Читать книгу: «Wildest Dreams»

One

Not much that happened on the beach got by Charlie Simmons. He was fourteen and his mother was the nurse who tended Winnie Banks, a lady with ALS who lived on the hill overlooking the beach. Charlie came to work with his mother every day. He hung out around the house, the town, the beach. He was, more than anything, a practiced observer. More observer than participant, something he’d change if possible.

It was the third week of August, the house next to Winnie’s was complete inside and out, and a moving truck had finally backed up to the garage. Charlie had seen the new owner back when he’d first looked at the house. He’d ridden across the beach road on a bicycle—a very expensive-looking road bike. He’d visited with Cooper on the deck that faced the bay. They went into the house together and didn’t come back out, at least on the beach side. Cooper had later reported the guy with the bicycle was interested and made an offer.

When the moving truck pulled up and began to unload, Charlie went out front to have a look. All the houses along this ridge backed up to the Pacific, with the perfect view from their decks and living rooms, but their front doors and garages faced the road at the top of the hill. Charlie saw Cooper talking to the movers so he waited patiently until he was finished.

“Just be sure that gym equipment goes downstairs—it’s heavy. He’s making the game room on the lower level his workout room. Living quarters on this level. You should be able to identify the master bedroom, kitchen, living room, bath, on this floor for everything else. I’ll be down at the bar when you’re ready for me to sign off on delivery.”

When Cooper was walking back to the bar that he owned, he passed right by Charlie. “Who’s moving in, Cooper? The guy with the million-dollar bike?”

Cooper grinned. “The same. He’s out of town right now.”

“In a race?” Charlie asked.

“Big triathlon in Australia.”

“Holy smokes,” Charlie said. “He’s an Ironman?”

Cooper laughed. “He is.”

“What’s his name?” Charlie asked.

“Blake Smiley. You going to look him up?”

“It’s what I do, Cooper. You want me to fill you in?”

“I think I have enough information, but thanks.”

“You ever want to compete in a triathlon, Cooper?”

“Absolutely never,” he said, clearly amused. “Not that I don’t admire the folks that can do that...”

“When’s he going to be here?”

“I’m not sure. Any day now, I guess.”

“I’m going to track the race. Do you know where in Australia?”

“No, I don’t know where. Can there be a lot of them?” Cooper asked.

Charlie was on it. He got out his laptop and looked the guy up. This was what Charlie had been doing for a long time—finding information and learning on his laptop because he didn’t have a lot of friends and couldn’t run and play like the other kids. Charlie had suffered from some serious allergies and asthma as a little kid and was therefore confined to a quieter life. He believed it was his frequent bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia when he was younger that resulted in him being a little undersized for his age. Either that or his Vietnamese roots through his mother’s side of the family. But then one day someone passed on an old laptop, showed him how to use it and all those indoor days had resulted in a smarter than average fourteen-year-old.

Charlie’s mother, Lin Su, was Amerasian. Since Charlie’s biological father was white American he supposed that made him Amer-amerasian. He could see Vietnam in his black hair and dark eyes.

He looked up Blake Smiley. The man had been racing for fifteen years. He went to college on a scholarship and was thirty-seven years old. Smiley was a triathlon champion many times over having scored his first win in Oahu; he held a couple of records, had a degree in biology and physiology and was sponsored by a few corporations and even made a commercial for a fancy juice mixer. A juice mixer? Charlie wondered. Smiley was also a coach, consultant and sometime motivational speaker. Charlie was in love with TED Talks; he’d love to be smart enough or experienced enough to teach or inspire people with his accomplishments. “He’s a god,” Charlie muttered to himself. And then there was his size. He was five-ten and one hundred and fifty pounds. Not huge. Charlie found that encouraging.

He’d seen the guy. He looked so strong. So ripped. He saw him ride his bike down the beach road, pick it up and jog up two flights of stairs to meet Cooper on the deck of that house he bought. But as pro athletes go, he was small.

The second thing to intrigue him—Smiley had to teach himself to swim. He gave speeches about how he built his athletic career on survival instincts and practice.

Charlie couldn’t swim. His mother freaked out if he even ran and he sure hadn’t had a pool in the backyard. He wanted to swim. He’d spent the summer hanging out here on the beach watching the older kids paddleboarding and, lately, windsurfing. He’d had a ride on a paddleboard with someone else paddling. And he’d been wearing a life vest...

Charlie closed the laptop and went to Winnie’s bedroom. He knocked lightly on the door. There was no telling what was going on in there. It could be bathing, primping, reading or maybe Winnie was sleeping. “Come in,” his mother said.

