Night Drive: A Love Letter | Alexander T. Damle

    It started coming out of a concert late at night, up state in Fort Collins when we needed to be home in Denver by morning. Normally, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. That late and you could hit a steady ninety on the freeway, be home in an hour. But the entire stretch of highway between the cities was closed for maintenance all weekend.

    We asked around, Thomas and I. There was a back road that would take us all the way home, a guy we knew told us. Through the mountains. It would take a while, four hours for what should’ve been more like one, but honestly I welcomed it. A drive through the mountains, that time of night, a few days before I headed back to college? It sounded beautifully peaceful.

    So that was it, I guess. We looked up the route on Thomas’ smart-phone, figured it wouldn’t be too hard to navigate, and started out. We said goodbye to the folks hanging around. It was bitter-sweet. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing them again for a good long while. I knew, too, that every time I came back, we’d be a little farther apart, until, some day, I wouldn’t even bother picking up the phone when I was in town.

    For almost an hour we found ourselves headed more or less due south along lonely back roads, the speedometer pushing steadily upwards. We cut straight down the state, mountains to the right, plains to the left, distant lights of Denver illuminating the horizon in front of us in a luminescent haze.

    The steering wheel slipped easily between my hands, comfortable, second nature, almost. Press and depress gas, brake, adjust heading. The windows were open, blowing our faces with a steady blast of cool, crisp summer air. Occasionally those back roads through nowhere were punctuated by towns, small and cozy, my sense of nostalgic Americana disrupted by all the empty store fronts. Rural gravestones to the decline of American idealism. I felt the ghosts of an earlier generation pulse through those empty streets, American Graffiti adolescence playing out through my head like a melancholic Elvis Presley.

    My mind drifted back to my own childhood. All the long nights in high school, cruising around the suburbs with friends, windows open, music too loud. What felt pointless then now feels welcome, a warm reminder of a life that seems easy going and simple in retrospect.

    Thomas and I talk on and off, quiet remarks about the beauty of our landscape, the scarcity of other traffic on the roads around us. I’m scared that it’s gonna be over too soon, that I’m going to find myself pulling into my driveway, going to bed, the night lost to the depths of my memories alongside the ghosts of all those high school friends.

    Then we were driving through Boulder. An icon of the state, but my memories of it are limited. A New Years Eve spent wandering through half empty streets, looking for something to do. A sad goodbye to a friend I haven’t seen for years on a hot summer night god knows when. Broken fragments of past lives. The sort of thing you try to forget, cause’ you know if you hold on, you’ll just cut yourself on the shattered edges.

    With little warning, we were clear of Boulder proper, shops and middle class homes replaced by trendy mansions on either side of a road quickly sharpening into ever steepening curves. Then the mansions were gone and the streetlights too and we saw the last car we’d see for about an hour. I began to understand the sort of drive I was getting myself into as the speed limit dropped to thirty and I considered briefly that even that might be a little bit high, given all the blind turns jumping out at me.

    As we hiked higher into the mountains, our few words turned to a reverential silence. This is it, we both thought, this is home, Colorado, U.S.A. Beautiful, impossibly beautiful. The sky was clear, and above us we saw all the Milky Way spread out, free from the pollution of the city lights.

    My head got lost in that sky, flitting between the bright points of light against the velvet darkness, each blinking star a comfortable, cozy respite against all the unknown in between them. I sucked in a breath of fresh air, smelled, practically tasted the pine and cool mountain breeze. I flew through that sky, the steering wheel now little more than an afterthought, even as my reflexes became hyper-aware on the ever-tighter curves. I remembered the faces of a whole collection of people I haven’t known the names of for years. With each one came a bittersweet shard of memory.

    We turned a corner, and, interrupting an hour of forrest was a lake, small, but still unexpected in the midst of all the pine and lonely roads. Nestled in tight against the water was a small town, and unlike the ones we passed earlier, this one seemed alive. Of course no one was out by that time of night, but all the shops and homes were lit up bright with Christmas lights, despite it not even being September. Immediately the personality, the love of the place jumped out at me. I considered briefly that I wished I’d grown up in a place like that- it just seemed so much more inviting than a faceless suburb- a place to love, a place to remember, a place to come home to. Alternately, it might be the sort of place one, try as they might, would never leave.

    The town disappeared, and once again we found ourselves surrounded by forests, climbing deeper into the mountains. Thomas and I were silent. That town is ingrained forever in my mind, even now, remembered better than the face of the man who sat next to me for the hours of the drive. I’m not sure why- it was, after all, just another small town. Maybe it was the christmas lights. Or maybe it was one of those great points of light against the black, a bastion of the comfortable in amongst the yawning unknown

    I wonder if I’d even recognize it, were I to find myself back there. Or if I’d even want to. It seems to me that the moment was, in and of itself, far more perfect  than the reality could ever be.

    Once again I sank into the easy rhythm of back roads and low speed limits, tight turns and blind corners. The wind drifted restlessly through the trees around me, and I let my arm hang out the open window. I remembered back further into the depths of childhood.

Driving through the mountains with my dad, going to Breckenridge to ski. It was late and I was tired, awake only in the casual manner of a long time stoner, gliding along the open road, my dad driving next to me with a casual ease. And the music, the music is what really holds the scene together. It was well before I started really listening to music, but even then I knew this album. My dad had been playing it in the car for as long as I could remember. Even now, all these years later, its my favorite album, Born to Run. American in a way that apple pie can never be, America in all its beauty and strength, all its crime and poverty, restless idealism in the face of unrelenting tragedy.

    No album will ever speak to me like that one does, and that’s not just the Boss’ lyrics. I was raised on it the same way I was raised in Colorado. It will always be my dad, it will always be home, it will always be the open road. In the worst moments and the best, its always the first album I put on. Every word, every chord, known to my heart as the face of a lover.

    We began to see road signs again. Blackhawk was coming up in not too many miles, one of the few places in the state where gambling was and is legal. I’d never been before, as far as I could remember, just seen it on TV.

    Without warning, it was upon us, and let me tell you, after all those miles of small towns and back roads, seeing it like that was a bit of a shock to my system. It was in the midst of a narrow valley with rocky sides, the casino buildings shooting up high into the sky, seeming almost improper in the midst of all that nature. The whole thing was lit up in overwhelming shades of neon, pinks and greens and purples, blue and gold and red, pulsating, pounding, pushing energy, grabbing hold of your attention and refusing to let go.

    The stars my mind had been stuck in all night began slipping, and with them the whole world around me. The endless mountain roads, the neon-illuminated pleasure scape, the towering buildings against old trees and older rock, they were all becoming something out of a broken, stuttering acid trip.

    I took deep breaths of the night air to try to clear my head. I considered briefly what would happen if the sort of people living in this place two hundred years ago saw it on that night. It would be as if we were to wake up and find ourselves on an alien planet, impossible geometry tearing down even our most basic frame of reference, bright pulsing bulbs hitting hard at our inner corneas.

