A Broken Cup Read online

  “Well, fu…” Michael said. “Get them in the damn car. I give up. Dad won’t care, and Mom won’t know who they are anyhow. It’s just our friends who will think our whole family is terrible. This may affect my promotion at work, you know, Cecile. I had hoped you’d do better for me than this. Can’t you control your own children? Little freaks.”

  Cecile let go of them. They ran out the door, one of them going, “Look! A limo! We’re going in a limo! I told you Dad would do something nice for a change!”

  I just had time to watch Michael’s face turn red before Mike pulled me gently out the door. The back door of the limo was just sliding shut as Mike and I approached and got into the front. Mike slid the window open between the two areas, and we could hear the excited voices.

  “Simmer down,” Mike said through the window. “I don’t even know your names. I’m Mike. I’m your chauffeur today. The bar is locked, everything else is available for your enjoyment: sodas, candy, TV, music. How many of you can drive a car?”

  Two voices answered, then Jacob said, “Gwen, you only just started thinking about driving.”

  “Little do you know.”

  “Well, maybe she can, but I’m the only one with a license,” Jacob added.

  Mike said, “Here’s the deal. This is a 1979 Corvette-based limo, twenty-three feet long, with…”

  Jacob piped up happily, “Automatic transmission and a 185 HP engine! I knew it! Can I—I mean, may I—drive it later?”

  Mike smiled, “Only if both your uncle and I become incapacitated and are out of the vehicle.” Looking at me, he rolled his eyes. And off we went.

  * * * *

  Later, I could never remember if it was Spring Street or University or something else, as we came to the green light, Mike stopped short. I was about to ask what was happening when a car came from the right, flying downhill faster than the old pirate boat had. It flew across in front of us and off the end of the land, into the water. The kids in the back hadn’t seen it but got somewhat jostled around. I barely remembered them as my professional time in the water kicked in, and I found myself out of the limo and running toward the water. I could see Mike behind me but didn’t even worry about the car or the kids. As it turned out, Jacob had grasped what was going on, climbed into the front, and driven the limo carefully onto the side of the street, found the four-ways, and put the car in park, rather too gleefully for the situation, but there you are.

  I found out later that he also called the police, told Gwen to get the kids, and the two of them herded the little ones to a nearby snack stand and bought them ice cream to keep them diverted and happy.

  My eyes on the water, I saw someone in the car being jostled about, and then the car sank with what sounded like massive, gargling bubbles. As I ripped off my shoes and coat, a hand grabbed them from me. It was Jacob, his eyes aglow with excitement. I handed him my wallet and went to the edge of the water. People were screaming and gathering around, some still eating or drinking their snacks. Two were dressed like pirates. Or was I dreaming that, remembering that other day so long ago. Didn’t matter. My mind was already focused on the task ahead. No fins, no tank, nothing to take pictures with…I did my little ritual of the right number of breaths and a glance above at whatever saint might be in charge that day and dove in.

  Ugh. The water tasted like oil and gunk. I know it’s not supposed to go in my mouth. I know that, okay? But a lot goes on that is less than perfect. I also don’t concentrate wholly on the task at hand. I get distracted by fish or turtles or the idea of sharks. I get distracted wondering if my auto-pilot for free dive breathing—that is, holding my breath vs letting out some now and then—is still working right. And if it realizes there’s no mask or tank. Sometimes, I free-dove at home, but I’d always had more time ahead to mentally prepare. Well, that’s not true. I’d gone in quickly several times when people near me had needed help. I have a few awards for saving lives. It’s just a matter of being aware and capable. It was never a sure thing. Each time was the first time.

  Then I saw the shape of the car before me, still settling. The water had to be deep enough here for ships and ferries to dock nearby, but I had no idea of how deep it might be or if there might be other things down there. Didn’t matter. I swam down, grateful as always that I’d learned to surface dive as a kid. I should thank my dad for that. Well, I guess maybe not.