He pushed open the door and saw that his mother had been giving Winnie a manicure. Winnie loved manicures. Winnie had become a good friend; they spent a lot of time on their laptops together, talking, figuring things out.

“You are never going to believe this,” he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “The new guy next door? He’s an Ironman!”

* * *

Blake arrived from Australia late at night. He’d slept on the plane so he was up for a few hours knowing that in the next couple of days jet lag would kick his ass. Then it would pass.

He was creaky and stiff. His body had become a little less responsive in the past few years. Things like prerace training and international travel were beginning to take their toll. And it was odd going home to his own house. It was his first. People wouldn’t guess that. He was almost forty and had never owned a home. Not even a condo or town house. He’d given the location a great deal of thought. He wanted to be near the ocean; he liked the cold of the Pacific. As a workout it was more taxing than warm water; the unforgiving nature of the ocean was more realistic than a lake or pool for training. He needed altitude training and he had that in Oregon. Everywhere he looked...mountains. He had seriously considered Boulder or Truckee but at the end of the day he liked this little spot. When he wasn’t racing he was training and when he wasn’t training, he was living. He could get his training done here. And while he might keep up with the training for life, he wasn’t going to race professionally forever. For living he wanted a quiet place that wasn’t overrun by professional athletes and Olympians. Shake a tree in Boulder or Truckee and ten Olympic contenders fell out.

He spent his first day unpacking, arranging his gym and doing a short workout to keep from stiffening up after a seventeen-hour plane ride. Then he drove into a larger town to the grocery store, rounding up his food. He stuck mostly to organic vegetables, legumes and grains, including quinoa. He ordered his supplements online. He wasn’t a vegetarian. For his purposes he found it served him best if he cooked up a little poultry or beef to add to his vegetables and grains. Cooper had suggested that if he got friendly with Cliff, who owned the seafood restaurant at the marina, he could get fresh fish, crab and other shellfish.

When he was training, which was almost year-round, he avoided or at least limited his favorite things—cheese, simple starchy carbs, the most flavorful fats like butter and cream. He limited his alcohol to the occasional beer. But when he was off-season and his training was moderate, when he was relaxing for a little while, he indulged. Not too much, of course, because no one was more disciplined. But a good, greasy pizza was the best thing in the world as far as he was concerned. And yes, he could make his own vegetarian with a gluten-free crust, but if he was indulging that wouldn’t do it. The way he grew up, he still longed for those things he couldn’t have and pizza and beer were a couple of those things.

His second day home he woke up too early, blended up one of his protein drinks, stretched out, dragged on a wet suit and hit the bay. It was eight-thirty but the sun wasn’t quite up, given all that sea fog, and the water felt icy. He didn’t know the exact distance across the bay but after a fifty-minute swim he’d have an idea. He had already measured a couple of cycling and running routes before making an offer on the house.

He loved the house. He’d looked at a hundred of them, at least, in a lot of places, including Hawaii. Hawaii was tempting; the lifestyle was alluring. But he thought most of his future work would be in the US, and while he didn’t mind travel, he’d like to be able to have a base less than ten hours away. If work took him to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles he could get home to Thunder Point in six hours or less. Boulder, being in the center of the country, was practical but wasn’t as tempting as this unpretentious little fishing village on the ocean. There was a house on Cape Cod he liked but the East Coast beyond the cape wasn’t as peaceful or traffic friendly as Oregon. He remembered asking Cooper, Doesn’t anyone know about this place yet? The freeways weren’t clogged, the air was clean, there were some wide-open spaces... When he was ten years old, the idea that he could live wherever he wished had never occurred to him. But then, when he was ten his most urgent concern was eating and staying warm.

He set the timer on his watch, walked into the water, dove, swam out past the haystack rocks and began swimming from end to end across the bay. When the timer went off he’d made seven trips across the bay—he judged the distance across the beach as slightly more than a quarter of a mile. Maybe four-tenths of a mile. He had a laser measuring tool and later he’d check to see how close he’d been, but even those devices weren’t perfect. By the time he exited the water, the sun was shining. He’d ride for a few hours today; tomorrow he’d go for a run. He’d do one test triathlon before the next competition, only one.

There was a kid sitting on the beach stairs to the house next door to his. He had a laptop balanced on his knees and wore black-framed glasses. Blake shook off the excess water and pulled off his hood and goggles. He walked up to the kid. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless.

“Hey,” the kid said. “You came in second in Sydney.”

