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With that, she turns and starts walking.
“I’m on a date, Vivian,” he calls after her.
She turns back, ten feet away, and looks at Caleb like she’s just told him that an avalanche is coming and he doesn’t believe her.
“The art. Is. Broken,” she says, astonished.
I’ve now moved past feeling awkward about this interaction and into being sort of entertained by it. Clearly, Caleb has dealt with this woman before, and just as clearly, nothing is expected of me.
Caleb just sighs, then waits. Vivian shifts her stance slightly, though she’s still firmly rooted like she’s about to lift something.
There’s a long, long pause. She clears her throat and looks like she’s concentrating.
“I would be ever so grateful if you would pause your nightly cavortation and assist me with repairs,” she calls, sounding like Harper when she’s drunk. “Perhaps your date would appreciate a glimpse behind the scenes. I’m told it’s very interesting.”
Not for the first time, I have the sensation that I’ve followed a rabbit down a hole and found myself in Wonderland. Is Vivian the red queen? Is she going to insist that my head come off? Where’s the caterpillar?
Another couple strolls past us on the walkway, and all three of us watch them as they pass Vivian, very obviously ignoring whatever’s going on here.
“Please?” Vivian finally calls.
Caleb looks down at me.
“She’s a good friend of my mom’s,” he explains, voice low. “Probably because my mom is the only one with enough patience to stand her when she gets like this.”
“Let’s do it,” I tell him, giving his hand a quick squeeze, my pulse ticking up at the same time.
Caleb raises one eyebrow.
“I don’t like to give into terrorists’ demands,” he says, voice still low, the tiniest bit rough, like ruffled velvet.
“But the art is broken,” I say, fighting back a smile. “It’ll be a good story. Someday she’ll be famous and you’ll have a good story about how this well-known artist chased you down in a garden and called you the wrong name.”
“I’ll be incredible at cocktail parties,” he deadpans.
“Exactly.”
Still hand-in-hand, we walk forward.
“All right,” he says to Vivian, in a normal voice, when we’re close enough that we don’t have to shout. “Take us to the sea monster.”
“It’s in the sea,” she says, pointing down the spaceship path, as if it’s obvious.* * *The sea monster isn’t in the sea. We’re a four-and-a-half hour drive from the nearest sea, at Virginia Beach, a distance and journey I know pretty well because my family’s lived in Norfolk, right next door, for the past seven years.
It’s more of a pond monster, stationed on a platform between lily pads. The pond partially surrounds a small Thai-style building, the points and turrets of its roof outlined in golden light.
Vivian may have zero social skills, but she’s good at what she does.
“There,” she says, pointing, though we didn’t need the help. “Slack-jawed, like some sort of inbred yokel. The jaw is supposed to move with the breeze but the idiots who actually built the thing decided on their own that it didn’t need that amount of bracing, so obviously the strain snapped the joint and now my beauty looks like it’s about to spit chaw into the sea.”
Pond, I think but don’t say out loud.
“Are there materials?” Caleb asks.
“Behind the temple,” she says. “Small supply shed. Five-twenty-seventeen. Rowboat’s right there. Fix her up good, I’m supposed to be at a damn Q&A talking to art students who want to talk about intersectional multimedia semantic bullshit.”
With that, she turns and stomps away, her heavy boots vibrating the wooden bridge that we’re standing on.
“Sorry about her,” Caleb says, probably before she’s even out of earshot. “She and my mom have been friends for a while, and she’s really not this bad most of the time. I think she’s stressed.”
“She has friends?” I ask, looking after her, and Caleb laughs.
“At least one,” he confirms. “My mom’s got a habit of taking on odd ducks, though.”
We walk over the bridge, through the lit temple where the northern lights are being projected on the ceiling above us, and behind it we find a small, locked storage shed that opens to the combination she gave us.
“This is gonna be pretty slapdash,” Caleb says, looking at what’s inside.
“Well, you’re no Levi,” I tell him, and he just snorts. “Whoever that is.”
“Levi is my eldest brother, and we look nothing alike,” he says. “Nothing.”
“You sure about that?”
“Of course,” he says, grabbing some wood, a box of nails, and a hammer, a smile playing around his lips.
“Not even a tiny family resemblance,” I go on, leaning against the temple and grinning.
He leans into the shed, disappearing for a moment.
“Maybe a little,” he admits.
“You know that the more you claim you don’t look like someone, the better chance that you could practically be twins,” I tell him. “My brothers swear up and down that they don’t look a thing alike, but seeing them together is like seeing double.”
