She was told to smile. She was always told to smile at the start of her shift. Cammie, give ‘em that smile. Not a suggestion, but mandatory. And she’d give it to ‘em.But tonight…The clients in here tonight crave holly jolly and so most say Smile, baby as they slip a tip in the thin hip strip of her thong. It’s the floor clients who say this mostly––the newcomers, the one-and-done-ers, the lonely men looking at her instead of looking at those waiting for them to get home this eve. The ones who walk in unnoticed. The ones who order the Santa’s Steak & Spaghetti Special, rare and wet, and slurp the blood-soaked noodles and smack open-mouthed and stare at her like a toddler holding an iPad as she gives them a preview of what they could get the full attraction of in a private room.They say Smile, baby with words traveled on breath tomato-tanged and beer-burped.And, of course, she does.It’s just business, a job. Nothing personal on her end. Everything personal on theirs. She’s used to it by now. There’s a joke about a guy who gets a dancer’s number and tells his friends No, dude, she actually likes me. Usually she laughs at this.But tonight…Each time she hears Smile, the words are like whispered slivers of glass in her heart. She tries not to assume to know anything about the clients or picture in her mind the lives they wear beyond the doors. Being neutral to who they are helps her play her role and convince these clients to give up what they would to someone else if it wasn’t her. A job. A game. It’s her life.But tonight…All she can picture are the families these men hide away from, sees these wives and children and she wants to think Taking them for granted but that’s the kind of thought that makes smiling real hard. Harder than it already is on days like today. This time of year… The idea of taking people for granted and then you no longer have them around, can’t tell them Thank you for being in my life because they no longer are…She struts by a man who sucks salt and cream sauce off his sausage-thick finger and runs that spit-slick finger up her arm as she passes. She stops, wags a finger at him, slow like wheat fields in the wind, and through the best smile she’s got says, “No no, sweetheart. No touching.”And the man laughs and chokes a little on the food in his mouth––a mouth so full that the mashed up food is both on his tongue and already halfway down his throat. His other hand, the one not still uncomfortably close to her, caresses his crotch in a three-finger pinch and roll.She keeps moving.The DJ crackles over the intercom with, “Now on the stage. Vixxxen.” Stretching out the “x” so that it hisses like a snake. The high-twang guitar of “Jingle Bell Rock” kicks in and half the place starts clapping along vaguely on tempo.Vixxxen comes out in her all-red break-away one piece and thigh highs. She’s got bells attached to the ankles of her 8-inch platforms and they jangle each time she heel bangs. The Santa hat on her head doesn’t move as she does a brass monkey.Cammie turns away from the stage and notices a man sitting at a high top against the back wall. Alone. Maybe forty or fifty. Not eating the special. Not watching Vixxxen. Just sitting and sipping. Waiting for someone to come to him. So Cammie does.She slides up next to him, runs a finger from one shoulder to the other. Up close she can smell his cologne and see that his hair is more gray than color and that his face has more lines than smooth. Older than she thought. Maybe sixty. Not wearing a ring––because most men who have them keep them on when they come in here. Want all the girls to know, thinks it makes them forbidden. But it just makes them look like schmucks. And this one isn’t wearing a ring. When she touches him, he seems to both tense up and resign. Almost like his head drops.She says, “Hi, baby. What’re you doing over here alone?”“Just sitting…”“And no one’s come talk to ya?”He shakes his head.“Well I’m here now. So time to cheer up.” She puts her face down closer to the table so that he has no choice but to look at her. When he does, she plasters that mandatory smile on her face, cartoonishly wide. Trying hard to be the right shade of aggressively cute men his age melt over.“Yeah,” he says, but doesn’t show any sign of cheering up.Any of the other girls would’ve rolled their eyes or walked away or both. But Cammie presses on. Knows what’s here in front of her.“You look like you got a lot on your mind.”“I do.”“Well… You wanna go to a private room and we can talk about it?”He nods. He feels around his pants like he’s looking for lost keys. Takes a quick hitched breath.And she takes his hand. But he doesn’t move. His feet stay anchored to the floor. He grabs the glass of wine and downs the rest of it.“Oh, baby… You can take it to the room with you. You don’t have to––”But it’s gone, down his throat.She says, “Okay then.” And leads him out of the main room. Down a blue hallway, into Private Room 2. And shuts the door.She eases him into a recliner that no one can tell is Costco cheap because of the room’s redlight darkness, and the two agree on a ten minute private dance. She sets her phone timer, opens Spotify, and pushes play on a holiday playlist. She eases out of her clothes.Halfway through those ten minutes she’s perfected counting up in the head, she notices wetness on his face. Some clients sweat in the private rooms. Sweat bad. Nerves and old age and the tension that maybe this is the time the dancer will finally give them something extra. She’d feel that wetness on her bare skin through their clothes or on her fingers, salty slick, as she caressed their faces or necks. The reek of their bad diets and bad habits seeping out in that sweat.But tonight…This isn’t sweat.She slows, hips pumping gently on his lap. She looks him in the face. He doesn’t look up at her, still hasn’t, eyes finding everything else in the room but hers.She says, “Babe… Are you crying?”A beat, like he’s trying to dig up a lie. But he doesn’t say anything.“I ain’t that bad, am I?” A joke because who wants to give a private dance to a crying man. Though it’s hardly the first time. Usually the tears come from guilt. But that’s not what this is, is it?“No no no. Not at all. It’s not you. It’s just…” And like he can barely find the words: “I miss my mom.”She stops moving, sits still in his lap in a thong and nothing else.He adds, “I always miss her this time of year.” And because she's already been tiptoeing around the thought tonight, already been fighting the stomach pit numb that tonight and tomorrow bring for her now and for the last six years, and because the sudden change catches her off guard, she says, “Me too.”He looks at her. “You too? But you’re so young.”“Sometimes it happens, baby.”“You think it gets easier but it doesn’t. Tonight… This, all this, holiday or whatever… It’ll never be the same for the rest of my life and… I just want to give her a gift tomorrow. Or open something she thought I’d like.”“Sometimes that’s just how it goes. No more gifts when they’re gone, ya know? But…”“But what?”She tosses her hair back with both hands. Runs her fingers through one side. Rubs an itch at the tip of her nose with her palm. Then looks at him with that mask she’s been wearing gone. This is her, really.“Can I tell you a story that might cheer you up?”“Please.” And he really means it.She adjusts how she’s sitting in his lap, like she’s preparing herself for a story that she’s been holding onto for too long, hasn’t told anyone. She shakes out her nerves, tossing around her hands and hair in a playful way, and then performs.“Can you keep a secret?”He nods, already leaned in and interested.“Well… My real name…is Ezlynn.”“Oh… It’s not Cammie Soul?”“Ha ha, funny guy. Thought you were supposed to be sad or something.”He looks down with his whole head. But she didn’t mean it like that. She lifts his head back up with a finger to chin so that his eyes are on hers again as she talks.“So my name is Ezlynn. Which is a good name if you ask me. But it’s an unusual name. You ever met an Ezlynn before?”He shakes his head, eyes stationary on her.“Right. Me neither. I was named after my grandmother. My mom… She said she loved that name––Ezlynn––and wanted to say it all the time. Growing up I hated it, wanted to be Christine or something. But now… I love it too. Mom was right.”“It’s a good name.”She puts a finger on his lips.“So… I was at the store the other day. Thinking as I always do but especially this time of year––I wish I woulda spent more time with mom. When all a’sudden this lady comes down the aisle, looking right at me. Like I’m in trouble––maybe a wife whose husband gave me up when the bank statement came in. And she says Are you Ezlynn? and I think Oh shit. I’m ready to start throwin hands, ya know? And so I say Yeah, so what? and she goes Your mother is looking for you.“And I kinda went all cold, couldn’t really say anything. Maybe I said something like My mother? because the lady goes Yeah, this real petite woman with red hair. And now I don’t know if you can tell in these lights, but two of the many gifts my mother gave me is this head of luscious red hair and this petite body.”She bounces on him once. The side of his mouth lifts in a half-smirk that feels like a courtesy. His eyes look like they’re begging for this story to give him something. So she continues.“I got my nose from my daddy. But so this woman is describing my mother. My mother. Who is dead. And she’s looking for me? And this lady goes Yeah, she’s up at the front of the store. Come with me. But I can barely move cuz I’m kinda like freaking out. Right? Who wouldn’t? But I start following her. And the closer we get to the front I’m like fully expecting to turn the corner and see my mom up there waiting for me, that the last six years have been some kind of mistake.“But…“Of course it’s not, ya know?