    As the buildings began to shrink, then disappeared behind us, I got a sick feeling in my gut. If we were through Blackhawk, it meant we were almost home. Timer was just about up on the night. I tried to hold on to the last half hour or so of it in silence, simply letting the peaceful beauty of the night air wash over me.

A Fleeting Thought | Theland E. Thomas

    I see a beautiful girl as I step off the train car. She has flowing, brown hair and soft, dark eyes, and she smiles at something on the screen of her phone.

    I take a step.

    I wonder if she would go for me. Or if she would go for that guy in front of me? What do girls even like? Buff guys? Even if I become buff and toned, I’ll never be a hulking hunk. Not that it matters. I could just hop back on the train...

    I take a step.

    Suddenly, the idea overtakes me. I alter my course and push the button to reopen the train doors. They yield to me with a hiss, and I step back in. My heart pounds in my ears. It’s OK. Be calm. Fear is only the feeling you get when you’re about to cross a threshold. Well, that’s what I tell myself.

    I take a step.

    Why am I doing this? Because I’m so lonely? Because I have a lot of love to give? Can I handle this?

    I slide into the seat across from her. Her big, brown eyes catch mine, and she offers a smile. I try to reciprocate, but I know from experience that the corners of my lips have barely budged. That I look like I’d rather not be communicating with another human. I feign a glance across the car - a thinly veiled opportunity to give her a once-over. Knee length floral skirt, legs crossed, earbuds in, empty train car, she may be wondering why I chose this seat.

    Well, I should probably do this. The shuttering of the light rail fades as blood rushes to my head and limbs. My heart thuds. OK. This is it. Just- c’mon, it’s not that bad. But don’t be awkward.

    “Um…” I start with a slight hand motion toward her, palm up.

    She glances up, eyebrows raised and with that smile again. Is she one of those naturally nice and friendly people? They’re fascinating.

    “...Hi.”

    She pulls one white bud out of her ear, and her hand hovers near her chin. “Hi,” she says.

    I gulp. My face is burning. Now conversate! Small talk! “Sorry to interrupt your tunes there…”

    I trail off. My mind is blank. I literally can’t think of what to say next, so I just introduce myself and extend my hand. What is this, a business meeting?

    She leans forward to shake my hand, uncrossing her legs and tucking them beneath the seat. “Nice to meet you. I’m Chloe.”

    “Nice to meet you,” I say. I love that name. It just sounds pleasant. Suddenly, I’m encouraged. Maybe it’s the adrenaline pumping through my veins. “Well, I was - um… just wanting to see if...uh,” Oh, my God. “Do you want to go out with me... sometime?” I glance up at her.

    I glance away. Images flit past the window, a slideshow of human life. Now, whatever happens happens. My stomach is twisted in knots, and my throat is parched, and my toes are clenched in my shoes. Should I have done this differently? How do people normally do this? I know nothing's like it is in movies, but I didn’t expect this to be so real.

    I look at Chloe. She’s staring right at me with a smirk on her face. “Sure. Why not?”

    I remember to breathe. Now I’m smiling too - a real one this time. An unquenchable ear-to-ear grin. “Cool!”

    The tracks squeal as the conductor brakes. We quickly exchange numbers, and I stand to up to exit, saying, “I’ll see you soon.”

    I’m walking, and I take one last look at the beautiful girl - her flowing, dark hair, her soft eyes, and her sweet smile.

    And I take another step as the train pulls off, carrying away the girl and the daydream.

Colfax Avenue | Alexander T. Damle

Small-town southern Colorado spreads out across a half dozen miles, painted in amidst mountains and desert plains, the town itself built out of that dull, mid-century architecture that runs like a bruise across this land, a place where no one comes from because no one ever goes, peaceful and quiet as far as these things go, trailer trash psychopaths and alcoholic assholes aside, but that black Dodge Challenger with an angry-looking blower sticking out of its front parked in front of the community bank seems to argue otherwise, what with the bored looking twenty year old perched in the front seat, one hand on the wheel, one on the shifter, checking his watch, checking the door, watching, looking, listening, sweat running out of his too-long, cheaply cut brown hair into his eyes, dripping onto his tanned skin, the radio crackling out about hundreds dead in a shooting in a Denver suburb, thousands in some terrorist attack in a towering city far away, and the kid slides the dial to some classic rock number, taps out the rhythm on the steering wheel, while inside the situation is beginning to reveal itself as the pretty red-head, tan as her boyfriend waiting outside, waves a shotgun and screams at everyone to “STAY THE FUCK ON THE FLOOR YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” while a bank employee stuffs small bills into a trash bag, and standing on the counter with a wild look in his eyes is a dark haired 15 year old wearing a Metallica shirt, and he’s scanning with his AK-47, modified up to full auto, watching, looking, waiting and the tension in the room rings and buzzes and everyone is coated in a layer of dust and grime, cheap clothes all soaked through with a nervous tension cause just cause no ones shooting now doesn’t mean they won’t and the guard, his Sig kicked off across the floor, lays flat on the ground but then some stupid fucker who wants to be a hero goes for the silent alarm, a big red button under the counter, only the crazy badass with the Kalashnikov sees it then everything goes completely, totally, absolutely fucking fubar, and he lets off a spray of gunfire and people start screaming and the woman putting the money in the bag stops and he starts screaming at her, gutteral and practically incomprehensible, and no one has any idea what the hell is going on, they know this kid, he’s slow, sure, but he always used to be such a good kid, and all those shooting trophies are looking really menacing right now, then he sees or he thinks he sees the guard start to move across the floor for his gun and he lets off another spray and everything erupts and there’s screaming and crying and more sprays of rifle fire and then a harsh, thudding blast from the pump-action in the redhead’s freckled arms, and there’s blood and gore everywhere, and someone throws up and a woman is screaming, trying to hold on to the life that’s fast escaping out the giant hole in her middle, and the redhead is screaming at the wild one and they’re screaming at each other, and one of them grabs the garbage bag and they’re out the door and they’re frantically piling into the car, the kid in back, and the driver is asking what the fuck happened and they just tell him to drive and he puts the car into gear and the blower’s going and the car hauls ass down that main street heading south, and the wild one, well he’s loading in a new magazine, and the look in his eyes is even wilder, then they see a cop, they knew that guy, they grew up with him, what’s his name, he was at her sixteenth, he knows her dad, but now he’s leveling his glock at the car and a shot rings out and it strikes the badass in the shoulder and blood sprays everywhere, across the leather, across the windshield, the driver, the redhead’s hair redder, but the kid doesn’t even seem to notice, and the cop is on the ground screaming, holding on to what looks like hamburger meat, crying out for his mommy but no one hears him because the engine roars loud, then its gone and there is a juddering silence echoing long down the street.

We three set out across the desert as wanderers, looking only to find something to look for. Our grand scheme, our plan, our “this is our only way” now lay broken and bleeding on the floor- what should have netted us tens of thousands had brought in just $2390, a bullet hole in an arm, and a half dozen dead bodies. When we got into the car and told Johnny to drive, to get us the fuck out of Dodge, he looked at us with a sadness in his blue eyes that I’ve never seen before.

