His wife pulled back the blankets. The light in the room proved softer now, incandescent. Twilight had found him again.
“It must be suffocating under there,” she said. Her cold hands folded back the duvet.
He clung to the flannel sheet and felt disappointed; still lying here, occupying a body that betrayed him with each breath. On the bedside table, he noticed a paper plate with a peanut butter sandwich cut in half.
“Hungry?”
“No, thanks,” his voice rasped, as dry and cracked as desert leather. When had he last spoken?
“I forgot to tell you,” she said, rearranging the blankets, flattening them out, dust pluming out of them. “You got a card yesterday.”
“A card?”
“There’s no return address.” She held it out to him, waiting for him to reach for it. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes. “It’s here by the clock radio. Do you need anything?”
He shook his head almost imperceptibly. She sighed heavily and left the room, pulling the door half closed. He listened to the stairs creak and her footfalls faded.
He hard eyed the envelope, really not interested in a card from some do-gooder, probably from the church. Someone who barely knew him, requesting that he get well soon. He wondered, about the possibility of someone’s well-wishes superseding his own desire to be released from this life. Maybe he really didn’t want to get well. He fell asleep again.
Much later, the volume of the television rose a few notches, waking him. Against the clock radio that blinked 12:00, leaned a square, turquoise envelope. He reached for it. His arm ached with the mere effort, but he picked it up and brought it to his eyes, noting the handwritten address. It took him a full minute to open it, but finally, he freed the card. Who sent it?
Heard you were feeling under the weather… His hands trembled. The image on the front of the card was a yellow raincoat hung on a hook and wet, red boots. Who would send such a silly card? He opened it and readjusted his eyes.
“We miss you at the book group and hope you are on the road to recovery.
P.S. I’d love to take you to lunch when you are up to it, my treat.
Dacey.”
He found himself smiling. For the first time in three months, Terry sat up in bed.
Chapter 3
We drink our beers in relative silence, the windsurfer and I, sitting like two old friends who know each other so intimately that even silence speaks for them. We haven’t even learned each other’s names. Except that he arrived just as the tide reversed. I really don’t know much about him except he’s in fantastic shape, he surfs and drinks Corona.
It occurs to me that not a single living person knows I’m here. I wonder if my phone lies in the bottom of my straw bag and I don’t really care. With it not ringing, I consider the possibility that I forgot it at the office… In my peripheral view, he turns slightly to look at me, studying me, I suppose. I do the same when I think he isn’t watching.
I pretend to not notice. What do I care if he looks? My relationship days are over. Two major fails, three broken engagements. My brother, Liam, will tease me unmercifully now, until we both agree when it comes to marriage material, this girl is threadbare. He victoriously maintains his marriage of twenty plus years. None of mine made it past ten; the last one even shorter than the first. I feel strangely safe sitting on the beach with this ageless male surfer. I can’t explain it, of course. A feeling of invincibility gives me some kind of supernatural armor, having already been shot at once today. Can lightning strike twice?
I toss shoes in the straw bag and push my sleeves up as far as they will go. I drain the last of my second beer and close my eyes. Realizing others won’t be joining us, I drop the bottle in the sand and let the sun warm my skin. Well, at least the part that shows just below my rolled up jeans.
“What are you running from?” he asks.
“You don’t know me, or anything about me.”
“If you say so.”
“We haven’t even introduced ourselves.”
“They call me Mercury. You’re Dacey, recently divorced, far from home and something bad happened today.”
My eyes pop open.
“How did you—”
“You’re wearing your name badge from work, a place I’ve never heard of. I see a white indentation on your ring finger and you’re not wearing beach attire. Most people don’t come in the middle of the day, let alone the middle of the week. The cooler of beer— a last minute thought—because most people bring their personal gear.”
So much for being inscrutable… I reach under the lid of the cooler. Ice shifts inside as I pull out another Corona and crack it open. I hold it out to him.
“Want another?”
He looks at it, thinks about it momentarily.
“No thanks.”
I shrug and take a few long chugs. The sun dries his skin and the sail on his board itches to ride the wind. He notices the tide change. I close my eyes again, focusing on the sound of the waves, the rhythm of it.
“Whatever brought you here must have been pret-ty bad.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Third beer?”
