At nine in the morning, Cameron pulls on the front door of Dell’s Saloon, half expecting to find it locked. But the door swings wide open. He blinks, adjusting to the dim light.
Old Al, the bartender, pokes his head out from the back. “Cameron,” he says, sounding mildly surprised. His thick voice is like something out of a mob movie, so Italian and Brooklyn that it sounds almost comical here in central California.
“Hey, man.” Cameron slides onto one of the stools. In the back corner, covered right now in stacked liquor crates, is the tiny stage where Moth Sausage plays. Used to play, that is, before Brad went and blew up the band. An ancient radio sits on the rail next to the pool table, its crooked antenna aimed at the bar’s only grungy window. Talk radio blares, a man and a woman going at it, arguing about interest rates and the federal reserve or some other boring shit.
“The usual?” Old Al tosses a cocktail napkin down on the bar.
“Nah, that’s not why I’m here.” Cameron clears his throat. “I’ve got a proposal for you. A real estate proposal.”
Old Al leans on the bar sink and folds his arms, lifting a brow.
“That apartment upstairs?” Cameron sits up straighter. “The vacant one?”
“What about it?”
“I want to rent it. I’ve worked it all out. I’ll be able to get first month’s rent by next week, and—”
Old Al holds up a hand. “Stop, Cam. I ain’t interested.” “But you haven’t heard the rest!”
“I ain’t interested in becoming a landlord.”
“You don’t have to be a landlord! I’ll . . . lord myself. You won’t even know I’m there.”
“Ain’t interested.”
“But no one’s living there!” “I like it that way.”
“How much do you want for it?” Cameron pulls the black drawstring bag from the pocket of his hoodie and dumps the jewelry on the bar. “I can pay. See?”
Old Al’s gaze lingers on the heap of tangled jewels for a moment, then he shakes his head as he picks up a gray rag from the sink. “What’d you do, rob an old folks’ home?”
Cameron huffs. “I just need a place for a couple of months. Please?”
“Sorry, kiddo.”
“Come on, Al. You know I’m good for it.”
“Let’s get real, Cameron. I could write the next great American novel on the back of your tab here. And you still haven’t paid me back for that table you broke last year when you pulled that little stunt. Hurling yourself from the stage.”
Cameron winces. “That was performance art.”
“It was vandalism, which I graciously forgave, because people seem to enjoy that noise you play, and because your aunt’s a good friend. But I’ve got my limits. Look, you can’t spit ten feet in this town without hitting a dumpy little apartment building. Why don’t you take your family jewels to one of them?”
“Well, because.” Cameron lets this stand on its own as an explanation, as if it should be obvious that the whole background-check-and-credit-history thing is a problem.
“Suit yourself.” Old Al shrugs, swiping circles on the bar with his rag, pausing every so often to wring dusky water
into the sink. He finally stops, tossing the rag back into the sink. “That was your old lady’s stuff, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Your aunt gave it to you?” “Yep.”
The bartender picks up the gold tennis bracelet and holds it up. “Some of this ain’t half-bad.” Then he picks up the Sowell Bay High School, Class of 1989 ring and says, “Huh, look at that. No one buys these as graduation gifts anymore, do they?”
Cameron shrugs. How would he know? He never graduated high school, a fact Old Al is surely aware of.
“Sowell Bay. That’s up in Washington, ain’t it?”
“I think so,” Cameron says. He knows so. He Googled it, of course. So what? That ring is some random thing his mom stole to pay for one of her bad habits, for all he knows. Maybe the guy in the photo was her accomplice.
“You know, I remember when Jeanne went up there to get her.”
“Get who?” “Your mother.”
“What are you talking about?” “Your aunt never told you?
“Told me what?” Cameron lets the wad of cocktail napkin he’d been balling between his thumb and fingers drop to the bar.