Blake smiled. “I had a good race.”

“Your times were good but McGill beat you. He beats you pretty regular.”

“You stalking me, kid?”

“Nah, just looked you up. So, what made it a good race?”

“First, what’s your name?”

“I’m Charlie,” he said, sticking out a hand. And with one finger on the other hand he pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“Nice to meet you, Charlie. I guess you know me already.”

“I asked Cooper who you were and he said you were racing in Australia and I looked you up.” He shrugged. “You have a pretty good record.”

“Thanks,” Blake said, raising a brow in question. In fact, he had a great record. “What else did you find out about me?”

“Well...you had to teach yourself to swim.”

“That’s right.”

“How’d you do that?”

“The same way I learned almost everything— survival. I fell in a pool. Or maybe I got pushed in, I can’t remember. And I couldn’t swim. Went down like a rock.”

“Did you have to get rescued?”

“Nope. It was in college and I was at a pool party. I don’t think anyone was paying attention. I held my breath and walked out. My lungs just about exploded.”

“You walked out?” Charlie asked, astonished.

“That was my only option at the time. I was an expert on depth because I couldn’t swim. Every time I was near a pool I made sure I knew where the shallow and deep ends where. I fell in the middle, eyeballed the shallow end and walked. It was slow. Nobody knows the depth and contour of a pool like a kid who can’t swim. Then I taught myself to swim because walking out in water over your head isn’t a good experience. I read about swimming, practiced it. I watched some video of little kids taking lessons.”

“That pool you walked out of wasn’t that big, I guess.”

“Any pool when you’re in over your head is big. After that I learned to tread water and then, since I knew nothing, teaching me to swim was kind of easy—there were no bad habits to unlearn.”

“They start you out with a life jacket?” Charlie asked.

“Nah, that’s not the best way to learn to swim. Best way to stay alive if you have an accident, though. Even experienced swimmers will wear flotation jackets under certain circumstances. The best way is to learn to respect the water, learn the moves, breathe right, understand buoyancy. They teach babies, you know. They don’t use any flotation devices. They teach them to hold their breath, fan the water, to kick, to roll over on their backs to breathe, to... Hey, you swim, right?”

Charlie shook his head.

“You live on a beach and don’t swim?”

He shook his head again. “I don’t live here. My mom works for Mrs. Banks. Since I come with her to work every day, I’m going to go to school here in town but we live... We live a few miles away.”

“And you don’t swim,” Blake said again.

Charlie shook his head. “That never came up before.”

Blake laughed. He understood that completely. “So, what’s up with Mrs. Banks?”

“ALS. She’s doing good. She’s not end stage,” Charlie said, as if he understood such things. “She still walks a little bit but never alone and my mom is optimistic. But she needs a nurse and it’s not my mom’s first ALS patient. I’m really sorry she has ALS but I think I’m going to like the school... Well, for as long as my mom works for Mrs. Banks.”

“Hopefully a long time,” Blake said.

“Yeah, for her sake, for sure. So what made it a good race? You got beat.”

“Gimme a break, will you? I came in second—that’s a damn good show. Like you said, McGill beats me regularly. This time, though, he announced his retirement.” Blake made a face. “Gonna really miss that guy.” Then he laughed. “Seriously, I had good times. I was close to my personal-best swimming and, in case you haven’t figured it out, that’s not my easiest sport. But I run like the wind.”

Charlie just grinned at him.

“I guess I better come next door and introduce myself to Mrs. Banks, huh? After I clean up, of course. What’s her schedule like?”

“After her nap, right before dinner, everyone is usually around. And she’s downright perky.”

“Everyone?” Blake asked.

“Well, Mrs. Banks’s daughter, Grace, and her husband, Troy, are there. And there’s Mikhail. He’s been hanging around ever since he found out Winnie has ALS. Mikhail used to be Grace’s coach. For, like, years. She’s a champion athlete, too. So you’re not the only one.”

“Is that so?” Blake asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Figure-skating gold medalist,” Charlie said. “A while ago, though. She retired.”

Blake frowned. The name “Grace” didn’t sound familiar at all.

“I guess she used to be called Izzy when she was skating.”

“Oh, Jesus, Izzy Banks?” he asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

“And her mother—Winnie Banks,” Charlie said. “Grace is like a second-generation champion.”

Now, what were the odds? Blake asked himself. Winnie and Izzy were famous mother/daughter skating icons. Winnie Banks had quit skating to marry her coach and they’d produced one of the best known women’s figure-skating champions in the world. “Unreal. What’s she doing now?”