  There were two people inside the vehicle; one with his head barely above water in an air pocket, and another who was grimly holding his breath while trying to loosen his seatbelt. He passed out while I looked at him. I was able to grab the conscious one, or rather he grabbed me, or both. As I went to back out, I felt someone behind me. I tried to pass the man to him, but he would not let go of me. I went to the surface and was happy to get some air, and then Mike popped up beside me, took my victim who was finally letting go of my arm, and I went down again while Mike took off for the dock.

  Down below, I cut the seatbelt with my dive knife, which I always carried, even when just driving to the store at home, grabbed the unconscious man, and backed out of the car.

  It’s always as if there’s a big brass band celebrating you, the big hero, when you get someone to shore, only you’re the only one who can’t hear the music. Someone took him, and others hauled us both up out of the water.

  Then the first man screamed, “Our son! He’s in the back seat! Oh, God!” He tried to run back to the water himself.

  All I really took in was Jacob’s big eyes and frightened face, and I turned and dove back into the gloomy murk of the water. This time, I was focused more than ever before in my life.

  All I remember is determination. Door trying to shut; seat in the way; something about the car seat or whatever and a limp form before it all went gray and almost black. I thought I felt arms around me. I had one more breath to let out, and then there was a rushing feeling and bubbles and air, blessed air. When I went to breathe into the tiny body in my arms, he was lifted away. There were people in boats and onshore and uniforms. When someone pulled me onto the dry ground, I saw Jacob and Mike and Gwen and ice cream dripping onto the lovely, solid ground before I passed out again. The last thing I heard was Mike’s voice.

  “You got him, you got the baby, and he’s already screaming his little head off and puking.”

  At least, that’s what I thought I heard, or it might just have been Mike’s strong heart beating so close to mine.

  The picture of him kissing me went viral on the Internet before we’d even stopped kissing.

  All my nieces and both nephews were beside me, dripping ice cream down their clothes.

  “You were great!” Victoria shouted energetically.

  “That’s my uncle. He’s gay!” Jasmine said proudly, swirling her pink satin skirt.

  “Good job,” Elden said as if he were my parent.

  Gwen smiled flirtatiously over my half-dead body. I assumed it was at a boy because boys surrounded her like bees on honey. There were also two girls hanging on her like they owned her.

  Gwen said, “Sorry, boys,” and giggled, resting her head against one of the girls’ lumberjack-shirted shoulders.

  Jacob rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry about anything,” he said. “I’ll drive them to the funeral and come back for you. If that’s okay.” He was looking at me and not at Mike.

  Mike said, “Swing by my house—the address is on the card on the visor—and bring us some dry clothes.”

  I was sitting up by this time and watched as all five of them, plus the two new best friends of Gwen’s, got into the limo. Jacob drove off as carefully and evenly as if he’d been doing it for years, and for all I know, maybe he had.

  Mike said, “I’m going to offer him a job.” And he squeezed me tightly to him once more.

  There were cops and rescue people and throngs and tourists and people with bouquets of fresh flowers from Pike’s Market, and reporters and TV people and, of course, one of the two dads who was kneeling behind Mike, wringing his
hands, effusive in his thanks, crying and shaking.

  Mike handed him a business card. “Go to the hospital and get checked out. I think your friend and baby went already. Take an Uber and tell them Mike said to send me the bill. It’s going to be okay.”

  Then people started drifting away.

  Someone from the fish restaurant came over. “Come with me,” he said, pulling Mike to his feet and me with him. “We’ll get you some dry towels and a nice lunch while you wait for your driver to come back. Nice-looking kid. Is he, ah, eighteen?”

  More family. I love Seattle so much.

  His name was Ali, and he owned the place. He was so excited to have us. “Here! Into the facility with you! You will get naked, and we will bring you warm towels! Under the hand dryer you can warm your tentacles and dingydongs. Nobody likes to have a wet thingum.”

  As Mike went ahead and stripped, I stood back, raising one eye brow, admiring of course, but then watching Ali, who was admiring very much. Too much. I did strip, though. I was cold and starting to shiver, and the warm hand dryers sounded wonderful. Two waiters peeked in and brought warm towels, small hand towels like you would expect to find in a restaurant kitchen, although, for some reason, I’d expected bath towels. I shook my head. Another waiter came in with a tray full of wine glasses and several bottles of white wine. Very good white wine.