I love Johnny, I think. I mean, I don’t begin to understand why. Sure, he’s handsome enough, funny, but he isn’t the smartest guy, the most interesting... but I guess in this town being handsome, funny, and normal is the best you can hope for. So long as he isn’t... off... like his brother, Adam, well that’s just about the best I can do. Adam isn’t so unusual, not in this time, in this place. We all grew up together, and every year it seemed to me there were more Adams, more babies born just a little broken. It seems to me everything in this place is just slowly running down, towns becoming deserted, people leaving and dying. The very country is decaying slowly like a piece of old meat, the mold and fungus spreading out and killing everything good and wholesome.

Johnny won’t even look at me now, he’s just driving, eyes on the road, the desert spreading out on either side of us as the mountains get farther and farther away and we haven’t heard sirens since we made it out of town, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find us, come after us. A lot of people are dead and its my fault, I know that. After all, Adam is slow. And this was my idea. I figured it would be easy, steal some money, go to Mexico, easy. I didn’t reckon on Adam, I suppose, and now we’ll pay for it. I know already this will end with our deaths.

Adam is bleeding still, but its like he hasn’t even noticed the pain. All we have is duct tape to try to hold the wound closed and it helps a little, but still he bleeds and still we drive.

“We need gas. Soon. The blower...”

I point vaguely at a faded road sign- “There, a couple miles.”

We’re driving on one of the two lane highways that wind their ways across the forgotten spaces of America, held still yet sacred by the last of the wanderers and the gasoline junkies. Our search for fuel takes us off that road and into a town was called Fordston, back when anyone still bothered to live there.

All the store fronts stand crumbling and empty, windows shattered, brickwork going all to pieces in a red, pasty dust that seems to hang in the late afternoon air, casting the light in a chalky pink. We pass a motel and we aren’t alone in this place- another old car stands in the parking lot and Johnny slows as we pass to look because it looks recently driven, broken fender and rusted hood aside, and as we roll past I see eyes watching us from between the curtains of a broken window.

Then the gas station is upon us, looking brand new and shining, bearing the logo of some big oil company. There is a clerk inside the little shop, and he looks young and clean. The whole thing is absurd, out of a bad trip.

Johnny pulls the car up to the pump and gets out.

“Amy, you pump. I need to take a piss.” He walks off in the the direction of the bathroom, and I stare after him for a moment before I get out of the car. Adam pushes my seat forwards and follows me. I see he’s still wearing a 1911 on his hip and this makes me wary. Then I see the blood drying on his arm and before I can say anything, he catches me staring at it.

“Don’t worry about me. I will be okay.” Then he holds up his hand, half cased in a dried red shell, and he curls his fingers to show me. I shiver though the air is still warm in the haze of early evening. I pick up the pump as a state trooper pulls into the station.

Adam and I begin to watch him, watch him get out of his car, watch him walk into the store, watch him chat with the clerk, watch him as the tank finishes filling, watch him as he walks out and starts to look at us.

The crack echoes loud over the old concrete, and my ears ring. The trooper stares at his chest as blood begins to ooze out and he looks like he’s trying to breathe but he can’t. He stumbles and falls and bounces off the hood of his car, hitting his head on the way down, blood now spraying in a floating, graceful ribbon from a gash across his forehead, then he’s thrashing on the ground, then another crack and blood explodes out of his head with a concussive force alongside chunky bits of brain and skull, and then he stops moving and I look to Adam.

“He would have stopped us.” All I can do is look at him, gun held in front of him, his pasty skin eating the sun out of the sky, big smile on his face. Then he sees something and I look at the handsome young clerk as he comes out of the store, and two more cracks in quick succession and the shop window is painted in a huge red stain and the kid slides to the ground. In the blood I see Christ on the cross. Adam holsters his gun and Johnny comes over to us and he can’t speak.

We drive through the night, sticking to back roads, moving in a brooding, crackling silence that feels like it could, at any moment, become a flash of violence. I watch America flee past me, towns drawn far away from our highway, little more than glows on the horizon most of them, distant vacation slides of young men and women moving around like we should be, in a sort of love unconcerned with the grand decay of it all, driving for the serpentine pipe-dream of freedom, not to chase it’s concrete tail. At some point that night I switch on the radio, check if they’re looking for us, and I hear about acts of terror and violence all over this idea that someone once called America, and it occurs to me that no one really cares about us anymore.

As the sun rises, I turn my head to look at Adam- his eyes are bloodshot, his boxy features strikingly brutal. His face is taking on a primordial tone, and where I once saw innocence now I see corruption. Everywhere around us all is corruption, rotted out husks of towns, junked old cars, broken frames of a million woken up from American Dreams. As we approach the border it only gets worse and I consider images on television of a war on drugs turned to a total war on the very notion of man.

I figure, we get to the border, that’s it, end of story, end of life. There’s no way we won’t be recognized, arrested, or more likely, just gunned down, because I guarantee you Adam isn’t going peacefully and I don’t think I will either- there’s nothing left for me in this world. Not for me or for anyone else.

We crest a hill and what we see is utterly unbelievable- desperate, clawing, violent chaos at the border, flames licking tall at humanity’s underbelly, gunfire on both sides. Border security looks harried and broken already, crouching behind wrecks of cars and concrete barricades as what I assume are cartel members bare down on them, seemingly unaffected by the swirling storm. These aren’t kids with kalashnikovs anymore, no, these are hardened soldiers, their souls power-washed in a baptismal spray of blood. I look to Johnny and he looks grimly over to me, turns on the blower, and slams the car up through the gears, past the gunfire, through the checkpoint, and then we’re in Mexico, just like that.

When we get a few miles from the border, when the gunfire finally fades into the distance, Johnny slows down and I see him shaking.

“What the fuck... oh god what the fuck...”

“Looks like we picked the right time to send our lives to hell, cause’ it seems to me the whole world’s following.” I shoot him a grim little smile with the line.

Eventually we come to a town, the architecture less old Mexico than Soviet-style concrete, all cracked and broken. There are bodies everywhere, men and women and children, some gun shot, but many more cut with knives, strangled, beaten. Organs and entrails spilling out of cavities across the bodies, festering sores of destruction of the flesh itself. Lives now just piles of gore littered with flies and maggots. The smell is intolerable. I think of saying something but I don’t. We pass a kid, can’t be more than four, five years old, and there’s the world’s biggest vulture picking at his guts, pulling out his lungs, then the bird looks up at us and in those eyes all I see is humanity, and I know I should feel sick, but I don’t. I just feel tired.

Out of the town we pass cars surrounded by men with guns. The cars are souped up low riders, the guns blinged out, covered in big stones and gold, and these are real cartel, the look of hyenas in their eyes, a thirst for blood. And they start to follow us and I yell to Johnny, but he’s already seen him, and the blower is back on and he jumps the car off the asphalt, onto the yawning sands of the desert.