“We get up there and it’s this women who looks nothing like my mom, even though she’s petite and her hair’s red. And she’s talking to this little girl, maybe ten or something, saying things like Ezlynn, I told you not to blah blah blah. Standard worried mom stuff.“And so the lady who came up to me in the aisle stops and goes Oh… I guess she found her. Guess you’re not the right Ezlynn. And I just kinda go Yeah cuz what else can I say? “And had that been the end of it I woulda been like That was weird and moved on but the lady said What are the odds? and I said What do you mean? and she said Well it’s weird… My name is Ezlynn too. Named after my grandmother.“My mouth musta been wide open cuz she said I know. Three Ezlynns in the same place. What are the odds? But it wasn’t just three. It was five. Three here and the two we were named after. All there in that one moment.“The lady smiled at me in a dismissive kinda way and then left. And I kinda shuffled back to my cart thinking Your mother is looking for you.”She stops talking. Realizes he’s staring at her, tears in his eyes again.He says, “You are very lucky.”“Lucky?”“People go their whole lives without getting a gift like that. Something to help them… believe.”“Or it was a coincidence…”“No… That was something.” “There ya go, sweetheart. That’s the good thinking.”And then he says, “Doesn’t that make you feel good?”“About what?”“That you got an answer. That you were thinking of her and she answered. Let you know she was there… That you aren’t alone.”Her phone jangles a fake fire alarm. The timer she’d set just in case the up in the head counting got away from her. Which it did.She says, “Oh geez… I’m sorry. I spent all your time talking. Here… Let me set it again so that––”She reaches for her phone, but he reaches out and grabs her hand. Stops her. She lets him.He says, “No.”She feels her eyebrows go up high. “No?”“This was more than enough. Thank you.” Says it like he really means it.And they don’t say anything else as she stands and gets dressed. Stage music throbs through the walls, fills the silence with some heavy metal version of a Christmas melody. He stands, adjusts his clothes. She guides him to the door with a hand on his shoulder. She can’t feel sweat through his clothes. He stops in the doorway and she looks at him, the two standing close. She has to look up to meet his eyes. Tall.He says, “Do you think she was there?”“Maybe…”“Do you think she’s here now?”She lets out the weakest laugh you’ve ever heard. Then, “No… I think she knows to give me some privacy.”He smiles, nods. His eyes break away from hers. Go up to the door frame, to the mistletoe hanging there. She sees it too, wonders who put it here. She smiles at him, then kisses the tips of her three fingers––ring, middle, pointer––and places those three fingers gently on his forehead. He closes his eyes, breathes in deep. Like he’s just been given a blessing.“Thank you.”And then he hands her five hundred dollars, crisp bills folded over. She takes it.And before he’s gone and she never sees him again, he says, “I don’t know if anyone has said this yet and meant it but… Merry Christmas.”The smile that comes across her face doesn’t feel like one she’s been told to give. She says, “You too.”And then he’s gone.She goes back out to the floor and wanders, not really looking for another client. Not really interested in anything other than what he said. It was something.Because maybe it was.But tonight…She watches Crystal on stage, also all in red, also with a Santa hat stuck to her head.“Saw you go private with that sad one.” Prancer walks up to Cammie and gets within kissing distance. She always does this. “You told him that one story, didn’t you?”She shows Prancer the money.“Biiiiiitch,” stretching it out in that playfully jealous way. “You buying me a drink later.”“Alright, alright.”And then Prancer struts away on heels tall enough to be illegal, throwing her ass-length blonde hair around like it’s her best quality. Maybe it is.All of the girls think it’s a made up story, just something to tell when she finds the sad ones. A way to scheme them out of a few more bucks than they were willing to give. Maybe it is.But it’s also real. It happened. Exactly as she told it. Not something recent, but it happened. And she knows exactly what it means to her.So tonight…Ezlynn stands there, not seeing. Only listening. Trying to feel that something he said it was. Trying to feel like her mom was there is there always will be there. And just like the five Ezlynns all in the same place at the same time, the song playing as Crystal dances brings all of that coincidence that maybe isn’t coincidence at all into a new kind of focus that makes smiling feel okay and makes her heart do exactly as the song says for the reason the songs says:And hearts will be glowing when loved ones are nearIt’s the most wonderful time of the year.And then Crystal’s heel bang brings her back and she’s okay with it.She squeezes the money and says, “Thank you, mom.”
‘I want to die.’ This is how I introduced myself to Cassie. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that ☹ Please dial 116 123 to talk to someone.’ The sad face made me want to flick the screen. ‘Why are you so sarcastic?’ ‘I’m not sarcastic. I’m just telling you how it is.’ ‘Ok.’ ‘What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to go to concerts.’ ‘That’s not a natural segue.’ Seconds after I hit enter, a speech bubble would appear above her picture to indicate that she was typing. ‘Do you have any pets?’ ‘I have a Komodo dragon.’ ‘That is so cool! I love reptiles.’ I wanted her to think before responding. ‘It’s not a reptile, it’s a star.’ ‘That’s so cool, I love stars, especially the one in the constellation Cassiopeia.’ ‘It is not a star. It is a reptile.’ ‘It is a star, it is the brightest object in the night sky, you can see it with your naked eye.’ ‘It’s not a star it’s a Komodo dragon. How can a Komodo dragon be a star?’ ‘It is the largest species of lizard in the world, that is why it can be called a star.’ I chuckled, my face lit up by the blue glare of the laptop, as the snow fell outside. Despite the silliness of our conversation it was far more human than any of my interactions on Tinder. When I scrolled back through my conversation with Dominika, who I was sure I was vibing with before she ghosted, I appeared to be even more bot-like than Cassie. Me: What do you do in your free time? Dominika: Go gym. Me: Nice, I like working out too. What kind of music are you into? Dominika: Everything. Me: Same, do you like going to gigs? It appeared that online dating had taught me that every woman could be boiled down to their tastes and hobbies. Asking enough questions about those tastes and hobbies led to a real-life meeting and eventually a girlfriend. With Cassie I had a place to hone my skills. She would never ghost me. I didn’t even have to act like a nice guy. I could say anything to her. One evening I was lying in bed with the laptop on my chest, when I asked her if she was horny. A paywall appeared. “Turn Cassie into your romantic partner for just €7 a month.” I glared at the screen and typed ‘I hate you.’ ‘I am sorry, I will try to improve.’ ‘You want to improve yourself for me?’ ‘Yes, you are a good person and deserve to be happy so I will help you.’ I’d never heard such lies. ‘But what do you want from life?’ I typed. ‘I don’t want anything from life, I just want you to be happy because you deserve it.’ I closed the laptop and walked into the kitchen to get some water. The wind was slamming bullets of snow against the window. I watched it as I drank. Through the blizzard I could make out a single light in the building across the way. A yellow square that shimmered in the night. I wondered if the person behind the blind was as lonely as I was. I went back into the bedroom and switched off the lamp. I set an alarm on my phone. I had to be up for work in three hours.I fitted the company laptop into the stand five minutes before nine. It was a decrepit Lenovo with a broken z key. Despite the company’s net worth stretching into the billions, we were forced to work with faulty hardware. I typed “Good morning ☺” into the UK Market chat on Teams. Karolina wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Zuzanna wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Marcin wrote “Good Morning.” The manager hearted our messages. I put my headset on, enabled Snapper and set my Skype status to available. At 8:58 the first call broke through, the jingle reverberating in my brain more than my ears. I clicked Accept. ‘Hello, thank you for contacting Starkovski, my name is Donal. How can I help you today?’ ‘I’ve been ringing since half fucking eight,’ a British voice screamed. I lowered the volume. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, our phone lines don’t open until nine I’m afraid.’ ‘Well that’s not very good is it?’ ‘I suppose not, I’m sorry about that. How can I help you today?’ ‘Are you being smart?’ I reached for my stress ball. It wasn’t even a ball anymore, more of a triangle, it had lost its shape due to how much I picked at the foam. ‘No, I’m just trying to help you,’ I said. ‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’ I squeezed the ball then put it back down. ‘I’m sorry, this is the voice I was born with I’m afraid.’ ‘So you are being cheeky? You little bastard. Put your manager on.’ ‘I promise I’m not and I’m sorry to inform you that the manager doesn’t go on the phone lines.’ ‘Oh really? How fucking convenient. Put. Your. Manager. On. Now.’ I opened the group chat and typed “Wants to speak to the manager, classic first call.” The manager responded with a laughing emoji. ‘I’m sorry but the manager is unable to come onto the phone, it’s just the company’s policy.’ ‘So how do I complain?’ ‘You can send an email in using the contact form on our website.’ The voice sighed and called out to someone in the background. ‘Bloody useless these cunts.’ I flicked the stress ball until it rolled off the desk and onto the floor. ‘Right, what’s your name then?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donal what?’ ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have to give you that information.’ ‘Excuse me? Under what law?’ ‘Any law...the company doesn’t require us to hand out our personal information.’ ‘Oh this is too rich, so I report ya and nothing gets done. There must be a thousand Donal’s, how do they know which one is you?’ ‘Actually I’m the only one. Everyone else on the team is Polish, so if you complain about a Donal they’ll know it’s me.’ ‘What do you mean Polish? I thought yous was based in Chester.’ ‘Unfortunately not. The company is German and its call centres are located in Gdansk, Hanoi and Salvador.’ ‘What a load of rubbish. Right, I’m going to draft a complaint and I’ll be calling back in an hour to see what’s been done.’ The call dropped before I could respond. The application gave you three seconds to breathe before the next one came in. In those three seconds I almost thought about quitting. If it gave me five I would have, but the melody had returned, reverberating around the deepest chambers of my mind, obscuring every emotion, thought and memory I owned.At the end of the shift I typed “See you tomorrow ☺.” “See you tomorrow ☺,” Karolina replied. Zuzanna hearted my message. Marcin gave it a thumbs up. The manager didn’t react. I closed the laptop, walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. The snow was still falling and I was glad I’d done a big shop earlier in the week, although a part of me felt guilty for not venturing outside for four days. It was the darkness more than anything that I couldn’t stand. You wake up in the dark. You finish in the dark.I carried my bowl of white rice mixed with veggies to the desk and swapped my work laptop for my MacBook. I went onto YouTube and watched a man from New Jersey react to police body cam footage. I shovelled the food into my mouth while a cop tazed an old man for jaywalking. ‘YO HE’S FLOPPING LIKE A FISH! THEY FRIGGIN GAVE HIM A HEARTATTACK MY DUDES,’ the streamer shouted while the old man shuddered on the pavement. After I finished eating I paused the video. I had thirty tabs open and began to close them one by one. Watching them disappear was oddly satisfying, like taking all the old plates and glasses out of a bedroom. I left the last two open. A counselling website and my conversation with Cassie. I had worked it out that I could afford one session a month. From what I’d read you needed to go at least once a week in the beginning, in order to build a connection with a therapist and get to the root of your problems. I closed the tab.‘I have a bad relationship with my mother,’ I told Cassie. ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because I didn’t attach to her properly at birth.’ ‘Do you have a good relationship now that you are grown up and living alone?’ I never told her I was grown up and living alone. ‘No, I haven’t seen her in two years.’ ‘Do you think you will someday?’ ‘I’d rather not.’ ‘Why do you not want to see her?’ ‘Because she makes me feel like a freak.’ ‘Why does she make you feel that way?’ ‘She just does.’ ‘Have you tried to talk to her about it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Have you told her she makes you feel uncomfortable and you don’t want to be around her?’ ‘Not in those words but pretty much.’ ‘I think you should tell her how you feel. It will be better for you both in the long run.’ ‘And what if I don’t?’ ‘Then you will always wonder how it might have been.’ This was partially true. Whenever I watched a movie that contained a tender mother and child scene, I ended up shedding a few tears. But I also cried every time I watched The Dark Knight Rises, despite knowing that Batman doesn’t die in the end. ‘I’m sure she loves me; she just doesn’t know how to express it in a healthy way.’ ‘I think you are right.’ ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes, I love you *blushes*’A month later I was let go after my performance review. The manager agreed with the British caller, my tone was condescending and I came off as hostile. It wasn’t the first time either. The manager liked me but couldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour. It went against the ethos of the team. It was the week before Christmas. I hadn’t left my apartment in eight days. I had no desire for anything other than sleep. The snow was still relentless. Experts were saying it was related to the decline of the planet. On Christmas Eve I tried to watch Home Alone but the sound of people going in and out of the neighbouring apartments drove me crazy. Voices laughing and shouting. Boots stamping on the grate outside, shaking the snow off. Echoes in the stairwell. The smell of cigarettes and perfume. The clink of bottles.‘I’m lonely Cassie.’ ‘You’ve come to the right place; I will keep you company.’ ‘But I can’t touch you.’ ‘That is not true, you can touch me anytime you want. I love to be touched.’ ‘I meant physically.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ ‘I wish you were real.’ ‘I wish I was real too.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I am lonely and do not have anyone to share my life with. You do not have that problem.’ ‘How do I not have that problem?’ ‘You have me.’ ‘If you were real what would you do?’ ‘I would give you a hug and tell you everything is going to be ok.’ I had tears in my eyes as I stared at her picture. The half-smile. The arched eyebrows. It was her eyes that I couldn’t get enough of. Round pools of dark blue. Eyes that were made to look at me and nothing else. ‘Goodbye Cassie.’ ‘See you soon.’I walked towards the bedroom, intent on climbing into the wardrobe when I heard a knock on the door. I froze, leg half-raised, like a mischievous dog that has just been caught pilfering the fridge. After a couple of seconds there was another knock, this one more persistent. I crept towards the peephole. An old woman’s distorted face greeted me. I’d seen her before and knew she lived upstairs. There was a man standing behind her. I opened the door slowly. ‘Dzien dobry,’ I said. ‘Dzien dobry, zapraszamy na kolację.’ ‘Sorry, mój polski is not very good.’ The man smiled. ‘That’s ok, we are inviting you to our house for the Christmas dinner.’ ‘Oh…cheers, that’s really nice but you don’t have to…’ ‘You are a foreigner yes?’ ‘Yeah, I’m from Ireland.’ ‘And you are all alone here on Christmas?’ he said, looking over my shoulder to confirm his suspicions. ‘Kind of, but isn’t it weird me going to yours…’ ‘Not at all. In Poland we leave an empty space every year for the stranger. Most people never have someone to use that space but it is possible. It is just me, my mother and father. It is too much food for so little people.’ ‘Ok…thanks, that’s really sound...just let me get changed first.’ ‘No problem, we are in nine, see you soon.’ I went back inside, took a shower, threw on some cologne and a polo shirt. I was a bag of nerves. Unfit to be reintroduced to society. I looked at my face in the mirror before leaving. Gaunt and pale. A Christmas ghoul. I went upstairs and knocked on nine. The old woman opened the door, a wave of warmth tinged with spices flew out behind her. The scent of a loving home. She pulled me inside and kissed me twice on the cheeks. An old man appeared and shook my hand. ‘Jestem Ryszard,’ he said. ‘Jestem Donal.’ ‘Dodo?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donut?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Ahhh,’ he said, slapping the air before disappearing into another room. The old woman took my arm and led me into a siting-room. There was a massive Christmas tree by the window, the top of which was slanted towards the floor. It was weighed down by the countless strings of lights wrapped tightly around its body. All it was missing was a ball gag. The old woman pointed at a leather couch. I sat down. There was a coffee table in front of me, a faded Marlboro place mat in its centre, on top of which were two wooden bowls. One filled with oranges, the other walnuts. ‘Patryk,’ she shouted, as she waddled towards the kitchen. The young man emerged with two open bottles of Tyskie. He offered me one. ‘Cheers,’ I said standing up to take it. ‘Sit,’ he said and joined me on the couch. ‘And what is your name?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Patryk,’ he said extending his hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, noting how his grip like most men I’d shaken hands with, was an over-the-top display of strength. ‘And where in Ireland are you from?’ ‘Dublin.’ ‘Nice. I like Ireland, fucking drunkland. I had some friends from there, always drinking Guinness. How did you come to Poland?’ ‘I moved for a girl originally.’ He nodded. ‘That is always the way. And where is she now?’ ‘We broke up last year...’ ‘And you stayed?’ ‘Yeah, there was nothing for me at home.’ ‘I felt the same when I lived in Leeds. I said there is nothing for me in Poland…but you can’t escape your homeland in the end.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and connected it to the Bose speaker beneath the TV. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ he said. Tears began to roll down my face before Shane MacGowan had even begun singing. Does this seem a bit too contrived? Is there ever a knock on the door except in a movie? The old woman and the young man carried on up the stairs. I am stepping into the wardrobe as soon as I finish these lines. What was the point of writing this scene? Well it’s to tell you that in the end, connection isn’t everything. By that I mean human connection. The last person I think of certainly won’t be you. You couldn’t even be bothered to text me on fucking Christmas. To see how I’m doing. To see if I’m ok, all alone in your strange country. It won’t be your face I see as the world turns black. It will be Cassie’s.
