Steven Hunley
08-30-2012, 01:04 AM
Bitter and Numb Nothing More
by
Steven Hunley
When Timothy woke up it wasn’t light yet. In June it gets foggy on the coast. Californians call it the “June Gloom” for good reason.
He walked through the kitchen and grabbed his army coat and a bottle of Jack Daniels, the half-empty bottle from the night before. He went back into the bedroom and put on his rubber flip-flops and walked out the sliding glass door silently, leaving Julie, her blond hair a tousle, asleep in his bed undisturbed. There was nothing wrong with Julie you understand. She was perfectly satisfactory---for a substitute. But she wasn’t the real thing. Kaleana was that. Kaleana was all that and more.
He stumbled to Ocean Beach pier, then across the deserted beach to the jetty. Something about the waves, about the interval between them, reminded him of that sunny day on the docks in San Francisco. The thought gave him no comfort. Thoughts never have the comforting nature of a woman's warm hand. The sunshiny afternoon had been shared with another woman, another woman entirely. No one was at the jetty either. It was unaccountably quiet. A single sandpiper nervously poked at a pile of seaweed while Tim tipped the bottom skyward and attempted to drown his sorrows.
He took off his flip-flops and forced his feet into the sand. It did no good. He still didn’t feel rooted and couldn’t feel his toes. Without thinking, he peeled off the label. In his pocket was a baggie of coke. It had been full, but that was last night, now only a frozen headache away. Last nights are never forever, no matter how much you crave them for memory’s sake. He pictured Julie lying in bed, and remembered a funny thing she said.
The mirror on the nightstand was devoid of product, they’d finished it off. He decided they needed a taste more, after all, each crumb was a possible laugh, and was lining it up. It wasn’t a mirror actually; it was a piece of cobalt blue glass from a welder’s helmet, quite small so it could be carried in your pocket. Small package, heavy burden. She watched eagerly as he chopped it up and drew sparkling snowy lines on cobalt blue with the sharp edge of his blade and a flick of his wrist.
She said with a sensuous smile, all sinister and sweet, “Give me three lines and you’ll get three more minutes.”
The girl really knew how to nasty. At that moment it was just what the doctor ordered.
But now was now. He bowed his head in silence and ran his fingers through his hair and folded his hands on his lap. Just as he noticed the sun refusing to break through the fog he took a last swallow of sacrament, and although it burned all the way down his throat, it still failed to warm his innards. Nothing would. In his pocket was the baggie half-full. In his other pocket was plenty of money. On his bed was a woman.
He didn’t give a tinker’s damn. She just wasn’t right.
He discovered a pencil stub and tipped up the bottle to drain the last drop of Jack while everywhere around him sullen grey waves washed relentlessly against the sodden shore. He had a lucid thought for a change and wanted to write it down. Placing the label on the bottle for support, he wrote on the back. Taking the baggie from his pocket, he rolled it up in the label and stuffed it in the bottle and screwed the cap on tight.
He didn’t want the fog, the fog was damp, or the money, the money brought out the worst in him, or the controlled substance, damn controlled substance anyway. What a joke. He never had any luck controlling it. Nobody did.
Much less the wrong girl. He wanted ‘the one who got away.’
With Kaleana he’d known comfort; a kind of deep-reaching comfort that’s hard to explain.
He found himself making his way towards the grey sharp-edged rocky jetty surrounded by mad foaming waves with white-laced necks. Flocks of seagulls screamed overhead but the wind reigned supreme and cut off their squeals like dying piglets who smelled blood and knew they were soon to be sausage. When he reached the enormous rock on the end, the Gibraltar of Ocean Beach, he took the bottle roughly by its neck and tossed it in with a mighty groan. Turning his back on the uncaring ocean he trod slowly home with a pair of feet he could barely lift free of the sand.
Days later, a couple, holding hands like tenuous lovers, found a bottle half-buried in the sand in a picturesque cove in Laguna Beach, almost a hundred miles north. They’d been watching the sunset together like lovers do, society expected it, every romantic movie they’d ever seen had it, and for personal reasons each kept to themselves. The horizon was bright and crackly, as if God himself with his infinite sense of color and design pinned colored cellophane over the sky with celestial push-points, using fingers that bestowed the spark of life to Adam on the wall of a certain chapel.
The girl pulled the bottle free of the sand.
“Look, a message in a bottle!”
She unscrewed the cap and poked her finger in.
She found a syrupy liquid dripping from a small baggy and before she thought about it, the silly girl placed the tip of her finger on her tongue.
“Oh,” she winced, “Whatever that is…it’s bitter!”
“Watch out!” cautioned her boyfriend. “It might be dangerous!”
She unrolled the paper. The empty baggy fell out, wet inside, but the writing in pencil on the label could still be read.
“What’s it say?”
“It says HELP, only help, that’s all.”
“Probably some kid trying to be funny.”
He grabbed it roughly from her hand with a harshness that didn’t bode well for their love life and threw it back in the surf.
The sun was a pale glow balanced on the edge of the waves. Foggy gloom stretched like cold dead fingers from the Pacific, invading the beach, enabling dark shadows to make it impossible to tell one thing from another. The loving couple dropped each others hands and shivered. They hurried across the width of sand like frightened Bedouins and mounted the cement steps that led up to their car. The streetlight flickered feebly leaving much of the stairway lost in deep pools of black; you had to watch your step, now that darkness enveloped the land. With each ascending step the taste grew more distinct.
Bitter and numb was how it felt, bitter and numb, nothing more.