“It was bad and I don’t want to talk about it.” I take another slug from the bottle. I don’t usually deal with my problems by drinking. And, normally if I drink beer, I feel a buzz after one. But today I’m nowhere near feeling it, seeming to sweat it out faster than I can pour it in. The anxiety level finally drops and my nerves feel more normal, which I attribute more to being far from home or basking in the relaxing presence of the sea, than drinking beer. “You said something about a message. What message?”
“Your life has changed incredibly. It’s now going to be better than you ever imagined.”
“If you say so,” I mutter, keeping my eyes closed.
“You’ll see.” He falls silent again and I wonder if he wants that second beer. The sun blisters bright and it occurs to me, too late, that I could use a pair of shades. I admit, even though initially his message hardly seems credible, it sure beat hearing everything’s gonna be alright, or something equally trite.
Mercury’s words bring some comfort, and as I consider them, questions fill my head. What’s better than I ever imagined? How does he know that? Who calls him Mercury? Even though I want answers, the morning slowly catches up to me. For a few moments, tiredness renders me unable to speak.
I decide to ask him a few questions and I open my eyes, only to find that Mercury and the sailboard have disappeared from the beach. Even his footprints have vanished.
The sun’s position in the sky signifies three p.m. My plan fails to include hotel reservations. After a brutal and expensive divorce, I don’t want to spend more money. If I head back now, I might be home just after sunset. I finish the beer and open the cooler to set the empty inside. I count them.From a six pack, I try to figure out how I still have five beers left.
Chapter 4
Terry allowed himself to daydream about Dacey. If he only felt better. If only he still worked as the editor at M.I. Sery publishing company, then she’d really… What? He wondered. Find me attractive?
Terry pondered this a long time. They were very, very good friends. Unlike anyone he’d ever met before, with her contagious enthusiasm, disarming creativity and her find-a-silver-lining attitude chased away his darkest storm clouds. Her eyes lit up when he entered a room, something he couldn’t remember ever seeing in his wife, Rebby.
He weighed this look of hers at every opportunity. He watched her interact with friends at various events. He watched her with her family, as Dacey and her husband had been gracious to invite them to holidays. Her smile gave nothing away, and she always appeared to be having a great time.
The book group was altogether different. There, Terry watched her face as her husband arrived, just before the book group ended. Not only did her eyes not light, her demeanor shifted ever so imperceptibly. Terry recognized the look: fear. Her performance, quietl
y welcoming him home was, however, nearly flawless, to the uneducated eye, they looked like a normal happy couple. She almost fooled him.
Terry absolutely cherished their friendship. Her honesty with him… made him feel connected to her, in part because of the non-threatening environment in which their relationship grew. Their trust rooted deeply in companionship, with no expectations of each other. It resulted in a unique bond.
Eventually, Terry tracked right along with her most heart breaking dreams. He observed that around him, she was trusting and mostly uninhibited. To what heights could she soar if she were free to do as she pleased? In these moments, he pulled back from her, withdrew for several meetings of the group and stayed late at work avoiding people who really knew him. Because, although he would never admit it to anyone—and barely acknowledged it to himself—he loved her. Even that didn’t really come close to the truth. He adored her.
He recognized her marriage to Evan, and he had committed to Rebby. It didn’t look like it was going to end soon, for Dacey at least, and even if it did, he was not one to sit around scheming how to run off with another man’s wife. He believed in the institution of marriage, that it was a sacred union, he really did. She never disparaged her husband. The most she had ever said, out loud, was that he had bad timing. Terry sensed something amiss and had for some time. He’d probably been thinking about it far too much.
“You’re the only one trying,” he said, and almost immediately regretted it when he saw her face crumple a bit.
But she rallied. She didn’t argue, disagree or defend.
“Maybe so.” She reflected a sadness he knew all too well and his heart fell to see it on her.
Terry had his own struggles. Rebby’s unfaithfulness, which he suffered enough. But she lied almost continually, about where she spent her time, her money and she rewrote history with reckless abandon. A point they had argued about repeatedly in the last several years. She frustrated and exhausted him. He wondered why he stayed when she kept proving over and over she wasn’t in it for the long haul. But he told no one.
Today, while thinking of Dacey, he realized a fresh new clarity. Good? Bad? Too early to tell. He allowed himself to remember the many times he’d thought about her.
What’s going on, Dacey? He’d asked when he found himself awake at three a.m. In those days, Terry got up and took a sleep aid. He often stared at the moon, wondering if Dacey lay sleeping, having beautiful dreams… or awake and restless and as tortured as he was. He wondered, too, if she had ever dreamt of him.
