Sandcastles Read online

  Gwen agreed to one beer. This guy was a classic. Who knew when you’d meet a good “character” for a future story.

  Beer was not something Gwen had ever liked much, even in college, where drinking to unconsciousness was a popular pastime. But it was cold outside and the bar was warm and Gwen was depressed. What could one beer hurt?

  Three hours later, having line-danced herself into unwilling exhaustion she peeled A.J.’s sweaty arm from around her neck long enough to stumble to the bathroom. In the short time they had known one another, A.J. had somehow formed the impression that she was going to take the Greyhound back to Fresno with him. (Fresno was A.J.’s hometown, where he was the assistant manager of a K-Mart. Not an insurance agent after all.) To Gwen, discussing a trip to Fresno seemed an auspicious moment to terminate the engagement, before she found herself shopping for dishes with A.J.’s 25 % employee discount.

  The bathroom was crammed with over-aged “cowgirls” in varying states of disrepair and alcohol-induced stupor; Gwen had to wait in line for the only stall that possessed a window large enough to crawl through. A.J. had begun to pine for her by now and was pounding on the ladies’ room door, demanding that she “get her sweet little butt out here and dance.” Instead Gwen clambered up on the wet toilet seat, pried open the window and dragged her sweet little butt up and over the windowsill then jumped.

  She landed on a pile of garbage bags, which did nothing at all for her already fragrant condition, but at least she had lost A.J.

  Back at the Jeep, Gwen removed two parking tickets from the windshield and started the car. Behind her, she could hear A.J.’s plaintive call begging her to reconsider. Gwen hit the accelerator—and ran over the parking meter. Quickly she put the car into reverse and backed out, trying to avoid running over A.J., as she sped past him.

  Feeling a bit ill from what had been way too many beers Gwen rolled down the window and the cold night air hit her like a cold stone wall.

  Later she would explain to Josh that she would have made it safely home if some idiot hadn’t planted a enormous tree in the exact center of the road and if she had not sideswiped the damned tree at forty-two miles per hour on a fifteen MPH curve. The good news was that she required only a few small stitches in her forehead and the emergency room doctor assured her that such a small concussion probably wouldn’t leave her eyesight permanently impaired. By this point, as the beer wore off Gwen had begun to hope for something more long-term—like a buffer between herself and Josh when she arrived home.

  A handsome Highway Patrolman named Chris was kind enough to drive her the twenty-two miles back to the house, since Josh’s Jeep—his only vehicle—would require considerable more repair than she had. As Chris helped her from the car and up to the front door, the flashing lights on the top of his car brought Josh to the door, his face a mask of fear.

  “Are you all right?” he asked frantically, pulling her carefully into the hallway to get a better look. “Jesus your eye looks awful! What happened?”

  “There was this tree,” Gwen said, groggily. Pushing Josh’s hand away, she walked unsteadily to the living room and dropped wearily onto the couch, holding her head. The Highway Patrolman was still standing in the doorway staring intently at Josh.

  “Excuse me, sir, but are you? Aren’t you Joshua Denning, the writer... who wrote Jezreel? I could swear that.”

  Denning simply nodded and asked the officer to come in, too preoccupied with settling Gwen on the couch to worry about having been recognized. Chris followed them into the warm room with its blazing fire and stood awkwardly for a minute with his hat in his hand.

  “These are the hospital reports,” he said, handing Josh a large manila folder. “Jeez! You really are him, aren’t you?”

  Josh sighed. “Yes, officer, I’m afraid I’m him. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something? I want to thank you for bringing Miss Walden, here, home.”

  “Oh, no problem, sir, I’m just real glad she wasn’t badly hurt. I’m afraid your vehicle is pretty busted up, though. There’s no way she could have driven it back even if… I mean with the DUI and everything.”

  “I understand.”

  “Would you mind a lot if I asked for your autograph, Mr. Denning? I know it’s late and all, but ever since I read your books... Jezreel especially, all I’ve ever wanted to do was try to be a writer. I’m taking classes at a community college now—night classes, you know? Oh, I know I’d never be good enough to do anything really important but....”

