Still Soft With Sleep - Chapter 10
by Vincenzo Barney
We resume serializing our second quarterly Contest winner’s novel, Vincenzo Barney’s Still Soft With Sleep. Catch up with the previous chapters here:
As ever, if you believe in what we’re doing at PILCROW, please subscribe, please share, and spread the word.
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
Vincenzo Barney is a Vanity Fair contributor. He wrote Still Soft With Sleep for his senior thesis at Bennington in 2018. He is working on a book about Cormac McCarthy and Augusta Britt, a story he broke for Vanity Fair last year.
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
I tried to reach for him as he staggered forward. He collapsed nearly on top of me and I put my arm around his back and could not feel it I was so cold. We shivered together banked behind the rock in the sun and I gathered my arm back into me. We spasmed badly and I thought my back would break in the spasms. I knew we had to get our wet clothes off but I couldn’t find the strength to hoist up and remove them. Still we had to and after my body accepted it was out of the water I sat up and tried to wield my arms. They were numb and heavy. When I lifted them just a quarter of the way they began to shake. I laid back down and tried again after a long while. I bit the neckline of my shirt to get a purchase on it but the shirt was wet so it clung to my elbow and I couldn’t get my arm through. My arms did not belong to me. Elvis had sat up now and he put his weak arm through the short sleeve of my shirt and held it open and I got my arm back in to my torso and sat panting and shivering with one arm through. I started to push the shirt up with my free arm and Elvis helped me get it over my head and then I let it fall to the sand and helped Elvis in the same way with his shirt. Our pants were harder because we had tied and taped them at the knee and our fingers could not close themselves on the edge of the tape and pull. I got a finger in the small space of the belt loop and Elvis helped me pull until the prong was free of the holes. I wedged my hand between the loose belt and my pants and pulled until it was free. I helped Elvis with his too and then put a finger above my zipper and pulled down numbly, and then like crowbars pulled on the hole with my hands until my button popped loose out of the buttonhole. Elvis did the same and we rolled them down to the tape edge and pushed until they finally slipped over the knee. It was hard work and took long and we must have looked quite strange doing it. And then we laid down, and we were so cold we looked like a pair of ancient statues with the groins cut out, and laid in the sun huddled together shaking and sleeping.
The stretch of coastline was private and we were lucky no one came down this way. We were behind a rock from the public facing side and could rest here comfortably for awhile. When I woke from a tired nap my head was heavy and I needed water and tea badly. I chugged what was left of both and then got very dizzy and nearly collapsed. I grasped my head in pain and my vision vanished and came back and was still blurry. Elvis’s water and tea looked very good to me but I didn’t have any. I sat rubbing and slapping and clenching my body. I saw our clothes in damp clumps and grabbed them one by one from a sitting position and rung them out best I could with numb hands. Then I got up and spread them on top of the rock to dry and lay back down and huddled into Elvis.
The pauses between the shivering grew longer but I was still cold and my jaw ached because my teeth had not stopped chattering for several hours. My neck and shoulders were in the most pain and the hardest to get to move. My legs were heavy but they were ok and the toes had uncramped. I made fists with my fingers and I felt a warmth of blood under the cold skin. I smacked my body and rubbed as much as I could and I tried to walk a little.
When I could get to my voice I heard how alien it had become. “We’ve got to get some food, El.”
He didn’t say anything and I laid back down against him.
“El. We gotta get to town. Buy food.”
He moaned into the sand.
I could feel my fingers now and I started rubbing and massaging his shivering body. I grabbed handfuls of his skin and kneaded them. After a few minutes he rolled over, dazed.
“Can’t.”
“You can.”
“Ok,” he said.
I massaged the front of his body and handed him his water and tea. This woke him up. He drank them down and his head fell back and his teeth stopped chattering for a moment. The chattering came back and he exhaled heavily over and over.
It was hard work to get the tape and laces of the pants. We had tied them very tightly and effectively. We finally ripped them off and put our legs in. Our legs were so cold we didn’t feel the sand as we put our legs through, nor on our backs as the shirts went on. They were still damp but I thought they would dry as we walked in the sun.
