Falls (Pt. 2): Bev and also Tom

2.

It didn't take long for Bev to be bored and burning with energy. She walked briskly away from the docks and I followed her toward the dark, toward the sprawling and empty old battlefield that was a park now.

"I don't need love, anyway," she said.

"No?"

"Nope. I mean, it's fine, love, but I just don't need it, you know?"

"It'll all work itself out."

She lifted her dress up over her head and pulled it off. She only wore a bra now that her sandals were gone somewhere in the lake. She was thinner than I liked, but she was pretty and I cared for her. 

"Put your clothes on Bev," I said.

"I mean, You and Marie, you've got this, this thing, this bond. You know. Like, love isn't even the word. Love is beat right to goddamned death. Love is 'like' now. Love is handshakes now. No one knows what it used to mean. But you guys, you're more than love, you're each other. You're bulletproof. Like, how long have you been together?"

"A decade, last July. Put your dress on, Bev."

"A decade!" She began to walk faster, and I didn't feel like catching up. She was talking as she drifted further from me and I thought a cop would drive by and she'd get busted for being coked up and nude or some drunk fuck would throw her to the ground and I'd hear it and run up and end up with a broken nose or she'd see someone and throw them to the ground and I'd hear it and I'd end up with a broken nose. It was hard to tell with Bev. She got worked up from time to time.

I knew where she was going. Our bench. The four of us had found a bench under a large tree on a hillside and in the day when we didn't swim, or after or before we swam we'd sit on the bench under the tree and drink wine and read and laugh and we'd lay in laps and sleep under the tree until an ant would crawl across a face or any other number of distractions. I entered the darkness of the park and walked the familiar but still disorienting landscape to the hillside. 

The light only touched the borders of the park and the park seemed void otherwise. Serene and I'd only see the occasional tree as I came near enough to it to crash into it and if I hadn't known there were trees around the park, I would have crashed into them. I could hear Bev talking now, to herself and a bit loudly and I could see her pale body circling the bench. "Put your dress on Bev," I said.

Bev didn't look at me and just said "I threw it. I didn't want to hear you complain about it anymore."

"I wasn't complaining."

"You don't think I'm beautiful."

"I do. I just don't want you to get arrested or raped."

"You think Marie is more beautiful."

"Of course."

"Marie thinks you're more beautiful."

"I know."

"I think you're both beautiful."

"Thank you, Bev."

She stopped pacing and sat on the bench.

"I think Tom's beautiful." She stared at her feet. "I'm gonna miss him."

"I know." I took off my shirt and handed it to her. 

She took it and put it on. "What am I going to do?"

I sat next to her and she leaned her head on my shoulder. 

"Take me home," she said.

I kissed her forehead and my shirt covered some of her, but not enough and we took mostly darker streets back to the bungalow. She held my hand and watched for stones as she walked barefoot and when we got to the bungalow Marie was laying in the porch swing reading with her feet up over the arm rest and one shoe dangling on her toe and one shoe on the ground. 

Marie set her book down and sat up. Bev sat next to her and put her head in her lap.

"You all right?" Marie asked.

"Tom's going to leave, isn't he?"

I kissed Marie. "Hi beautiful."

"Hi honey. This is a me situation?"

"I think so."

"I'll be in a bit," Marie said.

"Okay."

"Goodnight James," Bev said.

"You'll be fine, Bev," I said.

3.

I went inside and took two beers from the fridge and went upstairs to the small crawlspace where Tom had set up a few old tape decks and had been singing into them for a while. He was sitting in a circle of them and had headphones on and one was playing back a repeating string of chords and into a microphone he played a complimenting string of chords and I listened for a bit before he stopped the machines and looked over at me.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"How's it coming?" I sat down outside the circle. He set his guitar across his lap. The room was barely lit by a small reading lamp in the corner.

"The song?"

"Yeah."

"Eh. It comes and goes. I get somewhere, I lose it."

I nodded and offered a beer to him.

"No thanks."

I opened mine and set the second one in front of me.

"So what's up?" he asked.

I took a swallow. "Bev."

"Oh. Yeah, Bev."

"Hows things going there?"

"You know, I don't know man." His fingers ran across the strings on the guitar and it emanated a soft rattling hum as they did. "I might go home."

"Yeah, that's what she thinks. She thinks your abandoning her."

"I don't know. Maybe I am. I'm not, but maybe I am."

I sipped again and looked at the lamp. We had come out in June as four and as a unit, and as time had passed more than that, and nothing terrible had happened. But now our arm was coming off. Our three a.m. songs and strings from the crawlspace. Our Tom. Bev's Tom. I didn't know what it meant for us. Maybe we'd all leave now. Maybe this was over. Maybe that's fine. It had been a wonderful summer and maybe that was good enough.

"Why?" I asked.

"Am I leaving?"

"Yeah."

