geometry and other past failures
Andrew Bertaina
I had hit rock bottom, down where the fish all have lanterns on their heads like coal miners, far below where even the largest whales can go. I was thirty-two, living with an ornery cat, working at a small bookstore at the edge of a narrow beach town where people took their children to mini-golf, eat ice cream and run from the small Atlantic waves before eating overpriced meals in frigid restaurants blasting AC so hard you could practically see the earth warming. A place where thinking hadn’t gone to die, so much as it had never taken root.
I worked at a bookstore just outside the city sprawl, shepherding crates of beach reads in and out of the store according to the whims of a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet dictated everything I did, and it was based on a computer program in an office building far far away. It was not the sort of life I had dreamed of, but I suppose that didn’t make my life unique. Disappointment was, like gut bacteria, omnipresent.
The bookstore was managed by an elderly woman, Marge, who wore spectacles and who probably had political views I’d find offensive. But then, I was rather taken with her. She treated me like a wayward son, asking after my interests and carefully monitoring my mental health, encouraging me to drink more water or love more carefully. She was the sort of parent I’d always hoped my properly liberal parents could have been. This sort of human complexity cropped up all the time and didn’t bother me in the slightest.
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Most days, I’d stock books in the morning, and then spend time reading in the afternoon, a mixture of classics—Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment—and leftist magazines—Jacobin, Dissent that articulated our future utopia and imminent downfall. I was in favor of both. Almost no one ever asked me about the books I read. I’d prepared a nice treatise about reading Natasha and Andrew in War and Peace through a contemporary lens of romance, but no one, save a few professors in my undergraduate program, and certainly not beer swilling beach enthusiasts, was interested in that line of thought.
Every once in a while, probably to punish me for holding out hope, a gawky teen would appear and ask what sort of book I’d recommend. A wild bloom of flowers would burst forth in my heart, but I’d try to play it cool, slowly walking toward the laughably small section labeled literature. There, I’d point to a book or two, The Brothers Karamazov, Beloved, briefly extolling their virtues before letting the teens browse.
Then I’d stand at the counter, wondering which book they’d choose from the pitiable section, holding out hope they might choose two. However, as animals left to graze without fences, the teens would wander out of the literature section, and they’d come back to the counter, holding a thriller about a series of violent murders in Boston, and a little part of me would slip off into the ocean, down into that deep trench.
I get it, I’d say. The book I showed you is a pain to fit into a beach bag.
The truth is, I couldn’t blame them. By that point in my life I’d learned not to trust my instincts for what makes people happy anyway either.
Did you sell any of your beloved Russians today? Marge would ask.
Not today, Marge. The plebians are out in force this summer.
You’re too young to be so glum, Marge answered. The look of concern in her eyes nearly unmade me. Why did my boss care so much more about my well-being than my family? Tears welled, and the slender edifice of self almost gave way, and I excused myself to find reinforcement.
In the distance, waves curled and ran into the small coastline, removing grains of sand. For years, people had warned a big storm could wash the city away. And each year, the storms would take away bits of the beach, carrying pieces of the barrier island to the ocean floor as a mother retrieving children. But then the city would send trucks inland, and they’d haul back miles of sand, reinforcing the slender edifice to keep the island intact.
I texted my best friend, asking if she wanted to get coffee. Above, sea gulls circled, a funeral procession in the sky. Bits of trash blew along the sandy beach, glimmering in the light before disappearing into the crash of waves. Last week, a wave of jellyfish had appeared, chasing everyone from the water, a bloom of stinging white monsters, gliding into shore. Everyone said the warming was hospitable to the jellyfish, that one day, the ocean would be full of mindless stinging ghosts.
In truth, there wasn’t really anything special about me, just another disaffected person in late-stage capitalism, eking out a living between student loan debt and the crushing loneliness of contemporary existence. I felt comfortable with this knowledge and began to walk the hot streets towards the coffee place to meet my friend and the day was so warm, I could smell the tar on the streets beginning to melt. I wondered what jellyfish dreamed.
Christine arrived before I did, and I was able to observe her as she sipped coffee and looked into space, the angular nose, her brown-blond hair tied back in a ponytail. We’d remained friends
after college, a rarity for me, in part because I couldn’t afford a therapist, but mainly because she’d been dating my friend during college when he’d been killed in a car crash. In the aftermath, she and I had bonded, spending several evenings drinking wine coolers and telling each other stories about him, the jokes we’d loved, his high-pitched giggle, the way he was always touching people on the shoulder, how he couldn’t help himself when he liked you and how we couldn’t help loving him in return.