We were not about to sit there and try and work our shoe laces back into the eyelets of our sneakers so we left them. We wobbled about a mile down the beach with heavy bodies and our arms tucked inside our wet shirts, hugging ourselves. We were slow and heavy and dazed like right before a big cold comes on and rested against tall rocks. Elvis leaned against a rock and I saw he slept. I slept too for a moment against a rock and jolted awake as I felt my balance go out. We were shaking. But there were soft pauses now between the teeth chattering and we walked barefoot and the sand was warm on our feet. We came finally to the public beaches of Menemsha and walked into Larsen’s fish market. There was an old fisherman behind the register. We ordered two quarts each of clam chowder and four cocacolas and waters and two large French Fries and a pound of raw bluefin tuna cut into sashimi and two lobster rolls each. We also put down two sweatshirts and grey sweatpants with Larsens’ name down the sides from the small alcove for tourists.
“You sell socks?”
The fisherman furrowed his brow. “Do I sell socks?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t sell socks.”
I turned to Elvis. “We should double up the sweats.”
Elvis pulled his damp wallet from his zipper pocket and I got two more pairs each, double-XL.
“You have triple XL?”
The man laughed. “What are you trying to dress, a bluefin? No.”
Elvis held the wallet below the counter so the fisherman wouldn’t see his shaking fingers. It was hard to wedge the card out and because it was wet it didn’t read, so the fisherman had to enter the number manually with his large, callused fingers. We must have looked drunk and blue but there was over three hundred dollars hanging on the card so he wasn’t about to send us away.
“What,’d you two fall off a boat this morning?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“You better take some coffee.”
“Thank you.”
“Take the clothes for free too, you look rough and they cost me nothing.”
“Thank you.”
He put everything in bags for us and brought us two hot coffees and packages of ketchup for the fries. Elvis and I walked to the public restrooms eating the fries and took turns holding the bag of food and changing into the grey sweats. We threw our wet clothes in the trash.
Then we sat down behind Larsens’ out of the wind and in the sun and ate. We were very cold even in the sun. My hair had dried and felt warm against my cold forehead and I started to fog eating the food and taking in the sugar. Blue lights were exploding against my eyes and my forehead hurt. We worked quickly through the first quarts of clam chowder and even dipped the fries in it. I drank the coffee like water and started on my first coke. My stomach was exploding but I kept eating. I worried about a fever and I thought we ought to feed the fever to stave it. Don’t stop. I didn’t use any of the soy sauce for the raw tuna because I didn’t want to dehydrate and soon my bladder called me back to my feet to pee. I held onto the table for several seconds before I took off lumbering and limping for the bathroom with a coke. I was too tired to stand and sat on the toilet and peed and sat there for five minutes, drinking my coke. The floor was wet and sandy and my feet were cold. I held my head in my hands and I felt false energy climb. I knew we were in the twilight of pain and it would come for us tonight. My eyes hurt badly from the sun and there was an electric warp laid across my vision I couldn’t see around. It throbbed when I closed my eyes and I thought I could still die.
The fisherman brought us more coffee and french fries and we finished as much as we could of the food and then we laid in the sun in our sweatshirts and tried to sleep in the midst of all the small children and families playing and sunbathing around us. I felt still the open tunnel, the same gate as sleep but forked back of the entrance. Falling into it for sleep felt like dying and my body kept jumping with the feeling of a plane falling during ascent. It was hard to sleep like this and I felt flecks of sand in my face. Elvis had turned the inner sweatshirt around so the hoodie covered over his face. I copied this and pulled it down once from my eyes to find a blonde child on his knees smiling at me.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello.”
He and his siblings were jumping over me as some obstacle on the beach.
“We’re playing,” he told me.
“What are you playing?”
“It’s called, Jump Over the Man.”
“How do you play?”
“Like this,” and he walked away from me, turned toward me and ran and leapt me.
“Huh. I’m still confused how you play it. Maybe go jump over my friend and show me.”
“We haven’t tried him yet.”
“I bet you can get good air over him.”
“Ok.”
And I fell asleep watching the children jumping over Elvis.
We took the bus back from Menemsha eating our lobster rolls, and had each a quart left of clam chowder. The fries and tuna were gone and I thought our breath must smell horrible and we must look like a strange pair. We tried to sit away from the air conditioning and open a window for warmth and the passengers looked at us sweating and irritated. My body’s heaviness was too strong and I fell asleep quickly, my arms inside my grey Larsen sweatshirt and my feet tucked into the rolls of the sweatpants, but I kept jumping out of it.