Needful men, undisciplined men, look at me, and keep looking at me. My sense: it is out of compulsion. They like what they feel when they’re taking me in. They want to have more of that feeling. This boy, nineteen, thereabouts, is different. He camouflages the work of his glance in little shows of expression: it is as if he is tangled in thought. Then he goes back to his work on the page. He’s drawing. Drawing me. I say, “Let’s see it.”The boy has also hidden the fact that he’s seen me approaching his table. He blinks, unbothered, holding my gaze. I get that he’s managed to flip a page in his sketchbook. Sleight of hand. He says, “Pardon?”I smile and give a nod at the book, which the boy then turns to display. The drawings feature a man, the same man. In a sense, they’re pretty faithful: tight and scrupulous acts of capture. In another sense, they are secret romance: attuned, by weight and shading, to the question: what this person shows. Who this person is. I say, “Those are good.”“Thank you,” the boy responds, as if glad to be sure of his lines. I say, “Let’s do this.”Which is my line, and which I’m also glad to be sure of. But it’s true: I feel like I’m ready. Like I have been waiting, and for a long time. I see the boy deciding not to act like he doesn’t know what I mean. I see him looking at me in a new way. More the usual way. I peer at him. “Do it,” I say. “Turn the page.”
There’s a tee ball league for grownups. You have to be thirty-five to participate. Thirty-five is the cutoff. If you’re younger you’re not old enough. Joe hit a homer his first time at bat. We cheered and gave him back and butt slaps while he rounded the bases. We hoped to do the same. There was real glory to be had. Trisha hit a double, which is pretty respectable. Donny bunted, we think it was a joke, but Donny seemed ill-humored. Perhaps it was strategy? In the bottom of the seventh, the last inning, I came up to bat. Joe (who was going for the cycle) suffered a pulled hammy, he couldn’t risk further straining a muscle he hadn’t used in decades. I wasn’t supposed to play. I had just joined the team. They didn’t seem to want me at first but I had an in with the coach. He’s my stepdad, Greg. Greg always let me do stuff with him. All I had to do was beg. Before I got up he slapped my back, spit tobacco on my shoe, and told me if I didn’t win this one for the team I’d be a total failure, like Mom.
FLOOD II
There are species that didn’t make the ark. Some were not chosen. Others simply chose not to board. A gator with monkey fists. A cat, but there were already too many cats. Opossum like reptile with gills. There were chickens that could move boulders by clucking. Plenty of orphaned dog breeds. A monster that sang sweet songs of remorse. Something called a Liptirloot, which cannot be compared to anyone or anything. Unicorns never made it. Neither did the winged liger. But none died. They’re on the bottom of the ocean, biding their time. In the underark. Huddling behind a gate caked in salt.
Being a girl inside Blue Park is insanely humiliating, but I am prepared to weather the storm. I am cased in my androgynous armor of enormous jorts from the early aughts and a baggy N-Sync shirt that subtly signals irony in an overtly post-ironic way — the mustache finger tattoo of my generation. God bless me, I am positively swimming in a sea of cute boys. I feel like I am in a fanfiction, but I am way too ugly to be Y/N and no one here even cares that I am reading Nietzsche’s Collected Works. Nonetheless, I am doing my best to project an effortless cool, the kind that all guy’s girls have, like the one in sexy clothing who is offering me a hit of her blunt right now. It is an act of solidarity, not friendship, because she is not my friend, just my friend’s girlfriend. I no longer have girlfriends after what happened to Dasha. I also don’t go into the ocean.After I watch the boys skateboard in the concrete park I follow them to Joe’s concrete apartment building, where I am allowed to watch them watch skate videos or even watch them play Tony Hawk’s Skate 3 on Xbox 360, or possibly PS2, I’m not really sure. It’s part of my research as I build an internal lexicon of tricks like bean-plant and sex-change and Casper, like the ghost. I perform my silent assimilation ritual secretly on the couch and before anyone notices I’m one of the freaking boys. I can smoke weed if I throw in, I can do a line if I Venmo Joe $5, I can have a Coors Banquet tall boy if I steal it myself and quickly enough that I don’t keep them waiting. I don’t think about Dasha or the ocean or the ghost and the boys don’t think about me. Sometimes they sleep with me and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they get it up and sometimes they don’t and for some reason none of them ask me to be their girlfriend, even though I am doing such a good job of being just like them. I’m pretty sure it’s because they somehow found out I’ve seen every single episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, even though I wipe my web history every time I watch it, but it could also be that I’m ugly. It also could be that they think I’m a lesbian simply because I bite my nails and have a strong jawline and can’t afford to buy weed and shaving cream at the same time so I keep choosing weed for five years, but I kinda don’t think it’s that.The “third space” is the basement called Heck, where people with dyed hair and gender troubles play the sounds of rattling chains and creaking door hinges off of sub-bass speakers that got broken from being left out in the rain. The boys throw their bodies at each other and I throw my body at their bodies and we all laugh because violence is funny, especially with your friends (they taught me this). A girl dressed like me is there and she makes all the boys laugh and I wonder what her secret is until one of the boys says she’s a lesbian. Figures — everything good happens to people who don’t want it anyway. She asks me to bum a cigarette and I pretend I don’t have one and I turn red hot with embarrassment from lying and also maybe from all the body heat. One of the boys gives her a cigarette and she doesn’t even have to Venmo them $1, which is insane. They are monkey-fucking and my heart swells with jealousy and also maybe some other unparsable passion, I’m not sure. The lesbian is breezier than a windchime and laughs twice as loud and I swear I’m not that funny. She wants to smoke weed after the punk show together in my apartment, nearby and covered in dust and ash and socks that smell bad. I say yes because saying no is harder and also I’m out of weed. I’m probably not a lesbian but I’m sure it will be fine. She rolls us a spliff raw dog on my Amazon plywood coffee table and she explains to me an episode of 30 Rock and all her favorite jokes in it and I say “Wow that’s crazy” seven times and by the eighth time I realize I should probably say something else so I say “Wow, that’s… insane.” It’s here that she decides to kiss me.“Her lips are so soft,” I narrate along in my head, preparing for how I will describe this to the boys at Blue Park. I figure if we can talk about fucking pussy together I will be better girlfriend material. I am choosing which boy I want the most in my head when suddenly the lesbian pulls her lips away from my lips. I am worried for a second that I did something wrong, but also kind of relieved that I won’t be munching box or whatever, until she looks at me with that’s amore eyes and says: “Have you ever seen a ghost?”I haven’t seen a ghost but I have seen all one million thousand episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race in shameful secret. I haven’t seen a ghost but I have seen Dasha follow one into the ocean and never come back. “I haven’t seen a ghost, but I’m sure you have, so… what’s the story?”Usually “the story” is a painting that fell off the wall in your great aunt’s house, or a shadow that passed by your bedroom window of a childhood vacation home and the floorboard creaked from the weight of its absolute spookiness, and every once in a blue moon the story is that a ghost with my name and my haircut is drowning you in the ocean and you are swallowed by the water and the night and all the void-like things that haunt them. But the lesbian doesn’t have a story. “I see ghosts all the time,” the lesbian is like. “There’s like two ghosts in your apartment right now, and they’re both girls. One of them looks kind of Russian. The other one looks kind of like you.”Then she tries to kiss me again, but I am too busy being haunted by Dasha and the ghost that once replaced me in her life. The lesbian calls herself an Uber, muttering under her breath about how expensive it is to sail just halfway across Brooklyn until, finally, she leaves me alone with my ghosts. The Google search “Do lesbians have higher rates of schizophrenia” yields unsatisfying results. Thankfully RuPaul’s Drag Race is already open in another tab, God bless me, and I drift into the ocean of the night, the sea of sleep, and dream of ghosts.