“Well, she owns the flower shop and she’s having a baby,” Charlie said. “Troy is a high school teacher. And in that house there,” he said, pointing to the house between Winnie’s and Cooper’s, “Spencer and Devon live there. Spencer and Cooper have a son together.”

Blake’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so? Two men?”

Charlie laughed. “Not like that. One of them is the dad and one is the stepdad or something like that. I can’t figure out which is which, but Austin’s mom died a couple of years ago. Now Spencer is married to Devon, and Cooper is married to Sarah. And Austin has two bedrooms.”

After all the house and community shopping Blake had done he’d managed to somehow land in a neighborhood where kids had moms, stepmoms, dads and stepdads, missing moms and so on. Where he grew up in Baltimore it was like that, but usually someone in the family was in jail and there sure weren’t any three-story houses on the beach or champion athletes hanging around. Just gang members, drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps. There were missing parents, dead parents and foster parents, kids raised by aunts, grandmothers and neighbors. Families of every creative invention, now that he thought of it. Back when he was a kid, you practically needed a chart to figure out who belonged with whom. He was always a little surprised when folks who could pay the rent had similar family trees.

No beach houses where he grew up, no, sir. He was raised to the age of thirteen in an urban tenement slum in a city that got so freaking cold in the winter he hung out with vagrants who built fires in trash cans under the tracks and bridges. From thirteen to sixteen he bounced around a lot while his mother tried to get her life together, but at least he went to school regularly. That turned out to be critical. An education was the thing that ultimately got him out of a neighborhood where a lot of young men and women lost track of their lives.

“What do you do on that computer besides research your neighbors?” Blake asked Charlie.

“I look up everything. Anything I can get for you?” he asked. And then he grinned the cutest grin.

Blake had a real soft spot for kids. All kids. But he didn’t worry too much about this type, the kind of kid who grew up in places like brand-new, pricey, three-story beach houses with famous retired athletes. He was more concerned about the kids who had tough, deprived childhoods. He’d been working on a project for the past several years meant to serve kids in need and he was nearly ready to unveil it as soon as he had a couple more corporate sponsors on board.

He liked Charlie right away. He felt privileged that he’d be seeing him around. “There is something you can do for me. I have to get on the bike and do at least fifty miles. Then home and clean up.” He looked at his watch. “Any time after one o’clock that your mother thinks is okay to come over and meet my neighbors, could you let me know?”

“Could be closer to dinnertime if you want to meet them all. Troy has been helping Grace at the shop.”

“I don’t want to impose on dinner—just a quick hello. I’m home the rest of the day,” Blake assured him.

* * *

It was not strictly required that Lin Su wear some kind of nurse’s uniform, but she wore clean scrubs every day just the same. For one thing, they were easy to move around in and her job sometimes found her on her hands and knees digging around beneath the bathroom sink or wiping up a kitchen floor. For another thing, scrubs were easily maintained and, if need be, replaced. And importantly, they identified her—even the UPS man at the door knew she was either on the job as a medic or worked somewhere nearby as medical personnel and was dressed in her work clothes.

As a home health care nurse, she could wear civilian clothes while tending patients like Winnie Banks, those who needed assistance and yet were not desperately ill. But when she tended patients in the end stages of diseases, which tended to be incredibly messy, her civilian clothes needed to be spared. After all, they were few and carefully chosen.

So it was all logical, her use of scrubs on the job. And when she opened the door to a very attractive man, they proved effective.

“So, you’re the nurse,” the man said. “Charlie said I could brave a visit, just to introduce myself and say hello. I’m Blake Smiley. Your neighbor.”

“Hello,” she said, more wide-eyed than she liked. He was just so damn handsome, it threw her. She’d caught glimpses of him when he was on the beach or on his deck next door, but up close he was shockingly beautiful. She was speechless.

“You are Lin Su. I asked Charlie, you see.”

“Ah! Yes, I’m Lin Su Simmons. Please. Come in.”

“Is it a convenient time to say hello to Mrs. Banks?”

“Come in! Come in!” Winnie called from the dining room table.

Lin Su stepped aside so that Blake could enter.

Winnie was sitting with Charlie at the dining table, both of them with their laptops open. Winnie closed hers and held out a hand toward him. “And how do you do, Mr. Smiley! Charlie told me you might be stopping by.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Banks,” he said, taking her hand.

“Will you sit for a moment?” she asked. “And now that the formal introductions are dispensed with, can we proceed as Winnie and Blake?”

“Nothing would please me more.”

