The Darkest Joy Read online

  I know it’s my fault. I’ve overcharged it one too many times and now the battery life is a couple of hours at a go.

  Well, that’s okay. We got to say what we needed to.

  I turn the engine on and the bus comes alive like Old Faithful, the classic VW rumble signaling my presence at about half a mile. I back up, pulling away from the Dawg . . . feeling like I have a new lease on life. A little warm light of hope sparks inside me and I allow it.

  Maybe I deserve . . . to live.

  I drive the length of the spit, noticing every detail like it’s in HD. I feel like I’m Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She leaves a black-and-white Kansas and arrives in Oz and suddenly everything’s in color.

  It’s more true than I could ever know, because that tornado is coming. And it will consume me.

  Chance

  I use the long-handled scrub brush, because my flake of a cleaner texted claiming sick.

  Translation: hungover.

  Homer is so small I’ll know in the next ten hours if it’s a bullshit excuse or he’s tossing cookies. Doesn’t matter, I’m still out here washing my own boat like the truly self-employed. It’s a two-hour job done right, as salt water’s like slow-working microscopic acid on a boat’s hull. It’s a gotta do it, not elective in the least.

  I hear someone approach on the dock, the floats softly hitting the side of the boat as it rocks with the waves in the protected harbor. I stand, my entire purpose getting the boat hosed off, making myself busy so I don’t think about Brooke.

  My hand clenches on the hose attachment as I ruthlessly spring it to the left on full throttle and the water shoots out in a fire-hose stream of straight pressure, blasting the debris and shit off in a steady spray.

  “Beatin’ the hell out of her?” Evan asks like he doesn’t expect an answer.

  I turn. “Yeah, dickhead Matt didn’t show.”

  “He’s a girl about booze.”

  Knew it. “So what? He’s hung?”

  Evan nods. “Like half dead.”

  Shit. “Now I have to find another cleaner last minute,” I say, shaking my head in disgust.

  “I thought Brooke from Seattle’s doing it.”

  I stiffen without meaning to and Evan gives me a look. “Sore spot?”

  “Nah . . . just thinking it might be to much for her.” I look at Evan, my friend since middle school, and ask, “You guys friends?” I turn and spray the boat more, turning down the jet attack.

  “Yeah . . . but she’s hot, if you feel me . . . I want it to be more.”

  I’m instantly angry. Evan and I are like brothers. But suddenly he’s my enemy.

  I turn and he looks in my face. I can’t hide it.

  “Whoa . . .” Evan says giving a low whistle. “You’re hot to do her?”

  I drop the hose and walk to Evan and he stays where he is, humor gone from his face. “Yeah.” And so much more. “What of it?”

  Evan gives a low chuckle. “Hello . . . she’s your employee?” He taps his head like I’ve got rocks in it. Not too far off, I think. “She’s like . . . here for two months . . .” Then his face gets a lightbulb look and he snaps his fingers. “You just want a little . . .” He gyrates his hips and does a few thrusts and it makes me even more pissed. But I say what he wants to hear.

  “Yeah, I want to sample the wares. I don’t want any commitment.”

  Evan grins. “That’s what I figured. Chance Taylor doesn’t take chances,” he says, pointing a finger at me, and I frown at his bad pun.

  “I take plenty of goddamned risks.”

  “True,” Evan says and I hear a but.

  I cock an eyebrow, twisting up my hose neatly, wrapping it around my elbow and inside my palm in a large loop. I hang it on the huge stainless C hook off the pier stub at the end.

  “I don’t know how you close your legs with the balls you got,” Evan says, miming basketballs between his legs, and I bark out a laugh. He’s always good for one. “But . . .” he says, wagging his finger at me, “not with chicks. Never with them.”

  I shrug a shoulder. I can have a relationship that’s just sex. I’m a guy; it’s like a biological directive.

  “If she’s game, then we’ll just sex it out,” I say.

  “What if I want in?” Evan asks.

  I turn, my body squaring off with his. “It’s a deal breaker, Ev.”