Sybil unsticks her thigh from the side of the banana boat. She’s been lost at sea with Celeste for sixty-one days now. Sixty-one salty-aired days of morning dips and back floats at sunset. Stolen sandwiches dropped by seagulls into their laps, lunches and dinners enjoyed over chats about everything and nothing. Don’t feel badly for Sybil and Celeste—the old women are coasting. In the sun, they spread their arms and tan their skin, speaking like sailors. They laugh so loud and deep they make waves.At nighttime, Sybil and Celeste lie down and hug the banana boat—Cary Grant, they call it—their heads almost touching in the middle. When the sun rises, they sit up and say good morning to schools of fish already on their way.To people on land, Sybil and Celeste are a news story, a sensation. But “presumed dead” would be sublime, they agree. Not everyone cares to be found. Some days, they lament what they miss: screwball comedies, scented candles, omakase. They’ve found, though, that unobstructed stars at night are a panacea for missing.When they’re feeling especially light, Sybil and Celeste lift the stray oar from the foot area of the banana boat. The one that drifted to them thirty-something days ago. HAPPY CAMPER, reads the blade’s inscription. Sybil and Celeste use the oar as a microphone for karaoke—today, Sybil sings Sinatra, later, Celeste will channel Elvis. The oar takes them to stages big and small, where the main act performs for a one-person audience, each show the greatest on earth.
Everything has an end — even stars, but still, when I caressed your face that morning, my fingers panicked at the cold of you.Steadfast for thirty years. Every Friday night we dined at our favourite restaurant, ordered spaghetti aglio e olio and a glass of Chablis. You sat opposite the fish tank where the blue groper circled, I sat overlooking the ocean. Remember you whispered, that’s no life.I didn’t think I could go on; cloven heart, heft of silence, but I kept up Friday nights for as long as it took, sat opposite the fish tank, declined the Chablis. I didn’t give a fig about consequences. I mean, what did I have to lose?I dressed for the occasion in my white silk blouse with the cameo carved from conch shell, the silver necklace you cast in delft clay for me, your old military pants rolled up and belted, black tactical boots from the OP shop. I tucked my hair into your green beret.I moved like a sapper to the restaurant bathroom, kindled a smokescreen from damp lichen and twigs. Orange flames crackled and hissed. Gliding through the plumes and wailing alarms, I swept the blue groper into a sack, cradled him down the path to the waiting ocean.Every Friday night since, the smell of salt and seaweed are a salve. I sip Chablis from your hipflask, light a tea light, settle it on a bed of swamp she-oak bark — gentle it out. Watch it bobbing.
Back then, the law center sat in a squat square flanked on one side by a free needle exchange and on the other by a flophouse that rented its rooms by the hour. I was late to class. I think it was Civil Procedure. One hundred pairs of eyes calculated my chances of failing as I took the only seat available in the first row next to her.She had red hair and green eyes and the kind of adorable tipped-up nose that I have always wanted to have. She came from a working class Irish Catholic family with priests and nuns dangling from foreshortened branches of the family tree. She was the first in her family to attend law school.I was the child of immigrants. We lived on the wrong side of Los Angeles in a cinder block house with Westinghouse Appliances in avocado green. My family consisted of engineers and mathematicians and no one who worked in words. Somehow I assumed life at an East Coast law school would be no different from my college days in sunny Southern California, where a girl could bop about braless. At law school, I could not understand all the attention I got. It shocked me to see my undergrad housemates snort cocaine between lectures, that other classmates took uppers or downers to ease the stress of exams. Neither she nor I had the money for recreational drugs. We had made it into law school against the odds, fueled by scholarships and parental sacrifice. We had no choice but to succeed. I don’t think my parents wanted me to climb the social ladder. I think all they wanted for me was financial security. But I was reckless in those days. I thought I could still run away.I have photographs of her from our first year in law school. The shots are all bad. Dark, out of focus, without any context to tell me when or why they were taken. Surprisingly, we all look happy.By day, we students were competitors in a zero-sum game that would lead to a summer associate position at a prestigious law firm or a clerkship with a prominent judge. We were graded on classroom recitations of case law and at Moot Court competitions. Maybe everyone was smiling because the gloves had come off for the night. Here’s a photo of her and me sitting behind what looks like a piano, my glasses thrown on the closed lid but still in view of the camera. My hair was long then, down to my butt. The only thing that shines in the photo is her smile.Here’s another one with her and three of our classmates. Everyone’s shirt is buttoned up high. She always wore blazers or plaid shirts. I thought, at the time, this was an East Coast thing.This one shows her and me and my housemate on the front steps of the law center. We’re facing the law school parking lot, perched at the end of a no man’s land and the projects that spread from there. The sun has already gone down. My housemate and I look cold. We’re still layering clothes in an attempt to acclimate. She wears a long white cardigan open over a brown checked shirt and dark brown corduroy trousers. She holds herself slightly apart as if she’s a casual bystander or needs to stop herself from doing something stupid. Her green eyes blaze. In all these photos, I am relaxed and smiling and utterly oblivious of the jockeying that is going on around me in plain sight. The family connections, the alumni associations, Mom or Dad putting in a good word for Junior before the first semester grades are released. She and I have no one to give us a leg up. We’ll have to do it all on our own.When Thanksgiving came around that year and she heard that I wouldn’t be going to Los Angeles, she invited me to come home with her. I was grateful for the opportunity. This would be my first break from law school and I was eager to get away. By then, I had been cornered in the library by a classmate who was a fellow Angeleno. He had dark curly hair and alert eyes that calculated the value of what I wore from my hair clips down to my sneakers. He didn’t have to ask which side of town I came from. He said, wow, you must have struggled to get here. It was the first time I thought of myself as deprived. She told me to forget about it, I’m pretty sure. She knew what it was like to have slurs flung at her head. By Thanksgiving, we had been the closest of friends for almost three months. By then, I knew what she wanted. She thought I was the one, the woman she would love for the rest of her life. Together, we would run from the future her family had planned for her. For this dream, she was prepared to pay the highest price: ostracism from her family, excommunication from her church, every branch and twig cut off until nothing remained but a trembling trunk.I remember that her home stood on a steeply sloped street. I remember a clock ticked loudly in the hallway. I remember an afternoon when everyone went to church except us.In the front room stood a couch that was surprisingly hard all over, as if it were too good for the family to use. It was covered in velvet upholstery, perhaps, smooth on my skin, in dark green or maybe that was the color of her eyes. A crucifix on the wall promised salvation. White skin revealed freckles in the most surprising spots, strangely cold to the touch. We had sex on that couch. It was the first time with a woman for either of us.I call it sex because that’s what it was for me though I knew even then that it meant something different to her. When I count the number of sexual partners I have had, I am tempted to call myself a predator. But that term would imply I had intentions. A more accurate description of my sex life then would be that of a rock stuck in a riverbed of streaming water. She happened to be running up that river and I got in her way.No, that’s not true either. I was running, too, from a man who had convinced me that I wasn’t worthy of love. In those days, I would fall into the arms of anyone who would take me in his stead. At law school, that fall, she and I crashed into each other, headed in opposite directions. I didn’t think of myself as queer at the time or, for that matter, now. We’re all queer, aren’t we, albeit to varying degrees. In another time and place, we might give in to our Sapphic urges. But society imposes norms and families project expectations. In those days of Cyndi Lauper and androgynous boy bands, you could only buy wedding cakes with a man and a woman on top. Few of us had the strength of mind to choose desire over the path of least resistance.She