  “Why would anyone want to be writer?” Gwen asked grimly. “My advice is to stay out there among all the murderers and drug pushers. Believe me, you’ll meet a better class of people.”

  Chris looked at her oddly, but said nothing.

  “Ignore the lady,” Josh advised. “She’s still feeling the effects and I can guarantee she’ll be feeling them even worse tomorrow. Let me see if I’ve got a copy of Jezreel around here somewhere to sign for you.”

  While Josh searched the bookshelves for a copy of Jezreel the patrolman stood in the living room looking nervous, then waited even more uneasily while Josh wrote a long message on the inside of the book’s cover. Obviously ecstatic over what Denning had written to him personally, Chris paused at the front door to thank him again and suddenly remembered the other papers he had brought. “There’s all this stuff to sign for the tickets” he said, humbly. “Sorry, sir.”

  Josh nodded and signed the papers. “Is that all?”

  “Yes, sir. You’ll get the court summons in the mail in a few days probably. I hope the lady will be okay. I’m afraid she kind of did it up real good for just one night.”

  “Good night, officer – Chris,” Josh said, “and thanks again for everything.”

  He closed the door and went down the hallway to the bathroom. The door was open and Gwen was standing at the sink in Josh’s terrycloth robe, splashing her face with water.

  “You’re sure you’re not badly hurt?” he asked, coming in to look at her more closely in the well-lit bathroom.

  “No,” she replied sourly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “How drunk were you?”

  “Didn’t Dudley Do-Right out there give you the exact numbers? Why does it matter, anyway?”

  Josh’s tone went from concerned to tough, fast.

  “I just wanted to know whether to wait ‘til morning. I want you to remember this one for a long time. Go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Gwen bristled and replied sarcastically, “You know, Joshua, you should be very proud of me. I don’t believe I made even one serious grammatical error all evening—in the bar or later while they pulled me from the flaming wreckage or even when Do-Right interrogated me or when his little friends made me blow up balloons or when he brought me home. You have no grounds whatever on which to spank me. Sorry.”

  “We could add a couple of new categories such as destruction of personal property and scaring the shit out of me.”

  She dropped to the edge of the bathtub too tired to quarrel. “Okay I’m sorry.”

  “Save it!” he snapped. “Just go on to bed. Your eye looks like shit. You’re going to have a hell of a shiner tomorrow.”

  * * * * *

  When she came into the kitchen the next morning her head still hurt and she ached all over.

  “You’re walking stiffly,” he observed. “They’re sure you didn’t break a rib or anything?”

  Gwen shook her head painfully. “In the immortal words of the examining physician who may have been the oldest doctor I’ve ever seen ‘You’re a real lucky little lady, Honeybunch. You’ll be good as new quick as a wink.’ After that I think he gave me a lollipop. The news of women’s equality hasn’t reached the Wagner Springs ER.”

  Josh wasn’t amused. “I’ll drive you into Monterey tomorrow. I have a doctor there I trust. I’d like to have him check you over to be sure. How’s your head? Still dizzy?”

  “I’m fine and I don’t need a doctor. What about the car?’


  “They’re bringing me a loaner this afternoon. It’ll take a while to get the front end and the passenger door fixed. Maybe a week.”

  “What about the fire damage?”

  “No fire, thank God. All the smoke you saw was from the airbag.” He stood and dumped his coffee in the sink. “Get some rest for the next few days; then we can get back to work.” As he left the kitchen, he stopped for a moment in the doorway.

  “I added up your crimes,” he said suppressing a grin. “Let’s see now: there’s grand theft auto—my Jeep. DUI, public drunkenness, parking tickets, lewd behavior, resisting arrest, attempted murder and running over an innocent bystander—that would be the tree I guess.”