The western landscape billows out around us, sun soaked and beaten, cacti spots of green scattered across the white sand, all sketched beneath the wide blue sky. Golden cliffs lie a few miles ahead of us, and I hope we’re not going to run up to a wall, because they’re behind us already.

We bear up on the cliffs and we see our salvation, a narrow gap in the rock, and after the opening we find ourselves in an arroyo, a narrow stream cut through a high walled canyon, and I can’t be sure, but it looks like there’s a way out at the far end. Johnny sees the same and he guns the car through the sand.

And then all at once the car is fishtailing, and Johnny is struggling at the wheel, fighting it like an animal and he’s losing and he screams “FUCK!” but I hear the word in my head before it leaves his lips, a tire gone flat and the angriest motherfuckers on earth right on our tail and Johnny and I freeze in shock horror but Adam doesn’t, instead ripping the door open, pulling us out with him, just as the gunfighter-wannabes pull into the arroyo behind us, and the canyon is filled with echoed explosions leaping wall to wall, slamming into our ear drums, and I take cover behind the car, let off a round from my shotgun, feel the thing leap with a thudding force of god, and I hear rifle rounds slam into the side of the car, the entire thing rocking with their force, and I look up and Adam isn’t even taking cover, instead he’s standing tall, holding the Kalashnikov pressed hard to his shoulder, spraying rounds in the direction of our attackers, and I peer my head out briefly and I see a bullet enter a man’s eye with a pop, then I see blood and brains spray out the back of his head onto the guy behind him, then Adam drops to one knee, slams in a new magazine, god knows where from, and he’s up and firing again, and he looks to me and he winks and mutters something about his brother not being a real man, and with that Johnny has his Glock in his right hand then Adam’s 1911 in his left, and he stands too, and he unloads both guns quick-like, and I watch my beautiful man shoot like Chow Yun-Fat glowing hard in the sun, but then a bullet slams into him and he screams out as I see a long bit of flesh start to snake out his side, sun glinting off his large intestine, and he’s on the ground screaming and crying, and Adam’s saying to fucking move as he starts pulling me by the hand but Johnny isn’t moving, he’s just laying on the ground screaming and there are more bullets now, then Adam points his gun at my man’s head, and I scream out and I can’t watch but I know I have to as I see his skull crumple then explode outwards in a wash of red and white and I feel sick as the warmth of his brains spread out across my blue jeans, and then Adam is carrying me in his arms, sprinting for the back of the canyon, and I wonder how he’s isn’t getting shot but then I feel his body rock with a great force as if hit from behind but he doesn’t seem to notice, he just keeps running, then we get to the back of the place and I start to cry because I see there’s no way out, but Adam hardly seems to notice, instead he sets me down and all he says is “Are you ready?” and I stand next to him and we both start firing like its the only thing we have left because it is- my mind wanders as men’s bodies are ripped apart before us, flesh and blood bone all exposed, made hollow and naked and raw- my mind wanders and I remember kissing Johnny at a football game in high school, fucking him for the first time, his body supple beneath me, planning our futures together, but I find myself not giving much of a fuck, not about him or the men bearing down on us hard, and I look up to Adam and he has a satisfied smile on his face, not the smile of a happy moron, but that of a man enlightened, and then I feel a slug hit me in the chest and my body is ripped round by the force of the thing, and the shotgun drops from my hands, clattering uselessly to the ground, then a second time I’m hit and I feel it all begin to slip away, my vision blurring out in a reddish, dusty haze, and as I’m laying there hearing the echoes of gunfire on stone, I look up at Adam and I see a round smack directly into his forehead, and he takes a hand from his gun, feels the blood, looks at it on his fingers with what can be described as no more than passive curiosity, then goes on fighting like its the most normal thing in the world, and he looks down and, despite the bits of brains and blood leaking out of his skull, he smiles at me, and, with my last act of living, I smile back.

The Black Deluge | Theland E. Thomas

It's one of my earliest memories. My feet dangled above the ground as I sat staring at the faded, yellow paint on the wall and inhaling that sickly hospital smell. I remember the inexplicable feeling of dread churning inside of me. It was the kind of feeling I could only place upon reflection years later. The memory is full of confusion. I knew something big was happening. We were leaving, and the car was full of packed bags. Daddy stood at the desk, checking us in. He wore a black and red striped polo and those tan, leather shoes he always wore. Next thing I remember, Daddy was leading me past the door frame into the hospital room.

I was crying because I knew we were leaving Mommy here. Why couldn't she come with us? I didn't want to leave her there alone. I didn't want to go away from her! I sat on the bed, and she held me and stroked my hair and told me how much she loved me. Her face was pale, her head bald, and there were tubes coming out of her nose.

I asked her, "Mommy, why can't you come with us? I want you to come with us!"

She smiled softly and said, "I want to come with you too. But Mommy needs these machines to breathe. It's not safe..."

I cried, burying my face into her body and clutching her gown with both hands, holding on with the intention of never letting go. I would do anything in my power to stay with her.

"I'll still be here when you get back," she said. I should have known she didn't believe it when her smile melted and tears flowed from her eyes. Both of her hands grasped mine, and she said, "Whatever you do, just know I love you. I love you so much, Noah. I want you to grow up big and strong and be the best person you can be. The most important thing you can do for me is live a wonderful, happy life, okay?"

It wasn't okay. I nodded through the sobs, hot tears rolling down my cheeks and snot filling my mouth. She said goodbye, and I screamed, "NO!"  and Daddy carried me out kicking and screaming.

I  couldn't understand why we had to leave her there.But, I remember staring desperately out the back window and seeing that pitch black cloud in the sky.

The next thing I can remember was Daddy and I in a dark room. He sat me down, wringing his hands. I asked him what was wrong. Then I asked him when we were going back for Mommy. He looked up at me, light glistening off the tears in his eyes. Seeing him choke up sobs made me cry too. What he said next was imprinted in my memory forever: "Noah. Mommy... mommy's gone."

Just like that, half of my world vanished.

They called it a tar shower. The thing that killed my mother. They thought it was just a hurricane at first. The evacuations were precautionary, but mother knew she wouldn't make it if the power went out. The world was shocked as news media broadcast footage from the affected area. It looked as if the entire city had been razed by some sort of explosive that deposited black soot everywhere. The buildings had been flattened, and only skeletons remained, reduced to their innermost structure and plumbing. Cars, street signs, mailboxes - everything left in open was completely evaporated under the thick layer of black. The world stood captivated by 24 hour coverage as the hazmat specialists announced their findings: the storm was worst case of acid rain in history - a mixture of oil residue, noxious material, and condensed greenhouse gases gathered in the clouds and poured down upon my mother and ate her alive. The thought of her screaming and thrashing as the tar poured in through the ceiling has always haunted me. My mother died terrified, suffering, and alone.

I never forgave my father for that.

