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JULIA

My father took us to Catalina Island on one of his weekends. We got the speedy catamaran ferry. My brother and I leaned over the side to see who could spit the farthest.

My dad was an actor. For a Sicilian, he was tall.

Almost six feet with olive skin and long black eyelashes.

That got him a ton of side parts on TV, for awhile.

Everybody still knows his face. When he started the handyman business, he’d go out on a job and there was always someone who’d say, “Weren’t you the next-door neighbor in What’s Up Brigette ?

” And yes, he was that guy, until the car accident.

When he woke up from the coma, he could function, but he couldn’t remember his lines or his blocking.

He couldn’t get his body or his face to express anything but what he was actually feeling, which was mostly frustration.

His acting career was over. He was left behind. Forgotten. Tall, handsome, talented, and broke. He bought a really nice kitted toolbox from one of his Hollywood friends and did what he had been taught to do when he was a boy. Fix things.

My mother left him. She took my brother, sister, and me to a little apartment in North Hollywood while Dad tried to keep acting.

He never gave up. He tried to sound cheerful all the time, but I could tell he was sad.

When I was thirteen, I decided to find out how much unfinished business he was sitting on.

It was his weekend, and he was on a handyman job for a few hours. I put Henry and Josephine in front of the TV and went through his mail, his closets, the recesses of the apartment.

Yes, it was an invasion of privacy. Sorry. Also, not sorry.

What a mess. The bills. The laundry. I can’t even think about the refrigerator.

He wasn’t keeping himself together at all.

I announced to my mother that I was going to live with Dad, for his sake.

And though she was already dating the man who would become her second husband, she still loved my father enough to agree, as long as my grades didn’t suffer.

I like to think I got him together, at least in the executive function department. He said he would have died without me. Then his heart gave out anyway—broken by the fact that he couldn’t do what he loved.

Point being, that first time on Catalina Island was my last. It was fun.

You can’t go too far without a golf cart, since very few cars are allowed on the island at all.

We’d paced the touristy waterfront and lounged on the rocky beach.

I helped Dad buy the ferry tickets, calculate the tip for lunch, and made sure we didn’t get lost in the back woods of the island, where the houses get big and the residents get paranoid about who’s near their gate.

Outside that, I don’t remember shit. So this time will feel like the first time all over again.

One of the pilots helps me load our littler tool chest and my suitcase into the back. I keep my knapsack and toolbox with me.

The second pilot, a woman, explains the headset. I get a rundown of safety features in case we fall from the sky, and fifteen minutes later, we have lift-off.

My first helicopter ride should make me too excited to nap. But I’m an eight-hour-a-night girl. That five-hour shit last night left me half-cooked. The headset is perfectly calibrated to make me drowsy. The voices, the static, and the crackling in the headphones is really triggering sleep.

So I drift off like a baby in a car seat. Right into dreamland.

I’m on the beach. The waves smack against the shore and whoosh out like the sound of radio white noise.

My flathead, the one I left at Duke’s, is stuck in the sand, business-end down, as upright as a little soldier.

There are people everywhere, spitting out call numbers in businesslike voices. But, stretched out on my dad’s Corona Extra beach towel, I feel alone.

The screwdriver turns into a naked, golden-skinned man with curly brown hair and thick, arched eyebrows. His abs and arms are as defined as sand dunes and his chest is dusted with sandgrass hair. He looks down at his body and says Holy shit as if it’s a new suit he didn’t expect to be wearing.

His erection is the screwdriver handle, but pink where he should be yellow… and enormous.

Holy shit is right, I say in dream voice.

He looks at me with real hunger. He wants to devour me. I am the most beautiful, fuckable woman on this beach. No. Not just that. He looks at me as if I’m the only woman in the world. No one has ever looked at me like this.

A sand crab says something to him in sand crab language.

The man nods, then walks over to me. He blocks the sun. I get up on my elbows.

Hello , I say. What’s your name ?

He doesn’t tell me. He just looks at my crossed ankles, then my calves, my knees, then he says, If you want me to fuck you, open your legs .

His voice is flat, like bad AI through a police scanner, and he seems both shocked and pleased that words came out of his mouth.

But I open my legs, and my pussy is right there. Dream logic has left me without a bathing suit.

Wider , he says. I need to be sure .

I lift my knees and spread them apart for his brown eyes, and that act alone is enough to send tingles all over my body.

Perfect , he says.

Am I perfect? I hear myself ask.

Yes . He kneels between my thighs. The enormous screwdriver handle between his legs is as silky and warm as a cock.

Yes, what? I ask when he hesitates.

I knew you’d be perfect .

Perfect. Me. I am perfect.

You should fuck me.

I did. I will. I am.

The dream screwdriver man enters me. He splits me open. He fucks me hard. Drills me into the sand.

Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t . He keeps saying the same thing with each thrust. My dream self doesn’t ask what he means, because I know already.

When I’m about to come, he finally finishes the sentence.

Please don’t forget me.