  Mike’s phone rang.

  “It’s me Jacob. I dropped the kids off, but when I went to your house, the old bitch, I mean woman accused me of stealing your car. She’s on the phone to the cops right now! I’m parking the car, and I’ll take a bus back to the funeral. Dad was shrieking curses in the parking lot, and I’m afraid he’ll hurt the children, and Gwen’s girlfriends are trying to flirt with him! No, wait, I’m going to beat it with the limo before the cops get here.”

  Mike sipped wine and held the phone away from his ear. Even over the hand dryers, I could hear the tinny, tiny sound of sirens in the background.

  “Over and out!” Jacob bellowed. “Sorry about the clothes!”

  So we’re sitting naked with tiny towels on our laps, drinking wine and eating fish and fries and salads. They kept filling our wine glasses, and we kept drinking them down again. After a while, Mike’s phone rang again, and after saying hello and listening, he handed it to me.

  “Iss for you,” he hiccupped.

  “Yo! Jacob, what? Huh? Oh, Dad’s funeral! I forgot. Do I still have to come? My brother is what? He said what? And Gwen is in the ladies’ room with those two…I see. And they won’t open the door? What about…Never mind. Is that your dad in the background, all that screaming? Oh, shit.” And just like that, I was sober again, or so I thought.

  A lot happened all at once. Mike’s hand fell off my leg. All right, it wasn’t on my leg, but close, okay?

  I stood up screaming, “My father’s funeral is about to start! What am I going to do?” And then I got upset and started swearing. I was still drunk.

  Mike, that idiot, just sat there, giggling.

  But Ali had heard, and he came rushing over. My little towel was hanging off my dick like it enjoyed it there, flapping in the breeze. Ali rubbed his hands together, and a smile lit up his perpetually happy face. His mustache twitched. Then he lifted his eyes from his dish towel to my face and tried to compose himself.

  “You father’s funeral! You must get there. It would be disrespectful to not go. Boys!” he called over his shoulder. “Bring this evening’s work clothes. They can pass for dress suits. Bring ties and shoes, and, uh, well, they can go commando. No one will know, so there will be no disrespect. Aga! Get the fish wagon. We will drive them to the father’s funeral. We will some of us go with them as is proper in our culture. Aieee!”

  I swear the man made the sign of the cross, but I was too upset and drunk to figure out what culture he came from with that swarthy face, lengthy mustache, odd accent, and perhaps Catholic background. Besides, I didn’t care. After being gay and living in multi-cultural Hawaii, it mattered not one bit. I’m just saying how it was. And how I felt. It never occurred to me to worry about how my brother felt. He wasn’t the boss of me.

  We looked like penguins. Luckily, Ali did not put white dish towels over our forearms. Ali closed the restaurant, and nine of us crammed into the store’s delivery van, which smelled like fish. As did we. It would have been better had I not gotten the giggles when we walked into the funeral parlor en masse and everyone turned around to see who had the nerve to come so late to the funeral.

  Everyone (except my father, of course) turned to look at us. The Episcopalian minister’s voice trailed off and then, after a few minutes of silence, gamely started again. She was a sturdily built woman, and I noticed Gwen and friends standing close to her, their arms around each other with Gwen in the middle, trying their best to look like they were supporting her. She had a handkerchief, or rather a large bandana, to her face, and her eyes shone with either tears or mischief.

  Jasmine jumped up and down, pointing at me. “That’s my uncle. He’s gay, and he just saved some people from the water!” she screamed proudly.

  Beside her, Victoria growled, “Look! Pirates!”

  Elden climbed onto his chair and said loudly, “Everyone! Please quiet down. This is a funeral, not a schoolroom.”