Elvis was asleep too but he woke me when we got to Church Street in Edgartown. We left our trash on the bus and lumbered forward with what was left of our food. It must have taken us thirty minutes to make the five minute walk back to Mayflower. We shuffled and dragged our feet going up the smallest hill. I was cold still but my head was sweating and Elvis looked dead, and I must have looked the same. He had bags under his eyes and his skin was pale and blue in the cheeks.
When we got to Mayflower we took the side entrance that no one ever used to sneak past any Gavins. The side door was right by the stairs. Elvis peeked through the windows and saw no one. He took a key out of a fake rock and opened the door quietly. He put the key back and we entered and he closed the door and we took to the stairs. The last leg of our journey was up three flights. We went quietly on the carpet and slowly. The washing machine was whirling and we could hear Laura and Michelle in their bedrooms. We got to the top of the landing and then Elvis felt for the gun in his pocket and he went up the last flight of stairs to open and hide it on the fifth floor. I turned off the air conditioning and fell into the bed. Elvis came down with a gallon jug of water and closed the door and pushed his dresser over it so no one could come in. He opened the skylight for the hot air and drew the shades down over the sun and he fell next to me and we bundled under the blankets. It was hard to fall asleep and I knew once I did the pain would come alive and it would be a hard sleep. For sleep binds bodies and if Elvis and I were ever to lay awake in the moonlight of the same dream it was tonight. Could we chance a glimpse of what we may see and would there come a second swim to be made tonight in the work of sleep, as the pain twined us up to our crowns and sleep sewed it to the bone.
We slept for only a first smooth hour. Elvis ripped his side of the blanket off in a sweat and my body was too stiff to turn and do the same. I laid in a great heat with the last of the daylight in the room and I did not fall asleep so much as drop out of myself. My eyes were still injured from the sunlight and that opening was still in me. It was the eye of the needle of death and it was stabbed across my eyes. It was the same clean gate as sleep, all untouched. I felt I could enter it and die if I chose, and I had the sense every time I began to sleep that I was hurtling down toward its rim and I panicked and threw myself on the outside of its dark halo and lay around it and slept. Then I would gasp awake and realize I was sleeping on my back and I was not breathing. The pain of the swim was coming into its early strength and I could not bear to move my body and get to my side. I tried to turn and my abdominal wall shook as if to fall apart. A turn of the head could move the mood into fever and I feared a change of direction might leave me more vulnerable than others.
The way was open. I could choose it. The exit which chambers the soul. It was like the drain of the tub when I was a child. I would lay under the water and listen to the sound of the drain and was afraid of getting sucked down into it. Afraid of coming out of the water. I fought it and sweated and took the top layer of my sweats off. There was something loose and unknown in the dream material and it was stealing pieces of me. Who could say there were not certain dreams where you could lose your life. That the omegas of the soul could not open to you in a duct of dream and you could thread through to die if you chose?
I fought it all night. In my dreams I still swam with Elvis and I had others that were like librations of the soul that I forgot on the instant of living them. I was deep in an original layer of memory and ascended from sleep like the levels of rest a diver must make. Yes, a rose off the moon gates the first dream, and you must drop it in the sea before you can leave. I woke sometime in the dark shaking with light boring through my eyelids. It was as if to have swum out of the light of heaven buried at the bottom of the ocean below the dark and yet the light was still boring into my eyes even in the dark of the room. It still had some grip on my death and the bright eye of the needle awoke the awe and absorption of the child in me who cannot stop staring into the sun. My inner eye would go blind if I didn’t stop and I didn’t know how to turn from it and it kept pulling on me. I felt the bonds of my soul take on gravity and pull away. I was breathing like mad and hyperventilating and Elvis was groaning next to me on his side in pain. Then I became very cold and reached in pain to bring the blanket back over me.
Again I dropped into sleep against my will and without my knowing it. What was awake in me merely dropped out of me completely, over and over. I jolted out of its pull to discover it had already sucked me down. The hole was not closing up but settling in me, becoming more clear. Like a scratch on the iris you see when you close your eyes on the beach, against the inner red of the eyelid. When I shifted my eyes it shifted too and drifted with the drift of my eyes. The way was open, and I could go in anytime.
