The Spiteful Orbit

I'm Tyra Harlow, twenty-four, and I stack grocery store bargains like most people stack receipts. Tuesday morning, Daisy Vaughn called me at seven.

"Uphill job," she said. "Piano delivery to the lighthouse keeper. Two trucks needed. Yours and Stan's."

"No!"

"Tyra. Listen. Brian's already promised Stan's truck. The keeper's paying both of you."

I sat up in bed. Stan Novak. Twenty-five. Co-owner of the bait and tackle shop down by the harbor. My ex. Two years of dating, one telescope alignment argument at twenty-two, and two years of him acting like he'd won the breakup.

"I'd rather deliver a piano off a pier," I said.

"Heard you the first time. Still doing it. Six o'clock at the shop."

She hung up. Daisy's known us both since college. She's twenty-eight and she has zero faith in either of us, which is fair.

* * *

The bait shop smelled like low tide and fish food. I walked in at six sharp and there he was, leaning on the counter like he'd been posing for the position his whole life.

"Harlow."

"Novak."

"You're driving your own truck," Daisy said before either of us opened our mouths. "Piano's got a crate bed. It's already loaded on Stan's. Your truck takes the straps and the extra crates. Nobody rides with anybody. We meet at the harbor lot and roll out together."

"I could drive both," Stan said.

"You could not," Daisy said.

"I'd say I'm a better driver," Stan told me, "but that'd be mean."

"You backed into the church gate last spring."

"That gate moved."

"Gates don't move, Stan."

Daisy dragged us both outside. The piano sat on Stan's flatbed in a crate the size of a fridge. Big black thing. Lighthouse keeper's name on the paperwork. Mr. Corbin, up past the valley road.

"Rules," Daisy said, counting on her fingers. "One. Nobody races. The valley clocks run backward for a few minutes every day and I'm not explaining to a customer why his piano arrived before we loaded it. Two. The cliffside road has no elevator, so it's switchbacks the whole way. Three. If you two start a fight, I leave you both in the valley."

"Fair," I said.

"Cowardly," said Stan.

We loaded my truck in about twenty minutes. Straps, two crates of tools, a roll of moving blankets. Stan watched me cinch the last strap and made a face.

"You'll want to re-cinch that after the first mile. Nylon stretches."

"I know how nylon works, Stan. I have a physics degree."

"You have an astronomy degree. You look at stars."

"Stars are physics, you absolute bait-aisle genius."

"There it is," Daisy said, walking past with the paperwork. "Three minutes in. New record."

* * *

We rolled out at seven. Harbor road, then the long climb toward the valley. In my mirror I could see Stan's truck, riding my bumper like a man with a grudge against my exhaust pipe. He wasn't racing. He was just... orbiting. Close enough to annoy me, far enough to claim he wasn't.

At the first switchback I pulled the handbrake turn a little tighter than strictly necessary. Purely for efficiency.

His horn went off. One short blast. He flashed his lights at the next bend, passed slow, and mouthed something through the window I chose not to read.

The valley hit around eight. You can feel it when you drive in. Your watch gets twitchy. My dash clock rolled back two minutes while I watched it, tick by tick, then snapped forward like nothing happened. Local thing. Nobody's ever explained it properly and the town council gave up trying.

Stan's truck pulled alongside at the valley floor and we crawled together for a half mile, windows down.

"Your clock doing the thing?" he shouted.

"Doing the thing."

"Maybe time's bad at math like you."

"Maybe your shop's so boring even time won't stay there!"

He laughed. I hated that he laughed.

* * *

We stopped at the pull-off past the valley for water. Daisy had gone ahead in her own car an hour before, some story about checking the switchbacks. So it was just the two trucks and a whole lot of coastline.

Stan leaned against my fender like he owned it.

"Nice work back there. Real sharp cornering."

"I know."

"You always were good at showing off for nobody."

"That's rich. You put a chalkboard in your shop that says DAILY FISH MOOD. That's showing off for nobody."

"The fish mood board is customer service."

"Nobody's ever once agreed with the mood board."

"Mr. Corbin agrees with it."

"Mr. Corbin lives in a lighthouse."

He grinned and I caught myself grinning back and killed it fast. This was the problem with Stan. Two minutes of bickering and my whole face forgot we were done. Two years done.

"You still doing the observatory thing?" he asked. Casual. Too casual.

"Tuesday night public viewing, yes. Last week a man asked me if the moon was real."

"What'd you say?"

"That it was real but his opinions weren't."

