I snort. “A confession? To what? Being a giant asshole? Good luck with that one, buddy.”
He pulls a phone out of his pocket. “Call him.”
“I don’t know his phone number.” This is actually the truth. I never have to call him, and even if I did, I’d just go to the listing under contacts and press the call button. Dad’s number is programmed in my phone under Asshat, which, on the rare occasion he does call me, always gives me a smile when Asshat Calling shows up on the screen.
“Just press call,” Snaggletooth snaps. I wonder whose phone this is. I press call and bring the phone up to my ear. There isn’t anything in sight except for water, but we must be near land because the phone has reception. Or they have one hell of a cell service provider.
“Hey, who’s your cell phone provider?” I ask.
They both ignore me. The phone is ringing. It rings exactly two and a half times and then Dad’s voicemail picks up. Which means he pressed the ignore button. Great, Dad. Thanks.
This is Carl Alexander. Leave a message and I will get back to you at my earliest convenience . . .
“You want me to leave a message?” I ask.
Snaggletooth grabs the phone from me. “Goddammit,” he says. “He really doesn’t give a shit, does he?”
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “If you guys let me go, I’ll fly home to New York and threaten to move back in, unless he gives your boss the 7.2 million and the confession. Me doing that is far more likely to get you what you want, trust me. Here, give me the phone and I’ll call him back and leave that on his voicemail.”
“Fuck.” Bandana throws his beer overboard.
Snaggletooth shoves the phone back into his pocket. “The condition of your release is twofold, the confession, actually, being the more important. So if we get the money but no confession, we kill you. If we get the confession but no money, we kill you. If we get both . . . maybe we’ll kill you anyway.” Snaggletooth comes over and stands next to me. “Why don’t you get your ass back down below.” He pulls out a diving knife, an Atomic Ti6, made of titanium, a nasty looking motherfucker with a serrated blade. I have the very same model—which I had strapped to my leg last summer when I went diving off of Kadavu Island—though I widen my eyes and take a step back.
“I don’t like knives,” I say, shuddering. “And I’ll go back down if you want, but it really wouldn’t make a difference if I’m up here. It’s not like there’s anywhere I can go. I can’t swim,” I lie.
He stares at me, running a tongue over those picket fence teeth.
“It’s true,” I continue. “My dad was always after me to join him swimming at the country club, but I had better things to do. Like playing polo and eating caviar.” That would actually be my brother, Cam, but they don’t have to know that. The only thing caviar is good for is smearing on your front teeth for primo photo ops.
Bandana looks at me in disbelief. “So you can ride a horse but you can’t swim?”
“Right,” I say, thinking of all my swim team trophies my mother proudly displays on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. “So if this were the Wild West and you boys had kidnapped me on horseback, I might be in okay shape, but out here on the water . . .” I smile and shrug. “I’m as good as dead anyways. Hope you weren’t planning on getting that money. Or that confession.”
Bandana glances at Snaggletooth and then looks back at me. “You’re lyin’,” he says. “Your dad will pay. Shit, to a guy like him, we’re not even askin’ for that much to begin with.”
“Maybe he’ll liquidate my trust fund. It’s about ten million. He might not want to deal with the headache of having to do that, though. He’ll probably just tell you to kill me. Have you talked to him? Have you talked to dear old Dad?”
“We talked to him in Thailand,” Bandana says defensively. “And he sounded very concerned.”
I laugh. “Then you must’ve dialed the wrong number.” I try to imagine Dad taking that call. It probably lasted all of 2.6 seconds before he hung up. “There is someone else I could try calling,” I offer. They look at me skeptically. “Unless you’ve kidnapped him, too.” But I know that’s impossible, because Cam would never let himself get into a situation where he would be kidnapped. Cam does not dance to techno, nor imbibe anything more toxic than a glass of cognac with Dad every now and then. Cam probably sleeps with his fucking eyes open, if you want to know the truth. And maybe, just maybe, if anyone can help get me out of this mess, it will be him.
Snaggletooth grudgingly hands the phone back. “Don’t even think of trying to call the authorities,” he says. “You’ll be dead before you get word one out.”
“Don’t worry, buddies; the authorities are no friends of mine either.” They watch me carefully as I dial. The phone rings exactly once and he answers.
“Hello?” His voice is smooth, like water running over sea glass or caramel getting drizzled over ice cream. I can’t remember the last time I talked to my brother, yet every time I hear his voice, I can’t help but think: This time will be different. This time he’ll decide he actually likes me.
“Cam,” I say. “It’s Griffin.”
Silence.
“Your brother,” I add. Snaggletooth is watching me closely.
“Are you sure we got the right guy?” I hear Bandana whisper loudly. “No one in his family seems to know him.”
“Griffin,” Cam says finally. “Carl said you might be calling.”
“Oh, did he? Then maybe he filled you in on my . . . situation.”
“And which situation would that be? Tripping on acid in Tokyo? Losing your passport in Belize? Getting thrown into a Mexican jail? Would you like me to go on? I could go on.”
“Actually—”
“This is nothing you haven’t heard before, Griffin, so I’m not really sure why I’m bothering to repeat myself, but some of us work for a living. Some of us go out into the world and try to make something of ourselves, instead of thinking life is a twenty-four hour party. Whatever situation you’ve gotten yourself into this time, I highly doubt I’d be able to help you out.”