Sometime before dawn I woke in a panic that I had slept. My body had pulled me under and to wake was to wake into total pain. But now my bladder throbbed and I had to get up or I would wet the bed. I was still on my back and tried to turn toward the floor. It was going to hurt. It was going to hurt very badly. I turned against a riot in my body and my vision seemed to come in a delay round to my eyes. My shoulders and neck and abdomen screamed against it. There was an odd calm in my head. I lay there on my side as the pain in my body subsided and then the pain in my head rushed round like a swell breaking over a seawall and I groaned loudly as it washed over me.
I heard Elvis say my name. I slowly slid my leg off the bed and onto the floor. From my side it hurt less to get my stomach flat.
“Adam.” There was concern in his voice.
I groaned and got my arm and leg over the side and slid my other leg all the way over. My back ached now as I did this and my head was fogged. My body was a bond of pain and gravity worked against me. I had never felt before gravity’s intimate bond with pain. They are made of the same physical law and sleep had married them.
“Are you gonna pee?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Use the emply jug.”
I laid and caught my breath.
“Where is it?”
“Our feet. It kills.”
I lifted up against the bed onto my knees, feeling the full length of the pain. My head swam in flashes of harbor lights. I was shaking in the cold and an old spasm from the swim worked through the exhausted locks of my body. I found the jug and crawled sideways with my arms on the bed. I pulled my sweatpants down and put myself through the lid and peed for a long time. Elvis began to lift up in his pain and it took his breath away how much he hurt. I was dizzy, but took solace in the pleasure of peeing. It did not all flow and I had to push with the muscles of my stomach and I groaned aloud in the sound of the stream and he had spirit enough to laugh at me.
“What’s our lie?” I asked.
“We went over to Astana’s in Falmouth.”
“Ok. And we’re massively hungover.”
“Massively.”
“Is the gun safe?”
“Yes.”
“And about the boat we play dumb.”
“Ok.”
I woke with the smell of daylight on the ocean. The windows in the room had been shut for the AC ever since the Gavins showed up and it was nice to smell the sea in the house again.
The pain was worse in the morning than the night. Only if I laid very still on my side was the pain ok. But my right leg was sore from not moving off it for hours and I couldn’t help but yelp when I turned over. It felt as if every bone in my body was broken. But the sense of fever was gone, and I could see again and think a little better. I wasn’t shaking anymore but my muscles hurt from all the shivering I’d done.
I felt my hair and I could hardly put my fingers through it. There was a thin caked layer of sand on the side of my forehead under my hair and I wiped it away. The bed was also full of sand.
The jug was full too and I had to pee again. I got up very slowly and shuffled to the door and pushed the bureau away. It woke Elvis. I couldn’t bend over to grab the jug and dropped to my knees instead and stood back up with it. The work of a long minute. The food was on the bureau and I had some last cold bites.
Jamie and Serena were coming out of their room. There was an afterglow on their skin and a daze in their eyes.
“Bruuuuuu,” said Jamie. “Damn, you look destroyed.”
“What time is it?” I asked, chewing lobster.
“10 dirty bru.” He looked me over. “Nice Larsen’s gear.”
“Thanks man.”
“That’s a sick fit. You just pick it up?”
“Yeah. Pretty fire, right?”
“Where have you guys been?”
“Larsen’s.”
They laughed. “The whole time?”
“Nah, we went to Astana’s in Falmouth.”
“You guys get trashed?”
“Yeah. Did a ton of Molly. So hungover. We got back yesterday and slept all day.”
“Sick. Yeah, Laura was freaking out about you guys.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah she thought you guys were dead or something.”
“Ah, well. El forgot his phone and I don’t have your numbers and then we were just gone off the Molly.”
“Is it fun there?”
“So fun.”
“You missed some crazy parties,” said Serena.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Celebrating Chris’s rescue.”
“He got so drunk he forgot where he docked his boat,” Jamie smiled.
“No way.”
“Yeah. He was walking all up and down peoples’ backyards looking for it.”
“Well,” I said, “every good deed deserves a bad turn.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just an expression. The guy’s been up to such good, something’s bound to happen to him.”
