Pleasure Unbound

My latest plan involves buying a bus ticket to Florida, where it’s always warm and I can sleep under a dock. I’ll use the free WiFi at coffee shops to apply for jobs. Maybe the Peace Corps.

So I’m surprised when I blurt out, “I’m going to see my grandmother.”

“Gertrude?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah.”

This will be the easiest way to disappear. So Katie won’t worry. I’ll find a job in Florida, find a fresh start.

Over the next few hours, I convince Katie this is true. We read Gertrude’s poems aloud, and Katie orders Chinese food, which I devour so quickly that I puke it all back up once Katie leaves.

Late that night, I’m curled up on a blanket in my empty bedroom, wearing the pink iPhone earbuds I used to wear when I wrote at work. I’m lying on my back, my face striped by the streetlight streaming through my blinds. I’m listening to Lana Del Ray, surfing the internet for what will be one of the last times ever on my phone; I’ve just sold it on Craig’s List for $90.

My leg itches and I reach down to scratch it. One of my nails is jagged. I scrape my calf just a little, and it stings.

I start to sob. I tug at my hair.

“How did this happen? What the fuck is wrong with everything?”

I rip the earbuds from my ears and toss my phone down. I jump up and tug my sneakers on without socks. I stab my arms into my coat and run toward Beacon Hill, where the bar crowd’s out in full force and creepers stand in alleys with their heads lowered. The air is so cold it feels like a corporeal thing.

I continue toward Boston Commons, and when I reach the pond, I spend five bucks on skates, because why the fuck not? I skate furiously in circles, until the dim stars that wink through spindly tree branches are nothing but a blur, and the faces passing by and the strings of lights and crying of a child and icy wind that slaps my cheeks seem like slivers of some dream.

This is not my life. It cannot be my life.

I skate until my feet are numb, and by the time I make it home, my hands are so frostbitten they burn terribly.

I take a hot shower and bundle up in my blankets. I check my Facebook, and my e-mail, and feel the morbid compulsion to check my bank account. I do this fanatically now, sometimes like every five minutes. I’m not sure if I’m trying to motivate or torture or…holy shit.

The page has loaded. I blink. And blink. And wipe my eyes and blink.

My heart is pounding hard. Blood roars inside my ears. This can’t be right. It just…can’t be. But there it is. In simple, sans serif font, black on a white screen underneath my bank’s emblem:

$30, 377. 12

I can’t believe my eyes. I must be going crazy. I log out, in, and out again. Twice. Four times. Six.

My phone vibrates an e-mail. gertrude@omalleyfoundation. com

She has written only one word: “Come.”

Attached is a photocopy of a hand-drawn map, sketched with an ‘X’ on one Rabbit Island, a blip about two miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. At the bottom is Gertrude’s e-signature.

I’m pretty sure my “FUCK YES! HELL YES! FUCK!” is heard all through my building.

I throw my snow-damp sneakers back on and dash to Fred’s Coffee & Bagels, where I order a grande latte and four extra fattening, buttery, cinnamon-crusted bagels.

I walk slowly home to my nearly empty apartment, thanking God and sleet and smog and dirty snow for what this night has brought me. I’ve made some stupid choices, but e-mailing Grandma is not one of them.

As I climb behind the wheel of my new-to-me ’04 Camry the next afternoon, I’m beaming from ear to ear. I’m going to meet my mom’s mother, and after that-or maybe before if I’m extra lucky-I’m going to find a way to end this two-month dry spell.

*

WOLFE

I leave the island four times annually-one trip inland for each season -and that’s mostly for Trudie. Was for Trudie. She needed things on occasion, and with her bum hip, it was easier for me to get them.

After she passed, I debated ever leaving the island again. No reason to. I’ve got food and supplies. I can get Bob, my cousin, and my manager, to arrange a courier to get the paintings. Maybe pay him to haul his ass down here and do it himself if he doesn’t trust a third party. Not my problem.

Keeping me anonymous is Bob’s problem. Has been since we started.

The only thing that made me second-guess confinement to the island was pussy.

When I first came here four years ago, I didn’t leave for months. I started dreaming of pussy. Smelling pussy. Even tasting it. So I found Clarice, a lonely young widow in one of the row houses by the water. She likes it like I do, and she never wants to see my face.

She’s a good enough fuck. But I have to go to her. I would never bring her here. I would never bring anyone here.

I could pay for pussy. Liplocked pussy. Motor boat some discreet escort to the island. But escorts are boring.