He and I would have solemn, silent dinners, only communicating through the scraping of our utensils. Occasionally, he would try to start up a conversation. Ask how my day was. How school was going. Sometimes I obliged him with one word answers. He wanted me to become an ecologist. To find a way to end the tar showers for the good of the world. For my mom. To this, I responded with dead silence. I always finished my plate first, and, before I stood, he would look up at me with desperate eyes, hoping today would be the day we finally had a real conversation. The day I granted him absolution. Then I would stand, take my plate to the sink, and give him the same, "thanks for dinner, Dad" with a flat, hollow tone. No matter how many hours he spent in the kitchen, it would never be my mother making those meals.

The Black Deluge in California was only the first of many tar showers our angry mother Earth unleashed upon her rebellious children. Tar showers increased in frequency until they were a constant summer threat. They cropped up in routine storms and laid waste to whole towns. No shelter could shield from the wrath of the storms, the black acid eating through the sturdiest of buildings and burrowing deep into the ground. I always shuttered seeing the harrowing images on the news. The dyed bones of a little arm clutching a miraculously preserved doll, young storm chasers with death wishes attempting to live stream the destruction from inside the storms. All their videos ended the same: unbearable shrieking as the acid ate through their skin, bones, and phones.

Naturally, the fashionable thing was to become an ecologist, or anything related to the environment. But I wanted to stay as far away from the tar showers as possible. I refused to become an ecologist, but my mom's last words to me always rang in my ears. Whatever it took, I needed to survive. At the job fair, when all of my friends went to the ecology booths, I stopped by a business school. I moved across the country for college, and I never came back.

The years flowed on. I graduated and got married, and I got a job at a big oil company in the Gulf Coast. Rachel was so excited to move to Florida with our little girl. "We can go to the beach every day! It'll be great."

I tried to suppress the jolt of panic as I replied, "Yeah, you'll just have to be careful. Always check the forecast to make sure there are no storms."

"Ahh, Noah..." she said, reaching for my hand across the table, "We'll be careful. You know only 1 in 800,000 rain storms are tar showers."

I smiled then, even knowing that she worked for a conservative think tank. I thought she was right though. There was no use blaming the energy sector for tar showers when the leading ecologists' data was inconclusive at best. So, we moved to Florida. Tahlia was so fascinated by the sand and the shells. She frolicked in the teasing waves as I watched with my wife laying next to me in the sand. I remember grinning and thinking, This is it. I'm living a wonderful, happy life.

I worked on the rig a month on, a month off as a field engineer. My days there were spent in my office drawing up plans, printing blueprints, and bouncing strategies off coworkers. It was basically my job to prevent a second Deepwater Horizon. I failed.

One day, one of our ultra-deepwater pipes exploded. I watched my computer screen in horror as it, and all the pipes around it, flashed red. Later, the report said that a minor earthquake on the seafloor bent the pipe until it could no longer maintain pressure. Soon, through the madness and scrambling on the rig, I saw the black cloud of oil billowing to the surface of the water. As I stood there, one of our disaster analysts informed me that we had an estimated 10 days until the oil began to wash ashore. 10 days because an incoming tropical storm was going to accelerate the spread.

My hands shook as I tapped my phone to call Rachel.

"Hey baby," She answered cheery as ever.

"Rachel, you need to get out of Miami. There's been a..." I stopped, suddenly remembering protocol.

"What? What happened?"

"You have to get out of Miami. Cause... there's a tropical storm coming, and I'm afraid there's going to be a tar shower."

She sighed. "Noah, I know you're concerned, but we're going to be fine."

"You don't understand," I said panic rising with a fluttering urgency. Panic is a funny emotion. It's the emotion of the powerless. "The storm is going to pass through the Caribbean Islands and wrap around and hit Florida!"

"I can't fly out of town every time it rains, Noah! We're staying here, and we're going to bare the storm with everyone else."

There was nothing I could do. "Okay."

A brief moment of silence.

I added, "If they call for an evacuation, please just go. I love you."

"Love you too."

There was no evacuation. Some speculated that the oil spill might cause a tar shower, but the general public believed that they were completely unpredictable. So, the citizens of Florida hunkered down and waited for the tropical disturbance to pass. My thumb compulsively tapped refresh on my newsfeed until I saw the first report.

My heart plummeted as I read the words, "Tar shower wipes out Southern Florida", my chest tightened and breathing constricted. My stomach coiled as panic shot through my veins. I remember screaming. And falling. And nothing after that.

I'd had a heart attack. The doctors got it pumping again, but I still don't feel anything but the cold, dead, loneliness of loss. My wife and little girl are gone, and I can't even see their bodies. I can't stop thinking. Why? Why me? Why my family? Why did Rachel not listen to me? Why didn't I just tell her? Why did we even move down herethere in the first place? I keep having nightmares of Tahlia sitting next to my mother in that hospital room screaming for me to come save her. Those shrill, grating screams that can only come from pure agony. I twist and turn through the yellow halls, but I always arrive too late, and the black slush has already taken them away.

After I got out of the hospital, I went to Colorado. My dad moved there after I moved away. Back when they used to think that the tar showers only happened on the coasts. We quickly learned that there was no refuge from the merciless waters of Hell. He lives close to the mountains, on the edge of town in a little, beaten house with overgrown weeds. I give his door three sharp knocks. There is some shuffling and clanking inside, and soon the door opens. I gaze upon my father for the first time in years. His ample belly stretches his now faded black and red polo. Grey hair and stubble do little to cover the wrinkles in his yellowed skin. A spark of hope lights his eyes as he looks at me. It was the same look he'd given me at dinnertime for all those years. He gasps, "Noah? Is that you?"

"Yeah, Dad. It's me."

He invites me in. I try to ignore the bottles of alcohol strewn about. He gets a beer from the fridge and gives me one too, and we finally sit down at the kitchen table to talk.

"Noah," he starts, "your mother… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I’m so, so sorry." Dad falls silent, focusing on the label of his beer.

I stare across the table, realizing that even though I'd lost my mother, I'd pushed away my father. "I know, Dad. I'm sorry too..." There are no words I can say to make it better. Years of bitterness and estrangement won't go away with words. Tears well up in my eyes. "I... I lost my family." I start sobbing, hot tears rolling down my cheeks and smacking the table. "I lost my family to the damn tar showers."

My dad gets up and embraces me. He's sobbing too, sharing all the same pain, grief and loss. Years of bitterness and sadness are washed away by the mingling of tears and the sharing of suffering. We stay that way for a long time, father and son finally reconciled.

Then, he breaks away, saying with a heavy voice, "Well, you should go. There's a storm coming, and... I think it's going to be a bad one."

The tears burn a little as they dry on my face. I wipe them away. "I'm done running."

