Chapter One

Sam Baker

When Sam Baker’s girlfriend dumped him, his thoughts immediately turned to what he thought was the most rational and intelligent solution: suicide. Being an artist, Sam had always been prone to thoughts of suicide, but his sudden freedom from worldly constraints – coupled with intesnse post-relationship depression – made them much more viable. He immediately set out to find a method that would shuffle him from the mortal coil in style and infamy.

Sam quickly ruled out anything with knives; he was too squeamish for anything that would make him bleed all over himself. He similarly discounted guns, because he didn’t want to leave a mess. Even though he would be gone, he found the thought of the police finding him surrounded in brains to be just plain embarassing. Somebody would have to clean it up, and he couldn’t put that burden on another human being.

Hanging, poisoning, and toaster-in-the-tub electrocution were all ruled out because there was a big chance that they wouldn’t work. Sam had never been all that good at science or biology, so any pills he took would have to be decided upon arbitrarily. At best he would end up quickly and painlessly dead, but at worst he would be stuck in the hospital with a skyrocketing heart rate and a massive never-subsiding erection. No good.

No, Sam needed something that was quick, painless, and foolproof. Then, one day, it hit him much the same way that gravity was revealed to Isaac Newton by a falling apple; he glanced out the window to see Fluffernutter, the cat of his upstairs neighbor, rocket by in the ill-conceived downward pursuit of a pigeon. It was all of a sudden very obvious: jumping from a great height was the way to go – efficient and pain-free.

Sam decided to dive off of the South Saint Francis Bridge, which brought tourists in and out of his city. The bridge was nearly five stories high and stretched across Concord Bay, which was not a bad place to die. From that high up, the water looked like a bumpy grey oil painting, and Sam thought it would be a particularly poetic way to go.

The first time Sam decided that it was the end, he didn’t make it five yards onto the bridge before chickening out. He reasoned that it was the tourists; suicide, in New England, near the ocean, in the summer, was like streaking at the Superdome. All kinds of people would see, and everyone would have an opinion about it. Sam saw suicide as something that should be done in private, so he put it off until autumn.

Just after Labor Day, Sam was able to make it a quarter of the way onto the bridge. It occured to him that jumping in the fall wasn’t a very good idea, since the bridge was heavily trafficked by leafers making their way north to watch the change in seasons. Besides, he had just opened a modest exhibit at a small gallery in the city. If he didn’t give the critics a chance to be appalled by his lack of skill, he could never die after being unappreciated in his own time. If the exhibit is a failure, he told himself, I’ll jump. It’s the right thing to do.

Unfortunately for Sam, the Saint Francis Herald called his opening “exciting” and “novel,” and he decided that he needed to have at least one bad opening before he could rightfully enter the art history books.

Halfway through December, with the first real snowstorm blanketing much of New England, Sam had an opening that was, according to that same paper, dismal at best. Completely underappreciated, Sam felt that things were finally looking up for him. Half a year after his girlfriend dumped him, he finally made it to the middle of the South Saint Francis Bridge and stepped onto the ledge.

Problem was, Sam didn’t really feel like dying anymore.

On the one hand, he was still incredibly lonely. He hadn’t even approached a woman since getting dumped by Alicia, and had resigned himself to being alone for pretty much the rest of his natural life. Dating was an art that was as elusive to Sam as subtlety was to Puff Daddy. Alicia had been Sam’s girlfriend since art school, so he had never really earned any chops in the real world of relationships. Since love makes the world go ‘round, Sam considered being without it a good reason to stop the world and get off.

On the other hand, Sam was a chicken, and all the women in the world wouldn’t change that. Suicide had been much more romantic as a concept than it was in practice. His mind was suddenly full of strange questions: What would his parents think? Was he paid up on rent? What would his breath smell like when they found him? How cold was that water, and how manly would it make the coroner think he truly was?

“Well?” said someone behind him.

Sam turned around. A tractor-trailer driver had put on his warning lights and pulled to a stop. The man leaned out his window, catching snowflakes with the brim of his hat as his eyes widened expectantly.

“Excuse me?” said Sam.

“Are you going to do it?” the driver called back.

“Do what?”

The driver rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Son, I’ve been driving this rig over bridges around the country for fifteen years. You’re not the first person I’ve seen standing on the edge of a bridge.”

“And?”

“Are you going to jump, or am I just wasting my time?”

Sam thought about it for a moment and said, “I guess not.”

“You’re not going to jump, or I’m not wasting my time?”

Sam stepped down onto the bridge and stared into the cab. The driver rolled up his window, muttering something about how no one respects their elders anymore, and pulled back into traffic.