She and I had stayed in touch through the occasional email as we both moved between cities, chasing jobs or relationships until we’d both miraculously landed in the same place a year ago. But we were there for different reasons. For me, the city was a terminus, an acknowledgement that whatever I’d been searching for wasn’t to be found. While everyone headed West to find something new, my station on the East coast was an admission the journey was over.
For Christine, her work at a small environmental organization, seeking to keep the bay clean, was a brief stopover as she waited for her governmental clearance. She was headed further east, trying to make the world a better place by studying cities in Eastern Europe. I was biding time until my death, thinking of clever things to put on my tombstone.
In recent weeks, something had shifted between us, as currents coming together in the ocean. I found myself hanging on her every word, noticing small things I’d missed before, a spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose, and the way her face was slightly asymmetrical. And then, lying in bed, I found myself waiting for her text, an anxiousness I’d never felt before.
However, I’d learned to distrust these sorts of feelings, which I’d discovered, as an adult, could arise for nearly anyone without rhyme or reason. I’d read somewhere it had to do with scent, a particular smell that drew us to our mates as bees to nectar. Though I wondered how I’d missed her scent until now. What I
knew is I’d never found love to be useful. When it ebbed, all you were left with was wreckage. Most of the movies I’d watched as an impressionable teen had hinged on this precise moment, when love was finally made manifest in a friendship, when things suddenly shifted.
My life was ruled by indecisiveness, by almosts. If I revealed my feelings to Christine, and she didn’t reciprocate them, the imaginary life I’d been constructing with her would crumble. The same was true at the bookstore. I imagined if I was ever in charge, I’d convert the literature section into something that would divert the tourist energy into meaningful thought, and I knew if I ever left this backwater of a city, things would be better. And I clung to these ideas as barnacles to rock, all of these imagined futures, while the current of life pushed me along.
Christine noticed me and her face lifted in a smile.
How’s saving the world today, I asked.
More or less the same as yesterday, but most things have gotten a little worse, she answered.
Story of my life, I said.
She took a sip of her coffee and then a long draught from the Nalgene bottle she carried everywhere.
You know those have small plastics in them that leach into the water?
Where did you read that? I forget.
Sounds like a reliable source, she answered. The sky was white hot, and the clouds were light and ineffectual. A plane flew overhead with a banner behind it trying to sell auto insurance. Moments later, another plane passed through the sky, with another banner, wishing Jennifer a happy birthday.
Why don’t you ever get a plane with a banner for my birthday? I asked.
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I respect you too much for that, she said. Now why did you want to get coffee?
I looked back in mock offense. What do you mean? I just wanted to see you.
She smiled. We both knew it wasn’t true. What I wanted was someone to listen to me, to help me sort through the problems in my life. I called her when I was in need, and she almost always said yes out of a sense of obligation, of how I’d been there after her boyfriend’s death. I never listened to her advice, but I liked to hear it, to know some other version of me, Christine’s version, could get it together and live well.
She idly turned the coffee in her mug, which she brought everywhere to avoid contributing more plastic to the mass that floated around in the ocean, larger than a thousand blue whales if any of them were left.
Sincerity pains me, I said.
I know, she answered, but try.
I told her I felt like I didn’t belong to the world lately as though I was almost watching myself live my life. I said it could be any number of things: my job, my tepid love life, climate change. Who knew? Sometimes it was hard to quantify a self against the disaster of life.
Mmm . . . hmmm.
I sat back in my chair and mused. She said I was famous for my musing.
Or maybe I’d be happy if someone from Jersey would just read Tolstoy. I’m willing to settle for Dostoevsky; I’m not a snob or anything, I said.
You absolutely are a snob, Christine answered, but I don’t think an earnest twenty-year old reading a treatise on 19th century farming is going to make you feel better. What will then?
Christine glanced down at her phone, her eyes flickering toward a text, in the way of contemporary conversations. Alcohol? she suggested. Or a writer who has written something in the last, I don’t know, one hundred years? Seems suspect, I answered.
Okay, she said. You know what I’m going to say. Say it anyway. But reframe it. Therapists, or so I’ve read online, are really good at helping to reframe.
Next to us, a family of four sat, the husband looking tired, and the wife harried, their two children, sun-burned and irritable. The toddler started crying, asking after Cheerios. The little girl was idly picking her nose. The husband and wife each looked off into the middle distance, strangers to me.