Dad looks at me and smiles, then he goes and sits down on the sofa. I open the door and feel the cool air that precedes the storm. The cloud of darkness comes racing over the mountains, blotting out the blue like a million strokes of black paint obscuring an already finished portrait. Lightning strikes overhead as the black cloud overtakes us, filling the air with the acrid stench of burning tar. I look to my dad. He puts his feet up and lays back, not even as much as glancing toward the window. Fat droplets of tar now splatter on the cement and grass. The wind picks up, and a few drops are blown onto my skin. They burn, just as I thought they would. I wipe a black dot from my arm with my shirt. It's left a deep red sore. And there are several holes in my shirt where the rain has touched. I see the sheet of heavy rain approaching - the black curtain that's ended the story for so many people is now about to end mine. I can't breathe for the acid in the air. I step back into the doorway, as if it matters. The first pools of black appear through the ceiling. Then they pour right through, a black deluge of destruction. The ceiling splits over my dad, and the acid washes away his skin. The muscles on his face peel and disintegrate as his bones are dyed a ghastly black. Now the tar pours on me. I scream as it burns my head and shoulders. I hold out my hands before me as the horrible, dark water eats my flesh to the blackened skeleton that dissolves into nothing. As the acid washes me, I go completely numb. My feet are gone, and I fall into the acid, the splash of the rain blinding me. It eats into my head and body from all ends until all I am is blackness.

A Bottle By the Sea | Alexander T. Damle

It’s funny how time works. That old line about a river doesn’t even begin to cover it. Time doesn’t flow forever forwards, it twists and turns, looping in on itself, years gone with a turn of the head, a smile or frown, decades built up out of nowhere, a prolonged absence, bad choices late at night in a seedy bar. On a metaphysical level, time doesn’t exist at all, it’s just a concept to explain motion, to justify us chasing our lives in circles, the way we live in the past or for the future, forgetting that the present is really the only thing that matters.

And then there are those things, hourglasses in teen fantasy novels, Deloreans in a few 1980s films, police boxes in a British science fiction television show, hometowns, songs, the voice of an old friend, those things that manage to outright cheat time.

I guess that’s where I ought to start- the voice of an old friend. Sweet and sultry, the accent British International School, with a honeyed hint of South African thrown in to add a bit of spice to the old formula. The face attached to the words is marked by the perfect bone structure of a model, exquisite skin, sculpted nose, soulful, piercing eyes of the face everyone looks to the moment it walks into a room. The body attached to the face is tall and blonde and intimidatingly well dressed, even here.The time attached to it all is nigh on ten years ago now, a different country, a different visa, a different hope and promise for the future. Different bottles of cheap booze.

The words are simple and straightforward- I’ve heard them a few times before.

“Can I get a beer?” The voice sets off an alarm bell in the back of my head. A million repressed memories fighting their way forward. But the words are so pedestrian, the memories don’t have a chance to break the surface. I answer without turning to her.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, honey.” I continue polishing glasses.

“Well, what’s good?” Just a touch of sass, a bit of sarcasm, and more charm than most of the wastes of life that pop up at this place.

I finally turn to look at her. The wheels turn. A dark medieval city. Coffee on a windy afternoon. A fashion show on a warm night in a Venetian Renaissance amphitheatre. Pains cut deep into my mind, etched down into the spots eternally clouded by booze, loud music, and quiet mornings. I see the look that slowly spreads across my face mirrored on hers. Recognition. Time suddenly gets seven kinds of fucked up.

“Jay?” She asks, hesitantly.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t expect to see you... here.”

“I didn’t either.”

“...What?”

“Uh... I’m sorry, this is just really... uh” On the list of really stupid ways to respond to the situation, this was pretty damn high.

“Okay...” She gives me a slight smile. Its at this point that I start crying. Not loud, shuddering sobs, but quiet, tragic, Fitzgeraldesque tears.

This? Now this is the absolute stupidest way I could’ve responded. Yet she doesn’t walk away. She stands in front of me, looking quite a bit like I feel- like my favorite childhood pet just came back to life as a really pissed off zombie. It’s not a great feeling. Finally, with all the grace and subtle, seductive beauty that made me fall in love with her that strange winter all those years ago, she leans across the counter and embraces me. It’s  not just a friendly, “You’re acting like a bloody idiot but you’re drunk so that’s excusable” hug, no it’s a proper, cheek to cheek, two people who meant something to each other back in the day and wished they still did embrace.

Finally she breaks away, hesitantly, it seems to me, though that may just be the booze. We stare at other for a minute. What, a second ago, seemed profound, just became impossibly awkward.

“Uh...”

I stare at her. Though she’s clearly older, she’s still as gorgeous as she was back in university. Still- some of that strange, ethereal glow that attracted me and everyone else to her seems to have vanished into the night. I really wish I could say that was just the booze, but its not. Some of the magic is gone. Maybe it never existed at all, maybe it was just the city, that time and place. Maybe it was all down to the fact that the man I wanted to be saw her as the woman that he should be with, her international upbringing, her work as a model, her raw, unpretentious intelligence, her openness to everything and everyone, the way she laughed at my grim, black as a Beretta humor, jokes that made most people grimace. The way she laughed. God damn I suddenly just want her to laugh.

“Ten years. You disappear for ten years, and now I find you tending some shitty bar in the middle of the Caribbean... Ten years.” I’m not sure if she is phrasing this as a question.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? All you can greet me with is a yeah?” Realizing she probably deserves more, I pour us each a shot of whiskey. She looks at the glass for a moment, then reaches for it, downs it. I do the same, then pour another shot, then two more after that.

I look around at the bar. My bar, I guess. I called it Jay’s American Cafe, like Rick’s in Casablanca. I guess that makes me Bogey. Not quite. The bar isn’t Rick’s either. At the back of the space is the bar itself; a shitty, balsa wood construction, scratched and scarred by a million bottles and glasses. A few beers on tap. More in the glass-doored refrigerator behind the counter. A few bottles of half decent whiskey on display shelves. In front of the counter, maybe twenty feet by fifteen. A few plastic chairs and tables. The roof is cliche tropical palm. The floor is sand. The walls in front are built with windows that open onto the sea, which lies forty feet from the door by high tide’s mark. It stares back at me, endless and black. I return to the scene directly in front of me.

I’m already four beers in, but I always could hold my booze better than most. Plus, it always takes me a little time before the drink kicks in. She doesn’t look to have that going for her. I decide we’re both drunk enough. So does she, apparently.

“Now you need to tell me where the fuck you went!” She emphasizes the expletive.

“I left.”
“You left?”

“I left. I decided I was burning away my life like I always said we wouldn’t.” She clears her throat at the sound of this.

“You said we.” This is a statement, an accusation, rather than a question.

“Slip of the tongue.” The words come out choked. “Anyway, I decided it wasn’t worth it, so I left.” The words come out sad.

“And then what, you left and then you just found yourself a barkeeper somewhere in the world's asshole?”

“Pretty much.” She just stares at me. She doesn’t look angry. She just looks sad. Sad she’s found herself in this conversation. I’ve seen this look from her face one other time. Last time she was asking me if I was in love with her. Of course she put it differently, diplomatically, politely, but words and meaning are often a far cry from one another. A boyfriend she said. Back in South Africa, I inferred.

I spent that weekend drinking and not sleeping and trying to tell myself I didn’t care, I’d move on. That was a year before I left.

And I did move on- we became friends, normal friends, and I was happy with that. Happy just to be around her, around that light and energy. In time, she became one of my closest friends in that place.