“Charlie,” she said. “Fetch Mikhail from the deck.” Then she turned to Blake. “Very nice of you to make the effort to visit. It’s not easy for me to get around, as I’m sure Charlie told you.”

“He told me,” Blake said. “I’m so sorry to hear it. Lou Gehrig’s disease, how bloody awful for you. You look positively wonderful. How are you feeling?”

“Until I try to pick up a glass or stand, I feel just fine,” she said, adding a small head shake. “Speaking of glass, what can we get you?”

“Nothing at all, Mrs.... Winnie. I just wanted to meet you. I was shocked to hear two famous athletes were living next door.”

“Yes, but we’re not competing anymore,” Winnie said. “What in the world are you doing here in Thunder Point?”

“I’m still training, but I fell in love with the quiet of the place.” He glanced around. “If you can find a way to move this house to Boulder you can get three million for it.”

“I can’t believe the price was what attracted you,” she said.

“The town did, as a matter of fact. The size, the simplicity, the building around the bay. That’s a great place for me to swim. The hills and lowlands are great bike and running trails. The air is perfect.”

“What’s your next event?” Winnie asked.

“Tahoe,” Charlie answered for him, sitting down again.

“He seems to know as much about me as I do,” Blake said. He stood and extended a hand toward the short Russian coach who had come in from the deck. “How do you do, sir. I’m your neighbor, Blake.”

“An honor,” Mikhail said.

When everyone sat down to visit, Lin Su drifted off to the master bedroom. This was the time of day she put it right for later when Winnie would settle in for the night.

After a nap and a little refreshing, Winnie would spend some time in the living room or on the deck, have dinner with whoever happened to be around—sometimes the entire family, sometimes just Lin Su, Charlie and Mikhail. If Winnie’s daughter, Grace, wanted to help her settle in for the evening, Lin Su and Charlie would go home. Most nights Lin Su would stay for the evening ritual and then take herself and her son home.

Her present home wasn’t exactly a welcoming place. Lin Su and Charlie were renting a small fifth wheel that had been left behind at a rather scurvy trailer park, but it was completely adequate and she had gotten it antiseptic clean. This job with Winnie, while demanding, was also accommodating and paid well. Lin Su was working on a solution to that fifth wheel, but it had been all she could afford at the time—she’d been laid off from the hospital and bills had accrued while she was between jobs. There were also old loans like tuition, moving, some medical expenses that hadn’t been covered by employers. She finally had some savings but she didn’t dare touch it. She was very cautious and the most important thing in the world to her was that Charlie get a good education.

It was all working out, for now. It was Winnie, in fact, who had suggested Charlie come to work with her every day and therefore attend school in Thunder Point. Winnie’s son-in-law, Troy Headly, taught history there and Winnie’s next-door neighbor, Spencer Lawson, was the athletic director and football coach. She wouldn’t have to worry about Charlie being picked on by bigger, tougher kids, and for that she was so grateful.

She drew back the comforter and smoothed out the sheets—six hundred thread count—fluffed the pillows and made it inviting. She shook out and refolded the throw that Mikhail used when he slept in the big leather chair at Winnie’s bedside. He thought no one knew. That made her smile. Mikhail was so devoted, but he disappeared before Lin Su arrived in the morning so no one would know he was that protective. Lin Su dusted the room, removing the water glass from the bedside table, tidied the books and magazines Winnie kept nearby. The bathroom just needed a lick and a promise plus fresh towels and facecloths. Tomorrow she would change the sheets and wash some linens. She would love to sleep in such fine bedding but she wouldn’t trade places with Winnie for the moon.

By the time she returned to the kitchen and dining room, Grace and Troy had come home and there was a great deal of chatter. They had brought dinner from Carrie’s deli and Grace was putting out place mats.

“Please, won’t you stay?” Grace asked Blake. “I can assure you it’s healthy and nutritious. Carrie is very particular.”

But to the disappointment of all, Blake declined the invitation, heading home for some concoction of kale, squash, beef, chicken, quinoa, oil and... Lin Su might not have caught all the ingredients, but he was in training—there was another race in a month.

“Sounds delicious,” Grace said doubtfully.

“Sounds excruciating,” Winnie said, making everyone laugh.

Blake laughed with them. “After the next two races I’ll have a little downtime. I’ll exercise and eat well but the strict training and diet regimen is relaxed a little bit. I’ll eat and drink like a regular person,” he said with a grin.

“Well, when you’re done with the next race, I’m buying,” Troy said, lifting his beer in Blake’s direction.