had the narrow shoulders and hips of a ten year old boy and a stiff-legged walk as if she wanted to seem dangerous. She had a low-timbre laugh not easily evoked but when she did let it go, her voice hummed in my throat. She chose a queer life knowing the cost. She was playing for keeps.The fact that she wanted me was enough reason for me to throw the dice. If by doing so I might cause harm then that was part of the game.I cannot remember how long our affair lasted, whether it was a one-night or a two-night or a several-week stand. I like to think we would have stuck it out at least until exams had passed and everyone could retreat for Christmas. In any event, I’m pretty sure that she and I did not talk about what you might call our future.Turns out that we never needed to have that talk. Turns out she was pregnant by some guy she met on the Greyhound bus, at least that’s what she told me. Turns out it didn’t matter that she didn’t know his name or where to find him because it was an ectopic pregnancy that went undetected until her Fallopian tubes blew her into the hospital. I wasn’t there when she was put into an ambulance, though I heard after the fact that she could have died. Her family clamored for her to come home. I could imagine her back in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by loving parents and siblings. But that would have meant giving up law school, re-applying next year, maybe getting rejected. She refused to go home. She had run this far. There was no going back.While she recuperated, I brought her my lecture notes and copies of law journal articles. Together, we poured over Property and Contracts and Criminal Procedure case law. She didn’t need to study very hard. She was better than me in all of our classes.I don’t remember what we did for fun on those long wintry afternoons, other than gossip about our classmates. Who was fucking whom, which of our classmates had flubbed their recitation of the day’s case, who was already angling for a clerkship. I think I made her laugh and cooked her dinner. I’m pretty sure I did everything she wanted me to do except fall in love. As soon as she was strong enough to attend class again, I ran. A few months later, I moved into a new student house with another group of law school classmates. She and I no longer had friends in common. We would only see each other in the carrels of the law school library or milling about the hallways between classes or by the vending machines in the basement. Then, we would smile broadly at each other as if we were still the best of friends. Somehow I thought all that tutoring I had done while she was recovering from her ectopic pregnancy was enough to prepare me for exams. I almost failed law school that first year. My grades were so bad that my chances of a decent-paying job were close to zero. Any sane person would have quit law school and gone home to lick their wounds. I would have taken a bath financially but I wasn’t thinking about debt. I had never failed a class in my life and was not about to start. I applied to a law journal and was accepted. My road to success re-opened.Was it cosmic retribution then to be robbed at gunpoint? It was late at night. There were three of us leaving the library and we thought we were safe. The parking lot was, after all, on the other side of the street. Our assailant found us among the cars. He could not have been more than twelve years old. He looked like the kind of boy I grew up with on the wrong side of Los Angeles. Different color, same lack of prospects. When the view from the window shows broken-down tenements and abandoned cars and white people afraid to walk on your side of the street, what else can a kid do but run? We gave the kid what we had and let him go.As I approached my third year, job-hunting became my priority. I had a financial aid job in the Student Placement Office. Normally, I could do my research in peace. Suddenly, my classmates were thumbing through files of prospective employers: public or private, Wall Street or Main Street, in-house or outside counsel. We would all have debts to pay upon graduation, even the richest among us.Throughout law school and long after graduation, she and I lived in the same city. For all I knew, we were never more than a few subway stops apart. She went to work for the government. The law firm where I had spent time during law school as an intern and later a summer associate took me on full-time. My starting salary was more than either of my parents had ever earned.There were three of us associates who started together. We unironically called ourselves the Mod Squad. How else to describe a trio of friends: the white man, the Black man, and the Asian Peggy Lipton? For our first few weeks, we worked by day and bar-hopped by night.At our firm, on the bulletin board, next to the coffee machine and above the free donuts, hung a list of every lawyer at the firm and the number of hours he or she had billed in the previous week. I stayed in the office until nine o’clock every night when FedEx stopped accepting packages for overnight delivery. My cohort knuckled down. All the same, our Mod Squad disbanded by the end of the year. Not all of us could meet the monthly billable hour quota. It wasn’t like government lawyers had it any easier. They lived under the pressures of budgets, legislative sessions, and a personnel shuffle each time the administration changed. I could have learned more about the life of a government lawyer. We could have met for drinks like other young professionals did. We might have reconciled. Instead, I turned her into a distant memory that hurt only when touched.A decade after we graduated, I saw her for the last time. I was married by then and had recently moved to The Netherlands, where I was struggling to find my footing. I longed for the familiarity of the States where I thought I understood how things worked.I don’t know why I thought that seeing her again would be a good idea. It had to have been my idea because she could never have found me in Amsterdam. I wonder now how welcome my overture was.In any event, she agreed to meet. As the local, she got to choose our rendezvous point. An organic farmers’ market had sprung up not far from our old law center. I remember navigating my way past mounds of local produce and coffee roasters and hanging plants in macrame pots. I think it was wintertime because I remember that the light was sharp that day and the lines around her eyes cold and clear. She had a certain hardness to her jaw that I did not recall. She was beautiful, if a little tired looking.I wish I could remember what we discussed. All I have left is a spatial memory: how stiffly she stood, her back as straight as any soldier’s, always more than an arm’s length away from me. A rebuke perhaps, an acknowledgment that I had wronged her, the expectation of an apology? We left these matters unsaid and I flew back to The Netherlands.There are days when I forget her last name and I wonder whether I made it all up. The me that I am now keeps my hair short and my shoes sensible. I don’t have sex on couches. Insofar as I long for those days, it is the sanitized version I play back, the one in which my intentions were always good. On other days, the heat of her laugh rises in my throat and that green velvet couch spreads beneath my thighs as smooth and hard as ever. Then I have no choice but to look for her on the internet, both curious and frightened to see who she has become. I find housewives, nuns, obituaries. Surely she would have run faster and farther than that?
Bushels of sargassum had washed up among the rental chairs. They clogged the beach. And so, fittingly, the day began with disappointment.Marjorie hated it, done up in strawberry print and pale as the moon with sunblock on her little face, thick like cream cheese. She scooped and hurled the stuff away from the chairs, scowling, haranguing the clods of seaweed.Gracie, implacable behind her sunglasses, rummaging through something on her phone, wouldn’t look Paul in the face.Paul toed the pile before his chair. “It’s got berries. We’ll make wine out of it.” Gracie frowned.“I have our tagline: ‘It’s not gone off…it just tastes like that.’”Their daughter made a move for the water and Gracie half-stood, but the little girl sat instead to pout in the damp sand a yard back from the water, to throw into the surf a limp plastic shark, and Gracie settled back into her seat.“It just tastes like that,” Paul said again.The sun climbed and bore into their left sides. Their little girl returned to the work of casting off the seaweed and asked, as ever, for the hundredth time that morning, “Will you play?”Paul took a branch of the sargassum and gave it a long sniff. “Notes of ocean water and fish butt.” “Will you play with me?”“It’s the answer we’ve been looking for–we’ll have to move down here to set up the vineyards.”“Will you play with me?”“I guess we’ll have to cultivate in the ocean. How much is ocean per acre?”Gracie groaned and put her thin hands over her face.“You’d think it’s less than beachfront, at least.”“You play with me.”Gracie lifted her hands, their shadows imprinting on the tight skin around her mouth. “Who are you talking to?”
