Page 11 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis lost his breath; tears filled his eyes. The damned happiest moment that would ever be.
Everyone around them clapped, and Otis’s Guinevere pulled him up from his knee and let him slip the ring on her finger.
“It’s the most gorgeous ring I’ve ever seen.” She kissed him ten times and then held him tightly, and they danced as lovers and best friends.
Later, in the tent, as the sun rose over the festival, they made love for the first time, and Otis said goodbye to his virginity and to his youth. He had no idea what was to come, but he felt a newfound optimism that he’d never known, and he became desperately thirsty to see what happened next.
When his own demons came, when he wondered what his parents would say, how this turn of events might affect his plans for college and life, he simply pushed them away and buried himself deeper into this woman who gave him the courage to break free.
Chapter 3
Skeletons in the Closet
It was a chilly and gray Tuesday afternoon in mid-September when Otis and Rebecca finally pulled back into San Francisco. They’d returned with five less people, some lost to the madness of Woodstock, some deciding to stay on the East Coast. Like the bus that had lost half its paint, those who had returned seemed worn down—a long way from the jolly bunch who’d first set sail. It was time to detox and take long hot showers and sleep for a few days.
For Otis and Rebecca, it was time to face the reality of the exciting life they’d mapped out on the drive home. Rebecca took Otis to her place on Ashbury Street. On the way, she pointed out 710 Ashbury, the former Grateful Dead residence, and then she dragged him through the door of a row house where she lived with five other girls. Though he was no longer a virgin, Otis was still a shy bloke who found the opposite sex both a mystery and an intimidating force, so as this harem swarmed him upon entry, it was all he could do not to crawl under the couch. They couldn’t believe that Rebecca—the girl in the houseleastlikely to ever get married—had fallen in love and gotten engaged in a matter of weeks.
“He must be a miracle worker in bed,” one joked in front of the entire hive of roommates.
“You mean in a sleeping bag?” Rebecca responded before laying a wet kiss on him. “He is indeed.” Otis turned as red as Carlos Santana’s guitar but stood tall for a week afterward. No one could give him backbone the way she did.
He finally found the courage to call his parents—not that he was ready for an unveiling of truths.
“Otis, where in the world have you been?” his father asked. Five years in Montana had done little to chip away at Addison Till’s distinguished British accent. “We’ve left messages with the Texans.”
“I’m so sorry, Dad. What a month.”
“With the car wash?”
“Car wash and ...” He paused, unaccustomed to lying to his parents. “And I took a second job running Thai food for a spot down the street.”
“Ah, good for you, son.”
Otis wanted to tell his dad about Rebecca. He would proudly shout from the highest mountain that he’d gotten engaged to an angel, but telling Addison Till right now would shatter the world’s peace and send Otis tumbling into what might turn into a battle for his future. Sprouting from a family tree of successful men, his father had set a high bar and held even higher expectations of his only son.
Two in the afternoon in October, and Otis and Rebecca sat in a crowded Chinese restaurant on Grant Avenue in Chinatown, sharing egg rolls and fried rice. The San Francisco fog hung heavy outside and moved into the restaurant like smoke every time someone opened the door.
A group of war protesters had just marched by. Thousands of miles away, American soldiers fought an escalating war in a country most Americans couldn’t point out on a map. Between the seemingly countless soldiers returning in body bags, the talk of possible conscription, anda new president many doubted would make any changes, the dissent back home grew stronger by the day.
All the men dying, fighting a war many didn’t even understand, only exacerbated Otis’s swelling need to carve his own path. He was more than a month into his education at Berkeley, wondering why in the queen’s name he was chasing someone else’s dream.
Not that Otis had an alternate idea for a vocation. It had all seemed perfectly brilliant to talk of dreams and to propose to this young lady sitting across from him, dipping her egg roll into an inordinate amount of duck sauce, but the follow-through was more daunting. Especially now that they were back in reality. It wasn’t like hehadto become a journalist. Even if he graduated with a journalism degree, he didn’t have to commit to write for a living. So he didn’t need to tell his father yet.
But he did need to share that he’d found the love of his life and that they planned to marry the following spring. For that matter, Bec had kept it quiet too. The inevitability of sharing the news with both sets of parents hung in the air like a trapeze artist who’d lost his pants.
Otis still hadn’t even told his father that he’d paid the small fine to bail out of his dormitory commitment, opting to continue his inexpensive lodging with the Texans, only a short walk away from Bec’s place.
He pointed to her puddle of duck sauce. “Americans eat more condiments than they do actual food. What would happen if there was a ketchup shortage? The country would go to war. Well, another war.”
“At least the cause would be clear.” She wore a sunflower-yellow dress cut low enough to show the jewel necklace she’d made and a peek of her voluptuous and braless bosoms.
Apparently noticing his wandering eyes, she leaned forward to tease him with an even more tantalizing peek. “I come for the egg roll, but I stay for this sweet, delicious sauce.” Her lips split into a smile.
“Well,” Otis said, “I come for the fried rice and stay for the fortune cookie.”
Holding her egg roll like a microphone, she spoke into it. “What would you want your fortune to be?” She moved the mike toward his own lips and waited for an answer.
Otis grinned and pretended to tap on it, as if testing whether it were on. He cleared his throat and gave a terrible Nixon impression. “I would like my fortune to read ...” He paused. “Shite, I don’t know ... may gold rain down from the heavens and splash onto the marble floors of our palace overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and may we have ten babies who each grow up to dominate their fields and subsequently change the world.”