  We stare at each other, my eyes hard. His are cautious. The tenor of our years together is shifting.

  “Over a girl, Chance?” His eyes search mine in disbelief. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah . . . over this one.”

  “Our friendship is worth more than eight weeks of tail . . .”

  I can’t respond. I don’t want to say things I can’t take back. And I will.

  “Fine . . . fuck it, have her,” Evan says in disgust, his angry eyes looking me up and down. “But, you know the mantra.” His eyes meet mine like a challenge. “I’ll say it again for clarity’s sake: bros before hos, man . . . bros before hos.”

  Evan walks off and I fold my arms across my chest. I’ve just risked a ten-year friendship for a girl I promise myself is just a fling. A girl who I promised to stay away from, considering I’m her boss . . .

  I’m going to toss everything to the wind anyway, the promises to myself broken.

  I can feel it like a slow-moving river in a single direction: toward Brooke.

  SEVEN

  Brooke

  I hit end on my cell and shut my eyes. Somehow, the spontaneous calls in the middle of a Homer parking lot makes talking to them less big, less real. But it’s oh so real.

  I feel like a wrung-out washrag, speaking to the other survivors. Their pain and anger—the same as mine. Their guilt: crushing. But speaking with them ushers in new feelings.

  Mainly of liberty. I, Brooke Starr, might finally be free to live. I realize I’m not alone in this. Helping them helps me.

  I swipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and take a deep cleansing breath. There are others who’ve survived besides me. That commonality helps breach the chasm of my grief.

  I set the brake and swing the driver’s door open on the bus, closing it solidly with my palm. I sweep my hand above my brow, shielding my eyes from a sun that should not be hot or bright.

  It’s Alaska, right? Wrong. The sun’s at its zenith, the summer solstice arriving in less than a month. Its cold brilliance bathes the knee-high wheat-colored pasture grass as it whispers in the breeze from the cliff. The waves drive the wind up, bringing it through the pockets of forest stranded like islands around the homesteader’s cabin that I stare at.

  That, I think, is a wreck.

  I let my hand fall with a sigh. Time to do a whirlwind cleanup. I’ve crawled from under the rock of my contemplative demise with determination. I can almost hear the small cabin’s grunt of relief as I climb the wide half-log steps, split almost a half century ago by my great-uncle. I wrap an arm around the stout porch log that braces the roof as I reach the top of the short run, my eyes taking in the general disarray with a dash of grime.

  With a determination that’s been lacking for the better part of a year, I swing open the door, leaving it standing open to the breeze.

  The stale guts of the place smack my face. I scan the interior, my eyes hitting the dirty glass windows like an insult and I walk over to where I’d hidden the cleaning supplies I’d purchased like a zombie. I had been one . . . now I’m not the walking dead; I’ve rejoined the living. Finally.

  It’s time I begin acting like it.

  I bring out Simple Green, a butt load of paper towels, and start in on the glass.

  Two hours later, I look up from what I’m doing and bold sunlight streams through the windows, highlighting the bare spruce floors, polished to a mirrorlike shine in the tiny space. I move through the straightened area, not bothering with lights; the late May sunlight infiltrates everywhere there’s a gap.

  For the first time, I notice a slim narrow door: its five recessed panels, e
xposing the flat-grain pattern of the wood’s wavy pattern on each frame, the small glass knob against it, thick with a film of dust.

  I bet that thing hasn’t been turned in fifty years.

  I use my spray bottle like a weapon, blasting the glass, the brass housing loose around the seat of the crystal. I dry the knob carefully.

  Then I turn it.

  The small door opens, leading down ten steps into . . . another room.

  Have I been so out of it I missed this?

  Yup, I answer decisively.

  There’s a polelike rail of the same wood at the bottom of the steep staircase. I hit it with my hand for balance, the stairwell dim, since sunlight doesn’t enter here as brightly as the main floor.

  It’s so dark when I stand at the bottom, I don’t feel like I can go farther. Like the blind, I throw my hands out in front of me and search like a staggering drunk for a light.