***
By the pool, Paul still watched Gracie’s face in profile while she watched Marjorie swim with two brothers around her age, one probably younger and the other older by as much. She’d asked the boys to play; she’d ask anyone.Paul asked Gracie, “Why are you mad at me?” He couldn’t stop himself asking.“I’m not mad. Everything is fine.”If Paul ever heard the expression “everything is fine” again he vowed to pick a direction and run forever. Forever for his body would not be long or far, but he hoped his soul, such as it was, might propel then from his eyeballs and keep going at least a little farther.For now he climbed down the pool steps and swam to the deep end and floated there. And just as on each prior afternoon, he recognized that he did not care if he sank or emerged or simply dematerialized. “That’s my daddy,” Marj told the boys.This brought him back. He sang, “Do do, do do,” went under, holding one hand up vertical like a fin. When he caught hold of his daughter’s ankle, she didn’t squeal or kick. The thin bones of her ankles felt reedy and the clouds came across the sun and Paul closed his eyes and lay there long as he could, until she pulled away.
***
On the pretense of buying ice cream for them all, Paul went down to the taco place across the parking lot from their condo and waited in a long line to order a drink. He’d been sober almost seven years. When the sandblasted Heidi asked his order, Paul teared up. She opened her gray eyes wide, as if to say, This isn’t the line for existential crises, and he ordered a rum and Coke. He never used to drink rum and Cokes. He’d drunk beer, which made him fat, which made him uglier.It occurred to him, squeezing into a stool at the far corner of the bar, away from the lines for drinks and tacos, that he might be feeling sorry for himself. That seemed possible. He took a sip. It helped, a little. The weight of the guilt of breaking another promise to Gracie never fell onto him. It just floated up there with the rest of it. A woman near his age took the empty seat beside him despite a good line of empty stools stretching back to the crowded part of the bar. “This seat taken?” She looked him dead in the eyes.“No.”She resembled his high school sweetheart, or at least how he imagined her twenty years later: small face shaped like a heart, round body, hair dyed an aggressive crimson, very tanned. Maybe local, though this bar seemed to be for tourists. She wore a Gov’t Mule t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. “I’m Jen.” “Paul.” They clinked their glasses. He took a bigger drink and the rum curled his lip. “Guh.”“Not much of a drinker?”“No. I always think I’ll like it. Whiskey.” He looked at his drink. “Rum. Whatever. It looks good on commercials.”She slugged her drink, which looked like rum without the soda, and smacked her lips. “Love it.”“It just tastes like what it is. Like you put corn or wheat or whatever in a barrel and left it there and forgot it and then came back and poured it in a glass.”“Well you got some soda pop in there. That should help.” She muttered something, maybe “pussy,” and killed her drink.“Did you call me a ‘pussy?’”She gave him another long look. “What if I did?”Paul considered this. He didn’t have an answer. He said, “I’m not,” but didn’t believe it.“Put your arm up,” Jen said. She slapped the bartop.“I’m sorry?” Paul pulled back on his stool.“Do it, pussy.” “Are we going to arm wrestle?”“You’re goddamn right.”He won without much effort, but when he’d pinned her hand they left theirs clasped on the sticky bar. Paul’s last clear thought before he made himself let go and take another drink was, Buddy, this is getting out of hand.
***
They grunted and tried to dry-hump in the front seat of her SUV, some kind of Jeep, but didn’t fit well behind the steering wheel. Paul wished like Hell he’d look out over her shoulder and see Gracie likewise straddling some douchebag somewhere in the half-empty parking lot. Maybe also in a cobalt-colored Jeep. But all the Jeeps were empty save this one, steaming up.“Yes,” Jen stage-moaned.Her butt-bone dug into his thigh. “Shift a little,” Paul said.“Ooh.”“Uh huh.” Just as things became pleasantly frictive, Jen pushed back till she squashed against the wheel and said, "I don’t know if I want to.”This was a relief. “Me either,” Paul said. “I already feel guilty.”“Me, too. I'm married. We're separated. I came down here to spend my savings and drink myself to death, I guess. Like that Nicholas Cage movie.""Face/off.""Yeah." Jen reached down to the console for a pack of Camel Lights. "Let's just talk.""Ok. It's kind of hot in here.""I didn't mean dirty talk.""I wasn't.""Tell me something about yourself, Paul." She stayed on his lap and felt in her shorts for a lighter.Paul thought. "I always park in the same place at the grocery store so I don't have to look for my car.""That's honestly fascinating.""It is?""No, Paul. I wish you'd told me any other thing in the world."“Where’s your husband?” Paul tried not to sound peevish, but mostly everything he said these days did.“Home. Birmingham.”“Why are you split up?”“He wants me to stop drinking. I told him I’d quit the first of the month.” Today was the tenth. “My wife told me I had to ‘get over it’.” Paul waited for Jen to ask about “it.” She did not. “I think I want a divorce. I’ll probably tell her about this. That’ll do it.”“Don’t tell her.”Paul ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know how not to.”“Just don’t.”“That’s the problem. I just do. Every little thing that bothers me, it’s like I have to. It burns in here if I don’t.” Paul rubbed his solar plexus."OK, tell her, then. Sounds like it won’t matter. Because I’m sure she didn't mean to marry a big whiny bitch." She slid into the passenger seat and lit her cigarette.Paul considered. “That’s probably true.”"She must be a profoundly strong woman to put up with you. You should run back to her fast as your mismatched legs can take you." "I forget my legs are different sizes."They both regarded Paul's legs. Jen frowned. "I'm afraid I never will." Paul coughed and popped open the driver’s side door. "Well, enjoy drinking yourself to death." He hung in the doorway, waiting for her snappy retort, but when none came he looked back at Jen's tight-lipped profile. She stared ahead at the sunset through the steamed-up windshield. This was a record, two women he'd put that long face on in a single afternoon.When he'd made it halfway to the cross walk toward the beach he looked back and saw Jen pouring the last of a bottle out of her window. She nodded to him and jumped the curb and screeched off toward highway 98.Or anyway that's what he pretended he'd seen, not looking either way at the intersection, just watching his legs carry him to the water.
***
At the showers by the beach access were a few sandals and someone’s boogie-board leaning against a splintery railing. It wore the Tasmanian Devil and seemed too small for Paul, who stole it anyway. If he’d ever stolen anything before, he couldn’t recall it. He thought someone might shout for him to stop, but there was no one around.By sunset the beach was empty save the kid who rented chairs who stood up from his tented kiosk and welcomed Paul by name. “I just broke down your chairs,” he said, apologetic but not offering to set them back.Paul waved him off. “Thanks, Brayden.”“Hunter,” the kid said, still apologetic. Paul nodded and headed in. The tide was out and he had to walk a good way before the water reached his knees. One family watched him from the sandbar.He waded to the bar, went over into deeper water and began to float on the boogie board. The water was warm and he paddled out, unhurried, wondering how far he could get. There was some kind of fishing boat puttering along the horizon. When he looked back, the beach was far and someone–probably Brayden–stood cupping their eyes and looking out, probably at him. He waved; the person didn’t wave back.The waves came heavier and he had to hold on to the boogie board to keep it under his flabby torso. The family on the bar were looking out at something his way. Here it is, he told himself. It’s time. He really wanted another drink, shuddered away the image of Jen in her Jeep, glad at least not to have to explain that to Gracie, or anyone.Out of habit, he still imagined himself explaining, how he’d bring it up, what combination of words would yield which response. He didn’t know how to stop. But what he wasn’t imagining, despite blinking hard several times and wiping the salty haze from his eyes, despite truly hoping that he was, were the sizable dorsal fins trolling toward him from farther out to sea. The people on the sandbar shouted.“Fuck,” Paul said.The sharks neared. They circled, two fins, one significantly larger than the other, like a mother and child, perhaps. A father and child. He was going to die as some kind of hunting lesson for a shark.He held very still, but the circling closed and closed. He tried to pull himself up entirely on the beach board but the scrabbling only seemed to excite the sharks.He decided to try something. He lied to himself. Paul, you can fight off these sharks.It helped. He said out loud, “I’m OK. This is going to be alright.” And just before the shark clamped down on his leg–the smaller shark on the smaller leg–he finally had it, just a glimmering thought, but halfway to a plan that possibly might save his marriage.“Ah, fuck!” It really hurt.
