Pontius Pier

I meet Allison, my high school love, near Pontius Pier. She's only in town for a few days, she and her husband. She wants to see me. I wouldn't have known if it weren't for Cricket, who always knows where to find me. I asked Cricket what Allison could possibly want - she'd destroyed me in a dumpster fire breakup three weeks into college - but he said he had no idea, and Cricket never lies. A flash of ego insinuates she wants to repent, get back together, start life over. That same flash of ego tells me to withhold forgiveness just long enough to make her cry, and then take her into my arms. A flash of Neolithic violence suggests something worse, though I can usually dodge those thoughts.

It's cool out. I have stolen a baby blue windbreaker. It says 'Bermuda' on the chest.

Allison's on the pier, looking out at the ocean. The wind's right on her, and strands of hair reach toward me like the arms of someone falling from a ledge. I call her name, and she turns. Her belly tells me why she's come.

"Jack," she says. I hear the horror in her voice. Too young to age, I am not aging well.

"I heard you're married."

"Yes," she says. "Chris." 

I try to stare through her womb, to somehow see the child inside. I have not even heard her voice in four years, let alone touched her body. Still I hope that child is mine. Otherwise, my Neolithic man might try to kill it.

"Is there somewhere we can go? Coffee, something?" she asks.

"I'd rather have a drink. Though I guess you don't." Her eyes hit the pier's twisting wood. One day the whole thing will collapse. I'll probably be on it, given enough notice. "Tell you what - I know a place."

There's a stand a quarter mile up the beach, almost up to Lunar Dunes, where a guy sells these lemonade slushies. For three dollars extra, he'll spike it something fierce. Like most things, I learned this by watching the gypsies, like I learned not to be seen with one if you're hustling for money. Nothing makes you look less broke than an ice-cold lemonade slushy.

Allison gets a strawberry mango thing, and I get the spiked version of the same. The hooch burns going down, and the crunchy ice soothes it just right. 

"What happened to your eye?" she asks.

"Bad woman," I say. "It happens out here."

"And you're out here all the time?"

I shrug. I feel like a fool. Most days I can convince myself that this is who I am, this beach bum, this cultural leech, this jester joker & fool. I see her and I know otherwise. I remember new pants, air conditioning, mouthwash, cell phone. It's like I drag it all behind me in a green mesh bag. I don't want Allison to look at me. She knows me too well. Even the gypsies know. I don't know where else to go, though. There is no home any more.

"Chris is an optometrist," she says gently. She reaches a hand to touch my face, dangerously close to the eye. She's not afraid. She's never afraid. "He'll look at it if you let him."

"No. I don't need help."

"You don't want help, you mean."

"It's the same thing."

"No."

"Out here it is."

She bristles. I remember her naked, lying on Mark Sutterman's mother's bed on one of the woman's many out-of-town trips. I remember Allison spreading her legs for me, not for me to enter her, but for me to look. To explore. I remember her sleek stomach. I remember the way her breasts smelled. I don't ... I don't ever want to look back on moments again. I want the right now to swallow me whole.

"Look," she says. "If you want to do ... whatever this is ... then do it. I'm just here with a message, and I made a promise to my parents that I'd give it to you in person, so ... you know. Here."

She hands me an envelope, not fat enough for money, unless it's a single crisp hundred. Or maybe it's a check, though I have no account in which to put it. There's no writing on the face, and no stamp. I take the envelope from her, open it up, and pull out the folded clip of newspaper.

I see my father's face on it. His mugshot, the day they took him in.

"I think you should know there was a problem. With the injection. He ... did not die well."

"Were you there?" I ask.

She nods. Her eyes tear up. "We all were. Mom was there because of how close she and your mother were. I was there because ... well. I felt like he needed somebody there for him. And I knew there would be no one."

A sea breeze, not the sweet saline but the foul decomposed kind, whips by me, rippling my curls and rattling the slick fabric of my windbreaker. If it's my father's spirit passing through me, asking for peace, begging for forgiveness, then he missed. I stand, and pinch the obituary between two fingers. I hold it above my head, arm straight as a flagpole. And I let go.

By the time my breath returns to me, bringing consciousness, Allison is gone. So is the sun.