You need to stop imagining yourself as a cloud being swept along by the winds of chance. You can’t keep thinking some external thing, a different job, a new lover or whatever are going to straighten things out, she said.
I understood she was talking about meaning, something I hadn’t ever really figured out after I’d lost faith in God and myself. The closest I’d come had been three years ago, when I’d briefly had an affair with an older woman, Danielle, in my office. We’d met for secret lunches in her car, licked and sucked one another as though we were horny teens. Something about being with her, the stolen hours, the way we’d watch an oak holding up sky along the coast as we shared french fries, salty and warm, gave our time meaning, but I suppose it was just the certainty of its end.
She’d had children and sometimes, even though she always said we’d be temporary, I’d imagine myself as a father to them, tossing around the wiffle ball or teaching them how to do the backstroke. I thought those kids might have grown to love me, but they never met me. They just took up space in my head, an imaginary life that had never been mine to claim.
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Are you listening? Christine asked.
Sorry. I was just wondering if Jennifer was having a good birthday.
Fuck off, she said, smiling and picking up her coffee. In the street, shirtless teenage boys with bulging muscles carried coolers across the hot cement. Behind us, the father and mother were still staring into the distance, while their toddler munched Cheerios, and their other child drank a milkshake. The sunlight had somehow gotten hotter as though the sun was radiating lasers. A flock of birds made a strange pattern in the sky, flying inward from the sea in wave after wave, more birds than I’d ever seen. I arrived back at the bookstore fifteen minutes late, but Marge just smiled at me.
Cured your blues? she asked. Nope.
Then what’s the point of being late?
Don’t make me go to the union, I said. I get my allotted thirtyminute breaks.
You were gone for forty-five. Also, there is no union, she said. Typical capitalist, I grumbled, and Marge smiled. I knew she made barely more than I did, and that corporate was always on her ass about selling more books. We were united in our disdain for corporate. I felt this was central to any relationship: a common enemy.
I went back to pulling books, referencing the spreadsheet to see what had languished on our shelves, occasionally scrambling back to the register if a customer entered, a rush of hot air descending on our small Arctic corridor. I thought of mentioning the birds, the endless heat, my love for Christine, but I couldn’t see the point
of directing anything to Marge or anyone as life just pressed on as it was anyway.
Back home, I got drunk on six beers and brought up pictures of my old lover, Danielle, on Instagram, while my cat, Mr. Jingles, arranged and rearranged himself on my lap. I understood Mr. Jingles in a particular way, never quite comfortable, always hoping some slight shifting would be the right one. Perhaps that’s why I’d always loved cats.
In the end, Danielle had broken things off with me because I stopped behaving, started wanting more and more of her time, which she’d told me she wasn’t available to give. I texted her at all hours, interrupting reading time with her children with my incessant desire to connect.
Eventually, I confessed I wanted children of my own, that I thought she should leave her husband to be with me. Within days, she’d blocked my number and gotten transferred to a new division. It was stinging because while I’d been constructing our future life together, Danielle had been biding time to leave.
The truth is, I couldn’t really be sure I’d have enjoyed life with Danielle. Since our break-up, I’d encountered kids at the bookstore and been horrified at the destruction they so casually wrought. I didn’t see how children would have fit into the quiet and contemplative life I often imagined for myself. And I’d always loathed theme parks.
In Danielle’s recent pictures of her family they’d taken a trip to Florida. The kids were happily posing in pictures at a Harry Potter themed amusement park. And then at a place where they each mimed having their hands bitten off by the Great White from Jaws. I stopped scrolling and hovered over a picture of just her, leaning across a dark railing, wearing short yellow shorts and a
white blouse. I desperately waned to like it, to close the chasm of space between us. I wanted to tell myself it meant something, that she’d feel my quiet presence. Then I slipped into a strange and fitful sleep awaking when Mr. Jingles was meowing at the door, begging to be let out.
That night, I dreamt of my father. In the dream, he was firing wiffle balls at me, one after another. They’d all take this long arc behind me, and I’d start to prepare for the impact, hunching my shoulders. Then, as wiffle balls do, they’d bend back over the plate. Strike one, my father would yell. Strike two. Strike three. You’re out!
And then, in the dream, still a child, I lay down on the grass and started crying. Overhead, the sky was white with heat and vultures circled. Trees where I used to smash home runs looked wilted and sad, with denuded bark and branches in the shape of badly broken bones. My father stood on the grass, which began to turn brown, mopping sweat from his brow. Then saying, I’m bringing the heat, before rearing back to throw another long, looping strike.
