More than ten years ago, I published a short story collection called Evolvement. I’m going to republish the stories from the collection here. The book is available at all ebook retailers and the paperback version is available at Amazon.
“Just a Story”
She rode barefoot and bareback along a bare beach. I saw her bouncing toward me, the humidity slightly obstructing my view, making the air wavy like the ocean. I saw her holding the mane. The horse was free from the weight of a saddle and the pain of a bit. She was unbound by stirrups, or line-marked lanes on roads, or buildings, or time, or space. There was only the ocean and the breeze ….
I had fallen asleep at the early-morning water’s edge, a hand on my fishing pole beside me. The rising tide tickled my feet to wake me. This wasn’t the beach in my dream. This beach was lined with sky-scraping hotels and plastic lawn chairs, but the people had not yet come. It was early and the sun must have risen only moments ago. I reeled in my line, sure that the tourists would soon funnel in as if they were caught in some sort of sunny drain.
I turned, balancing the slightly curved fishing pole against my cut-off jeans. People walked towards me like robots in flesh and bathing suit. Their hands were on the cell phones at their ears or computer cases at their sides. Some had Kindles. Few had books. I never liked contraptions. My fishing rod and reel were utilitarian. Then there was my car, which had, unfortunately, become a necessity. The car wasn’t flashy. Big, but not flashy. A 1983 Monte Carlo. Brown with brown interior, a broken dashboard light, and a dented door. I bought it dented for luck. If it was already dented, I wouldn’t dent it myself, I had thought. No matter how unflashy the car was, I still had to keep it spotless, so I washed it every Thursday and Sunday.
The people were coming. I broke down my pole and stuffed it into the trunk before driving home.
Home was dark and quiet. I lived in a beach house just outside of town. The place wasn’t huge, but neither was I. The kitchen worked, my bedroom had a bed, and it was clean – what more could I need? As soon as I walked in, the phone rang. I could tell by the impatient way that it rang that it had been ringing for some time.
“What time is it?” It was my girlfriend, Denise.
“I’m not sure.” I didn’t own a watch and I couldn’t figure out the digital clock on my oven.
“It’s 9:15.”
I could tell by her tone that this time should have meant something to me. “What day is it?” I asked.
“Saturday,” she said.
I still didn’t know the importance of the time.
“Saturday. July 3. 9:15 a. m. Think real hard.”
“Did we have a date?” I asked, still unsure. I had missed many dates.
“Yes. Nice work. You were supposed to meet me here at eight. You were supposed to meet me and my parents for breakfast here, at eight, one hour and fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“My parents,” she continued as if she didn’t hear me. “Remember? The ones you’ve never met? The ones who really wanted to meet you? The ones who have been waiting all this time?”
“Oops.” It was all I could think to say. I never did well when people yelled at me. At least her next response was quick – she said not a word and hung up. In that brief moment, I knew we were over. In all of our arguments, Denise questioned whether I had a heart. I always assured her that I did. I still believed that I did, even after this. But our relationship was going nowhere, and I could see how maybe it seemed to her that I didn’t have a heart. I could tell from the beginning that we weren’t going to make it by the way I referred to our relationship in conversations.
“How’s Denise?” my friends asked sometimes. “You two make such a nice couple.”
“The relationship is good,” was my usual reply.
I admired Denise’s imagination and her ability to tell a story. I respected her ability to support herself as a writer, something I have never quite accomplished. Denise was smart, and she had money, and contraptions. She wrote mystery and romance novels on a computer – a laptop. Once, she let me read a draft of Killing Case: A Romance. I pointed out her grammatical errors, her constant use of the passive voice, her incomplete and underdeveloped thoughts – all unforgivable in my book.
“What do you know?” she asked. “What have you published?”
I had, in fact, published many of my works, most with small literary journals, but I knew it wasn’t about the published word. It was about the written word. She thought the volume of readers mattered most. I could accept that a reader was necessary, but one reader’s reaction was enough. Denise didn’t fix the mistakes I found in her manuscript. It sold well. Few read the stories I wrote, but those few seemed to enjoy them. Or so their letters and phone calls told me.
“Why do you let them call you at home?” Denise once asked.
“Where else could they call me?” I responded.
She huffed a breathy huff, crossed her often-crossed arms, and tapped her usually tapping foot. “You need email,” she said.