"I'm broke, and Bev, she's, man, she's not Bev anymore." He took the beer on the floor and opened it. "I don't have much going on here, and fall is coming, and then winter and I mean, what am I going to do in the winter with no money and Bev all strung out? I'm alone man."

"We'll take care of you. We have money."

"We can't just live like this forever. I mean, eventually the money's going to run out, you know?"

"Sure."

"And Bev, I mean, Jesus, I'll be surprised if she lasts the goddamned summer without overdosing or breaking down completely or god knows what, man."

"Then maybe she needs you here, to help that."

"Listen, I love her, she's great. But she's not my responsibility, you know. She's this girl I know and she's great to me and we have fun, but she's not my wife, you know. It's different with you and Marie, I don't expect you to get it. I just, I just need to get out of here before I'm strung out too and my whole shits, just, wasted."

"I have no idea what you're saying."

"I need to get home."

"We're going to miss you."

He smiled and sipped his beer.

"How should I go? I mean, break up with Bev or, whatever adults do?"

"Talk to her, maybe."

"She's a lunatic right now."

"Sneak out in the middle of the night then."

He laughed. I figured he'd probably sneak out in the middle of the night.

Falls (Pt. 1): Bev, Sped Up.

1. 

Bev had a shredded corner of a plastic bag tight with cocaine and tied off with a pink hair band. She was rolling it around between her fingers and staring down a girl across the patio. The other girl walked into the night and Bev turned to me.

"So how's your... things, I guess?"

"Fine." I sipped a beer.

"Yeah, mine too." She glanced backward toward where the girl had been and then back to me. Her eyes were wide and lost. Somewhere.

"So, who was that?" I asked.

"Who was who?"

"The girl."

"Oh, I don't know. Some... someone."

"You don't know her?"

She kept flipping the plastic ball between her fingers and she watched it roll around. "No."

"Okay." I finished the beer and set the empty bottle on the warped wood table between us. The air was warm and soft. Most of the tourists had left after the fourth but we were still kicking around and world was better with only a few of us. Only soft voices now. Only the breeze on skin in the morning through the window. Only the rustle of leaves and the distant hum of cars somewhere and boats somewhere and life somewhere else. We were nesting. The four of us. Bev, Tom, Marie, and I. Cramped into a rented bungalow in the back of town, above the bustle and the streets and the noise and the world. We slept late or early sometimes. We wandered or stayed around. We painted, sang, drank, and Bev had a cocaine addiction, but that wasn't my goddamned problem then. She was thinner now than when we got there a few months ago. But, I guess we all were. Her eyes were somewhere else. 

"Wanna head back?" I asked.

"No."

"Okay. you want a  beer now? I'm going to get another if we're sticking around."

"We aren't."

"Okay. What do you want to do then?"

She looked around. To the side. Behind her. To the distance, wherever that is. "Let's go sit on the docks. I want to put my feet in the water."

"All right." I paid the bartender, tipped okay, and we left the patio. Only a few people straggled the wide sidewalk between the bars and the beaches. Only a few people straggled the thinning gap between magic and the morning. Only we were forgetting the difference.

Orange cones of light fell periodically from Parisian-style streetlamps lining the water. At some point earlier we had begun avoiding the cones and for weeks we had and now we didn't need to think about it. We stayed in the dark, to the side.

Bev took my hand and held it. Her hand was cold.

"Tom's probably going to leave," she said.

"I figured."

"I don't think he loves me."

"I don't know. He just has to sort himself out, I guess."

"I don't know why he has to go away to do it. We have everything here. I'm here."

I wished I had brought a beer with me.

"Maybe that's it," she said. "Maybe it really is me. Is it me?"

"I don't know, Bev."

"You guys still love me, right?"

"Of course."

"Okay. That'll be enough."

"Okay."

She kissed my hand and let it go. Hers had made mine cold and I put it in my pocket. We came to the docks.

She sprinted to the end of the second dock and kicked her sandals far into the dark and they splashed somewhere on the lake. She had more. She lifted her dress and sat on the dock, dropping her feet into the water. She shivered and kicked the water. "Goddamn it's cold."

I sat next to her.

"Give me your wallet," she said.

"Don't throw it in the fucking lake, Bev."

"I won't.

I took it out of my pocket and handed it to her. She opened it and took out my license and bank card. She handed me the license. "Hold this flat."

I took it and held it for her like a small plate. She broke open the baggie of cocaine onto the license and used the card to line it up.

"Don't lose it," she whispered.

"I won't."

She knelt down and then breathed deep and the cocaine was gone and she breathed deep a few more times and laid back onto the dock. I took the card from her hand and put it and my license back into my wallet and put the wallet back. The lamps on the sidewalk reflected long orange teeth onto the lake, shimmering and splitting and waving and gnashing. The gentle rush of the water as it sloshed against the dock posts sang out in it's perfect language and calmed my core and set my heart back where it should be. It had been a long day and week and month.

"It's fine," she said. "It's fine."

"Okay, Bev."