Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

In the upper right-hand corner of the screen appeared a semi-transparent square that read: GLOBAL DRY DAYS: 4.

“What was that cat’s name, anyway? I can’t remember.”

My mother reached for the joint, took the last hit, then stubbed it out.

“Didn’t have one,” she said.

RUSSELL JONSKIN AND AYA were about an hour late, and I’d apparently dozed off on the back porch. I woke to a large man staring down at me, his face a broad, sweaty grin composed by fat red lips. As I rubbed my eyes he stood back, spread his arms as though welcoming me to the world, and gave me a full view of his person: a stomach protruded solidly through his open button-down shirt to boast fine white hair, beneath which peeked pink and splotchy skin. He waved excitedly to someone inside the house and motioned for them to join him. Moments later the girl who’d spoken to me from the white car was standing at his side, smiling down at me too.

“I dreamed,” I said, “that I was surfing. We were all surfing.”

The man nodded vigorously and his smooth jowls shook. “See, Aya? I told you there was optimism in there somewhere.” He held out his hand, and as I reached up to shake it he grabbed me and hoisted me to my feet.

“You must be Russell,” I said.

“Jonskin, yes. Russell Jonskin. And this is my lover, Aya Karpinska.”

Aya nodded almost imperceptibly but did not avoid my eyes. I tried to remember the last time I’d heard someone use the word “lover” without condescension. We all stood in silence for a moment, me still groggy and my guests apparently eager for my complete return to consciousness.

“Your mother let us in,” Russell said.

“The salad is almost ready!” she called from inside the house.

“Shit,” I said. “I’m the bad son.”

“I highly doubt that.” Russell motioned to the general area. “Here you are, after all.”

I excused myself and went in to see what I could do to help. What a wonderful first impression: a son who snoozes on the porch while his mother prepares food for his guests. Glancing through the living room, I tried to see it as a stranger might — something I hadn’t thought to do earlier — but couldn’t get beyond the familiar. It did not, at least, look messy. The table was clear. The carpet was clean. The masks were in their places on the walls. Of course, in this environment, cleanliness cut both ways. Perhaps the level of tidiness was unnatural. Would they think we were keeping up appearances? Would they think we were in denial — or worse, anal? The truth was more approximately that we didn’t do enough to clutter the space. The truth was that my mother and I lived fairly discrete, patterned lives, and perhaps that’s all someone would see.

My mother had brought the big wooden bowl down from above the cupboards. It was now heaped with lettuce, dandelion greens, red onions, radishes, green beans, heirloom tomatoes, and fiddleheads, and beside it all sat the coup de grâce: a large package of soft sheep’s milk cheese she got from a shepherd passing through the neighborhood the week before. We’d traded a wool blanket for it.

“Why didn’t you wake me before letting them in?” I whispered, opening the cheese.

“Blake, dear, I didn’t know you were asleep. I was in here putting this together when they knocked.”

I noticed an unopened bottle of whiskey on the counter and picked it up. It was a Lagavulin 30.

“I hope you don’t mind scotch,” Russell said from the porch.

I looked up to see him standing at the door. It was a five-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch, and I tried to hide the fact that I knew this. Russell’s chest was thrust forward and his frame took up most of the doorway, but beyond him I could just make out Aya standing at the corner of the deck, looking, it seemed, at the scarecrow I’d made from one end of a freestanding clothesline I’d found in a neighbor’s yard. With the loose fabric and hat we’d used, we always thought it looked like a Sasquatch from the corner of the eye.

“I see you’ve met Earl,” I called out to Aya, and then to Russell, “Want it open?”

“Posthaste, good sir. Posthaste.”

I unwrapped the stiff soft metal seal and pulled the little cork from the bottle’s neck. The sharp, peaty smell rose immediately, and I flared my nostrils to suck it in. It had been a long time, and though scotch had never been my spirit of preference, it was brown, and that’s all that really mattered. I looked up and saw my mother watching me, eyebrow raised.

“Having a drink?” she asked.

“It’s an occasion.”

I took down three small tumblers from the cupboard and brought the bottle outside. Aya was still standing at the corner of the deck, though now she faced in, and a long branch from the apple tree hung a burst of leaves beside her face, a young apple in their center. She was every bit as beautiful as I remembered her — a frail, thin thing, narrow with long limbs. Her long black hair was pulled back from a high forehead, her overlarge eyes well-deep. I poured three glasses of scotch and handed one to Russell, then walked one over to Aya, who took it with a small nod of her head.

“What should we drink to?” I asked.

Russell stepped forward. “To Seattle,” he said.

“To Seattle,” I repeated, raising my glass.

“May her dream live on.”

I took a long pull from my glass, not taking a lot into my mouth but drawing it in slowly, savoring it, aerating the viscous liquid into an explosion of hot, deep flavors to both assault and sooth. Drinking scotch is being transported to a different world, something familiar yet magical, mysteries in the soil. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, but when Russell spoke again I found I had to open them and that I’d missed the first part of his sentence.

“May what be a warning?” I asked.

“Your novel. Forecast . Electricity based on denial? Let’s hope we’re better than that in the end.”

I shrugged. My mother brushed by me with the salad bowl.

“Will you get some plates, dear?”

I found the plates piled on the counter, forks and cloth napkins on top. I struggled to grab the stack with my free hand and had to put my drink down finally to pick them up, painfully aware of how aware I was of the glass. How long had it been? I took everything back outside, booze included.

“This looks positively decadent,” said Russell.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” my mother said. “It’s just a salad.”

“Salad of the gods!” he cried out. “Salad of kings!”

We proceeded to eat amid great groans and inarticulate sounds of approval as the big man shoveled enormous forkfuls of greens into his mouth. He wasn’t afraid to use his hands, either. Upon finding a perfect cherry tomato he plucked it from his plate and held it at eye level, pinching it gently, and slowly spun it with his ring finger.

“It’s a jewel,” he said. “Fuck the rubies.”

In his hands the tomato looked even tinier than it was, and indeed I could almost picture it mounted on a silver band. Russell suddenly seemed to become aware that the entire table had stopped eating and was presently staring at his tomato. He quickly flicked it into his mouth and shrank back a bit in his chair.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly. “I can get carried away. But I’m a little nervous. Your son’s book had a tremendous impact on me, you see. Aya knows. Didn’t it, Aya? Aya never heard the end of it.”

“All true,” Aya said, and looked at me. She hadn’t touched her scotch.

“I suppose you could say it inspired me,” Russell said. “As a kind of warning sign.”

I was beginning to feel the whiskey, and I felt no need to hide my pleasure at receiving his compliments.