“I hate contraptions.”
“What about the telephone?”
“I’m not a monk.”
“What about the television?”
“I only use it for movies – necessary inspirational tools for my writing,” I said and smiled, figuring I had won the argument. She huffed, and crossed, and tapped again, figuring she had won the argument. That was how most of our arguments ended, both of us claiming victory, leaving us in a perpetual state of argument.
Now, it was all over. I no longer had to refer to our relationship in conversations at all. I should have enjoyed this conclusion much more than I did. Why did I feel so bad?
Losing someone was never easy and I had lost plenty of girlfriends. I was waiting for the one who rode bareback on the empty beach in the wavy air, holding the mane, water splashing around her as her horse galloped in the shallow tide. I dreamt about her often – her marble, staring eyes looking ahead, squinting to avoid the sea’s splash. I liked that she rode bareback – how the charcoal-colored horse caressed her thighs. I liked how she held the mane with a firm, uncompromising grip – a grip that would not let her fall, no matter how rough the terrain became. This was the woman worth waiting for. She was perfect.
Afternoon came and went as I sat thinking of Denise. I tried to think of good times, but realized that we had argued more than anything. Something about the mellowness of evening made it my favorite time to be outside. I took a walk on the beach beneath a big, bright half moon. When I was a kid, the moon scared me. I thought it was a big eye following me around, watching my every move. That is a chilling thought for any child. On this night, the moon wasn’t scary at all. It shone through a thin layer of swirling clouds, like a Van Gogh painting.
After a short walk, I returned home and sat on my couch. I closed my eyes; my feet were still moist from the ocean. I thought, again, of Dream Woman bouncing towards me and I grabbed my pen. I wrote about her for the first time. Sixteen pages about how we meet beneath a bright moon and sleep on grains of beach sand. When I finished, I lay on my couch and neatly stacked the manuscript on the floor beside me.
The next morning was rainy. A knock startled me as I stepped out of the shower. I threw on a pair of shorts and hurried to the door. Denise was there, soaked. Her clothes clung to her and pieces of her auburn hair covered her face. She looked sad, but it could have been the rain’s effect on her makeup. I was surprised to see her, considering our conversation the day before. I let her in and gave her a towel. She dabbed her face and sat on the sofa. I offered her a blanket. She refused.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.
“Me too.” I wasn’t very sorry, but since it was the expected response, I said it.
“It’s just that this sort of thing has happened so many times.”
I stared at her blankly. Why did she insist on dragging out the inevitable?
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
“Why do you insist on dragging out the inevitable?” I said.
I could see that this shattered her. “What’s the inevitable?” she asked with a shaky voice, as if she were afraid of the answer.
“We’d never make it.”
She cried and kicked my Dream Woman manuscript as she left the house. My story scattered all over the sofa and floor. The wrinkled pages made the manuscript look old, like maybe it was written years ago, when I first pictured Dream Woman in my head. Water had dripped from Denise onto the paper. I picked it up, shook it dry, and held it as I watched Denise drive away, still soaked and still crying. The rain stopped. I folded the manuscript, shoved it halfway in my pocket, and went for another walk.
As the afternoon sun evaporated morning puddles, I noticed that this walk was nothing like a painting. I saw people. I saw couples kissing, couples quarreling, couples just lying beside one another, skin lightly and comfortably touching. I sat on a bench near the sidewalk and watched. As I gazed at a family digging in the sand, a blond woman took the seat beside me.
“What’s that?” she asked, her hip brushing my folded manuscript.
“It’s just a story I wrote,” I said. It sounded so funny to say: just a story.
“Do you always carry it around with you?”
“It’s just a story,” I repeated for myself to hear again.
“You told me. What’s it about?”
“It’s just a story about a woman.”
“What’s she like?”
I stopped listening and pulled the folded story from my pocket, holding it in front of me. Denise was a woman in tears, soaked by an early-morning rain, and gone. In my hand was perfection. I released the manuscript. Pages caught the morning beach breeze and flew towards the ocean. They slapped against hot faces and hot sand as they swirled with the wind. Then they spread out atop the seawater and sailed into the horizon.
More than ten years ago, I published a short story collection called Evolvement. I’m going to republish the stories from the collection here. The book is available at all ebook retailers and the paperback version is available at Amazon
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