Bad Things Read Free Page B

inspiration to strike. Before long I was beginning to wish I’d
    walked. At least that way I could have headed over the dunes down
    to the beach, where the waves would have cut the humidity a little.
    “Gonna rain,” Kyle said suddenly, as if someone had given him
    a prompt via an earpiece.
    I nodded. “I’m thinking so.”
    Five minutes later, thankfully, Becki’s car came down the road
    as if hurled by a belligerent god. It decelerated within a shorter dis-
    tance than I would have thought possible, though not without cost
    to the tires.
    “Hey,” she said, around a cigarette. “Walking Dude’s going to
    accept a ride? Well, I’m honored .”
    B A D T H I N G S 15
    I smiled. “Been a long day.”
    “Word, my liege. Hop in.”
    I got in back and held on tight as she returned the vehicle to warp
    speed. Kyle seemed to know better than to try to talk to his woman
    while she was in charge of heavy machinery, and I followed his lead,
    enjoying the wind despite the signifi cant g-forces that came with it.
    The journey didn’t take long at all. When we were a hundred yards
    from my destination I tapped Becki on the shoulder. She wrenched
    her entire upper body around to see what I wanted.
    “What?”
    “Now,” I shouted, “would be a good time to start slowing down .”
    “Gotcha.”
    She wrestled the car to a halt and I vaulted out over the side. The
    radio was on before I had both feet on the ground. Becki waved with
    a backward fl ip of the hand, and then the car was hell and gone down
    the road.
    This coast is very quiet at night. Once in a while a pickup will
    roar past, trailing music or a meaningless bellow or ejecting an empty
    beer can to bounce clattering down the road. But mostly it’s only the
    rustle of the surf on the other side of the dunes, and by the time I
    get home, when I’ve walked, the evening in the restaurant feels like
    it might have happened yesterday, or the week before, or to someone
    else. Everything settles into one long chain of events with little to
    connect the days except the fact that’s what they do.
    Finally I turned and walked up to the house. One of the older
    vacation homes along this stretch, it has wide, overgrown lots either
    side and consists of two interlocked wooden octagons, which must
    have seemed like a good idea to someone at some point, I’m guessing
    around 1973. In fact it just means there are more angles than usual
    for rain and sea air to work at—but it’s got a good view and a walkway
    over the dunes down to the sand, and it costs me nothing. Not long
    after I came here I met a guy called Gary, in Ocean’s, a bar half a mile
    16 Michael Marshall
    down the road from the Pelican. He’d just gotten un-married and was
    in Oregon trying to get his head together. One look told you he was
    becalmed on the internal sea of the recently divorced: distracted, only
    occasionally glancing at you directly enough to reveal the wild gaze
    of a captain alone on a lost ship, tied to the wheel and trying to stop
    its relentless spinning. Sometimes these men and women will lose
    control and you’ll fi nd them in bars drinking too loud and fast and
    with nothing like real merriment in their eyes; but mostly they sim-
    ply hold on, bodies braced against the wind, gazing with a thousand-
    yard stare into what they assume must be their future.
    It’s a look I recognized. We bonded, bought each other beers,
    met up a few times before he shipped back east. Long and short of
    it is that I ended up being a kind of caretaker for his place, though it
    doesn’t really need it. I stay there, leaving a light on once in a while
    and being seen in the yard, which presumably lessens the chances of
    some asshole breaking in. I patch the occasional leak in the roof, and
    am supposed to call Gary if the smaller octagon (which holds the two
    bedrooms) starts to sag any worse over the concrete pilings which
    hold it up on the dune. In heavy winds it’s disconcertingly like being
    on an