

He heard her and gave her a strange look, one charged with electrical tension. He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. She let his gaze roam over her, like some alien ray gun scan. It tickled her head and traveled down the length of her body to her toes, almost the touch of a finger. She closed her eyes and heard his voice, which sounded as if he whispered in her ear, although he was miles away, across the room.

I’ll just be a few minutes. He took in the simple furnishings and didn’t seem displeased. It was a cozy, cheerful place, painted in a soft yellow. The heat exacerbated the paint smell, so she reached into her large cloth shoulder bad and pulled out a cigarette. The couch and armchair were upholstered in typical ’sixties’ boring earth tones and striped patterns, but in good enough condition. Once he put up some posters and macramé and hung a few house plants, it’d be pretty bearable, she decided.

Jake dug a towel out of his duffle. She lit the cigarette and sucked in the smoke.

Is that all the stuff you own?

I shipped a few boxes. They should arrive in a couple of days.

She nodded. Want one? she asked. Meaning a smoke.

No thanks. He closed the door to the bathroom and she was pretty sure she heard him click in the lock. She chuckled. As if that could keep her out, should she really mean to get in. Her skin tingled and she imagined herself wading into the ocean, small waves breaking at her ankles, spindrift caressing her cheeks. The sea, the sea drinks of my slippery skin. I tumble in a universe of history, falling with great ease into a humanless world . . .

Lines of poetry washed against her awareness, in the gentle way the silky waves raced up and folded over the sand. They lapped against her mood in rhythm, those little reminders.

Who she was. Why she was. What she wanted. The things she needed.

She smoked in silence, letting the imagined sounds of the ocean drown out the traffic, her thoughts, the constant restlessness that pounded at her harder and more insistently than any wave could.

She tapped her foot against the wall as she lay on her back smoking, staring at an old glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. She heard the water turn off and Jake moving around in the bathroom. After snuffing out her smoke in the kitchen sink, she reached into her bag and pulled out her hairbrush. When the door opened and he stepped out in his jeans, his mahogany hair wet and flopping against his forehead, a towel the color of sea grass draped over his bare shoulders, his lean but firm chest webbed with pearls of water caught in the soft down of his hair, she felt her pulse throb in her throat. It throbbed so hard, it ached. She untangled her hair and let it fall freely down her back, a waterfall of black ink.

From the corner of her eye, she caught him watching, eyes fixed like a gull about to dive for its prey.

He threw a clean white T-shirt on and shrugged. His expression now spangled with excitement.

She sucked in her breath. Ready?

He nodded and let her grab his hand; it felt like smooth Manzanita bark.

Outasight, let’s run. The ocean is waiting to meet you!

His laugh danced around her, making her giddy as she skipped down the stairs, her inner compass needle quavering westward. His skin smelled of mountains and pine. Of wide open sky and river rock and alpine meadows. He had hijacked those scents with him to the coast.

But she knew they would not last long. Once his flesh tasted the sea, all those lingering molecules would be washed away, washed by a million salty drops as potent as tears, drops with the power to erase, a potion that dissolved all troubles and worries and hang-ups. That mercifully dissolved the past.

She, undoubtedly, knew that better than anyone.

––––––––

After the first bitter bite to his throat, Jake managed to gulp down the rest of his drink without gagging. He elbowed Richards, his buddy from the algebra study group, who phased in and out like a faulty neon sign under the pulsating, blinding strobe light. What is this stuff?

What? Richards yelled over the noise. Frank Zappa’s howling from the LP 200 Motels made Jake’s ears feel stuffed with cotton. That and whatever some dormie had spiked the punch with. He knew better than to drink when he had a pile of notes to organize. His buddy shook his head. Either I can’t hear you or I can’t be bothered.

Richards rocked to the song, something about stolen towels. He shouted out every third word in an attempt, Jake presumed, to sing along. Streamers in green and red, makeshift Christmas decorations, tangled in Jake’s hair as he ducked under décor and edged through the crush of partygoers, feeling woozy from the alcohol—whatever it was. He should have stopped after one cup. Hell, he should have passed altogether. But he was sweltering in the stuffy, dark dorm room that seemed a whole lot smaller than he’d remembered it, and the punch was the only thing in sight to drink. He didn’t hang out much in the dorms, but Richards had insisted, called him a bore.

Jake smirked. Students like that—attending college with a get-in-free ticket from their parents—probably didn’t calculate the financial outlay for each hour of class, but Jake did. He had to. Failing and retaking a course was not an option. And by the time he pulled his work-study hours at the career center, agonized through his homework, kept up with fifteen units—throw in commuter time both ways on the bus—he barely set aside enough hours to sleep.

Not that Leah gave ground much on that score. Lately, she seemed to spend more time crashing at his pad than at hers. Too many women stressing with PMS, she argued. One tiny bathroom. Low water pressure, barely hot enough water. She liked his place, so close to the beach. Before he stirred some mornings, when he didn’t have an early class and confiscated those precious extra hours under the covers, she’d run to the pier, swim out behind the waves, and hop back in bed, smelling of salt and sand, before he’d opened an eye to the day. Handfuls of sand eddied in the folds of sheets, rubbed rough against his toes. Little by little she was transporting the beach to his apartment. No doubt her intention.

The flashing light made it hard to make out faces, but he finally found her in a corner, hemmed in by three students nodding their heads like those bobble-headed dolls. Their red glassy eyes told him they’d been smoking weed, but Leah was on her natural high.