Old Al sighs. “I never knew Daphne as anything other than Jeanne’s hell-raising little sister, mind you. Way I understand it, she ran away from home when she was in high school. Went up to Washington, who the hell knows why? Got in some sort of trouble up there. Jeanne had to call off work to go drag her sister home. I remember her in here one night, talking about it.”
“Oh” is all Cameron says. His brain feels weirdly numb. “Anyway.” Old Al holds the ring in his upturned palm and
bobbles his hand like he’s weighing it. “A boyfriend’s,
maybe. I gave mine to my sweetheart my senior year.” A slow smile spreads over the bartender’s face. “She wore it on a chain around her neck, just long enough so it rested right in the sweet spot, right there in the crack of her rack.”
Cameron cringes.
“Yeah, probably still there, for all I know. Never got it back from her after we broke up,” he says with a gruff grunt. The door creaks open, a triangle of dusty light cutting across the bar as two old guys come in. Cameron recognizes them from around town. The day crew. They nod to
Cameron before settling a few stools down.
Unbidden, Old Al caps two longnecks and slides them across the bar. He holds up a third bottle in Cameron’s direction. “Want one?” Then he adds, his voice slightly softer, “On the house.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Old Al gives him this guilty little nod, as if a two-dollar beer makes up for being a giant douchebag about not renting out his empty apartment. Then he sidles over to the radio and yanks the cord before coiling it neatly around his fist. A moment later, the jukebox in the corner lights up and the twanging guitar comes through the speakers. Apparently, the day crew likes country music, and Dell’s is officially open for business.
Cameron swallows the entire ice-cold beer in one long pull, then wipes the ring from the bar top before slipping out the door.
AS A GROUP, the class of 1989 at Sowell Bay High School has a surprisingly robust online presence, owing to the fact, he supposes, that their thirty-year reunion is coming up later this year. Thirty, just like him. His mother would’ve gotten pregnant that same summer that all these kids were graduating.
A boyfriend’s ring. Which one of these assholes knocked his mom up?
Someone has gone through the trouble to scan and upload a shit ton of pictures to this reunion page. The entire goddamn senior yearbook, it seems. Old people have too much time on their hands. Cameron scrolls through the grainy images, pausing occasionally when he spots feathered brown curls like his mother’s, but really, he’s looking for someone else. The guy with her in the wrinkled photo on the kitchen counter next to him
He turns the ring over. To his surprise, there’s a faint engraving on the underside. EELS. The Sowell Bay High School . . . eels? Well, it’s a weird mascot, but it makes sense if they’re by the water. Weird that the yearbook pages don’t seem to have an eel theme, but what would that even look like?
He continues to look through the scanned photos. Random pictures of kids and their basic high school antics, mugging for the camera with their big hair and cheesy ’80s clothes. Something catches his eye: a photo of his mom he’s never seen before, standing on a crowded pier with that same guy’s arm slung around her. The guy’s head is turned sideways; his face is buried in her windblown hair, like he’s kissing her on the cheek, but it’s him, sure as shit.
Fingers suddenly clammy, he zooms in. There’s a caption. Daphne Cassmore and Simon Brinks.
“Bingo. Simon Brinks.” His own gravel whisper seems to drag through his vocal cords. Quickly, he opens a new window and types in the name.
Page after page of search results paint a clear picture: a renowned Seattle real estate developer and nightclub owner. A feature on his vacation home in the Seattle Times. A photo spread with his goddamn Ferrari.
This guy is a big deal. A big, fat, extremely rich deal. Cameron lets out a short laugh and pumps his fist.
Simon Brinks. Cameron wanders into the living room, sinks into Brad and Elizabeth’s pristine couch, and studies the picture that was wrapped around the ring. Could that
really be his father? It’s just a photo, but it’s more than he’s ever had to go on. He studies his mother’s image, her carefree grin, her windswept hair. She’s tall and thin, of course, almost taller than Brinks, who himself looks like a decent-sized guy. But the thing he can’t stop looking at is her cheeks, which are plump and healthy, almost chubby like a baby’s. It’s not the Daphne Cassmore of his memories, who he can’t recall as anything other than bony and sunken.