Stan laughed again. Worse this time. Louder.

"What about you," I said. "Still naming the lobsters?"

"His name is Clive and he's a draw. Kids love him."

"Kids love a crustacean in a tank with a name tag. Incredible business model."

"Better than teaching tourists that the sky is up."

I threw my water bottle cap at him. He ducked, grinning, picked it up, set it on my hood real gentle like it was an egg.

* * *

Back on the road, the switchbacks started. Cliffside, no guardrail in places, the whole harbor dropping away to my left. I took them slow and careful and thought about nothing except the road, which lasted about four bends.

Then Stan's truck was in my mirror again and he was close. Too close for the curves. I could see him in the rearview, one hand on the wheel, talking to himself or to me or to Clive the lobster.

At the top of the climb there's a wide spot where the old elevator station used to sit. It's been dead for years. The whole area around it is half wrong. Clocks there don't just slip, they wander. Daisy's car was parked there waiting.

"State of the road," she said, leaning out her window. "Two more miles of switchbacks, then the lighthouse track. Corbin's expecting us by eleven."

Stan got out and walked over to my window. Just stood there with his thumbs in his pockets.

"Your left rear strap's sagging," he said.

"It's fine."

"It's sagging, Tyra."

"Fine. I'll check it."

He crouched by my back wheel and tugged the strap. Tightened it. Didn't say anything smart while he did it, which was somehow the most annoying part.

"You didn't have to do that," I said.

"You'd have driven two miles with a loose piano. Then it'd slide. Then I'd have to listen to you explain physics at the crash site."

"I'd be right, though."

"You'd be dead and right."

Daisy looked between us like she was watching a tennis match she'd seen before. "Eleven o'clock," she said. "Drive."

* * *

The last stretch was the worst. The track up to the lighthouse is gravel and both our trucks complained about it. Mr. Corbin came out of the lighthouse door before we even stopped. Small man, sixty-something, white beard, waved us in like we were late for dinner.

"Piano!" he shouted over the wind. "About time."

He was cheerful. He kept offering us tea. Daisy started supervising the unloading and Stan and I got the crate off his flatbed with the hand winch, which meant standing shoulder to shoulder for ten full minutes.

"You're leaning," I said.

"You're short."

"I'm five-eight."

"You're five-eight standing on your pride."

I elbowed him. He elbowed back. Daisy said, "The piano, please," without turning around.

We got it inside. Corbin paid us on the spot, cash, both shares counted out fair and square in front of Daisy so there'd be no arguing about it later. He put the kettle on and we sat in his kitchen with tea and biscuits like four normal adults.

Then Corbin asked the question.

"So who's driving home together, then? One truck back empty is a waste of petrol."

"Oh no," said Daisy.

"Actually," said Stan, looking at me, "we could save on fuel."

I should have said no.

"Fine," I said. "But I'm driving my own truck down and you're driving yours."

"Then we're not saving fuel."

"One of us will give up by the second bend. It'll be you."

"It won't."

Daisy drained her tea and stood. "I'm going ahead. If you two kill each other on the track, at least there'll be a witness with a head start."

She left. Corbin waved us off from the lighthouse door like we were family. Which was nice. Nobody else was waving.

* * *

The trouble started at the elevator station on the way down.

The dead station sits at the top of the climb and the air around it has been wrong for years. Everybody in town knows it. You don't park there. You don't loiter. You definitely don't stop with a truck full of tension and a full tank.

My truck stopped anyway.

Just died. Mid-bend, fifty yards past the station. Engine off like somebody flipped a switch. I coasted to the gravel and sat there with my hands at ten and two, breathing.

Stan pulled up behind me and got out. "What'd you do?"

"Nothing. It just died."

"Trucks don't just die."

"This one did. We're next to the elevator. Draw your own conclusion."

He looked up the hill at the dead station. Rusted frame, glass gone out of it, grass growing through the platform. The whole spot hums sometimes. Not a sound you hear so much as feel in your back teeth.

"Clocks," he said.

"Yeah."

I checked my dash. The clock read 2:47. I checked my phone. 1:12. I checked my watch, which I keep because my phone lies up here. 3:05.

"That's three different times," Stan said. "In one cab."

"Welcome to physics, Stan. Sit down."

He sat in my passenger seat because his own truck was boxed in and neither of us wanted to move a piano-crate's worth of metal by hand. He filled the seat. He always filled rooms, Stan. Big shoulders, big opinions.

The engine wouldn't turn over. Not a click, not a cough. Dead as the elevator.