I never moved on. That rejection hit me so much more than any of the rest. Maybe because I threw so much of myself into making the ultimately failed play. Maybe because I got all the steps right for once. Maybe because I wrote a future I knew I couldn’t ever have into the idea of having her.

And then I left.

I can’t deal with that look again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...” The look is still there.

“We thought you were dead in a ditch in some forgotten corner of the world.”

“Aren’t I?” I ask myself. Outloud I finally tell the truth.

“I wanted to do something, say something, leave a note, write a letter once I sobered up, hell, some way of letting you know I was fine. But I knew. I absolutely knew. If I ever reminded myself of what I left, it would fucking kill me.” The look. “I deserve for you to walk back to your hotel and never think about me again.”

“You do.” She drops the look. And she smiles.

Then the most extraordinary thing: she laughs. That glow, that glow, I feel that glow. God I’d forgotten how beautiful it is, like ‘Clair de Lune’ on a rainy night, like the scene on the beach in The Shawshank Redemption, like that moment in The Great Gatsby in Nick’s parlour when you let yourself think that this time, even though its your millionth time reading over the words, that this time they’ll end up together. Maybe this time. Please god let it be this time. But it never is.

I ask the question I’ve been dreading.

“So what’ve you been doing over the last few years- I’m sure it’s better than tending a bar in a country where you barely speak the language?” She smiles briefly, and I consider that she might laugh again. But then a ghost passes behind her eyes.

“I’m still in modeling.” The way she says it; the slight tragedy behind her beautiful eyes. It kills me a little bit, a little bit more than the look she gave me when I told her all I’d managed with my life. She always wanted to be more, and god damn she could’ve/should’ve been. And I know that.

“That... I’m not sure... it’s... Audrey...”

“It’s  not much better than being dead in a ditch in some forgotten corner of the world.” We look at each other for a minute. I pour us another whiskey each. We both drink. She sways slightly, and I put a hand out to steady her.

I know how this ends.

It’s  near enough to the usual closing time by now, and official bar policy is that the bar closes when I say it does, and right about now is when I say it does. It’s been near empty all night anyway.

The refuse left in the bar: an extremely drunk Brit, ranting to an extremely drunk American about Parliament, who is ranting back about Congress. An Aussie woman who’d been in every night for the past week, asleep in a corner. That Guy, the one with an impossible to place accent who always sits in the corner with one beer for the entire night reading a book. The Brit and American are easy- a little pushing and they’re out the door; more engaged in their problems back home than in their night of supposed revelry. The Aussie is a little more challenging, but I manage it. I’ve had to do the same thing every night for the past week, just an hour or two later. I go up to her and tap her on the shoulder. I stand for a moment, as she slowly rouses herself. She looks at me.

“Go fuck yourself.” You’d think she’d be more creative. As usual, I follow this by calling her a cab back to her hotel a couple miles and a million worlds from here.

Finally, That Guy. Normally, he just leaves. Not tonight. Of course not tonight. I walk over to his table. I inform him that I’m closing the bar. Before tonight, he hasn’t said more than two words to me, limited to “pint” and “Guinness.”

“She doesn’t love you.” I stare back at him. “But neither do you.” I’m not really sure how to respond. Finally, I say the first thing that comes to me.

“No, but she’s a very old friend. The kind who deserves a proper catching up.”

“The kind who will break your heart.” He just stole my line.

“Get the fuck out of my bar.” He looks at me with a pained expression, as one might look at a child who just said something particularly stupid. And then he leaves quietly.

And we’re alone.

I ask myself if he was right.

“So, Jay... I guess we ought to catch up...” She’s audibly slurring her words now. Somehow it doesn’t match up with the record of her voice that’s played for years through my head. I feel remarkably sober.

We sit down across from one another at one of the cheap plastic tables. I look into her eyes, once a perfect blue, now slightly faded. I try to say something, but the words come out jumbled. Maybe I’m drunker than I thought. Neither of us says anything for a while.

“Was he right?” Her words remind me of that time I sliced my hand open right down to the tendon- I couldn’t really feel anything from the shock, but the very implication makes my skin crawl.

“About which... thing...” I’m stumbling in the dark for words to pull me back from what this could turn into, and the booze is making it damn hard to keep a hand to the wall and just walk a straight line. Then I tell the truth. “Yes.”

“Does it... does it really matter?”

“What do you mean?

“I mean its been a decade. We don’t even know each other any more. All we know is memories of past lives.” She’s right, in the wanna-be profound logic of a drunken fairy story.

“Then tell me what you are now.” The wanna-be profound thing runs both ways. “Married? Kids? Where are you living?”

“Not married, no kids... I’m back in South Africa, in Cape Town.” She pauses. “I guess I don’t really have to ask the same of you.” I shrug. “Although... where do you live?”

“A little shack down the beach- nothing fancy, but it’s all I really need. Or want.” We sit in silence for a few moments more.

Our eyes drift to the bottle in the middle of the table.

We’ve been drinking out of one of those big bottles of JD, the type you buy for one party and expect to have enough leftover for your next. Which really should preclude the next suggestion. I’ve never been one for modulating my alcohol intake anyway.

“Do you want to finish it?”

“Yeah.” The flatness in her response seems more to belong to me than her.

What happens next occurs in my memory in flashes, spots of light in a murky darkness, soundtracked by the dull roar of the waves.

Her lips against mine the moment we down the last few drops.

Her holding on to my arm for balance as I fumble for my key to lock the shutters in front of the bar.

Her sitting down in the surf, refusing to move, saying life isn’t worth it. Not worth moving, not worth leaving this beautiful spot. Her perfect stature illuminated in silhouette against the moonlight, the water pushing her skirt up her legs, licking quietly at the bare flesh. Me setting down next to her, her head on my shoulder. I tell her that it is worth it. I tell her that the world is a good place and worth fighting for. I’ve found over the years that quoting Hemingway is the one guaranteed way to make a woman fall in love with you, if only for the night. She turns her head and kisses me on the cheek. I pull her close and our lips meet, our bodies lit in stark relief against the sand and sea by the neon moonlight.

Us walking through the sand back to my place, our shoes held in our hands, arms around each other, holding each other up.

Falling together into my tiny cot.

We don’t fuck.

We sleep in our clothes.

Her in a gorgeous white summer dress, wet from the sea.

Me in a beat to hell pair of jeans and t-shirt.

We fall asleep holding each other close.

As if

If we let go

One of us will disappear around the earth’s curvature.

Eventually the sunlight stretches out over the sea, a million shades of pink and purple and red and yellow and orange, the palm trees cast in stark, perfect, emerald green and bronze, the sand a perfect shade of white. In the morning’s sobriety, the electric love that came to be in the night fades into a strange sort of smoggy haze.

I wake up and look at her body next to me. All I can do is stare. I lay there for a full hour before she wakes. I quietly ponder all the nights I lay awake considering her, back in that strange time when I thought I was in love. I remember back on last night, what that younger version of me would have had to say about it. Her eyes flutter gently open.