Jamie looked confused. “Why though?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Parade’s today,” said Serena.
“For Chris?”
“No,” Jamie laughed. “For the Fourth. It comes down Northwater Street.”
“Oh sick.”
“What’s in the jug?”
“Urine. We’re collecting it.”
Jamie laughed. “It’s Gatorade right?”
“Yeah, for the hangover. I have to go to the bathroom now very badly.”
“Ok bru, we’ll catch you downstairs. I’ll let Laura know you guys are up. I heard you guys get back yesterday and I kept her from barging in.”
“Thanks bru.”
“She thought you guys stole Chris’s boat.”
“Did she really?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah. We swam over.”
“Nice.”
I shuffled to the bathroom and Jamie and Serena laughed at me.
“Damn, you’re really hungover, huh?”
I laughed too and shuffled melodramatically for them and shut the door. “Hung as, bru.”
Elvis and I had come back to the same axis but I wondered if we had merged at such speed that it would not hold and we’d swing apart again. I did not know what pacts he may have made in his sleep, what promises sworn to for we were too tired to recover them and talk. By midafternoon we appeared downstairs.
I sat out on the balcony and looked at the innocent glitter of the harbor. Without the fever the pain was agreeable. I was proud of it. I watched the Chappy ferry and thought I could see Brock at the wheel. I wondered at that. But I could not stand up to get a better look. I looked ahead a few steps. The sleep had given me a distance. Elvis was inside fielding Linda’s questions. There’d be a pride in her at the hangover, the sporting of it. She might not have noticed Elvis was gone but Laura would have terrified her.
Tumbling Dice came on through the speakers. I was alone in the song until voices came out and took to the pool below.
Baby, I can’t stay, you to ro-oh-oll may
And call me the tumblin dice
I stood up and looked down at Serena’s tan breasts swimming in the pool. Laura and Michelle were sunbathing in the lounge chairs and there were Gavin children in the pool too.
One of Elvis’s uncles climbed the stairs.
“This was one of Ed’s favorite songs.”
“It’s a good one.”
He went inside and then Sweet Viriginia came on next, like it always did.
Made it through the waste stormy winter
Jamie called up. “Adam, that you up there?”
“Yeah bru,” I said, sitting down again and moaning loudly for them.
“Come on down sweet virginia.”
“I will later. I’m afraid of the sun right now.”
“Yeah and you should be. You vampires had to party your cocks off and scare us to death,” said Laura.
“Ah yeah. Elvis left his phone and I don’t have your numbers so—”
“So you couldn’t text. Yeah yeah yeah. Astana has my number. If you guys cared at all about the people who loved you you’d have had her text me. We were all scared to death.”
“I was chilling,” said Jamie.
“Sorry Laura.”
“And then mom took down all the photos of Dad the same day. It felt like a bad omen.”
“Bad juju all over the place,” said Michelle.
“Yeah but the photos of dad were just cuz she repainted,” said Jamie.
“Well, they’re not back up yet, are they? It’s been two days.”
“Did you hear the woman Chris saved died?” asked Mark GF.
“No!”
“Yeah, yesterday morning.”
“Alright, that’s it! No more messing around. No more sneaking off. No more staying up past midnight and going out on boats. There’s a bad energy going around. I want everyone in bed at a reasonable hour.”
“It’s the Summer of Trump,” Michelle quipped.
“No, for real! It’s the first summer of Trump and it’s killing everyone. They still haven’t caught the guy who killed that little girl.”
“Well, whoever it was didn’t mean it. It was a freak accident.”
“Still, he killed a girl. He’s got to face something. It’s the daughter of the Chappy Ferry captain. That sweet man, Brock.”
“Is that true? Adam, do you know him?”
“Yeah, he’s a great guy.”
“Have you seen him since? How is he?”
“Rocky.”
“I cried this morning when Hugh showed me her picture in the paper.”
“I told Chris. He’s got that stupid gun he shoots off when he’s wasted. I told him be careful, he could kill someone by mistake. Like that poor girl.”
I went looking for Elvis in the kitchen. The walls of the dining room and living rooms had all been painted now and their old L-shaped couch replaced. Even the doorframe in the kitchen where they had measured their heights as kids. My height had been marked there too. I could feel a place where Elvis had been in the room like a patch of cold water and I knew that his mother had painted over his soul.
