2

A little while later, Sam was standing on a street corner under a flashing marquee for a coffee brand, when he looked at his watch. He was due at the quayside in a couple of hours but from now until then, he was free as a bird. He looked at the newspaper boxes and briefly considered buying a Daily or a Trib, then decided he didn't want to be encumbered at his interview. He was trying out for the job of lighthouse keeper. Sloan City had a burgeoning shoreline, and many boats came in to port each day. The lighthouse fell under the jurisdiction of a certain maritime district he didn't quite understand.

"It was stitched together through merciless gerrymandering," his lawyer friend Chip had said, a few days ago at a crusty nautical bar on the wharf.

"Huh? Gerrymandering?" Sam said.

"Aye!" Chip said. "Aye, gerrymandering most foul! The deliberate drawing of political districts in order to influence the results of elections, usually by taking all the people of a certain belief and bundling them all up into one district. Arr, 'tis a dastardly practice!"

Sam rolled his eyes and noticed that his friend always seemed to go overboard in the nautical bar, apparently inspired by the ceramic wall hangings of flubbery sailors with corncob pipes, authentic steering wheels, memorabilia from old Cape Cod, and other beloved sea-oriented trash. "So, Chip, have you been taking on any new casework to try to stamp out the gerrymandering? Like, you know, some kind of activist DA or something?"

"Arrr!" said Chip, squinting one eye.

"Look" interrupted Sam. "Would you please talk normal?" Chip looked hurt and Sam felt bad and made up a fib. "I ... um ... it's really hard to understand you when you talk that way."

"Oh," said Chip, convinced. "Okay." His cel phone rang.

"Hello?" he said. "Oh, hi H.!" Sam raised his eyebrows. H. the mononym? H. who lived in Sloan? He smiled.

"Sure!" Chip said. "Come over! We were just having a discussion about the SEA! Uh huh ... yeah ... corner of Xanthan and Autoclave. Yeah. By the wharf. Yeah. Okay, bye!"

"Was that--"

"H., our mutual friend. Yep, and she's coming over."

"Oh boy! I love H.!"

"Yeah," said Chip. "She's really cool, and you know she'll be here because she loves the sea! She loves it almost as much as I."

Sam blinked.

"Um, Chip," Sam said. "This whole thing about the lighthouse, the gerrymandering and the maritime district and everything ..."

"What about it?"

"I'm trying out for that job."

Instead of looking Sam straight in the eye, Chip looked straight ahead, into his beer.

"Well," Chip said. "So am I. My interview is in three days."

"Mine is in two."

They both became very quiet.

Oh great, Sam thought. Something about the stark, Darwinian arena quality of trying out for the same scarce job. He eats it up. It feeds his sea fetish, and the fetish feeds back.

After thirty seconds, Chip squinted his other eye and said in a quiet voice, "Let the best man win."

"Oh for crissakes," Sam said. "Let's talk about something else. What am I, your noble adversary now? We aren't both going to be there in the room with them when they make their decision, so what is the point of getting all filled up with competition? Either I'll get it and you won't, or you'll get it and I won't, or neither--"

"Or H." Chip said hoarsely.

"H.? Is she trying out too?"

"Here she comes, why don't you ask her yourself?"

"Hi boys!" H. was a sharply dressed woman with long red hair.

"Hi H.!" The whiff of intrigue was quickly mixed with, and then drowned out by, H.'s charisma.

"How are you?" Sam rose and they hugged.

"Oh, I'm okay," H. said. "I'll be doing a little better when I'm working."

"Yeah, we were just talking about that," Sam said.

"So you're trying out for lighthouse keeper, huh? Me too!"

"Seriously?" H.'s eyes widened.

"And so is Chip."

"Hi, Chip! I didn't even say hello to you!" Chip didn't rise and they didn't hug.

"All three of us are trying out for that lighthouse job," Chip said.

It's like he had a switch flipped somewhere inside him, Sam thought. He wants to be in those kinds of situations, he wants it all to be some kind of deathmatch.

"How exciting!" H. said. "When is your interview?"

"Two days," Sam said. "Chip's is in three."

"Mine is in four," H. said. She smiled and sat down. She and Sam both looked at Chip, his eyes locked on a vision neither of them could see.

Probably a rough night of fighting and clawing with the high seas, thought Sam. I guess he's actually been out there, which is more than I can say for myself. I doubt H. has either, but, heh, that could just be a sexist knee-jerk reaction.

"Were you ever a sailor?" he asked H.

H. shook her head.

"Nope, no ..." it seemed as though she was about to elaborate, but she didn't.

"Heh," she said.

"Well," said Chip. "Ye may get yer chance. Ye'll be that solitary beacon of hope to many a weary swab." He held his translucent beer mug up to the light. To be even more overdramatic about the light in the night, Sam thought.

"And may the best man or woman win" Chip said, taking a gulp.

Heh, that didn't sit well with him, Sam thought. He looks like he's drinking a carafe of Robitussin.