When I awoke, I tried to make sense of the dream, which bewildered me. Which made the dream exactly like everything else in my life. I texted Christine, asking if we could talk. Is it important?
Yes!!!!!!
I called her while we got ready for work, shoveling cereal into our mouths, and making bag lunches. I told her about the dream. This was the important thing, she asked, turning on a faucet. Absolutely, I answered.
Although, I said in retrospect, I couldn’t be sure if it was actually my father throwing the pitches or just someone who looked and acted like my father.
Give me a minute, she said.
And I waited for her to look up the dream interpretation on her phone. I thought about how this was the core difference between us, my acceptance that the dream hadn’t really meant anything was countered by her belief it had to. She believed in order, in meaning, and this controlled her approach to life.
It says you’re dreaming about your father because you are struggling with authority. And the sports part is you feeling a sense of competition, maybe. It sounds like you feel as though you’re failing in some way with authority, she said.
Mm..hmmmm. Tell me more, I said, slathering peanut butter onto cheap grocery bread.
Well, Christine said, your father is in the dream because you’re thinking about your role at the bookstore. Remember how you wanted to ask for a raise?
I did remember, but I also didn’t trust my past self. He often wanted things that didn’t correspond to my present reality. Marge couldn’t afford to give me a raise. Besides, I think it was up to corporate anyway. I put strawberry jelly on the other half of the sandwich and mashed them together. Then I went in search of a bag of chips.
What about the baseball? I asked.
That’s your fear of authority. You’re too afraid to question your father, his interpretation of your life. The baseball is just a stand in, she said.
I could hear Christine running the water as she brushed her teeth. She was a fascinating woman whose desire to interpret dreams through a narrow aperture was the most reductive thing about her. I adored it.
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I’ll think about it, I said.
You already have thought about it, she said, frustrated with me as always. It’s the doing part you need to get to.
How’s the clean-up of the bay going? I asked. She sighed, a beautiful sigh.
I think life is probably just this one quick go, not a succession of lives, not a spin on the Dharma Wheel or everlasting life, it was time to tell her. Except, maybe I was entirely wrong. I thought of Danielle, how we’d once loved one another. I hesitated. Maybe I was in love with both of them or honestly, maybe just myself. Maybe telling her would be the worst decision of my life or the best decision of my life. Maybe we’d have children or clean up the bay together.
Sorry you, she said, I’m off to save the world.
Bye.
After she hung up, I stood on the balcony, watching the bay slap the dock below, the bits of grass above it. Then I got out Mr. Jingles’ food and rattled it for him at the door. Here kitty, kitty. Here kitty, kitty.
After work, the sky was a soft purple bisected by power lines, which made me think of geometry and other past failures. I looked overhead for non-existent flocks of birds. The breeze shifted, coming off the Atlantic now, cooling the city after days of heat. Most summers, a storm raged through every few days, threatening to be the big one, but after a few hours of lightning and rain lashing the bay, the storm passed, and the city rebuilt whatever minor damage had come: a downed tree limb, a few loose shingles, erosion of the dunes. But it hadn’t rained in a week, and though I searched in the distance for clouds, nothing was on the horizon.
I stopped at the liquor store, waving to the proprietor, an aging man with an unkempt white beard. He and I had never exchanged more than a few passing words, but I wondered if he had noticed a shift in my drinking patterns, my frequent visits. The truth is, he probably didn’t think of me at all. I picked up a six-pack and then decided on the twenty-four-pack instead, telling myself it was for the greater value.
Back home, I checked for Mr. Jingles but didn’t find any sign. I opened a beer and scrolled through my phone, seeing pictures of the fires out West, skinny polar bears, terrifying politicians who didn’t give a damn about anything.
After a few minutes, I had another beer, and as often happens, my mood began to lift. I sat on the couch and remembered the good times I’d had with Danielle, and I checked Instagram. There she was again, still thrilled to be on vacation with her kids. This time, I didn’t hesitate to like her photo. What we shared had been the most important part of my life. My ghostly presence on her account was nothing wrong. I drank another beer and kept scrolling. Danielle might be thinking of me too, the beer said. She probably is, the beer said. That’s what I loved about it, the way it told me exactly what I wanted. Every few minutes, I’d make sure I hadn’t missed a message or a like from Danielle.
