#12: Crashing
"The rain blasted down in pricks of ice against the boiling of my brain."
(Last time, Charlie and Bonnie were having a great time at the wedding—until Ralph mentioned something about a letter.)
“Letter? What letter?”
Recognition shot through the glaze coating his eyes. “Nothing, ah, nothing. For-forget about it.” His arm slid over my neck as he tried to drift away.
I grabbed his wrist. “Ralph.”
“Charlie. You don’t—” He swallowed. “You don’t want to know.”
“Ralph, you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
He sighed and slumped down on a bench. “You know Alyssa?”
“Alyssa—Gina’s friend?”
“Yeah, yeah. You know we had that thing, right?”
“Ah, sure.” Ralph’s many sexual adventures hid beyond the furthest horizon of my mind.
“So she was, ah, going to come visit, and, ah…”
“And hook up.”
“And we were talking—and this was before—but she said Gina wanted to see you again.”
The music and the crowd disappeared. There were only the words of this scrawny and strung-out perfect pattern of a poet. “What?”
“And, ah—and, ah, when she came out, she brought a letter from Gina.”
Electric hands were squeezing my lungs like bellows. “What are you—what are you telling me?”
“Did you think Pat really wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge that much? We were going out to the West Coast to go to Seattle—for Gina.”
I choked on the golfball-sized sparks in my throat.
“We weren’t supposed to read the letter, but we did, just to be sure it wouldn’t hurt you. And we shouldn’t have done it, but she wanted to see you again. She wanted to make a new start. And we were going to show you—we were—but then Bonnie—and Pat said—”
“Pat!”
“He said it was better for you not to know. Not right now. Not—not yet.”
My head swirled. A flurry of lightning shot through my body. Everything blurred together. My friends had deceived me. My friends had taken me on a trip with a secret purpose. Secrets coiled within secrets. I had invested so much pain, disappointment, and anger in that dead relationship with Gina. But the fantasy of joy was a whetstone for the edge of pain. I had lost forever those hours on the quilted coverlet, the quick kisses in the movie theater, and the taste of spice that had at once burned my tongue. And now—they could return? She—we—could be back?
Thunder rumbled. In my head? Outside?
I stormed through the brass echoes—crashed through the busy dance floor—tripped over the edge of a plastic chair—and found him at the edge of the tent. With a beer in one hand, Pat sat on top of a table pointing two fingers at Lana, in one of the stupid, demonstrative arguments he used as a flirting technique. He stank of booze.
Ralph was somewhere behind.
I yanked Pat’s elbow and pulled him off the table and dragged him outside.
“Charlie, what is it?” he asked.
“Do you see strings on my wrist?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Or maybe they’re around my ankles somewhere? Are they there? Are they there? Can you see them?”
“You sound crazy.”
I was so crazy, I pushed him. “Do you think I’m your puppet?”
He stumbled backward. Beer flew in the air.
But he didn’t get angry. Instead, it was like a key had turned in his head—an awareness that something had happened. His words were level. “Charlie, what’s this about?”
“Pat,” Ralph said behind me, “I told him about the letter.”
Now, anger flashed in his eyes. “You what?”
“You think you could hide that from me?” I said. “You think you can lay out this whole scheme for my life and not tell me about it? This is my life.”
“This is your life, Charlie? Yeah, sure. And it’s circling the toilet bowl. You sit on the couch all day long watching TV and feeling self-pity twenty-four seven.”
A drop of water hit my forehead, which felt so hot that it should have sizzled. I had nothing to say.
“So, yeah, maybe I wanted to help get you out of this rut. And maybe we had this one plan, but then there’s Bonnie and the wedding, and I would not do anything to help you screw this one up.”
In the distance, a single streak of lightning flashed like a glowing scar in the sky.
Bonnie and her friends had heard our shouting. I saw Danny standing next to Sarah, both frowning.
Bonnie touched my arm. “What is it?” The sunshine of before had concentrated into care, even worry.
A sharper blow of thunder.
“I just found out that Pat had this giant plan for this road trip, how we were supposed to finish it by going out to Seattle to see my ex-girlfriend. My friends even have a letter from her to me. And they’ve kept it all a secret.”
“Well, you’re not going to go, right?”
Her question was a karate-chop.
I thought I had escaped in this adventure of fun. Yet a thin line—supple as silk, firm as steel—still threaded from me to the citadel where I had piled my idols of longing. In the fury after Ralph had mentioned this letter, hadn’t there been some flash of something, even hope? When your first love says she wants to see you again, can you really say no?
“I don’t know.” Then, my throat tightened, like the closing of a lock.
I immediately knew I shouldn’t have said that, as a brick of regret hit me full in the chest the instant those words left my mouth. I had been weighed in the scales of the moment and been found wanting. I had flinched.
Now, the sunlight was all gone, and there was only a frozen mask on her face. “Well, you need to figure that out then, I guess.” And then she turned and left.
“Bonnie…Bonnie…”
With a great rolling crack, the rain blasted down in pricks of ice against the boiling of my brain.
“You blew it!” Lana cried as they ran into the dark storm. “You blew it!”
“Bonnie!”
From the heart of the tempest: “Good-bye.”
The water drowns. It all slips away. You slip and tumble down the thousand stairs of memory and despair and hope and desire. The lungs—burning hollow—echo in the emptiness of breath.
“Good-bye.” The rain tumbling down my face. “Good-bye.” The rain all over. “Good-bye.” Washing down my cheek.
“Good-bye.”
The Thoughts of Many Nights by the Sea
The sea bears away all our tribulations and triumphs, and it drowns all our tears. What is it to fight the sea? What is it to grab a fistful of water? What is it to drown so deep, that you are forgotten in the night of that embrace, bones your only testament, bones which transmute into coral? Even death can be forgotten in that faint, expiring, relentless doom. What cup is that which no man can drink to the dregs—that poison, that annihilation of surfeit?
Our eyes look to some paradise across the sea. There, no one shall grow old or sick, and brotherhood will unite us. No song shall ever wither and no dance shall ever tire. At night, we will withdraw to fires and palm-leaf cabins. We will eat warm pizza from an always-full box and grab beers from an ever-stocked cooler. And we shall want no love in the night.
We hold out even when we should know better. We hold out for ourselves, our dreams, and our fantasies of love. Some hope of renewal comes before us like a far-off vision—so far, so grand, like an aged matinee idol. Hopes are cunning, but the heart always betrays us.