Commitments

Andrew and his wife wait outside.  They wait on last call or a bad song to force out their friends.

A drunk woman eyes them.  She wears too much make up.  She stands away from the two of them - a satellite - but orbits closer for a better look.

The three of them talk.  The wife is the first to introduce herself.  She mentions how she can’t keep dancing, though she planned to.  More and more, the drunk woman squints at Andrew, trying to read an answer on his face.

Though the wife continues about the night she’s having, the drunk woman steers the conversation to Andrew’s hair.  She even goes so far as touching it.  Finally, the woman speaks her mind, “Honey, you got to choose one,” she tells Andrew, “You can’t do both half-assed.  You’re either all the way sexy, or you’re a dude.”

“Mm,” Andrew replies.

“I’m sorry.  I’m drunk.  Am I too in your face?”

“No.  But you’re getting there.”

“It’s just that, your hair is so long and pretty.  But you part it down the middle like a man.  You’ve got to commit, honey.”

Neither Andrew or his wife acknowledge the drunk woman after the comment.  When she leaves, Andrew tries to share a look of relief with his partner.  He rubs his wife’s shoulder - his fingers tipped in coral polish - and asks, “Are you tired?”

Visits

Sometimes, I’ll see him shift in my peripherals.  Always, he’ll lurk in a dark spot, then turn to air the moment I try to spot him.  In fact, I have no idea what he looks like.  I see the movement, but no actors.  I see the rustle, but no bodies.  Always ducking out of sight just in time.  I see the ripple, but no diver.

He drops in when he knows it’s inconvenient.  Like when I’m seeing a friend in an hour.  He wants to feel that he means more, so he times his visits to compete with my plans.  But sometimes, I don’t prefer him, like when he came to me during an acid trip.  I wasn’t in the mood to take him seriously; I wanted to enjoy the lights.  The next time I swallowed a tab, though, I trapped myself in my dull room, and he answered every problem to a story I was writing.

Most times, he’ll speak to me indirectly - the result of a Youtube misclick that leads to a lecture by Alan Watts.  He’ll reveal himself in the affirmation of a mentor, or the warning on a bottle of mayonnaise to stay cool, but never freeze.  He’ll tug my ear to a phrase, or he’ll make the print of a label so small, I have to hold it close.

Once, when my car broke down on the highway, no one would stop when I tried to flag for help.  But when I pushed my car, other drivers got out to push with me.  I think my muse operates the same way.

So I show up to the table everyday, set the cursor on a fresh page, and torment myself.  Sometimes, he’s kind enough to crack his knuckles and get me out of my mess.

Doldrums

Kevin digs at the ocean with the rudder.  He snapped it from the tiller while the sun was up.  He is wet past his forearms.

Nina sits at the bow of the boat, out of his way, with nothing in her hands to correct the circle Kevin spins them in.  She marvels quietly at the stars.  Rather than dwell on her hangover - embedded like an axe in her forehead - she fills her mind with memories of night sermons with her mother, how their church lit entire cases of candles along the pews.  The stars make Nina feel holy.

Earlier that day, after waking to empty sails that Kevin forgot to close, Nina paced the length of the boat - 20 feet, though she stretched it to hundreds - holding her phone out to get reception.  Fatigued, Nina shut the phone off at four percent and stashed it in her pocket.  She calmed and watched the sun set on the horizon.  Nina recognized how the water stilled to glass, how the ocean mirrored the sky so that every direction seemed a continuum instead of a boundary.  Rather than disappear behind a solid mass, the sun shut like an eye - first to oblong, then to almond, then to sleep.

Nina tried including Kevin on the spectacle.  Instead, he invested in flipping the boom back and forth to make enough wind to propel them.  All it did was force Nina to hold down her hair.

“Kevin,” she said, “You’re missing it.”

“I can figure this out,” he replied, panting, “I can get us out of here.”

“Kevin,” she said, “Look in front of you.”

He looked in despair at the sail.

“Kevin,” she said.

“Nina!” he snapped.  He knew he made a mistake.

Nina waited.  “Should I be helping?”

“Just keep the phone ready.”

As Kevin digs at the ocean - crude oil black, same as the night - his ripples shake the reflecting surface and return it to sea.  He misses the arrangement of his living room, his standing speakers propped in every corner - for immersive sound - and his high definition television - set to lifelike.  Exhausted, he begins to accept how far that room is.  He sits with Nina on the bow.

“Any service?” Kevin asks.

Nina shrugs.  “It was no service then, it will be no service the three feet you paddled us, and it will still be no service over there.”  She points at the closest ripple, made visible by the network of stars overhead.

“Then what do we do?” Kevin asks.

“Look.”

As the ripple echoes to its end, the mirror returns, and the sky joins the sea to suspend the boat in cosmos.  Like floating through the stars, Kevin cannot believe it.  He thought he understood panoramas from the fifty five inches of screen in his living room.  He sees now he’d been cheated, how none of that compares to finding this center of the universe.

As Kevin drifts into a trance, Nina suggests, “I guess we could have a look at the phone, but it will probably drop us another percent.  Should we save it for later?”  

Kevin, slow in hearing her, weighs their options.  Rather than answer, he inches toward the edge of the bow, but stops before seeing his reflection.

From the edge, and from any direction he chooses, the stars offer to swallow him whole.

“Play a song,” he says.