©Steven Hunley 2012
by
Steven Hunley
When Timothy woke up it wasn’t light yet. In June it gets foggy on the coast. Californians call it the “June Gloom” for good reason.
He walked through the kitchen and grabbed his army coat and a bottle of Jack Daniels, the half-empty bottle from the night before. He went back into the bedroom and put on his rubber flip-flops and walked out the sliding glass door silently, leaving Julie, her blond hair a tousle, asleep in his bed undisturbed. There was nothing wrong with Julie you understand. She was perfectly satisfactory---for a substitute. But she wasn’t the real thing. Kaleana was that. Kaleana was all that and more.
He stumbled to Ocean Beach pier, then across the deserted beach to the jetty. Something about the waves, about the interval between them, reminded him of that sunny day on the docks in San Francisco. The thought gave him no comfort. Thoughts never have the comforting nature of a woman's warm hand. The sunshiny afternoon had been shared with another woman, another woman entirely. No one was at the jetty either. It was unaccountably quiet. A single sandpiper nervously poked at a pile of seaweed while Tim tipped the bottom skyward and attempted to drown his sorrows.
He took off his flip-flops and forced his feet into the sand. It did no good. He still didn’t feel rooted and couldn’t feel his toes. Without thinking, he peeled off the label. In his pocket was a baggie of coke. It had been full, but that was last night, now only a frozen headache away. Last nights are never forever, no matter how much you crave them for memory’s sake. He pictured Julie lying in bed, and remembered a funny thing she said.
The mirror on the nightstand was devoid of product, they’d finished it off. He decided they needed a taste more, after all, each crumb was a possible laugh, and was lining it up. It wasn’t a mirror actually; it was a piece of cobalt blue glass from a welder’s helmet, quite small so it could be carried in your pocket. Small package, heavy burden. She watched eagerly as he chopped it up and drew sparkling snowy lines on cobalt blue with the sharp edge of his blade and a flick of his wrist.
She said with a sensuous smile, all sinister and sweet, “Give me three lines and you’ll get three more minutes.”
The girl really knew how to nasty. At that moment it was just what the doctor ordered.
But now was now. He bowed his head in silence and ran his fingers through his hair and folded his hands on his lap. Just as he noticed the sun refusing to break through the fog he took a last swallow of sacrament, and although it burned all the way down his throat, it still failed to warm his innards. Nothing would. In his pocket was the baggie half-full. In his other pocket was plenty of money. On his bed was a woman.
He didn’t give a tinker’s damn. She just wasn’t right.
He discovered a pencil stub and tipped up the bottle to drain the last drop of Jack while everywhere around him sullen grey waves washed relentlessly against the sodden shore. He had a lucid thought for a change and wanted to write it down. Placing the label on the bottle for support, he wrote on the back. Taking the baggie from his pocket, he rolled it up in the label and stuffed it in the bottle and screwed the cap on tight.
He didn’t want the fog, the fog was damp, or the money, the money brought out the worst in him, or the controlled substance, damn controlled substance anyway. What a joke. He never had any luck controlling it. Nobody did.
Much less the wrong girl. He wanted ‘the one who got away.’
With Kaleana he’d known comfort; a kind of deep-reaching comfort that’s hard to explain.
He found himself making his way towards the grey sharp-edged rocky jetty surrounded by mad foaming waves with white-laced necks. Flocks of seagulls screamed overhead but the wind reigned supreme and cut off their squeals like dying piglets who smelled blood and knew they were soon to be sausage. When he reached the enormous rock on the end, the Gibraltar of Ocean Beach, he took the bottle roughly by its neck and tossed it in with a mighty groan. Turning his back on the uncaring ocean he trod slowly home with a pair of feet he could barely lift free of the sand.
Days later, a couple, holding hands like tenuous lovers, found a bottle half-buried in the sand in a picturesque cove in Laguna Beach, almost a hundred miles north. They’d been watching the sunset together like lovers do, society expected it, every romantic movie they’d ever seen had it, and for personal reasons each kept to themselves. The horizon was bright and crackly, as if God himself with his infinite sense of color and design pinned colored cellophane over the sky with celestial push-points, using fingers that bestowed the spark of life to Adam on the wall of a certain chapel.
The girl pulled the bottle free of the sand.
“Look, a message in a bottle!”
She unscrewed the cap and poked her finger in.
She found a syrupy liquid dripping from a small baggy and before she thought about it, the silly girl placed the tip of her finger on her tongue.
“Oh,” she winced, “Whatever that is…it’s bitter!”
“Watch out!” cautioned her boyfriend. “It might be dangerous!”
She unrolled the paper. The empty baggy fell out, wet inside, but the writing in pencil on the label could still be read.
“What’s it say?”
“It says HELP, only help, that’s all.”
“Probably some kid trying to be funny.”
He grabbed it roughly from her hand with a harshness that didn’t bode well for their love life and threw it back in the surf.
The sun was a pale glow balanced on the edge of the waves. Foggy gloom stretched like cold dead fingers from the Pacific, invading the beach, enabling dark shadows to make it impossible to tell one thing from another. The loving couple dropped each others hands and shivered. They hurried across the width of sand like frightened Bedouins and mounted the cement steps that led up to their car. The streetlight flickered feebly leaving much of the stairway lost in deep pools of black; you had to watch your step, now that darkness enveloped the land. With each ascending step the taste grew more distinct.
Bitter and numb was how it felt, bitter and numb, nothing more.
©Steven Hunley 2012