  “You’re a riot Denning” she grumbled. “But attempted murder! Okay so I know I had a little too much to drink but I wasn’t that…”

  “Your friend A.J. got my plate number and called the cops to say you tried to run him down. And last but not least of your crimes? Scaring the hell out of me! No jury in the world would convict me for blistering your ass raw and locking you in the cellar for a month—if I had a cellar. For now, just take it easy for the rest of the day. I’ll do the laundry and the dishes later. When you’re feeling better, we’ll discuss it—in detail.” He grinned. “And you know what they say—the devil is in the details.”

  * * * * *

  She got the promised spanking three days later, after Josh’s doctor gave her a clean bill of health. Gwen was resigned to what lay in store for her when they arrived home, and since it was already close to bedtime, she went directly to her room to change into a nightgown. Josh was waiting in the living room with the dreaded hairbrush when she came back.

  Neither of them said anything as he took her across his lap, tucked the lightweight gown out of this way and began peppering her naked backside with quick sharp swats, hard enough to draw involuntary yelps. As the hairbrush continued to rise and fall with a rhythmic thwacking sound, Gwen didn’t struggle, but lay across his knees miserably, her fists clenched and biting her lip, accepting each scalding smack with as little squirming she could manage. She had this one coming and they both knew it. It was obvious that Josh was planning to take full advantage of this resigned—if not exactly cheerful—moment of submission.

  By the twentieth smack, Gwen’s resolve was fading fast, and she began to make the little yelping noises again, louder now, and each one accompanied by what might have been a strangled sob. While Gwen prided herself on not crying when she was spanked, everything short of that had happened on occasion. When swat number thirty brought the first wail of genuine anguish and a gasping, heartfelt apology, Josh put down the hairbrush and signaled with a pat on the right cheek of her beet-red behind that she could get up.

  Gwen slid off his lap with as much dignity as she could, wiped her nose, smoothed her nightgown into place and went quickly into the hall bathroom to “regain her composure.” She had read this phrase somewhere and used it on the occasions when she felt like losing her mind. When Josh had stopped spanking, her backside had felt as though she’d sat down on a barbecue grill. Now the pain had settled into an intense burn and an uncomfortably warm throbbing. Gwen turned around, lifted her gown and regarded the spanked area in the mirror with a certain detachment, deciding that her backside resembled a sky full of bright red and vaguely lavender balloons—each balloon still delineated quite distinctly from its nearest neighbor. Finally, when the “balloons” began to meld together into one blotched, stinging mass, she ventured to touch the area and yelped out loud. It still hurt like blazes.

  It still hurt when she went to bed early that night, although the pain had diminished by then to a sensation when she moved. Josh had never actually bruised her during a spanking, but by morning, in just the right light and from the correct angle, Gwen thought she could detect a few shadowy bruises among the balloons—although the possibility that the vague shadows were dimples of cellulite was always a very real possibility. Still the condition of her ass made it obvious that Josh had outdone himself.

  But what hurt Gwen more than anything else was the fact that he had not talked to her about what had happened—and why she’d done any of it.

  When the body shop finally delivered the car, Josh drove the guy back to the shop and went off to do some errands, leaving Gwen to lie on her bed most of the day and watch old movies on television. He had provided her with a cell phone the day after the incident in Wagner Springs—for emergencies—and kept its mate in the glove compartment.

  By mid-afternoon, bored and still miffed at Josh, Gwen had decided to call her ex-editor at “SEEK!”. She had asked for an “extended leave” from work by e-mail, right shortly after Josh took her in, and now with the way things were, she was hoping that her old job might still be available. It was time to leave Joshua Denning’s house, and she had no other place to go. When her editor wasn’t in, she left him a message that she’d call back. She could only pray that he’d be eager to hear from her. She’d gotten used to eating regularly. After she’d made the call she began to sob and blamed it on how much she was going to miss Will and Ben and poor clumsy Charlie.