I walked out onto the small balcony in my apartment. The water was quiet now, and only the glow of my phone illuminated the porch. The moon lay in a glittering line, scattering its light across the water. I thought of calling Christine. Then I remembered she’d asked me to stop bothering her when I was drunk after ten. I went inside and pounded a beer in three solid gulps, then liked three more pictures of Danielle, some with her children. It was useless and stupid, but I felt the beer coursing through me, making every decision a good one. The beer said I was headed for good things. The beer said the lights in the sky were shining for me even
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if I couldn’t make out any of the constellations, not even the easy ones.
I texted Marge at 2 a.m., telling her I was sick.
I understand, she said, even though she’d have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to open, driving the full hour from her place out in the sticks to open the store. She lived way out, through miles and miles of green fields where corn was sprayed by long arcs of water. She lived in a big house in one of those fake places like Sandy Hills or Pine Crest, where a bunch of houses had replaced whatever hills or pines had been there before. She loved it. The place, she said, felt like a culmination. She’d grown up poor and couldn’t even imagine the things she had now, vaulted ceilings and a massive chandelier. That it was an hour from work, was unimportant to her.
And that’s the odd thing, I suppose. People are always telling themselves the story of their lives. And Marge had hers, whether I thought it made sense or not was immaterial. Besides, I had always retained something fundamental, a sense of other people that had developed when I was very young. I knew on some very deep level that whatever story people told about their lives, lost loves, commitments, was just that, a story. And underneath whatever we showed to others and even to ourselves, lay something even deeper as mysterious as the Mariana Trench. And that truth about the nature of humanity, and of the self, kept me in humility when I related to other human beings.
While I lay in bed the next day, nursing a hangover, I tried to watch serialized television that had been recommended to me lately, but found myself bored. Too much happened in most episodes—betrayals, affairs, scandals at work. It didn’t seem like
it captured anything about the humdrum nature of life, the dull repetition of days, a boring commute, half-heartedly washing dishes, scrolling on an iPhone—all the minutia that made life feel as though it passed all at once. Art didn’t represent the essential fact of human life, which was that nothing ever really happened. I called Christine, and she answered on the third ring.
You know you’re the only person who calls me, right? No one does that anymore.
I know, I said. I assumed you found it charming.
Listen, I have news, she said.
The child is mine?
Very funny. Are you going to let me tell you? she asked.
My heart sank. Maybe she’d met someone on one of the apps. Maybe an itinerant band singer just rolling through Dewey Beach with skinny jeans and talent. My mind imagined all the pain in a flash. I thought of the Hemingway book, by far his best, The Sun Also Rises, all of the things unsaid in the book, all of this happening in the quicksilver space between her question and what followed.
I got clearance for the job!
I lay back on the pillows. Don’t you already have one? I asked. Well, a job I want, she said.
Those exist? I said.
The line I’d decided on was funny. I was going to be nonchalant. In the months after her boyfriend had died, I’d often made her laugh, and I suppose that had become how we functioned together. I told jokes, and she laughed.
Aren’t you going to congratulate me?
Congratulations!
That didn’t sound believable, she said. But I forgive you. And maybe that was the most important thing about us, we’d always found a way to forgive one another. She was going overseas, working in the Balkans on a peace related initiative, trying to learn
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how a society remakes itself after war. I wondered how I would remake myself in the aftermath of her leaving. I felt a sudden surge rising within me, a desire, once again, to tell her how I felt. It seemed especially important now that the decision had been made for me. But I couldn’t find the proper break in the conversation. I knew I was supposed to say, we need to talk, but I couldn’t make myself form the words.
After we hung up, I sat in silence like one of those Murakami characters in the bottom of a well, feeling like I would be down there forever. Then I went to the cabinet and poured a whisky. Then another. I knew I had something else important I had to attend to. It wasn’t work, and it wasn’t that the woman I loved was moving away. After a fourth whisky, I remembered Mr. Jingles. He hadn’t been back in days, and I missed him. On my phone, I had a message from Danielle. Long time no talk.;).
That night, I wandered the streets, drunk and calling for Mr. Jingles. As a child, I’d loved the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, and in my state, I thought perhaps Mr. Jingles was a spirit animal, that when I found him, he’d tell me what to do about Christine leaving and Danielle texting or maybe I just wanted something I loved that I could hold. Most people saw my staggering walk, heard me calling out, here kitty, kitty, and crossed the street. Parents with children steered them away from the crazy person. Maybe Danielle’s kids would have stayed away too.
An older man, walking his French poodle, stopped to ask if I needed help.
I lost my cat, I said. Where? he asked.
I didn’t say anything. Where? he asked again.
There were lights spinning in pyrotechnics behind him. I don’t know.
