F*ck Love

Well, there you go. I got what I came here for. I dust imaginary crumbs from my pants, and try to figure out what to do next. I have to go back to Seattle, buy a car, pay my deposit on my downtown apartment, and sign the lease. Busy, busy. My little trip to Port Townsend has come to an interesting end. Tomorrow, I’ll say goodbye to little Port Townsend and go back to where the Muggles live.

Tomorrow comes, and instead of getting in my rental and driving to the ferry, I walk once more down Main Street. I turn right in the direction of the water. I walk toward a beautiful, old brick building with aquamarine doors. This was the clam cannery someone mentioned. Someone purchased it a few years back and lived on the upper floor. The dock surrounding the cannery is open to public. A few couples stand with their backs to the water taking selfies and kissing. I wait until they are gone to venture closer to the water, my eyes searching for the glossy bodies of seals. It is breathtaking, this place. I desperately want to stay here. So why not stay? a voice in my head asks me. It is not my voice. It’s the reckless dream voice that told me to take art classes, and pottery classes, and move to Washington. I tell the voice to shut up—I’ve listened to it too much lately—then I make my way toward my hotel. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. Bright and early. I cross the street and turn back to look at the cannery one last time. That’s when the door opens.

She looks nothing like her pictures in the yearbook. I only recognize her because of the unique structure of her face. High cheekbones and full lips. She’s wearing a lavender dress, simple. On anyone else it would look like a sack. To wear something that simple, you had to be stunning. God, Kit. I seriously want to face palm on his behalf. She has a trail of lavender flowers tattooed down her outer thigh. The Greer of my mind disintegrates into a pile of camp T-shirts, leaving behind this lean, pert breasted beauty with silvery hair and bright strawberry lips. Her right arm is tattooed from wrist to shoulder, with what looks like vines and lilacs. She’s like a canvas for expensive art. Kit’s Greer can make straight girls gay. I know this because I consider it. I watch as she opens the lid to the giant dumpster behind the building and tosses her trash bag inside. She stops on the way back to the cannery to crouch down and talk to a little boy in red shorts who is walking with his mother, then she holds open a door for an elderly woman trying to fit her walker into the tight doorway of a gift shop. And finally, to top off all of her fun, spunky kindness, she high-fives a bum who looks genuinely happy to see her. When at last she disappears back into the cannery, I am hungry for KFC. I wander into an art gallery. I have never viewed art as something you do on weekends. Something you do outside of extra-curricular credit. The smell of paint pulls me through the door. It’s the smell of my stolen nights at painting class. They are acrylic on canvas; Neptune taught me that. The artist is the same for most of the gallery—local I take it. The paintings are of water. But, not the way water is usually painted, with land stationed around it. There is just water, as viewed from above. There are ripples, sometimes disturbed by only a leaf or a feather. Mostly just water. I don’t know that I can say these paintings make me feel things that are good. But perhaps art isn’t supposed to make you feel good, but just to make you feel. Does it cure the numb? I don’t know. A woman greets me; she is lean and tall, her hair tied in a bun on top of her head. I tell her I just moved here and wandered in. She is aloof but friendly. She asks what I did before I came, and if I need a job. I think about the accounting job my mother lined up for me in Seattle, and I automatically say yes. I don’t want to go back to Seattle. I want to stay here. The woman’s name is Eldine, and she owns the gallery, which features the work of local artists. “People come from all over America to buy her work,” she says, nodding to the paintings of water.

“What’s her name?” I ask.

I suddenly get psychic. I know what she’s going to say before she says it.

“Greer Warren. She lives in the old cannery along the waterfront.”

I feel my head spin. This keeps getting better and better. I can’t call this fate because I came here looking, but it’s still weird how things are manifesting. I look back at Greer’s paintings and wonder if they’re about Kit. The ripples she caused in their lives. The effects of her choices. Kit, the writer, was engaged to Greer, the painter. How perfect. How beautiful. I can picture him living his life in the cannery, being full of art and happiness, and bullshit. They’d have a candy jar filled with Kit Kats, and he’d trace her thigh lilacs with his Kit Kat stained tongue. This is exactly the reason Kit looks awkward in Florida. He was from a place where giant bubbles blew down Main Street, and artists lived in old clam canneries. The magic of this town clung to him.

“A few of us business owners around town could use help with our books,” she says to me. “Part time accounting?”

“Sure,” I say. What are you doing? What are you doing?

“You can work some hours here at the gallery if you like. I could use the help.”

And so I wander into a gallery, lost, and leave it found. I have a job in this little town of magic. I get to stay. I stop outside the cannery and look up at its high windows. Somewhere behind the Coke bottle panes is an ashen-haired pixie who Kit loved. I want to know her. Is that wrong? There are so many things wrong about me.

If only Della could see her predecessor. She’d freak out and ask Kit a hundred times if he thought she was prettier than Greer. Kit would have to lie. Della has always been unparalleled in her beauty, but Greer is not even human; she’s ethereal. I turn my back to the cannery and walk back down Main Street, the air whipping my skirt around my legs. I am in so way over my head. I’m not so sure the Sorting Hat would put me in Ravenclaw anymore. I am Slytherin. I take a selfie, Port Townsend outlined behind me. I call it, crazyperson.

When procuring a place of residence, most people take to Craigslist. I find Craigslist creepy. Who is Craig? Why did he make a list? I prefer the newspaper, or community boards. I find the nearest grocery store and check out their board. Two enthusiastic teenage girls have made babysitting fliers. Trustworthy! Fun! Reliable! Each word is written on a pompom, each letter in a different colored marker. I respect their handmade signs. Babysitters who rely on the computer for everything should not be trusted. All the children I’ve had can tell you that. I lift the corner of their paper to study what’s underneath. There’s a guy looking for a girl roommate. Clean guy looking for girl roommate who likes to do dishes. No pets. To me this says: Needy, incompetent male with control issues. Looking for a wife. “Ew, dude,” I say. I pass it up and find another pinned to the top left corner. It’s buried underneath a community garage sale flier, printed on lilac paper. I pull out the pin holding it to the board so I can read it.