CHAPTER 13

.13.

Three days out of Honolulu, the Pacific decided to remind us that its name is a fallacy. The sky darkened as if it were nighttime, and the SS Malolo began to roll in a way that, despite all the luxury, turned the first-class cabins into little more than gilded cages.

I found myself in Jimmy’s suite, the walls groaning under the pressure of a gale that was trying to peel the paint off the hull. Outside the porthole, there was nothing but a white-fanged sea and a horizon that wouldn't stay level.

Jimmy wasn't looking at the water. He was sitting on the edge of his berth, a bottle of high-end scotch clutched in his hand like a life preserver. The Hawaiian version of Jimmy – the guy who’d mastered the chopsticks and the surf – was fading, replaced by a man who looked like he was already being crushed by a crown he hadn't asked for.

“He said I had time, Ray,” Jimmy murmured, his voice barely audible over the thrum of the engines and the storm. He poured another two fingers of amber liquid into a glass that was sliding across the side table. “He wanted me to ‘enjoy life’ before the boardrooms and the quarterly reports took a bite out of me. He wanted me to have what he never had – a bit of fun while the sun was still high.”

He took a long, desperate pull from the glass. In the dim, swinging light of the cabin, he looked less like a prince and more like a kid who had been told the circus was leaving town and he was the only one who hadn't seen the show.

“’Then, when it’s time,’ he used to say, ‘I’ll teach you how to steer the old ship, and keep the monsters at bay.’ It turns out there wasn’t much sand left in the glass. Dad married late, you see? He was already forty-five when I was born. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.”

He didn't cry. He just drank until his eyes went glassier than the porthole. I watched him, my own stomach doing slow rolls that had nothing to do with the storm. I thought about my own father, safe in his fortress of books, and realized that even with all his snobbery, he’d never asked me to steer a ship into a hurricane.

Jimmy eventually drank himself into a stupor, collapsing onto the silk sheets with his shoes still on. I stayed in the chair, watching the shadows dance across the bulkheads.

The ship pitched violently, and for a second, I felt that old familiar itch in my palms – the urge to jump in and pull him to the sand. But as the Malolo plowed toward San Pedro, I realized that the "monsters" his father had warned him about weren't in the water. They were waiting on the docks in California, and they weren't going to be scared off by a "Stingray" kick.

I looked at Jimmy’s sleeping form and wondered what kind of sandstorms were waiting for him when we hit the mainland. I’d reclaimed him from the Pacific, but I had a sinking feeling that in Hollywood, the drowning happened on dry land.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, wishing the rhythmic struggle of the engines in the storm didn't sound so much like a timer counting down to zero.