I looked through the fridge and pulled out left over pizza and orange juice and sat at the island. Chris and Caleb came in then, reeking of weed.
“Adam bru! Where you guys been?”
“Hey guys.”
“Go on a splurge with the Frank coin?”
Chris and Caleb dapped me and I winced to raise my hands.
“What’s the matter with you? Where have you been?”
“We’re hungover. Partied hard in Falmouth at Astana’s.”
“Oh yeah, I remember her. She’s a babe.”
“Yeah.”
“She could do porn.”
“Yes.”
“So you guys steal my boat or what?”
“Huh?”
“My boat. It’s gone.”
“You lost your boat?”
“Look, it’s ok if you guys borrowed it, but I need it back. And you gotta ask first. Almost swam home a few nights ago.”
“Oh, Chris.” Caleb grabbed his forehead and put his hand on Chris’s arm. “I can’t believe this. Frank had it brought to the marina that day. I forgot to tell you. Shit.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He wanted to engine tuned while he was gone. The marina guys came and got it.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry bru. He caught me when we were leaving the Gidal that day and told me to tell you, and I said I would. But then we got to the Atlantic and the Yacht Club and I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ve been chilling so hard I haven’t been able to think straight.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Chris nearly collapsed as the tension left his body. “What a fuckign relief. I was getting close to calling him and admitting I lost another boat.” Chris shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Daaa-aaaad.”
Caleb laughed. His eyes were in crescents and he caught my eye.
“Dads, am I right? One day we’ll be just like them. Crazy.”
Linda came in then holding Chelsea. She screamed with laughter when she saw me. “Adam! You look terrible!”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “And I feel even worse.”
“Elvis told me all about the party in Falmouth. You guys are crazy. You’re not partying in the boathouse tonight are you?”
“Oh, when the hour strikes midnight, you’ll probably find us down there.”
She screamed again with laughter. “I don’t even wanna know what goes on there at night.”
“No, you don’t.”
“So, Chris and Caleb, to what do we owe the honor?”
“Caleb’s saying his goodbyes,” said Chris.
“What? You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, duty calls in LA,” Caleb said.
“An emergency on set?” Linda joked.
“That’s right Linda. The film I’m working on is a like The Godfather meets The Social Network, but with Mexican cartels. And Don Corleone and Mark Zuckerberg are just not getting along on set right now. Plus, I gotta get back to my harem.”
Linda screamed.
“The girls here are so fake. The chicks in LA are just… more real, I don’t know. Anyways, I’m off to the airport now to get ahead of the parade traffic.”
“But it’s not a Fourth of July without Caleb Stone!”
“I know. But I tell you what Linda. After the parade, around four, look up into the sky, for a red plane.”
“No.”
“I’m having my pilot fly over Chappy. Give me a wave.”
Linda screamed again. “Well, everyone’s out by the pool. Come on.”
Linda led them out of the kitchen and as Caleb passed me. “Keep it real bru.”
“You too Caleb.”
“By the way, you dropped this the other day on the yacht,” and he handed me the check, folded between his fingers.
I couldn’t find Elvis in the house and I didn’t have the strength to climb the stairs to look for him. The parade had started down Northwater and Mayflower was empty. I felt him through the timbers and the feeling put a message in me about his father and the photos. There was a webbing over us from the swim but with his father I felt him being tugged in a direction I couldn’t follow. I was cold and achy and I thought a hot shower might help. I shuffled down the balcony stairs into the sun and to the outdoor shower below. I hadn’t seen my naked body since the swim. My arms and stomach were coated white with sand and dead exfoliated skin. My hair was matted and I had seaweed stuck to my shoulders and everywhere below my waist.
The showerhead was monstrous and the hot water massaged into my neck. Every time I felt pain I was proud. I was proud of how I hurt. Every time my shoulders or my neck or my back hurt I said to myself, “Yes, they hurt because you did something big with them.” The pain was like a tattoo. And it felt a little looser, a little more comfortable in the hot water. And maybe I would miss it when the pain was gone. But there was new pain to feel as I moved my body in the water and I laughed out loud when I felt a new tear inside me.