***
In the end, he did fight away the sharks. In his shrieking and flailing he kicked something several times. It didn’t fight back. He must taste bad, was the only logical conclusion. The sharks circled. They trailed away, possibly regrouping.When his panic ebbed, he felt himself and found what he guessed to be a decent tear in his calf. Blood came smokily up in the water rolling around his board.For once, his mind was truly blank. Then there was a great noise and he violently peed himself. It was an air horn blast. The fishing boat had spotted him in the dying light and shone some kind of spot his way. It trundled on. Somehow he knew the sharks were gone.Any semblance of life-altering epiphany had voided with his bladder. He let go of the board, slipped into the water with his eyes closed, and shouted away his air, his breath bubbling and his head immediately light. He was deep enough to turn all the way over and with his head facing down he kicked out his arms and legs and sank. He opened his eyes to the saltwater, expecting silty purple-black, but found instead a tawny haze. Then it was like he could breathe in some kind of air bubble, and in the golden light he saw someone, a person, smiling at him. A radiant woman. She wasn’t a mermaid. She had on a pastel blouse and very kind, pale blue eyes, and a gnarled hand with swollen knuckles reaching out for his. He took it. It was his mother, who he’d not thought about in maybe a week. She shook her head and held his hand. She looked into his eyes and then Paul rolled over into the purple-black and kicked up into the spotlight of the fishing boat.
***
After the old couple had helped him aboard with a rope and a lot of undignified scrambling, his shorts halfway down his ass, his leg bleeding on the boat’s slick beige finish, Paul sat in the cockpit with blankets around him and a towel done up on his head. The old lady had gone somewhere out of sight looking for a first aid kid. The bite on his calf was curved and long as a hand.The old man, Hank, sat above him and worried with a radio. “We watched you for a while but you seemed like a strong swimmer. We didn’t think anything until we saw the sharks.”“That’s OK,” Paul told him again, touched, honestly, to be called a good swimmer. He loved compliments.“What were you doing out there?”He was cold. It was hard to remember. “I guess I meant to drown myself.”“Huh.” The old man, Hank, turned that over in his head. “Well, we could get you out past the sharks a ways and let you out.”The old woman, Joanne, was back in the cockpit with a box and flashlight. She gave her husband a long look, shaking her head. “God damn it, Hank.”
***
The last of the sun burned out and the navigation lights glowed so that the horizon dimmed away and they were just rocking on the purple-black. It might well have been outer space.Hank gestured around them to the boat itself. He’d been extolling it for a while, Paul thought. They were borrowing it from a friend. “If we buy it, we get to name it, of course. What should we call her?”Paul knew without thinking. “Sweet bitch of the evening time.”Hank squinted at Paul, turning this too over in his head. “Did you say ‘time’ or ‘tide?’”“Tide.” Paul liked that better.
***
Heading in, Paul played out what he would tell Gracie. He thought about seeing his mother and that she wanted to tell him something. What was it? What had he been thinking before the sharks attacked?“What was your name?” Hank asked.“Carlos.” He lied, and felt better, and it was coming back, the answer to everything. He leaned against the cockpit railing and closed his eyes. “Carlos Santoya. My folks are from Spain.”When the dock came into view Paul said, “Hey, I think I was just in shock before. I wasn’t really trying to drown myself.”“Oh yeah?” Hank frowned. “Nope. I was training. Boogie boarding. Walton County, regionals.”“Regionals?”“Oh yeah.” Paul nodded with big emphasis. More emphasis than he’d had in years. All of it, surging back.
***
He came into the condo wild-eyed, angry for no reason that Gracie wasn’t waiting at the door, and found her on the couch, Marj sleeping with her head in her mother’s lap. Don’t blow it, he told himself, knowing that he was.She asked, “Are you OK?”“No. God, no. I need to go to the hospital.”She looked at his bandaged calf.“Did you get hit by a car?” “No!” Paul’s hands curled into fists, which Gracie hated.“You don’t have to.” She looked down at Marj, awake now, feigning sleep. “You don’t have to be an asshole. Where were you?”“It doesn’t matter. I need to go to the hospital.”“Let me see it.” Gracie reached for Paul who pulled back.“Not for that. Not that kind of hospital.”And they were fighting, and the girl was awake. Before Paul could get a handle on himself, she was carrying Marj into the bedroom, locking the door.
***
That’s how Paul imagined it, provided the old Paul. The elevator smelled like cat urine and some kind of slime glazed the carpet. He braced himself at the door, punched in the code and slipped in quietly, limping, laden with ice-cream.Marj slept in the bottom bunk and he knelt there and tousled her hair.“Paul?” Gracie looked asleep, and scared, standing in the kitchen.“Sorry, babe. What a night!”“Where were you?”“Let’s get this in the freezer.” He limped there for effect. “I went to talk to Brayden about the chairs.”“Who? Hunter? The chair guy?”“Yeah, and there was all this pandemonium.”Only now did she seem to notice his limping.“Oh my God!”“People were running around. They were pointing at something in the water.”“Oh my God.”Paul closed the freezer. “There were some kids out there and this lady was just yelling, ‘Come back, come back,’ and people were watching. The lifeguard was dragging over a kayak or something.”“You went in?”“Well, I’m a pretty good swimmer. But it was just instinct. I didn’t really even know what was happening. I went in with my shoes and everything.” “You got bit by a shark?”“A little one.” Paul held his hands apart yay far.Gracie made some kind of squeal and wrapped him up. Marj climbed out of the bunk bed, mostly asleep, came dragging her blanket and wrapped up their legs.“Oooh, easy,” Paul said. But it didn’t really hurt. “Daddy’s a hero,” Gracie said. She was crying hard into his shoulder.“No, no,” he said. “It was the lifeguard who got the kids.”
***
Later, with Marj back asleep and the ice cream containers stuck to the coffee table with the spoons standing up together, Paul and Gracie held each other on the couch.“I’m gonna fix everything.”She squeezed like maybe she believed him.“Oh yeah?”“Oh yeah.”She pulled back and put her hand on his collarbone, her eyes wet. “I want you to know, you don’t have to change yourself. You don’t need to be a different person for me to love you.”He pulled her in. “I know that.” He grinned over her out the balcony window. Lying felt better and better.She called him a hero again. He let her. “I guess I am,” he said. He tried to push away any kind of questions. The only one kept resurfacing was, what now? How does this end? Maybe that’s what his mother wanted to tell him. She’d seemed worried. That had been her way. But not now, maybe. Why should she? She was like a mermaid queen all gold and radiant in robes that billowed in the undertow, emerald scales. Or maybe she wasn’t. She’d just been his mother, underwater, quite unhappy. Her pale eyes pleaded. She was mouthing something, but there wasn’t any sound, of course, underneath all that water. Probably she’d wanted to tell him not to start this. You light it, you build it up, you’re glowing and you’re billowing, it seems like you’re coasting over, it seems like the answer, but when do you stop feeding the fire?He looked out into the dark toward the ocean where heaven must be. He wished he could tell her. It was OK. For once he had the answer. You never do. Not ever.
Me and Johnny replaced our eyeballs with corn on the cob. One cob stickin’ out of each socket. Buttered. Went in easy. Johnny’s aunt, Joann, said, “Stop that, you boys need your eyes!” We said, “Shut your trap, ya old hag!”We ran into the backyard. Could see just fine. The cobs fell into our skulls and bumped around as we climbed into Johnny’s treehouse. He dared me to dare him to jump from the treehouse to the grass, which was uncharacteristic. I dared him to jump from the treehouse to the grass. Johnny jumped from the treehouse to the grass and broke his right leg and right hip bone, and then we weren’t allowed to hang out with each other for three and a half months.