“You’re not even a little curious?”
“Would you like me to be honest?”
“Of course.”
“No, I’m really not. This might come as something of a shock, but I’m not trying to live vicariously through you.”
“Man, and to think I bought that fluorescent pink mankini with you in mind—”
“Griffin, shut up. Seriously, shut the fu—”
“I’ve been kidnapped. I’m out on a boat in the middle of the ocean with these two guys who say they’re going to kill me if Dad doesn’t make some confession and pay seven million dollars.”
“You’re so full of shit—what?”
A gust of wind blows just then, almost drowning out the last part of what he said. But I hear it—something in his voice changes. Instead of silky smooth, his voice almost breaks, like liquid being poured over ice. It’s a rare tone for him, one he only uses when he’s very interested or excited about something, and in the twenty-four years I’ve known him, he’s never used it with me.
“What did you just say?” he says. “They want what?”
“Money! And a confession. They say Dad has—”
My back is to him, so I don’t see Snaggletooth come up next to me until it’s too late. He snatches the phone from me and shoves it back into his pocket.
“That call is clearly going nowhere,” he growls.
I stare at him. “But . . . but it was! He actually sounded interested, you asshole! I was getting somewhere! Let me call him back.”
“That’s enough!” Snaggletooth snaps. “Like I said before—we don’t care whether we kill you or get the confession and money. Hell, maybe we’ll kill you AFTER we get them. How about that? How does that sound?”
Maybe it was just my imagination. Cam has never given a shit about me, even when we were kids, so it’s probably just some pathetic delusion that he seemed to actually care, brought on by the drugs and lack of sleep and food. The sun beams down on me. There is not a cloud in the sky. It could be any day, any nice day where you’re going out to do something fun, maybe with someone you like, someone who likes you back. A day when you don’t have to spend any money, or try to impress anyone. I can’t recall the last time I had a day like that, and suddenly, I feel very tired. Blame the sun, blame the salt air, blame the fact that I haven’t eaten anything in at least a day. I look at Snaggletooth, still fingering the knife blade.
“That sounds great,” I tell him.
Chapter 4: Jill
Karen is twenty, with frizzy red hair and the type of pale skin that burns, never tans. She’s wearing khaki shorts and already has her Sea Horse Ranch t-shirt on, even though the campers won’t be here until tomorrow.
“Show me everything,” she says, as we walk down to the barn. “Bill and Lorrie said how you’re like the horse whisperer or something. Did you read that book? The Horse Whisperer?”
I look at her. “No,” I say.
“Oh. Well, it’s really good. So is the movie, actually. We should watch it some night. It’s one of those movies I never mind seeing whenever it’s on.”
“I really don’t like watching movies.”
“You don’t?”
“I mean, once in a while, I guess, but it mostly seems like a waste of time.”
I give Karen a tour of the barn. Karen is replacing Brandon for this summer, and though Brandon has always been somewhat gruff and of few words, I miss him and wish that he could’ve been here for my last summer.
“So I guess the owners’ daughter is also going to be a counselor here?” Karen says. “Allison? I think I met her when I first got here. She’s so pretty. So are you. I’m definitely the ugly duckling of the group.” She laughs in such a way that I can tell this actually bothers her more than she is caring to let on.
“Horses don’t care what you look like,” I say.
“I know.” She sighs. “So . . . do you have a boyfriend?”
“No. This place will keep you pretty busy. I mean, you’ll definitely have down time, but relationships take up a lot of time. When you could be doing other things. Like showering. Or napping.” She gives me a somewhat horrified look and I smile. “I’m joking. Sort of. Come on; let’s go tack up a few of the horses so I can take you out and show you the trails.”
I didn’t go with my parents into the East Bay because I had a headache. I had a headache because I’d been up most of the night, arguing with Sean, and then having that really hot makeup sex that almost makes the whole argument worth having to begin with.
My parents were going to visit their friends in Walnut Creek. I was invited along because the friends owned horses and had just gotten a new one that was giving them some trouble.
“Carol is sure this is something you’d be able to figure out,” Dad said as they were leaving. It was one of the last things he said to me.
“Maybe next time.” It felt like there was a swarm of bees clustered behind my right eye.
My parents were driving back to the city that evening when they drove their car off the Bay Bridge. The bridge had been under construction for a while, and there was a dangerous S curve that a freighter had driven off of a few months ago. Drivers were supposed to slow to 35 to navigate the curve, but most plowed on through, keeping up with the flow of traffic.
It was a tragedy and also a miracle, because no one could imagine how my mother survived the plunge from the upper deck down to the pavement on Treasure Island.
It was touch and go with my mother for a while, though. Her hospital room and the ICU waiting room became my new home for nearly a month last summer. I didn’t go back to the ranch that year and I put my classes on hold. Uncle Nate flew in and after the shock had started to wear off, started talking about conspiracies, adamant this wasn’t due to negligent driving and poorly-lighted warning signs.
“Mike has always been a very defensive driver!” Uncle Nate raged, as though that fact alone meant my father could never be involved in even the most minor of traffic accidents.
For a while, I dismissed it as shock, his unique way of processing grief. Dad was his only brother, after all. And it was Dad who helped Uncle Nate in the early days of his business. Dad was really the only one who believed in him when my uncle said he wanted to start his own luxury cruise business.