"So we wait," I said.

"So we wait."

"I hate waiting with you."

"You've said. Many times. Two years of times."

I looked at the dash clock. It had gone to 2:44. Backward. My stomach did that drop it does on the cliff road, except we weren't moving.

"Time's running the wrong way," I said. "That's a two-minute window, usually. Sometimes four."

"Then in two minutes we'll be unstuck."

"That's not how it works. It's not a spell. The valley clocks run backward and the field around the station warps. The truck will start when the field eases. Could be two minutes. Could be twenty."

"You and your degree."

"My degree is why I know the truck will start, Stan. Yours is why you're sitting in my cab asking stupid questions."

He grinned. I hated that grin. It had been ruining my focus since I was twenty-two, and I'd had two full years of practice at twenty-four and it still worked.

The clock ticked 2:43. Then 2:42. My watch agreed for once, running backward in little jerks. Outside, the light did a thing I can't describe. Sort of a flicker, like a film skipping a frame.

Then everything snapped back. The engine caught on the first turn of the key like nothing had happened.

"Told you," I said.

"You told me nothing. You said could be twenty minutes."

"Could be. Wasn't."

"Unbelievable." But he was laughing as he got out, and I was doing a bad job of not smiling at the windshield.

* * *

Daisy had texted: PUB AT THE HALF-WAY BEND. EAT SOMETHING. STOP FIGHTING.

The pub clings to the cliff about a third of the way down. Low ceiling, low windows, a dog that's been asleep in the same corner since before I moved to town. We took a table by the window because it was the only one and because sitting across from each other felt safer than side by side.

Two pints. A pie each. The dog snored.

"Here's what I think," Stan said, halfway through his pint. "The breakup was your fault."

"Excuse me?"

"You moved my telescope."

"Your telescope was pointed at a wall, Stan. A wall. There was a brick wall in the way of the entire southern sky."

"It was aligned."

"It was aligned to a wall."

The dog opened one eye and closed it.

"You touched my equipment," he said, quieter now, leaning in. "That's the whole thing. That's what I could never get past. You decided you knew better and you moved it without asking."

"And you sulked about a telescope for a week instead of talking to me. I asked you what was wrong eleven times. I counted."

"Because it was obvious."

"It wasn't obvious. You went silent and started sleeping at the shop."

"That's called working late."

"Clive wasn't even there yet. What were you working on at midnight, Stan?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Drank.

"Inventory," he said.

"Inventory."

"Yes."

"You sulked at inventory for a week and then told Daisy we were done before you told me."

That landed. I watched it land. He put his pint down slow.

"That's fair," he said. "That part was coward's way. I'll give you that."

It was the first honest sentence he'd said about the breakup in two years and it knocked the wind out of me a little. I'd built a whole courtroom in my head with him as the defendant. He'd just pleaded guilty to one count.

"And I'll give you the wall," he added. "The telescope was pointed at a wall."

"Thank you."

"I still think you should've asked."

"I still think you should've talked. We were engaged in a fundamental communication failure for approximately the final eight months of our relationship."

"See, words like that. That's another thing."

"What, that I use words?"

"That you'd rather be right than be happy."

The pub went quiet around that one. The dog snored. I looked at my pie because looking at him was going to cause a scene.

"You don't get to say that," I said. "Not when you moved a hundred miles of silence between us instead of one sentence."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I've had two years to know it, Tyra. Doesn't mean I liked you knowing it too."

My chest did something complicated. I finished my pint and ordered us a pot of tea because I needed a job for my hands.

The tea went easier. We argued about the mood board, about whether Corbin overpaid, about whether the dog was a lab or a wolf in a lab costume. Normal stuff. Old stuff. The stuff that used to be fun before it stopped being fun.

Daisy texted: ARE YOU FIGHTING. He replied: ARGUING. HEALTHY AMOUNT.

"Same thing," I said.

"Not the same thing. Fighting is when you throw a water cap at a man."

"That cap had it coming."

* * *

The road down from the pub is the worst of the switchbacks. Hairpin after hairpin, cliff on the left, no rail in the old spots. I'd offered to drive since my truck was ahead, and Stan had agreed without a fight, which was suspicious. He'd left his own truck at the pub for the landlady's nephew to bring down to the inn after closing, being one pint over his own rule, and climbed into my passenger seat. And it turned out the fight was saving itself.

Bend six. Gravel wash on the inside of the curve. The rear stepped out and I corrected and the correction was too much and the truck lurched.