The wind whipped highway slush at Sam, coating his khakis with a thick brown sludge. Such was the burden of being alive. He was pretty sure corpses didn’t have to worry about pants. You win some, you lose some.

Sam started to trudge back towards his car, and Saint Francis beyond. He may have been too chicken to end his life all at once, but that wouldn’t stop him from whittling away at it in small increments. The sweet, warm embrace of coffee was calling him.

In Which Sam Comes to Saint Francis

Saint Francis is small, as cities go. It has a population of about 64,000, most of whom are artists, which is what drew Sam to it. It began as a fishing colony, nestled on the coast of the Atlantic, and grew into a shipping and manufacturing mecca. After the Second World War, however, most of the jobs and companies left, leaving the bohemians who had come for the scenery with a city of beautiful buildings to use as they pleased.

Saint Francis quickly spawned a healthy litter of art galleries, restaurants, book stores, and coffee shops. The combination of sea air and erudite conversation brought both the well-to-do and the not-doing-well to the cobblestoned streets and tall brick buildings. The rich had their places in penthouses high above Concord Street, where they could see all the way to the islands on the very edge of the Bay, and the young nonconformists had their studio apartments in the art district, dangerously close to the water and surrounded with holes-in-the-walls that were open until the wee hours of the morning.

Sam had come to Saint Francis straight out of art school. He had only visited once before, when he had taken Alicia out for a fancy weekend on the coast. Everything about the city amazed him: its size, its people, the very smell of it. There was just an indescernible quality about the coastline that did something to his body, made him feel whole. Before they left, he had already picked out three apartment building that he hoped someone would die in within the next eight months, freeing them up for new tenants.

Unfortunately for Sam, life isn’t nearly as fragile and weak as he and his art school friends were fond of making it seem. When he graduated and packed up his car, he found out that none of the modest apartments he had liked were available, which left him with two options: get rich and buy a penthouse condo, or slum it and go for a cramped – but cheap – studio place. Frankly, it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

Sam and Alicia moved into a tiny second-floor apartment with a bedroom, a bathroom, and what the landlord called a central “kit-liv-din-ing room,” which was about as attractive as it sounded. The lack of space was kind of a problem, but affording it wasn’t. Alicia earned her degree in photography, and did most of her work taking pictures of weddings and anniversaries. Sam’s degree in art history didn’t get him much more in the real world than dirty looks from passers-by.

Alicia’s degree, at least in Sam’s mind, was also the first thing that proved to him that she was smarter than he was. The second thing was that she made him sign the lease on the apartment before cheating on him, dumping him, and moving out, which left him with a single-person apartment that he couldn’t afford on his own. That’s when Sam met Huxley.

Sam wasn’t sure, but he was pretty sure Huxley was a drug dealer. Not one of those carries-a-gun-and-takes-advantage-of-girls drug dealers – one of the pudgy, cuddly kinds. He never brought it up in conversation, but Huxley appeared to be perpetually stoned and always got his substantial part of the rent paid on time. Sam and Huxley got along famously, so in the end, it really didn’t matter.

The Click Clique Café

The Click Clique Café quickly become Sam’s hang-out of choice after moving into the city. The coffee was rich and clientele wasn’t, and they refused to play smooth jazz on the speakers. The latter was much more important to Sam than the former, because while he could get a primo cup of java at any of the city’s three Starbucks, he would have to listen to the yuppie music they saturated the place with. Smooth Jazz was, as Sam had once put it, “a limp dick.”

After entertaining suicide for the final time – at least the final time for the foreseeable future – Sam desperately needed a mocha java. He parked his car – a 1980 Chevy hatchback which Alicia had affectionately called “The Car That Would Not Die” – on a narrow street in the arts district and made his way into the internet café.

The smell of coffee and the din of conversation met him like a warm cliche. The Click was busy for a weeknight, with people crammed into the retro couches and computer terminals. Sam assumed that there was some kind of meeting there; local writing and art groups regularly came to the Click to discuss how much better they were than everyone else. Sam shuffled to his regular spot at the counter, undoing his scarf and wiping the snow out of his goatee as he sat.

A pretty girl with a bright green apron and brighter blue hair made her way over to him, handing a cappuccino to a patron on her way. Sam was always in awe of the employees here. Most of them were musicians, writers, and painters like him, and while they aspired to something greater than a service industry station in life, they took to the work like ducks to water.

“Sam,” she said, smiling warmly. “You look like you’ve been out sweeping sidewalks. Finally get a job?”

“No such luck, Rebecca,” he said. He knew everyone at the Click by name. “They’ve been all over me, though. Could I get my usual?”

“For you? Anything.”

