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."
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