I brushed into my hair slowly. It was knotted from the salt and its curls and blonde streaks looked like a Renaissance work of sculpture in the mirror. I looked at my tan body in the small mirror and I looked Roman and lean from the swim. The Sound had put an extra tone into it and it was the first time I thought my body looked truly beautiful. I was sad to destroy the artwork of my hair but it was nothing but sand underneath.
The hot water felt good and when I finished I left my underwear on the hook and put on my sweatpants and draped the hoodie over my shoulder. I lost a second of vision in the temperature swing. I fluttered my eyes. The sea air felt nice on my warm skin. When I opened the door finally, Serena ran into me. I had been standing so long gathering myself that she must not have thought anyone was there. We were both frightened and held each other in surprise. The fold of the towel had loosened and fallen to her feet and we held each other seconds longer than we needed, second long enough to kiss in. I looked down at her breasts and my head swam in the way she smelled. She looked down at my chest and we both said sorry to each other. She had that afterglow on her and I knew she and Jamie had hung back during the parade. It is a sin to kiss someone if you’re not in love and the last thing I saw was the sheer gold of hair in a vale below her waist and then I felt very lonely.
Elvis was sitting on the balcony. I was surprised to find him drinking a whiskey and I joined him. He put a look into me about his father and I didn’t ask about it. I felt around him.
“I was thinking, if they ever made a movie of what we did, it would be a great line when we land on the beach after the swim for one of us to pat our pockets and go, ‘Shit, you know what? I think I left my wallet back on Pasque. We’ll have to head back real quick.’”
I laughed. The whiskey had never touched me before but now it did. I was spent. It brought evening a few hours closer and the eye of the needle rose in me again. I was talking with Elvis but I could walk straight through it. It played over my soul like sunspots. It was the deep turquoise of a sunspot pinched tight below the eyes in the sun. I could smell Her breath through it. Seasweet. I could kiss it, sad and shadowed. All I had to do was put my foot on the sill. It was just further down the direction I’d been walking. I was one step from Her now. We had drawn now the distance of a kiss. I hurried another whiskey down and wondered if Elvis could see this needle too. Did he thread it for a moment when he almost drowned. Was there a door blown ajar in his swim. Did he hear the voice of his father in the old timbers of the house now shorn of his face coming through it?
“What happened when we got lost from each other?”
Elvis sipped his drink. “I got sucked under. And I swallowed a lot of water.” He swallowed the whiskey again to replace the taste of the salt in his memory. “I thought I was gonna die and then something pushed me back up. I thought, if I go down, I can’t kill Frank.”
“Yeah,” I said. I sipped my whiskey and refilled the glass. “You still wanna do that?”
“I didn’t know when I first said it but after the rips I knew. I saw it. I saw myself doing it. It’s what saved my life. I thought of it while I slept too.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I just gotta make sure I can lift the gun,” he laughed. “I could hardly pour the whiskey straight.” He sipped. “He’ll be back some time tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I scratched my jaw.
The harbor was packed with yachts now for the fourth and the sea was deep green. After Elvis went up to the fifth floor I shuffled along the beaches and the docks to avoid the parade. I walked around the building of the Harbor Master. There is a public launch on the other side and I walked up the road of the launch until I hit the parade crowd further down Northwater. Ancient firetrucks were going by, the kind twenty men had to push to a fire. I wedged through the crowd and down Dagget to the hut at the Chappy Ferry. Jill was walking up it.
“Adam.”
“Hi Jill.”
“You haven’t answered my texts.”
“Sorry, my phone’s been dead.”
“There’s a service this weekend for Rosie.”
“How’s Brock?”
“It’s so sad Adam. He’s so angry. The police won’t do anything about it. They say it’s impossible.”
“I know that’s bullshit.”
“It’s a .44 magnum. That’s all he could get out of them.”
“I’d like to see him before the service.”
“He’ll be in tomorrow morning.”
“What time?”
“First shift.”
“He’s not piloting is he?”
“No, he’s going over to the spot where it happened and see if he can figure anything.”
“I’ll see him. I’ll come tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you hear that woman died?”
“I did.”
“Devastating.”
“I know.”
“These things come in three’s and I’m just getting nervous what’s next.”
