Float Plan. Rob Hiaasen

act of compassion culminates Steinbeck’s epic. To save the life of starving man, a poor dying stranger in need of milk, Rose of Sharon...

      ...loosened one side of the towel and bared her breast, Parker recited. She knew she never could have paraphrased Steinbeck’s final words. Somebody in class would have snickered at the mere mention of “breast,” and that scene certainly wasn’t in the movie. She stuck to the script:

      “...You got to,” she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close…”

      Parker’s voice steadied. There was no snickering, not even from the boys. Not even from Alex Cavanaugh, the cocky, brawny wrestler sitting in the front row closest to the speaker. Parker felt his panther eyes on her – like he was hanging on her every word. She suddenly became very aware of the clingy top she had on. Could people see...

      “...There!” she said. “There.” Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair.”

      Parker felt twitchy. She swore she could hear Alex’s panting. She imagined, if for a second, the feel of his hot breath…

      “…She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.”

      In that moment, Parker Cool smiled mysteriously, Alex told her the next week but she swore it didn’t happen. But she had smiled mysteriously. And four years later, Lucinda Williams – not Rose of Sharon – was the culprit. If it hadn’t been for Lucinda playing the Ram’s Head Tavern, Parker would not have bumped into Alex again. He came over and offered her a beer she had never heard of – Flying Fish, Flying Dog, Flying Beer, something. After the concert and a scorching version of “Righteously,” the two walked up West Street. Parker liked his aggressive smile – not mean or nasty but aggressive. Everything he said or did, every expression, seemed to clear a path for her. That night they hopped the fence at Mears Marina at 2 a.m. and stretched out on the clay tennis court. She nestled her knees and hands into the clay and heard wind chimes from somebody’s boat, and as she rocked even his breathing was aggressive. Alex didn’t have any stop in him. The boy was all engine.

      Then, within a year, living together then Dailey, an accident, although Parker could never say that word out loud or to herself. How could her baby girl ever be an accident? If anything was an accident, it was that damn Rose of Sharon and Lucinda Williams.

      Alone in the parking lot of the Boston Whaler dealership, Parker pulled out her iPhone. Her older brother answered on the sixth ring.

      “Wake up, dear one.”

      “Please go away. I was in the middle of a sex dream. Brad Pitt was my dentist and he was taking out my wisdom teeth and I had like 60 of them so he was in my mouth all day.”

      “Visual achieved.”

      Steve didn’t ask why his sister was calling at 4:00 a.m. and why, judging by the faint sound of road, wind, and water, she was calling from an undisclosed maritime location. He knew her well enough to know the reason would be forthcoming in baby steps. Steve sat up in bed. He heard wind chimes coming from her cell. Was she on the bridge at Weems Creek?

      “Parker?”

      She had started walking back until she was a block from her home.

      “I’m here.”

      Parker reached Chester Street and looked up at Alex’s bedroom window. She prayed he was still snoring.

      “My living arrangement is less than satisfying.”

      “That’s a start,” Steve said.

      “Can Dailey and I come over to stay for a few days?”

      “I’ll turn the lights on for you.”

      The call dropped out.

      At the house, Parker took off her shoes on the front porch, squeaked open the front door, and walked upstairs in sock feet. At the bedroom door, she squeezed the knob counterclockwise. Nothing was ever accomplished quietly at night. Parker dodged the bedposts at the front of the bed, the knobbed masts that often were her foil in daylight. Alex wasn’t snoring, but he was breathing deeply. If she lifted the comforter, he might feel a sudden wave of cool air and awaken. Parker lowered herself on top of the covers and lay still as a dead sparrow. Cold outside her covers. Not even the flat pillow on her side.

      “Have a nice walk?”

      Alex turned on the light over his head, one of those fancy reading lamps he used when pretending to read. She sat up, looked ahead to a point outside the window where purple, pink and lavender streaked Maryland’s sky. Alex got out of his bed and walked to the window. Parker wrapped herself in the buttermilk comforter, a graduation gift from her parents after she became a veterinary technician.

      “I’m leaving.”

      She walked to the dresser to get her key ring and handbag. She counted her bills and double-checked for her Visa card. Folding the comforter was cumbersome, but Parker managed to tuck the bundle under her arms. Then she went into their daughter’s room, collected as much of her clothes under her arm as she could before gently hoisting Dailey from her bed.

      “Mommy, where are we going?” said the groggy girl in her Disney “Frozen Elsa” pajamas bought from Kohl’s.

      “We’re going to a sleepover at Uncle Steve’s.”

      Alex’s brain, which often lagged behind real-time events, finally snapped to attention as he watched Parker’s ensuing hour-long packing of her Samsonite three-piece set, a high school graduation present from her parents. He followed his girlfriend and daughter out to her car.

      “This is crazy, Park. You’re acting crazy.”

      Parker closed the hatchback with a good shove. In her back seat, she kept a spare hula hoop for whenever the urge to emergency hoop overcame her. The rest of her stuff was still in the house: DVD player, ottoman, Wegmans cookware and a Waiting for Guffman movie poster. She jetted back into the house and snatched the poster off the wall. In the front yard, she uprooted her shepherd’s hook and packed it, the bird feeder, and squirrel baffle into her car.

      “Get in the house. Now,” Alex said to the reversing car. Once out of the driveway, the compact stopped on Chester Street. She rolled down her window and waved him toward her.

      “Alex?”

      “What?”

      “Goodbye.”

      Parker was so tired she barely remembered her brother steering her and Dailey to his guest bedroom where they collapsed in two lumps of exhaustion. In the morning, she remembered her dream, and she never remembered her dreams.

      She was putting on a pair of Picasso’s pants. The pants were cubed and hippie yellow, and she spent the dream (a time-bending, filmic vision) walking alone on a vibrant purple beach. The shore birds were tilted and still. The surf was also frozen in still life – waiting for someone to paint the waves free. Parker walked the still-life purple coast, looking for anything that would and should be moving. But only she was moving, only she was going somewhere in Picasso’s pants. She wasn’t part of the still life. Not in her dream.

      Chapter 4

      The afternoon bell was set to ring in 13 minutes.

      Don’t think about her.

      Her name.

      Her mackerel eyes.

      Her scars.

      But Will thought about her name, her scars and mackerel eyes – a phrase from an old James Taylor song he heard at his Dad’s. He failed on numerous Google missions to unearth a definition of mackerel eyes. Parker had them, though, whatever they were.

      Will sat at his metal cart doubling as his desk. On the bottom of the floater’s cart was a framed photo of Dean gnawing on a poppy-seed bagel. Also, a broken stapler that worked as a decoy when kids asked to borrow his stapler. His freshmen had jammed or broken five of his staplers, so he hid the good one