  A slim cord smacks me in the face and I give a little yelp, jumping back. When I can unglue my hand from my chest, I pull down on the thin string, the end capped with a metal bell, and light bursts in the space as I give a gentle pull.

  Oh my God . . . I really am in the Land of Oz

  My eyes can’t stop moving, roving over everything that’s down here.

  Aunt Milli never told me, I think in wonder, taking in the framed articles, awards, and photos of glamorous events that cover the stone walls. Of all the stories she told me, none were of this.

  Aunt Milli had been a pianist back in the day.

  And in the center of the room, the bare floor covered in wide rough-sawn wood planks, is a hulking shape that I know very well.

  A sheet covers it like a secret shroud but I’d recognize that shape anywhere.

  With shaking hands and a heart that threatens to beat its way out of my chest, I pluck the corner of the sheet with my fingers.

  And like that Band-Aid I’ve thought about earlier, I tear the cloth covering away. It falls away like a ghost . . . a whisper and a breath, disappearing.

  Literally, I can’t breathe.

  Not because of panic.

  But unbridled joy.

  Hot scalding tears crawl down my face. They’re the first I’ve shed in happiness.

  A square grand piano teases me, our distance kissing close, and I move toward it, laying my upper body against the smooth top, the feel of the polished wood under my cheek like a lover’s caress. The hardwood heats underneath my wet face, my beating heart the only noise in the stillness of my discovery.

  I don’t know how long I’m there, but finally, with a reluctant reverence I straighten, cracking my back as I twist from my awkward bow.

  When I can, I pull my eyes away from the gift the piano represents and look around the room. I see there are windows. They line the wall, their frames touching the ceiling but no more than eighteen inches deep, but wide, maybe three feet. Each one has wood molding that separates them from the next. Covered by shutters. That’s why I couldn’t see, I think.

  I walk over to the nest of windows and unhook interior wooden shutters and lift them up. There are hooks on the ceiling and like mini garage door panels, they latch there, and I know where I’ve woken up in.

  Where my soul is driving me.

  The sunlight swamps the room, illuminating the small basement. The chimney from the first floor is a full Mason, beginning at the foundation in the corner of this subterranean room and rising through the main story and roof. It looks as if it grew up out of the ground. The rustic hearth is flush with the wood floor, old tiles in a deep emerald with a wash of gold cover the floor over the brick and move up the sides to flank a dark hole where wood belongs. A small wood mantel holds a sterling frame.

  I know those people.

  I move to the fireplace like a person lost in the fog and pick it up.

  There is my great-aunt Milli, smiling in the arms of an impossibly young man. She’s impossibly young too. I stroke a finger down their faces, feeling more connected to her in death than I ever was in life.

  I slowly turn, and every corner tells a story: an old steam trunk holds quilts; large vases adorn small tables topped by aging marble, begging for wildflowers. My hands touch everything, making it mine. Making it real.

  I’m stalling and I know it.

  I turn and look at the keys of the piano.

  Like a magnet I move as though through water to that board of buttery yellow teeth.

  I hit middle C and a deep boggy sound, low and wide, resonates in the underground space, the strange acoustics of the stone foundation and wood interior interact.

  Perfectly.

  A sigh escapes me and I’m on the bench before I know I’ve moved.

  My fingers fit the keys perfectly and they move of their own volition. Not tentative.

  Hungry. Starved.

  My fingers eat the notes in my head like a person coming awake from a dream and realizing it’s been real all along.

  My hands crave the feeling absent so long from my life and for the first time, guilt doesn’t pierce my heart, sick fear doesn’t pump through my blood in an adrenaline rush . . . I play and the music comes.

  It begins to heal me . . . if I’ll let it.

  As I move through my fifth piece, my fingers become fatigued. Yet still . . . I play.

  I play until the sun is rearranging itself on the horizon, the low rays flowing over my hands like spilled blood.

  Chance

  I pull up beside the psychedelic yawn of a VW bus and shake my head. I know Tucker painted that flower-power disaster on Brooke’s car. I chuckle, it’s just him. Somehow, it doesn’t suit her.