Rebecca grabbed a cup and went through her motions like a ballerina, barely pausing or watching her hands. Sam was suddenly intensely aware of the fact that he was single, then even more aware of the fact that Rebecca was five years younger than him, had a boyfriend, and listened to metal bands. She tossed a glance at him over her shoulder, forcing him to avert his eyes and come up with something to say.

“So,” he said, “busy tonight, huh? Is it the Underappreciated Writers Alliance or the Misunderstood Poets Society?”

“Nope,” she said, “it’s something new.”

“What’s that?”

“Wait until the next song starts. You’ll see.”

Sam raised his eyebrows as Rebecca handed him his drink. “I’ll see?”

“You’ll see.” She walked away to attend to the other customers.

Sam took a sip of his mocha and scanned the room. Nothing seemed any different than usual. Maybe Rebecca was just putting him on. They had probably just started putting something new in the coffee, he reasoned. More caffeine. Maybe heroin. Something to bring people in in droves.

The Stan Getz song on the sound system faded away and a hush fell over the café. Sam was uneasy. It felt like the entire place had waited until he showed up to play a joke on him. He placed his coffee on the counter so he wouldn’t spill it if everyone jumped up and yelled “Surprise!”

Dexter Gordon’s tenor sax licked the sexy first lines of “Willow Weep for Me” – a fat boom-chick-a-boom – through the speakers. Sam didn’t notice anything strange about this; the Click played Dex pretty often, and this was one of his favorite songs. Maybe Rebecca had just wanted to get his mind off of his troubles and had played a song she knew he’d like. He turned to thank her when he heard the whole room behind him erupt in cheers.

Sam turned back towards the commotion and felt like he had been smacked so hard he almost fell out of his chair. Standing on a table, holding a stir-stick like a microphone, was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. She had a mane of blond hair streaked with red that went halfway down her back, and long legs sheathed in tattered jeans. Her shirt was emblazoned with a picture of Che Guevara and flattered her in all the right places. Ruby-red lipstick shimmered as she ran her tongue over her lips and sang:

Gone my lover's dream, lovely summer dream,
Gone and left me here to weep my tears into the stream,
Sad as I can be - Hear me willow and weep for me.

Her voice was like melted chocolate, sweet and warm and making Sam’s mouth water. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. She started to gyrate to the music, seductively moving her hips as her hands painted pictures in the air, and Sam was in love.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” said Rebecca over his shoulder. “She just started dancing an hour or so back. Boss wants to put her on the payroll.”

Sam didn’t hear a word she said.

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“Hillary Clinton,” said Rebecca.

“Wow.”

“You’re not even listening to me.”

“Uh-huh. Keep the change.”

The girl started scatting to the music, bopping over Dexter’s solo with ease. Sam wanted to catch her eye, but her eyes were closed. She had melded into the music and seemed completely oblivious to the crowd around her... as oblivious as someone could be while standing on a table in the middle of Saint Francis at eleven at night, that is.

The song ended with another chorus, the girl singing:

When the shadows fall, bend oh willow,
Bend oh willow and weep for me.

Applause ricocheted violently off the walls. The girl opened her eyes and smiled, a sweet, innocent smile, before stepping off the table and walking towards the counter.

Sam turned away. Oh God, he thought, She’s coming this way. She’s going to be right here and I’m not going to know what to say to her. She’s going to think I’m a shmuck and never talk to me. I’m going to die sad and alone and they’re going to put prints of my paintings on the menus at a seafood restaurant.

Sam felt a hand on his shoulder. Her hand. On his shoulder. He could feel all of his muscles tense as her voice said, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?”

“What are you drinking?”

Sam looked down at his drink, which he had totally forgotten was there. “It’s, um, a mocha java.”

“It looks delicious.”

“Would you like to try it?” he asked. Time seemed to stop before she sidled into the seat next to him.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but...”

He slid the cup to her and watched as she lifted it to her lips. Her eyes were green, and the red streaks in her hair made it look like she had shampooed with strawberries. She took a deep breath and downed a gulp.

“Mmmm,” she said.

“Good?”

“Wonderful. I love this place.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Sam. He surreptitiously reached down and pinched himself. Was he really having a conversation with this gorgeous girl?

“The music is amazing,” she said, turning her seat to face him. “It’s not like that smooth jazz in the other coffee shops.”

“I know!” said Sam. “I hate smooth jazz. It just feels so...”

“Impotent?” said the girl.

It was official. Sam had definitely fallen for this girl.

“I’m Sam,” he said, extending his hand.

“Abbie,” she replied.

“You have a beautiful voice. I’ve never heard that song sung so well.”

She laughed. “Maybe that’s because I only sang I couple of lines. I’ve always loved that song. There’s something about the sadness of it. It just…” she scrunched up her shoulders and shivered. “I dunno. It’s so sexy.”

