I was suffering from episodic exhaustion just off the coast of loneliness where the sea dark waves are so high you’re blind to the moon, bone white and wounded. The people here are like pigeons, gathering anywhere they can find a few crumbs. It’s the colors that keep them alive, orange, green and gold that gathers around the thin stone streets, cracked and crooked. I came here to find myself, to make something complete but as each day passes I fall further away from any idea I once had and all I can do to feel is spend each late night polishing my chrome heart before sleep finally steals me. Let me be honest, I came here looking for a girl; I’m barely breathing with interest in myself. I’m a stranger to myself and even I know that it’s better that way.
She came here to begin a career as a postcard model. I remember her saying how the sunlight made her beautiful. She wanted to swim across the ocean, do battle with the waves and experience hand to hand combat with tiger sharks. She’d gone from collecting stamps to acquiring sharks teeth. Grace had always had expensive hobbies although every adventure comes with a price I suppose. After we hung up the telephone the cord coiled around my wasted words. I burned my collection of wrong numbers and hoped to forget her. Actually we were both acting like kids; flying kites inside the fish bowls we called our feelings. We may as well have been digging a hole to China. The impossibilities are endless when emotions get tangled in the chain of a relationship that’s been pedaling uphill too long.
I stepped from the street into an orange bar where the darkness melted into my bones, the flickering flames from burning wicks made the light look like liquid. The bartender looked lonely despite the number of people inside the bar. I ordered a beer, the kind where they add a piece of fruit to the foam which I’ve never really cared for but it seemed to spark a smile from the bartender as he dropped the orange on the foam before it began to sink, drop down, drown and drift down to the bottom of the glass. Death of any kind brings joy to certain people and this guy with a Virgin Mary tattoo blessing his forearm appeared to be the type. He stood proudly beneath a spiraled roll of fly sticky tape that held the carcasses of hundreds of flies, which assured me that he appreciated the subtle, quiet death that was more like stealing than killing. I finished one beer and fell into another looking for the sweet beer buzz like bees in the heat of a lazy summer afternoon.
Behind the bar was a photograph of Amelia Earhart standing below a steeple of a church from this town, which made me realize that we’re all trying hide from ourselves in some strange way. We all have our hiding places, the fuselage of fears and flight we parachute lightly down from to reach the ground to hear that soft sound of landing. I imagine it depends on how high we fly; when you’re too far up the sunbeams are like razors and they cut you down into a thousand pieces of loneliness and leave you in fragments of yourself. Who has time to put it all back together?
The harbor light was blue-green, the sky and water met somewhere in the middle it seemed and painted the salt air. There was a young amber-skinned girl on the beach collecting seashells. Perhaps she wanted to take the ocean wherever she went which is simply one of those well intentioned disappointments that all young people go through. The ocean doesn’t travel over air or land no matter how well you pack it. I drifted over to a souvenir stand and twirled the metal postcard tree around until I saw her; her blue breakable glass eyes staring through me, with the words, “Wish You Were Here,” in yellow block letters arching above her figure. Seeing her image hit me like a sucker punch with a horseshoe in the glove, the air spilling from my midsection leaving me gasping and gaping. I went back to orange bar before finally staggering back to my green room to rust away in rain soaked, drizzling dreams. I figured that when I awoke I would come to my senses and return home.
A knock on my door stunned me from sleep and I struggled to the door. The door ached open and there were two police officers standing outside. One of them was holding a copy of the postcard I’d seen earlier, although his thumb was wearing her image out and I noticed what looked to be a perfectly round drop of blood about the size of a dime.
“Do you know this woman,” the mustached officer asked me in bent English.
“Yes.”
“Come with us.”
We climbed the stairs of dingy apartment building where flecks of chipped gold paint littered the stone steps. My God, I thought, they’re taking me to see her body, semi-floating in the bathtub with her wrists splayed wide open and water turned to rust. The flies must be unbearable, I thought, and felt myself on the final flight of stairs getting sea sick and it was then I realized that the shoes I was wearing were too small for this heat. The apartment door had been left open, which didn’t surprise me. It seemed like everything people did down here was careless and done with half-interest. We walked to the bedroom and I saw a man’s body lying face down, naked to the waist with his arms bent at the elbow, open palms pleading skyward as if his last moment was a cry to God.
“Do you know him?”
“No,” I whispered.
The mustached officer said, “He has been killed. Shot. Dead.”
That was the other thing these people were so good at; stating the obvious, peeling it back, piece by piece as if they’d uncovered the center of some strange truth. The other officer, a short stocky man with a scar that drew his mouth to one side, creating a constant grin on his face walked over to the body and put his hand on the dead man’s shoulder. He turned to face the two of us and the crime scene turned into some kind of awkward performance art with glances and nods done in the most dramatic fashion. I was waiting for the circus music and dancing clowns but as soon as the officer turned the body over and I saw my own face on the dead man’s body the show came to a quick end.
“Are you sure you don’t know him?”
“Yes, more sure than before. I’ve never seen myself in my life.”
As we walked out of the apartment I noticed her suitcase by the stove, covered with stickers from all the places she’d never been. There was still time of course but we all reach certain points in our lives when dreams are all our dreams will ever be.#