  She packed her bag and slid it under the bed. Tomorrow she would simply drive herself to the airport and leave the car there, the way they’d discussed when she first talked about leaving. Her own car, the rusty enfeebled 1989 Plymouth she’d bought for three hundred bucks, had been pronounced sincerely dead and/or beyond resuscitation by the auto wrecking company that towed it out of the bushes—in pieces. She’d left the car to its fate on the same night she showed up at Joshua Denning’s door in the rain—a pitiful orphan with her starving dog. The car had had been sitting there ever since, unwanted, unloved and exposed to the elements. When she finally confessed the whole miserable story to Josh—ever the responsible citizen, he’d insisted on retrieving the car’s remains. Its corpse now reposed in a soggy junkyard somewhere, awaiting cannibalization or being squashed into a small metal cube.

  When she’d completed packing, Gwen took the angry, bitter note she’d written earlier and put it on Josh’s desk, then walked down to the abandoned garden, opened the gate and made her way down to the studio for the last time. He could add this to her accumulated penalties if he wanted to.

  When she opened the door to Susannah Channing’s studio, she saw immediately that there had been an enormous change.

  The studio had been cleaned—every inch of it. Furniture had been uncovered and dusted and the floors thoroughly swept and mopped. Susannah’s easel was gone as were the painted-covered tables and most of the art materials. The narrow bed remained covered with what looked like an antique quilt and scattered with a number of colorful cushions. Next to the bed was a small “bachelor’s chest” with an oval mirror above it. In the same alcove, she noticed a desk and a swivel chair, several newly emptied bookshelves and what looked like a new computer. On the largest wall hung the one very large canvas she had already seen of Susannah’s—the painting of the sunlit cove. Even the formerly filthy windows sparkled in the late afternoon sun. The stacks of finished canvases she had noticed on her first visit to the studio were nowhere in sight.

  She sat down to wait for Josh to arrive.

  The wait wasn’t long. When he opened the door it squeaked badly.

  “I’ll get to that tomorrow,” he said, “and the stairs as well. Just be careful until then. There’s no stove, of course, or even a microwave, but I can add both if you want. There’s no hot water in the shower; the sink works okay, but the toilet’s iffy. It’ll take a few days to get a plumber out here so .…”

  She stared at him. “You did all this for me?”

  He grinned. “No, I did it for me, actually. I want my damned den back. I hate to mention this, but you’re a bit of a slob.”

  “Josh,” she groaned. “I don’t know what to say.”

  He held her note out. “Did you mean what you wrote in this note?”

  She nodded miserably. “I did when I wrote it... a few days ago.”r />
  “And now?”

  “You want me to grovel and apologize?”

  “Yes. And then explain to me why you can’t spell supercilious.”

  “I wrote that?”

  “Supercilious and dictatorial are both misspelled.”

  “Oh all right, so I was in a hurry.”

  He reached in a drawer and pulled out a small wooden hairbrush.

  Gwen gasped. “What do you do?” she wailed. “Go around planting these things in every drawer just waiting for me to screw up?”

  He chuckled and tossed the brush into a nearby wastebasket. “Just a leftover. I used to come down here to write during the summer months. I even slept here occasionally. It’s always cooler at night than in the house. Completely furnished, too. Just about everything a person could need, except for the rather minimalist bathroom facilities.”

  He paused for a moment. “Stay, Gwen. I’ll do my best not to be supercilious and dictatorial. And try to be more patient as well. I’ve never been the easiest person in the word to live with, so I’m not sure that I can honestly promise to be much nicer—and by the way, I despise the word “nice.” What I can promise is to be patient and more considerate of your feelings—if you’ll stay and give this another chance. I want you to keep working, Gwen and not give up. You’ve come a long way and .…”

  “Do I still have to learn to spell dictatorial and supercilious?”

  “Sorry, but yes, you do. How do you expect to use me as a character without knowing how to spell supercilious and dictatorial?

  Gwen wiped her eyes, which were trying to tear up despite her best efforts. “I know this sounds dumb, but I’ll try to pay you back for the car and the hospital when I can. I know I’m running up quite a tab, but I WILL pay you back somehow.”

  “The insurance will take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I do worry,” she insisted. “Everything I do I seem to screw up. It’s a disease. I want to pay you back for everything, Josh. It’s important to me.”