He shrugged and kept walking. Good luck, he called over his shoulder. Then his dog stopped, crouched, and shat on a neon green lawn. The sort of place where the chemicals could leak straight into the bay.
After an hour, I finally spotted Mr. Jingles, walking along the top of a fence, picking his way carefully. My heart lifted, and I ran toward him. He turned to me and meowed. I snatched him up quickly, cradling him against my chest. He wriggled in my arms, desperate to escape.
Hey, a voice called out. What are you doing with my cat!
I looked down at the squirming bundle in my arms and realized it wasn’t Mr. Jingles after all. I was standing, drunk and holding a stranger’s cat.
I’m sorry, I said.
The fuck is wrong with you? the stranger asked. He had a thick neck and seemed on the verge of violence.
A lot, I answered.
Damn right, he said.
I hadn’t been in a fight since third grade when I’d bloodied someone else’s nose. Since then, I’d managed to keep a clean slate. And I had no desire, even in my drunken state, to ruin it for this asshole.
Sorry, I said, and started to walk home. On the way, I entertained different scenarios, ones where I’d punched him or body slammed him into the bay. One where I’d taken his cat to prove some obscure animal dominance like when one of those horned animals fends off another to keep his mate.
I thought about Mr. Jingles, hoped he’d gone to a better place. In truth, that wasn’t hard to imagine. I pulled out my phone and
stabbed haphazardly at the keys, moving back to Instagram and Danielle’s message.
I’ve missed you, you know. I thought you forgot about me. :/.
I stared at the message, which didn’t correspond with reality. It was she who had forgotten me, who had cut me off, switched departments and blocked my texts. Even now, three years later, the thought of it sometimes felt hot and fresh as a sting.
Danielle had always asked me what sign I was, using silly little descriptions of people based on their birth month. Essentially, she was a silly woman. And yet, I wondered as I staggered down the streets, if she wasn’t perfect for me, two flawed people meeting together. The whisky agreed. Perhaps it was meant to be. I carried this thought with me to my apartment, sending her two messages ending in heart eyes before passing out on the couch.
In the morning, what had seemed profound just felt like drunk thinking. It wasn’t some kind of cosmic fate. I was lonely and drunk and had let her know I was thinking of her.
Hi cutie. I’ve missed our chats. Tell me what you are up to.
I thought about how to respond, what framing of my life would lead us to reconnect with one another, to have the sort of relationship we’d had before. But nothing came to mind. We lived states away now. The past was washed away, all we had left over were the remnants, like bleached coral.
At work, Marge met me at the door.
Feeling better?, she asked, concerned. I’ll shelve today. You work the register. Also, she said, can we talk later? Her eyes had that imploring look Mr. Jingles sometimes had as though he was about to ask for the world or maybe just wet cat food, which I only gave him on occasion because it stunk up the house. Maybe that had been his breaking point.
I worked the register, selling book after book of useless tripe. I smiled at the bronzed people coming through, feeling a sort of fondness for them I didn’t usually feel. At least they were trying for something beyond the beer and frisbee toss, the latest issue of Us Weekly. Who was I to blame them? My cat was gone. Christine was going. What had feeling superior to other people netted me in the end?
Marge huffed and puffed while she stocked the books, pausing in her labors every now and again, to stare out toward something I couldn’t see.
Let’s close for an hour, she said at lunch. And we walked over to the place that sold crappy pizza by the slice and got four of them and some Cokes.
I have good news, and I have bad news, Marge said, not quite catching my eyes. Which would you like first?
Both. A seagull appeared on the ground next to us, looking at us contemptuously as we paid only half the attention it would have paid to such a bounty.
I’m leaving, Marge said. That’s the bad part. Maybe.
I tried to pretend like it didn’t impact me, but the truth was, Marge had been the best mother I’d ever had, which wasn’t saying much, but it still meant something.
But the good news is, I’ve recommended to corporate you be considered as the new manager. You deserve it. The place can be all yours, her face brightened. Maybe you can get all those books you love so much in our doors! She reached her hand toward mine and almost grasped it, then pulled it back and smoothed down her hair.
Thank you. But what takes you away from this Paradise? I asked.
She told me she wasn’t making enough at the bookshop to be worth the hassle and long drive. She’d found something that paid
less but that made it possible for her to spend more time in her beloved house.
As she talked, the seagull reappeared, cocked its head and looked at both of us with its strange uncaring gaze. I suppose that’s always what has unnerved me about birds, that blank look as though you could just as easily be a grain of sand or a rock. We were living in the Anthropocene, polluting all the rivers and heating up the earth, drowning the ocean in plastic and chasing off whales and still, this gull didn’t give a shit. He seemed to say, one day you too will be dead or maybe I was just sad and thinking too hard. That definitely happened sometimes too.