Jake shook his head. So animated, so passionate. About everything. She was an enigma; he’d never met anyone like her. Calm waters swelled into boisterous waves in her wake. Even at the grocery store. Who could get so worked up about mercury in cans of tuna? Once, in a sudden fit, she had tugged the manager by the sleeve to the canned food aisle, urging him to stop buying Starkist, throwing in the dangers of net fishing for good measure. That was early on, when Jake’d stand slack-jawed and speechless. Now he just cleared a path, stepped out of the way of her barreling arguments. She didn’t need much leeway, or encouragement. Any small space and a listening ear would do.

Hey you! Leah yelled to him, waving as if he stood on some distant shore. She wiggled out through her audience and wrapped her arms around Jake. Before he could say a word, her lips were on his, her mouth hot. Always hot.

Someone with a fuzzy Santa hat passed by them. Leah grabbed the hat and stuffed it onto Jake’s head, positioning it until she was satisfied. There. Now you’re dressed for the occasion. She ran her hands over his shoulders, stroked his neck. She’d clearly been drinking the spiked punch; her cheeks flushed, offsetting her emerald eyes. Her touch sent tremors across his skin.

He pulled her close, wanting to absorb her into his soul. She smelled like summer and citrus; her energy sparking like a severed electrical wire dancing free. Dangerous and erratic, too much voltage for one man to handle without getting fried. But how could he resist her? He was a moth, flirting with flame, mesmerized and helpless to pull away. He’d tried. Numerous times.

His flimsy excuses those first few weeks had only made her laugh. She matched Ethan in determination and stubbornness. She matched his mother in making those guilt-inducing faces when he hesitated, held back. All or nothing. No sitting on the fence. No one gave Leah Sacks a half measure of attention. She was an all-consuming fire.

Did you just get here? she asked.

Jake nodded. But I can’t stay long. I’ve got finals this week, and I still have fifty pages of economics to read. Just the thought made his eyelids heavy, made him yearn for sleep.

Someone pushed against her, propelling her back into Jake’s arms. He closed his eyes and drew her scent deep into his lungs, already feeling his resolve melt from the sway of her body to the music. She followed some sultry inner rhythm that rocked out of sync with the pounding bass notes blaring from the two giant speakers mounted on the wall.

Her words came out in a singsong lilt. Economics, schmeconomics . . . You . . . are mine tonight. She whispered heat in his ear, describing things that made his face and neck hurt with need. His body prickled with passion. He squelched that little voice telling him to pull himself together. Focus. Set your priorities. That voice used to be so sure, so authoritative. She’d done a good job dousing it. It rarely spoke up anymore. Got tired of being ignored and spurned and went and moped in a corner of his mind.

The room grew stifling. He led her into the hallway, past couples entangled in their own slow dance, then out the heavy front door of the dorm. The cool air sucked the sweat off his head as they stood under bright artificial lights, under the empty dome of pale sky that looked nothing like the bowl of dazzling stars in the foothills of the Rockies. His ears buzzed from the sudden absence of noise. Muffled music drifted down from the second-story windows.

She moved like water over him, her hands roaming. He kept trying to wrest his mind but her tentacles pulled him back. He found his voice and put some words together, although they felt smothered under her affections.

My mother called earlier. Wants me to come home for Christmas.

Leah raised her eyes and studied him. You gotta be kidding.

Maybe I should go. They said they’d pay my way. I’ve always done Christmas with them.

I thought you hated your dad. And your brother.

I don’t hate them—

And you promised we’d drive down to Baja. Jake—I’ve been counting the days!

—I just feel it’s my duty. His ramshackle excuse came out riddled with holes.

Leah stopped playing with his collar. Duty to do what? Take their abuse? Listen to them cut you down another notch? Come on, Jake. You don’t owe them anything. We don’t choose our families. We get stuck with them. And that’s what adulthood is all about—leaving the past behind and creating a new life. A new beginning.

Jake chewed on his lip. Yeah, I know, but—

Leah pulled the Santa hat off his head and rearranged his hair. Let them come out and see you, if they’re that keen to spend time with you. I thought you hated the snow. And the cold.

I don’t—

Shh . . . She put her finger over his lips and his arguments floundered in his gut. Jake Abrams, I can’t bear to have you leave me, even for a week.

Oh? He smiled and his eyebrows raised. Since when? Was she toying with him? The thought sent a pain through his chest. He thought about the many men she’d mentioned knowing, names thrown about in conversation, with him wondering how well or for how long she’d been with them, never daring to ask. He just figured he was her latest fancy, some new random guy she’d snagged on while trolling through her life. He was surprised she hadn’t tired of him already. How interesting could he be? All he did was go to classes, study, sketch from time to time, do a little whittling and carving. She considered him an artist, full of potential, mysterious. He couldn’t fathom how she saw him in a way so different from how he saw himself. At some point, she’d grow tired of him. He’d bore her. He wasn’t all that imaginative. She took all the initiative in everything they did, even in bed.

His head swooned as his thoughts drifted to her body, so lithe, such soft skin. He never knew, never conceived of such texture, not even in his dreams, what little skin he’d experienced in his life. One high school sweetheart, a few reluctant kisses, always clothing in the way, hands pushing him back. Being polite, well-mannered, and duly warned by his mother, he never dared ask for more. But Leah—she didn’t ask, she begged. Pleaded. He heard her frantic, desperate words fresh in his ears and he began to ache all over for her. He realized she was now speaking to him, a voice coming up from deep water. He shook off the shackles of passion and looked at her. That spiked punch had unpenned his emotions. They were running hog wild over his heart.

He saw something he’d never seen before