“It’ll be ok. Would you tell Brock I’ll be here tomorrow morning to see him and to wait if I’m not there right away?”
“Yes. He’d like that.”
“Thank you. Let’s go see the parade.”
“Ok.”
I put my arm out and she took it.
Linda had a catered barbecue set up in the backyard. High top tables were set everywhere. Chris and his mother were there and some of the boathouse crew and they walked with bottles of rose in their hands. Chelsea tiptoed through the grass. One of the frat guys had laid out in the sun all day with his hat on backwards and his forehead was sunburnt in the shape of the hat. Elvis and I sat on the balcony drinking together. We were going to get drunk tonight. There was something there at the end of the bottle for us.
“It’s Caleb! It’s Caleb!”
Half the crowd rushed up the balcony. There was a red plane in the sky and you could hear its motor. I looked at Elvis watching the plane and I thought of his father and the reach of other seas.
“The strangest thing happened, remind me to tell you later,” I said to him.
“Goodbye Caleb,” everyone said. They were waving and taking photos and Laura was on a FaceTime call with him.
“Stay chill while I’m gone,” I heard him say.
“I can’t believe he left today of all days.”
“I called in for work next week,” said Chris. “I can’t leave this place.”
Jamie and Serena and Mark GF stayed with us on the balcony after everyone went down to dinner.
“Caleb left me his conch,” said Jamie. He and Serena had their sunglasses on.
“You’re conched already, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Conched iz bru,” Jamie smiled.
The dinner passed and the light slipped away and at early evening the family gathered on the deck of the Boathouse. Linda asked me to get Monty a blanket because he was cold and he had to go to the hospital the next day to check his heart. Apparently he had been having pains all week and didn’t tell anyone. I ran in and grabbed a blanket and gave it to him and he very kindly accepted it and held my hand for a moment.
“Thank you, Adam.”
The first fireworks shattered green in the sky. I looked for Elvis. Jamie and Laura were standing alone together in the corner of the deck.
“Remember when that random couple was out here watching the fireworks on the dock, and dad came out and gave them a blanket and a bottle of wine?”
“Boy George, that was so funny. That’s the kind of guy you’re gonna be.”
“I know. I hope.”
“We should have done something for his birthday last week.”
The sky was darkening and the fireworks getting stronger over the black treeline of Chappquiddick. I imagined a war on the beaches of Chappaquiddick, and felt a warlike proximity to death. I went to look for Elvis and he was in the pool. His skin glowed red and green in the fireworks.
“Come in Adam. It feels so warm on the body. It’s melting my pain.”
“Ah, I’m chilling bru.”
The explosions burned into the pool. Later they mounted and all were sent off at once for the last minute and Elvis and I watched it from the balcony. Then there was a slipping away of the lights of the boats that had anchored to watch the fireworks and the light in the boathouse went on and slowly a party began. The older family members trickled back up through the balcony and some sat with us and drank. Chris came up for a bottle of wine and entered a magnetic ring with Elvis. I sat in the middle of it and I felt Elvis rotate in a circle with him like a fighter not yet ready to strike.
“Elllll. Heard you were at Astana’s.”
“Yup.”
“Good haul. She’s hot man. Why doesn’t she ever come and party with us?”
“She’s got her own place in Falmouth and a lot of family.”
“Don’t you want her here?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“But she’s like, ‘I wanna be with my family.’”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re like, ‘I just wanna fuck you.’”
Elvis didn’t say anything.
“Sorry, you’re more like, ‘I wanna kiss you… Where you pee.’” Chris laughed heartily at himself. “So what are you do butt buddies gonna do with the Frank coin? I took a look, that’s a lot of cash. I was thinking like, ‘Daaaad, let’s not go crazy.’ But nah, I really appreciate you guys. Legends. You’re legends, for life. You invest it right you never have to work. Well, you probably don’t have to anyways. How’s that all going? Are you guys well taken care of after Ed died?”
The moon slipped the clouds and was clean. Michelle and Mark GF came out to the balcony and Chris put a finger to his mouth. “We’ll chat later. Come down and play beer pong. I’ll wax you two. You guys grab the wine?” Chris asked Michell and Mark.
“You think twelve bottles will do?”
“Yeah, for the first hour. I’ll see you two later.” He winked at us.
 | A guest post by
|