  Jacob, meanwhile, backed slowly towards a door on the side of the room, his face flushed with either embarrassment, shame, fear, or all three. His face, of all of them, including my brother and sister-in-law’s angry faces, brought me to the reality of why I was even here. As Mike wisely grabbed my side, I started to cry and fainted. Or passed out; it could have been that

  It was probably Elden who called the ambulance. When I came around, I was lying on the lobby floor, being fanned by Gwen and Jasmine, with all our retinue from the restaurant telling everyone how I’d jumped into the water and probably had inhaled some of it, and what a hero I was.

  Elden said calmly, “Let him breathe. He could die.”

  I looked up and saw Mike staring down at me, his eye twitching, and his face going from a grin to a controlled look of cold sobriety, then breaking into giggles.

  Then, over everything, I heard my brother.

  “Leave it to this asshole to ruin everything like he always does. Oh, the drama queen must have all the attention! All the time!”

  And then Victoria’s voice, “You suck, Daddy! He’s a hero! And a pirate! You’re not even a sailor or a captain or anything. I hate you!”

  And my brother again, “Ow! Stop kicking me, you little brat, or I’ll chop you into firewood. For God’s sake, Cecile, why can’t she dress like a girl? That’s your job!”

  Mike giggled and snorted.

  Ali said, “Aieee, such language from a grown man! To think we came all the way from our homeland so we could live in peace! Aieee! What is happening! He should respect his brother; it’s the custom!”

  There was some mix up, I was told later, when they went to carry me out to the ambulance. Jacob had mistakenly parked the limo in the spot where the hearse should have been, and the hearse was double-parked in the street. The ambulance parked next to the hearse.

  When I was carried out, Ali went crazy. “He’s alive, he’s not dead! No, don’t go near that! Aieee!”

  All I heard after that was Mike, guffawing and wheezing as if in pain. Here I was the one who was dying, and he sounded like a sick owl.

  Who’s the drama queen now, I thought nastily.

  * * * *

  Because I reeked of booze, they assumed I was an alcoholic. They wanted to put me in a detox program. They wanted to give me a transfusion. They wanted to do an X-ray or a CT scan or something of my head. Then the media trailed in (along with our Aieee friends).

  Everyone talked about the rescue and what a hero I was and how I might have Near Drowning Syndrome. All of this as I was just trying to nab some much-needed sleep since I was flat on my back, anyhow. But they wouldn’t let me sleep.

  One of them said, “Wake him up every hour.�
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  Another one said, “Get him out of here. I mean, you can take him home now. There’s no signs of near drowning, but…”

  I pretended to be out of it as Mike steered me out of the emergency room, and then we stood outside with Mike scratching his head.

  “Shit,” he said. “I forgot we don’t have a car here.”

  Ali was right behind us. “The fish wagon!” he hollered. “Get it! We will take the hero home!”

  How Mike managed to get them to take us to his home, I never found out, but there we were, waving goodbye to our new best friends. Finally, we were inside, in Mike’s apartment, getting undressed, falling into his bed.

  I think we slept. There might have been more, but I’m not telling.

  It was around midnight when I woke, and I felt terrible.

  “I ruined my father’s funeral,” I said. I had even been dreaming about it and how dragons and the KKK had broken in, calling me their leader and chasing everyone else out. “My brother will never forgive me bringing the—um, Mike? Are you awake?” I had to poke him several times before he responded.

  I was lying on my side, my head propped up on my hand. I must have looked like a wild man. He woke with a start and called me Wolfman Then he shook his head and was awake.

  “Wha?”

  “Do you think my father hates my guts now for ruining his funeral? I remember his telling us about it years ago, when I was just leaving for college, how he had it all planned out, and how it would go like clockwork. Whom he wanted there and whom he didn’t want there.” I had to stop to breathe.

  Mike yawned. I wanted to stick my fingers in his mouth. I don’t know why, but I did. So I did.

  “Because I really feel awful about ruining his plans. I don’t know where the kids are, and my brother looked like he wanted to kill me. Cecile’s family was there. They all looked like they were in shock over my being there with you and all those fish guys. Then I passed out. You know?”

  Mike started sucking my finger. I was so lost in my fear, though, that my inner monologue just kept spewing out like lava, or water from a broken faucet.