You’ve seen the news anyway, Marge said.
I had no earthly clue what she was talking about.
Everything is going to hell, she said.
I tried to picture Marge storing up guns and waiting for Armageddon but nothing in her seemed to suggest it. She was probably just going to mow her lawn and crochet.
We’ll all be dead soon anyway the seagull kept saying in its obscure language.
I think you should take the job though, Marge said, as though she could see the hesitation in my eyes. It would be good for you. You’ll see. She hesitated again, smoothing her hair down.
You’re too young to be so sad.
The weight of her words hit me. A lump rose in my throat. I swallowed and looked away to cover the emotion.
I’m not all that sad, I said.
She smiled back at me, extending her hand across the table again, touching mine this time, holding it warmly in hers for a moment.
Now was my chance to say yes, to have the bookstore finally take shape, to fill it to the brim with the sort of knowledge I felt was germane to the process of personhood. I told her I needed a week to consider it. ANDREW
In the distance, the ocean was wrinkled with waves, as knuckles by skin.
That night, I called Christine and asked her about the job. You should take it, she said. Maybe. Actually, I don’t know. Your advice is no longer needed anyway, I said, lying in bed, feeling hot, but not wanting to turn on the AC, just wanting to sweat for a while, to feel something. You lost your role as advisor when you decided to leave.
To be fair, you never listened to me anyway, she said. Not true. I listened. I just didn’t take any of the advice.
She sighed. Are we going to meet up to say goodbye or are you just going to stay inside and wallow with your alcohol?
Wallow.
After a few drinks, I texted Danielle, and we talked for a while about her kids, about my life. She said she often thought fondly of our time together, recalled it as one of the best in her life. I asked her if I was really good in bed, and she responded lol. After a while, the conversation slipped into discussions of what we used to do in the back of her car, the way we’d passed those furtive lunch hours. As we chatted, I felt the world and all its disappointments melt away. Not because they had or because we still meant anything to each other but because our connection had always distracted me from the ugly reality of things.
Husband’s back. Gotta go!
I walked out to the balcony and looked for Mr. Jingles, for birds, for jellyfish, for signs of life.
Christine was flying home to see her parents before the move. I asked her to get coffee one more time, wondering again if this
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was the moment to tell her of my love or whether I was purely being selfish. I imagined she might say yes, might cancel her long awaited job in the Balkans to remain with me. Then I wondered if that would depress her, if she’d begin to resent how wayward I was. I wish I still believed in prayer then, in some kind of divine guidance. I was tired of mucking about on my own.
I didn’t know if I should take the job at the bookstore and turn everyone on to the writings of Diderot and Balzac, convert the whole summer-going lot of whiny kids and bored teens into flâneurs. Maybe that was beach life, the modern flâneur, strolling along the hot sands searching all those bodies for meaning. Probably though, walking the beach was just about being horny.
The traffic was heavy with beachgoers trying to get into the city, to unpack their coolers and grill hamburgers, shout at their children or get drunk with their new lovers. But at that point, none of us had anywhere to go.
I turned down the radio and thought about the Balkans, which I’d never seen but could imagine: emerald waters threading through lush green forests, old brick buildings, pocked by bullet holes, a vision of the past colliding with whatever it was we were up to in the present, killing and wrecking the planet and each other. I’d never make it there, but I could imagine it, on this long car ride and maybe that was good enough for now.
There was a long line of restaurants selling fresh crabs, fresh pizza, fresh doughnuts, fresh beer, fresh pancakes, fresh steak. All of Americana beckoning to the idling cars on this tiny barrier island, which, in twenty years, would probably be inches under the sea or ravaged by hurricanes and all of this would be gone, which contented me in some small way.
I parked my car after twenty minutes of idling behind families, watching the parents run the towel across their children’s feet as my own father had on those rare trips to the beach. My mother
never did that, with her, we always just loaded up in the car sand and all but with father, he blasted the towels across our feet until the heat of the friction caused us to pull away. Now I was thinking of my father again, and maybe, just maybe, how I might never have children of my own.
I saw my friend before she saw me. She was wearing jeans, skinny and tight, the same as everyone else, and looking intently at a magazine. When she looked up and smiled, I saw crow’s feet near her eyes and a soft twinkle.
Cappuccino? I asked.
