Morning was a novelty, something out of a coffee commercial. It was the first morning I could remember not waking up with a hangover or with a feeling of guilt or dread hanging over my head. Like the sky was just waiting for me to look up before it rained down in pieces on my head. A feeling that had been so pervasive that I didn't notice it until it was gone. The window in the room was open and I could hear the waves breaking on the beach. The sky was still a dark blue and the sun was just starting to come up. From where I lay all I could see were the stars retreating before the oncoming day.

Downstairs I sat and drank coffee holding the cup with both hands. The warmth was comforting. Across the small dining room sat a good looking couple, dressed in high-tech hiking gear. They couldn't have been more than two or three years older than I was, but they radiated something I hadn't seen in so long that I didn't know what to call it. Happiness? Success? They sat close together, talking and smiling, sharing some inside joke or maybe making plans for the day. They were sharing breakfast from one plate.

I imagined their life together, so far from the casual relationships and the drunken hookups. Mornings like this one where they shared breakfast. Seeing each other at the end of a long day. I wondered which of us were the freaks. Is that what life is really like, people falling in love, getting married, planning vacations and eating muffins together? Or was it just the grace period and eventually life would get in the way and their mistakes would piled up between them until they resented the sight of each other? Would it be an affair or just the "I don't love you anymore," deadpanned over undercooked pancakes one Sunday morning. Their smug happiness grated on my nerves.

When they were done eating they smiled good morning at Jean and went out holding hands. Once they were gone I felt drained, exhausted like I hadn't slept at all. The anger was gone and in it's place I felt empty. I desperately wanted to know if they were going to make it, if there was redemption for any of us. I desperately wanted to believe I wasn't so damaged that I couldn't find whatever they had myself.

Dear god, I hope they make it, I thought. But I had nothing to bargain with and no faith, just my vain hope.

Outside I walked through town. There were a few new cafés and restaurants and a few places that looked like they'd been around for a while but I didn't remember them. The Solar Café was still there. I smiled and thought about going in but didn't. Someone had opened yet another surf shop on the corner.

The campground was still there but they'd added an RV section. Row after row of what looked like tour buses sat parked with their generators on. The noise shook my teeth. I wandered around for a while until I found the trail Sarah and I used to hike to the tops of the cliffs. I stood there for a moment staring at it. I traced the path with my eyes to where disappeared over a low rise. Finally I turned around and walked down to the beach.

I was standing at the water line with my shoes in my hand watching a couple of kids build a sand castle. I liked their attention to the details. They'd taken their time crafting each wall, each building behind that wall. One continued to build the castle back away from the water while the other was digging an impressive moat to save their work from the incoming tide. He was madly shoveling the sand away with a red plastic bucket.

It was then that my cell phone rang. Immediately I felt bunched up inside, sick. There was no one I wanted to talk to. There was nothing left that I had to say. I took the phone out of my pocket and one of the kids looked up at me. I didn't bother to look at it, just reached back and pitched the phone as far as I could into the ocean. It rang the whole time and I saw his eyes go wide as he followed its trajectory. He looked at me in surprise after it hit the water and I just smiled and turned and walked back up the beach.

I spent the rest of the day bumming around town doing nothing. There was a used bookstore that doubled as a coffee shop. There was no one in there and after I had my coffee the kid at the counter pulled out a sketch pad and continued working on whatever he'd been drawing. I tried to catch a glimpse but couldn't.

The next day I walked down the beach as far as I could go and found a Mexican cantina that sat on the spit and overlooked the water that catered almost exclusively to the young surf crowd. I sat in the back corner at a small table and listened to their conversations, pretending that I wasn't alone. The place wasn't fancy, rough wood floors and people had carved their initials into the tables. The chairs were mismatched but the food was cheap and it was good. The walls were covered in pictures of surfers from all around the world. Some were signed and most weren't in frames, just stuck to the walls. Every once in a while the chef would come out from the back, a heavy Mexican man dressed in a dirty white t-shirt, and talk to people as they came in, laughing with them before taking their order. There was one waitress, a cute girl with brown hair and a swimmer's body who everyone seemed to know.

In town it was the beginning of the tourist season and mixed with surfers were fat pasty families from the Midwest. Down here though you'd never know it. They weren't going to walk all the way down the beach to enter a dark cantina with a crooked sign. It was perfect.

---

Chapter 21 | Suicide and Keg Stands Index | Chapter 23

Posted by Ben Corman at 11:45 AM

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