Even Clarice-predictable, submissive Clarice-could conceivably say “no.” She could fight me if she wanted. And I need that. Need to think that maybe one day, she’ll decide to twist around and grab my hair and look into my eyes.

Without that possibility, without the chance that it could all implode, it’s not fucking worth it.

So, no escorts in motor boats.

After I’ve had some time to digest Trudie’s death and my subsequent inheritance of Rabbit Island, I decide no more Clarice, either.

I’ll find another way to deal with my dick.

Peace follows my decision. Peace: the closest thing I’d found to happiness. I think Trudie would have been glad for me.

I celebrate my vow of seclusion by wandering the forest. Pines and oaks, cypress, swampland. The island is an eighth of a mile long, and I love every fucking inch of it. I leave my cabin for two nights and pitch a tent on the boulder on the northwest side of the island. Sit beside it with my feet in the sand and listen to the whip-poor-will, to the lapping of the waves. Watch cypress branches drifting in the salty breeze. And when I can’t keep my hands still any longer, I let myself paint. A gull in the water. A squirrel on an oak. Simple shit.

The next day, I call Bob. Set up the courier.

And then three days ago, when I was up at Trudie’s cottage, archiving her unpublished poems, the phone rang.

Trudie wasn’t a lover of technology, and she especially hated talking on the phone. In her honor, I let her archaic answering machine pick up. I wonder who the fuck has her number. The old woman was more reclusive than even me.

A second later, a male voice fills her little office.

“This is a message for James Wolfe. I’m Michael Halcomb, partner at Halcomb & Mallory and Gertrude O’Malley’s new estate attorney. I need to talk to you about her attempted deeding of Rabbit Island.”

I sit there a moment, absorbing the echo of my name; resisting the urge to grab the phone. Then I pluck it off her desk. “What do you mean attempted?”

I can tell the lawyer is surprised to hear my voice. I’ve got a deep voice. Distinctive. Shit… It’s fucking infamous.

I’m fucking infamous.

Bet the bastard was hoping he wouldn’t reach me.

“Mr. Wolfe?” His voice sounds tinny.

“You mentioned a problem?”

He clears his throat. “Er…yes sir. I’m glad I reached you. There’s an issue with the deeding of the island. Nothing insurmountable-”

“Spit it out.”

“I’m afraid the attorney in charge of Ms. O’Malley’s final arrangements was a junior colleague. He was only on the-” “Spit. It. Out.”

“The island can’t be deeded to you, despite your being temporarily in charge of her trust. If no family member is helping govern the trust, conservation land like the island can’t pass hands. For ownership of the island to change hands posthumously, it’s got to be done via Gertrude’s family. There’s only one living descendant, according to my research. A granddaughter-”

“Sarah Ryder.” A redhead. Freckled and pale, from the look of her in the photo on Trudie’s desk. Despite some kind of family feud, Trudie kept track of the girl. Subscribed to the Boston Journal online. Even had me program Google to send Trudie an e-mail alert when it picked up the name

“Sarah L. Ryder.”

In the last few weeks of Trudie’s life, I corresponded two times with her oncologist via e-mail. Which is how I found that little, red-haired Sarah lost her job. About a week before Trudie passed, Sarah e-mailed, wanting to meet up. Trudie asked me not to reply.

“I waited too late,” she told me.

Why hadn’t Sarah reached out to her until now? I did some checking around, had Bob call up a mutual friend from our Bridgewater days, and found out little Miss Sarah was looking for a job. Looking unsuccessfully.

Applications are out all over Boston.

So…a moneygrubber.

“You’re right,” Halcomb says. “Her name is Sarah. She needs to take a position with the trust. She can then decide if the island should be sold to an individual. You. You’ll need to convince Sarah to get involved, and convince her to sell the island to you.”

“I hope your office intends to handle this. It’s your fuck-up. And I don’t leave the island. Ever.” That’s a stretch, but I’m damn sure not going to this bastard’s office.

“I can send someone out to help you-”

“Not someone. You.”

“Ah, well, I-”

“If you and I have to meet for any reason, you come to me. I don’t want to deal with an intern or some fucking first-year lackey.” I enjoy his silence. Nervous silence.

He clears his throat again. The fucking pussy.

“Er…yes. Of course. Just tell me when and…well,” he chuckles, “I don’t need to ask where. Gertrude paid my firm well to be…considerate of her preferences. Her solitude. Yours as well, by extension, sir. But there won’t be any paperwork to sign, no business between you and me, until you contact Sarah.” Fuck.