Of course, she said, resting her magazine on the table and lifting a hand to shade her eyes.
What’s going on in the world? I asked, gesturing toward her copy of The Economist.
Business as usual, she answered. Failures on all fronts. What are you going to do without me, she said, leaning forward to touch my hand in an almost exact replica of the movement of Marge.
Be sad, mostly, I said. Maybe try to move to Los Angeles and get into Reality TV. I want to be the old guy on an episode of The Real World. Goals are important. You still planning on changing the world?
She sipped her coffee and leaned back. Absolutely not, she said. When did you get so cynical?
First off, I’ve always been cynical. Second, I never thought I was going to change the world. That’s the fundamental difference between us. You’re a romantic, and I’m not. I know my work is just a small drop in the ocean of human suffering.
Slow down, Buddha, I said.
It’s true though. I fundamentally understand I’m not going to come up with some theory of post-traumatic growth in a country after war or anything sweeping about the nature of humanity. I’m
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not Adorno. I’m going to do my best to make the world a little bit better knowing it’s a bit of a fool’s errand, she said.
I never had you pegged as such a nihilist, I said.
She ordered a salad and pushed it around with her fork, stabbing tomatoes and croutons.
That morning the air had been completely still and biting flies were invading the beaches, sending tourists running, children screaming and crying at the small bits of blood running down their legs. It was a massacre, and it had no meaning. The wind just wasn’t blowing that day.
But while we talked, the wind had started to shift, slightly at first, then becoming stronger. In the distance, it was almost possible to imagine what I was seeing were clouds. Other than the lone gull, I couldn’t remember seeing a bird in days. I thought about making this observation to Christine, but our moment had passed. She was driving north after lunch, catching a flight home from D.C. Whatever it was I’d had to say needed to have been said. We spent an hour talking about her old boyfriend, retelling the stories that had once woven our two lives together. In a way, it seemed like an appropriate sendoff, an acknowledgement that our connection had always been an accident of fate, more tragedy than anything else.
After lunch, we pushed back our chairs and hugged.
You’ll call, I said.
Sometimes, she answered. I don’t even know the time difference.
I wanted to schedule a call with her. I wanted to message Danielle and tell her I’d drive down to Florida and meet her in the back of the car where I could lift her skirt. I wanted to tell my father I’d always loved those games of wiffle ball and corporate that I’d take the job at the bookstore. All of these eventualities flickered through my mind as swiftly as light through seaweed. I leaned back and felt the wind rising.
Christine called a cab, and we hugged once more, brief, and for me, electric. Then the car slid into traffic, joining the main arterial of the town, the glare of the silver bumper in the sunlight, a kind of beacon or portal into another world, one where I could fix all the mistakes I’d made in this life.
The wind whipped now, throwing sand in the air. Thunder boomed, and I saw dark clouds moving swiftly. A few scattered beach goers remained, holding down tents. Everyone else was aimed at retreat, waiting out the storm.
The dark sky. The vast sea. My lonely heart.
The traffic was malicious downtown, everyone trying to escape to hotels and restaurants. After thirty minutes, it finally cleared just as the oncoming storm arrived. Lightning ripped jaggedly through the sky and rain pelted the streets, flooding the narrow barrier island. Long channels of water ran down the main street, fanning out in dramatic arcs as cars drove through it.
Rain lashed the tops of trees, which bent in the wind. The torrent seemed, as it often did there, Biblical in its intent.
Back home, I fell into a deep sleep and awakened hours later. By then, the bay was frothing, threatening to crest the docks. I thought of Christine, thousands of miles overhead by now, moving away from this disaster, looking out from her small window at the Euclidian shape of the cities below. I thought of Marge driving out to her country house, of Danielle and her children, of Mr. Jingles on the lam.
It rained all night. The forecasters said it was like nothing they had ever seen, soon the lower levels of the city would be flooded. I had a message from Danielle on my iPhone in the morning.
How are you really though? Been thinking about that car of mine all night.
I stared down at my phone, considering all of the replies, the video chats, the way we could once again make a wreck of
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our lives. Then I deleted it and sent a quick thank you note to Marge, letting her know I wouldn’t be taking her up on the offer to manage the store.
Below me, I could see a long line of jellyfish, idly floating where the lawn had been the day before. In the distance, a row of dark clouds was hung like laundry across the horizon.
The streets were swathed in inches of rain, and the news anchor was saying more was coming. I started packing up my place, opening bags and emptying closets, thinking of how Mr. Jingles had tried to warn me. The storm had finally come, and it was time to move on.