He studies the background of the photo: a huge planter overflowing with flowers. Daffodils and tulips. It’s April, then. Possibly March, possibly May, but with those things blooming, the odds are very high that the photo was taken in April.
Cameron was born February 2. He runs the math. Could he be in this picture, too?
Gestationally, it adds up.
“Hey,” Elizabeth calls from the hallway. “How’d it go at Dell’s?”
Cameron stands and follows her into the kitchen, recounting his failure to convince Old Al to rent him the apartment and his discovery of Simon Brinks and his Ferrari. “You’re sure he’s your father?” Elizabeth starts to dice a
red pepper. Fajitas on the menu. She’s annihilating the pile of little red bits, not even bothering to watch the blade, alarmingly close to her fingertips each time it slashes down. Cameron would kill for such confidence.
“Who else could it be?” Cameron holds up the photo. “Look at this picture and tell me these two weren’t banging.”
Elizabeth raises an eyebrow. “Well, lots of people are banging. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“But the timing. It’s exactly right.” “Does he look like you, though?”
Cameron tilts his head at the picture. “Hard to tell with that eighties haircut.”
“Didn’t you just spend the afternoon stalking him online?”
“Yeah, but now he just looks like some middle-aged guy.
Like a dad.”
“Because all dads look the same.” Elizabeth rolls her eyes.
“Here’s the thing, though. Does it matter? I mean, if he believes he’s my dad . . .”
“You can’t just shake down some random person because he was in a picture with your mom.” Elizabeth dumps the peppers into a skillet, where they release a puff of sizzling steam. “Besides, don’t you want to know if this guy’s the real deal? Don’t you want a relationship, too?”
“Relationships are overrated,” he says, popping a leftover pepper from the cutting board into his mouth. It’s unexpectedly sweet.
“So, what’s your plan? Just head up to Washington and find him?”
“Hell yeah. Why not?” Cameron hopes she’ll leave it at that—there are countless reasons why he shouldn’t. For one, how is he even getting there? It’s not like Brad’s going to hand over his truck for a thousand-mile trip.
“Well, that’ll be an adventure.” “Yeah, it will.”
Elizabeth leans over her growing belly to grab a pack of ground turkey from the fridge. She tears it open and dumps it into the skillet, where it sizzles. “If I wasn’t busy incubating this alien spawn, Brad and I would totally go with you.” She stirs the pan, sending up a hiss of steam. “Remember when we were little and made up stories about finding your dad? We thought he’d be, like, a pirate or a movie star. God, we were ridiculous!”
“Simon Brinks is no movie star, but he could be a pirate for all I care. As long as he’s ready to cough up for eighteen years of back child support, he can stay a mystery.”
“Well, if it doesn’t work out, I’ve heard Seattle’s supposed to be really pretty.” “Yeah, sure,” Cameron mutters, nodding. Pretty. Trees everywhere. Like it matters. Western Washington is the wettest place in the country, and if all goes well, Simon Brinks is about to make it rain.
Elizabeth pulls out a pitcher of lemonade, pouring two glasses and sliding one across the counter to him. She raises hers with a smirk. “To unsolved mysteries.”
“To unsolved mysteries.” He clinks her glass.
In the early hours of his last night in California, Cameron lies awake, face lit by his phone screen’s pale glow.
Two taps and he’s downloading some travel app he saw in an ad that promised the lowest fares. It works. A five a.m. JoyJet flight from Sacramento to Seattle pops up, and it leaves in three hours. He’ll make it—if he leaves now.
He grabs his green duffel, empties it onto the floor, then tosses in every pair of boxers he owns, some clothes, and his little bag of jewelry.
With his bag ready, he turns back to his phone. Crossing his fingers that his credit card doesn’t get declined, he hits “book.”
Simon Brinks, if he really is Cameron’s father, is going to pay for every precious second of fatherhood he’s missed over the last thirty years.