  Not that I know Brooke. I don’t. But I sure as hell want to.

  I jump out of my 1974 Bronco. It’s the rig I drive in the winter but I don’t like it dead for four months so I alternate. It’s my baby (which is why I’m rolling up East End, the armpit of rural roads, at a crawl).

  Call me desperate.

  You’d be right.

  I click the door shut gently and take stock of the landscape. I fold my arms and survey the place.

  It looks pretty good still, but nothing like it did back in the day. There’s pictures in the Dawg from when Brooke’s aunt played her rowdy sets on the piano that still sits in the fabled corner. There’s even a few of this place. I look it over with a critical eye. The porch still hangs true, if weathered. It’s deep and wide as it should be for our icy eight months of winter and four of a summer that’s cool and temperate, the sea curbing true heat. I laugh again to myself. It’ll be winter again before we know it.

  I begin to climb the steps, trepidation weighing each leaden pace.

  I told Brooke she doesn’t have to worry about any bullshit while she works for me.

  Liar, liar, asshole on fire, I think.

  I pause, a strange feeling permeates my brain.

  Uncertainty.

  Fuck it. I raise my hand to knock and see the door is ajar. I push it open and step inside.

  It smells like a goddamned lemon exploded, I think, looking around for the contaminant.

  Ah, a can of Pledge stands up like a lone flag in the garbage can, a mashed-up graveyard of used paper towels alongside it.

  Someone’s been busy.

  I smile, taking in the spartan digs. A ratty couch with a wool granny’s afghan lays folded on top, the squares shouting their color at me from across the small space. A cell phone sits on a tall narrow wood table, sentinel beside the door, a small oil-type lamp perched on top. There’s a tiny 1950s Formica kitchen table with a lick of chrome like a belly band holding a surface with gold flecks in a sea of battered white and two mismatched chairs. A great cast-iron porcelain sink with attached drainboard sits in the corner, its brilliant white a slash of brightness in the dim interior.

  Sun’s low, I note, glancing through the ancient glass. The redness of the sky eases me. A red sky at night is a sailor’s delight, I hear my mind recite.

  I love the sunset when it’s red.

 
; Good waters tomorrow, I think absently.

  Faintly, a sound moves through the confines of the cabin and it pulls my attention.

  I can’t find it. My eyes search every nook of the small cabin.

  Where is that sound coming from?

  There’s something about it that strikes me as my eyes hit a slim door.

  In the low light of the sun that hangs like a bloody globe at the edge of the horizon, a glint strikes out, facets like diamonds shooting their prisms around the room like rainbow glitter.

  I walk to the sparkling thing.

  When my shadow passes over it, my hand falls on the crystal knob, turning it.

  The door was nearly lost to the eye, looking like the end run of cabinetry in the kitchen.

  I open it and the music floods up the stairs like invisible water in reverse.

  “Für Elise,” my mind brings to me instantly.

  I stand where I am and it’s then that I realize that maybe she’s more than a hot dalliance, someone who I fell into protecting by a coincidence of fate. Her music makes me feel as though I am the instrument and she is playing me. More connects us than that night in the sea, the chemistry we share. Brooke’s music fills the space as if she’s the melody and I am the harmony. It’s not a casual and random connection, I realize. Her music moves me, resonating in that hidden place deep inside me that no one touches, no one sees. I drift down the steep coffin steps.

  I catch sight of Brooke as she sits hunched over a piano that dwarfs her.

  Yet . . . she commands it.

  Her hair falls around her, cloaking her in black as the sun hits her fingers as they move over the keys, bathed in scarlet light. Brooke looks ethereal, perfect.

  Hot.

  But I knew that, didn’t I? No reason lying to myself. I’m caving to the chemistry, end of story.

  I’ve played this piece on my guitar. I stray to the classics when I’m not doing a rock set at the Dawg.

  Classical music is pure; Beethoven, Mozart. They weren’t distracted back then with YouTube, the Internet, and shit.

  It’s just music. They eat, sleep, and drink music.

  That’s what I am watching right now. Brooke doesn’t just taste her notes.