You’re telling me, thought Sam.

She ordered a mocha from Rebecca and Sam asked, “What are you doing singing at a coffee shop in Saint Francis, anyway? I’ve never seen you around before.”

“I sort of just got here,” she said. “To Saint Francis, I mean. I heard the music from outside and just had to come in and sing. Everyone seems to enjoy it.”

Rebecca handed Abbie her drink. “It’s on the house,” she said.

Abbie’s eyes widened like a babe lost in the woods. “Why?”

“No reason,” Rebecca smirked.

“Nice people here,” said Sam. He raised his drink in a toast, grinning at Rebecca.

“Yeah,” said Abbie. “So,” she continued, leaning towards him, “when are we going back to your place?”

Sam expelled a fine mocha mist all over the front of Rebecca’s apron, causing her to jump back in alarm. He apologized profusely before leaning close to Abbie and harshly whispering, “What!?”

“Like I said, I’ve only been in the city for a little while. I need a place to stay.” She said it very casually, like it was the most mundane and normal thing in the world. “When do you want to take me back to your place?”

It took a few seconds for Sam to find his voice. “You aren’t staying at a hotel or anything?”

“I guess I could, but I want to go home with you.”

Sam blinked. He ran the statistics of the last few minutes over and over in his head. The most beautiful women he had ever met had just sang one of his favorite songs, sat down next to him, introduced herself to him, and told him that they should go home together. He didn’t remember buying a lottery ticket, but it seemed like he had hit the jackpot. For some reason, it didn’t sit well.

“Why?” he asked.

“You find me attractive, don’t you?” she asked back.

Sam thought that this must have been some kind of test. He needed the right answer or he would wake up from the walking dream that had somehow manifested itself in his life. Perfection was crucial. So he thought for a moment and said something like:

“Buh?”

Abbie laughed. “Is that a yes?”

He nodded vigorously.

“I find you attractive, too,” she said. “I’d like to stay with you tonight.”

Then, strangely, she did something that Sam had only seen girls do in movies: she bit her lip and brought a hand up to his chin, using a finger to stroke his beard like he was a kitten. When he saw it on the silver screen, it always came off as corny and unrealistic, but when she did it to him, he felt every inch of his body turn into gelatinous goo. She could have asked him to kill the Queen of England and he would have been on the first plane.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

A Quick Note About Sam’s Sex Life

The first time Sam was told about sex, the explanation began, “When a man and a woman love each other very much.” Being romantic, even for a nine year old, Sam had taken those words to heart. He looked at the idea of sex as something mysterious and monumental that one could only do with a person they loved, and only when they were married, rich, and using protection.

Then puberty hit, and Sam’s philosophy became, “If it has two x chromosomes, I am going to try and sleep with it.”

Sam threw himself into the dating world like a little leaguer throws a baseball: with a lot of force, and very inaccurately. His lack of interest in sports, cars and noogies – and his incredible interest in early Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso – made him more an object of ridicule from girls his age than a Cassanova. But Sam kept trying.

When he hit high school and fell in with a somewhat substantial art crowd, Sam finally started receiving some affection back. He started dating a girl named Veronica who dressed entirely in black and hated her parents, which didn’t bode well for his home life but did bode well for Sam. She decided that the best way to make her parents mad would be to fool around with him, and he wholeheartedly agreed.

They spent many nights wrapped up in the back of Sam’s Chevy, exploring the finer points of first-, second-, and third-base. Veronica was far more experienced than Sam, but after a while they had exhausted all the options so much that he thought he was at least catching up. Sam was very satisfied until Veronica suggested that they take things to the next level.

To say Sam’s first time was quick and awkward would be an understatement; it lasted about as long as a Journey song and left both him and Veronica unsatisfied and without much in the way of conversation. They broke up soon after.

Sam attributed it to a reemergence of his romantic tendencies. His relationship with Veronica had never been more than a partner with which to suck face. If he could have sex with a girl he loved, he reasoned, it would be amazing.

So he waited. He waited and waited for the right girl to come along, and finally found her in Alicia. Even when he was with Alicia, he waited more, just to make sure that they didn’t blow it by doing anything before the time was right. Unfortunately for Sam, he also waited until their relationship had become so tired and worn-in that there was little magic to the moment. Sam did feel like he got better, but he still had that niggling feeling in the back of his mind that the romantic, sensual, mind-blowing lovemaking that he had always imagined was out there for him.

After Alicia left for a relationship that was more passionate (namely, one that was with someone else), Sam threw out all his preconceived notions about sex. When he and Abbie got back to his apartment, and Abbie threw him against the wall, exploring every inch of his mouth with hers, he just let it happen.

And it was amazing.