“Hey...” Her voice is sweet and tired, but there is an unhappiness behind it. “Did we...?”

“No.” She looks at me. I give her a slight smile, then sit up on the edge of the bed. She sits up next to me. We don’t look at each other, instead gazing down at our bare feet. I briefly wonder where my shoes went.

After what feels like an eternity, I suggest I make some breakfast. I fry up bacon, eggs, and toast. The calories, carbs, and protein should do a little to mitigate the hangovers. The emotional effects of last night? Not so much. All I have for that is another bottle of booze.

Audrey wordlessly puts on a pot of tea. The soundtrack of the scene is built around the background hiss of the gas stove, the sharp pops and cracks of the cooking bacon, the tea simmering up to a boil. The piece is entirely instrumental. Neither of us really knows what to say.

The bacon, bread, and eggs cook. The water boils. The tone of the room stays the same. We eat wordlessly at my tiny table. To say the tension could be cut with a knife would be to oversell most knives. A chainsaw, maybe.

The food is gone. We continue to sit, saying nothing, doing less. Finally, I decide it’s  time for a scene change.

“We should talk. But not in here. It’s not the place for it.” She nods. I walk to the door, hold it open for her. We walk next to one another down to the water’s edge.

We sit down together again, this time out of the water, and this time with about six inches between us. Silence. The waves punctuate.

“I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.” She looks out at the bright blue waters.

“I was going to ask that. I kind of assumed you were on vacation...”

“I had a fashion shoot down in... oh what’s the name... that city with the port.. the one with all the freighters...”

“Yeah...”

“And, well, I was reading some guidebook that someone had left sitting around. I saw a list of local bars, and I guess I kind of just stumbled on “Jay’s American Cafe.” She turns to look at me. “It’s  not an uncommon name. But when I saw it... I don’t know. I just kind of knew, you know?”

“Yeah...”

“I had to know. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s  not like I’ve been looking for you or anything, but it’s  always kind of sat in the back of my mind- what the hell happened to you? You just kind of disappeared.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” I know the answer but I’m avoiding the question. I stare down at the sand.

“Why did you leave?”

“I guess that was the end of second year. Life was fine. Grades were fine. I knew some pretty decent people...” I trail off. I’m not really sure how to answer her question.

“Yeah?”

“That was the present. And it was nice enough. But I knew it was the best things would ever get. All I had as far as a future was some shitty office job somewhere not too far from that shithole I spent all my growing up. I really didn’t want to be like my parents, spend my entire adult life in fucking Colorado. And as far as I was concerned, this was my only other option.”

I look at the ground for a while. Run my hand through the sand. The way I grew up, I didn’t see much of the sea. But I always adored what little I saw of it. Endless and beautiful and perfect; destructive power hidden under a blanket of tranquil rhythm. I stand up and walk a few feet out into the water, feel the wet sand beneath my feet. I look out at all the places I’d never be. I feel Aubrey walk up beside me.

“I had this dream that played through my head for years, over and over, like a bad song. In the dream, I’d drop out of school. Leave behind all my friends and family. Find a little bar by the sea down in the Caribbean, or maybe the South Pacific, and just live out the rest of forever in tranquility surrounded by equal parts endless booze and beauty. My nights a series of faces I’d only ever see once and the bottoms of bottles I’d see a few times too many. Then, one day, maybe a month before I left, I asked myself what I really wanted to do in life, allowing for anything, ignoring all aspects of practicality. And the only thing my mind even considered was that dream.”

She’s silent for a long time at this. I feel like an asshole. I am an asshole. But god forbid I admit to myself what a waste of life I am. Finally, she turns to me, and slaps me across the face.

“You deserved that... But you know what? For all the bullshit... at least you made a choice. I mean, that choice may have been to become a lonely, washed up old alcoholic running a shitty bar in the middle of nowhere, but... But me? I’m a 30 year old model with maybe five years of real work left before I realize I haven’t worked a real job in my life. Neither one is too great, but... like I said, you made a choice.”

I feel like my body is being ripped apart by wild horses. My mind travels back to when I was thirteen. All the things I wanted to do and be. An artist, a tycoon, a soldier fit for the legends. I wanted to do something that mattered, above all else. I didn’t want to fade away. I wanted to live life short and brutish and exciting and worth remembering. But now. Now I’ve already faded well away down a bottle by the sea.

I return to the gorgeous gone girl sitting next to me. I have no idea what to say to her. For the last decade, faces of the life I left behind flashed through my mind, and none more than hers. I imagined what she became, a politician, a diplomat, an activist, something... something worth becoming. But not this. A great mind, a great life, wasted in the name of common comfort. That makes two of us.

Finally, I turn to face her.

“So fuck it. I’m sure you have some money saved up. Just say fuck it, stop taking modelling jobs, and do whatever it is that you want to do.”

“But that’s the thing- I don’t really want to do much of anything. Well, I mean...”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve always wanted to actually see the world. For real this time. I mean, I’ve lived on four continents, but my living was always so limited. Neighborhoods built for foreigners, surrounded by people without a country, the ex-pats of the world, all these groups of people drifting across the globe, never settling in anywhere, their home just a half remembered dream. I mean, Jesus, I don’t even sound like I’m from anywhere anymore. So I figure, if I’m going to give up on having a home, why not just go all in? Say fuck the diplomats, the ultra-wealthy, the global power players, the international schools. Travel for real, see how people really live, you know?”

“So why don’t you?”

“Because I’m too god damned scared to even think about it.” She stands, then reaches a hand down to me, helps me up.

I smile at her, not a real smile, but the one I always give when I don’t know what else to do. A smile one step above a scowl. A look of utter loss. Then she hugs me. I pull her close. The warmth of her body against mine is a window into another world, another life. I take comfort in just the fact of being close to her. After a time much shorter than I would’ve liked, we break the hug. She looks at me a minute, then takes my head in her hands, and kisses me on the lips.

“Never change.” And with that, she turns away and starts off down the beach, her shoes still missing. I consider calling out to her, saying something, anything. Begging her to stay.

I look down the beach and I see our future. We settle up our respective bank accounts, what’s left of them. We say goodbye to the few people we’ve met since college. And then we set off. We head to that port city neither of us can remember the name of. We get on the first boat out. We head out across the world, traveling across each of the six inhabited continents in turn. Big bags on our backs, boots on our feet, a long road stretched out in front of us, hot sun reflecting off the two lane blacktop, desert of impossible dimensions stretched out in mirage on all sides. Stopping at every shitty roadside bar and diner all the world over, making friends and leaving them in a few hours a day, always looking for the point, that thing that will make us stop, find real lives, real jobs, always looking but never finding, the only thing driving us forward each other, in love like proper film characters, utterly inseparable, with the perfect love of young kids with no idea of how fucked up love really is.

And I flash back to the moment. And she disappears over the horizon. I look around for my shoes, give up, then walk down to the bar. I open the shutters, take inventory, and open for the day.

Time is back on track.