Terry had dreamt of Dacey more than once. They were lying in the luxurious, lavender scented bed of a lakeside summer resort, spooning. The dream’s details engraved vividly in his mind, the scent of her perfume, her soft hair. He knew he should dismiss these thoughts at once. He wished more than anything, that the dream represented the future of things to come. He wanted her and thought at times, he could see a flicker of that same want in her. When she caught sight of him, a smile always broke across her face, and he wondered whose had been first, his smile or hers?
Often self-deprecating in her presence, he claimed to be difficult to love and at times overbearing and maybe slightly perfectionistic. He knew these things did not appeal to one who already swam in the midst of great complications, and she was fairly drowning. Compared to what he’d been through in his life, he thought they’d make a great couple. He never dared breathe a word of it to a single soul, not while they were married to other people.
He found it nearly impossible to imagine either of them being single at the same time again. That would take a miracle.
Today, he sat—barely alive—at the head of the bed, feeling an odd mix of termination and the beginning of something. He felt more hope than he had in weeks. Years. The door opened and closed. The dog barked and barked. The cage door squeaked open and then the back door opened and closed then all became silent down stairs. A few moments later the doors opened and closed again. He could hear Rebby speaking with someone, the stupid dog, he supposed. Then the doorbell rang.
He heard shuffling and banging and muffled voices, hers and a man’s. He strained to listen but heard nothing over Prinella’s incessant barking.
“There,” she said. The noises stopped except the door again, and then the rumble of a truck. He couldn’t get to the window to see what sort of truck. His curiosity grew more than a little inflamed. He looked at the side table and saw the sandwich. He reached for it. As he pulled it into view he noticed the bread slightly marbled with mold. His fragile stomach lurched. He replaced the sandwich.
He had an urge for a cigarette and a pee. He’d quit smoking long ago, and that urge would pass. The other, more immediate, was only a slight concern. Although Rebby had helped him down the hall on occasion, he’d mostly peed from his bed into a container that Rebby emptied and cleaned.
At the moment, it was nowhere to be seen. He reckoned that walking to the bathroom, though not far, would prove to be a challenge. If he leaned against the walls and took small steps, he figured he could make the ten feet. Terry slid his right leg to the edge of the mattress, then his left. They felt heavy as wet logs.
Ok, here goes nothing… he maneuvered his foot over the edge and it dropped like a sledgehammer. Loud! Prinella barked, but Rebby did not call up to him or come running. He lugged the other leg over the bed, with slightly more control, but it bumped to the floor anyway.
“Rebby?” he called. His thin voice raspy at best. Where was she? Why wasn’t she here? Flushing with anger, Terry looked at his feet, rocked back slightly and pitched forward to stand. He pushed off from the bed and stood for only a moment. His legs crumpled beneath him and he landed hard on the floor. Now unhappiness gripped him.
“Rebby!” his anger had given his voice a little more weight. Prinella heard him and she barked and barked. And barked. As if suddenly aware of an intruder.
Luckily, he’d fallen with his head toward the door. Terry crawled, inch by inch, arm over arm, dragging his legs, determined to relieve himself in the toilet of his own bathroom. He hauled himself into the hallway. He peered down the stairs, trying to make his eyes adjust to the dim light, but the blinds had been pulled tight.
He coughed, clearing his throat.
“Rebby, you there?”
The only response came from Prinella, the vexatious Chihuahua bitch which Rebby had intended as the replacement for his beloved dog Alfie.
The notion completely failed. The dog loved Rebby, of course, and yapped constantly; at the sound of his voice and whenever he moved. Right now, he imagined Prinella hoping that he would come to free her from her cage. Free to chew on rugs, or dig at the baseboards, or eat another one of his author signed books. The signed limited edition of C.S. Lewis had been a great loss and that day, he’d lunged at the dog with every intention of killing her.
Rebby had snatched up Prinella and announced that she and the dog were going out for a long walk while he cooled off. They had returned well after sunset, hours later, with Rebby stinking of sex and cheap men’s cologne, her hair bedraggled, carrying Prinella and a magnum of Terry’s favorite wine. A guilt offering, he guessed.
“How about a glass of wine?” she suggested.
“I’m supposed to be at the office early. I’m going to bed,” he’d said, leaving her there holding the wine and the still barking dog. That was over six months ago.
Terry struggled to the bathroom, promising himself to begin strengthening exercises immediately, appalled that in such a short time he’d become so weak. He pulled himself into the bathroom and pushed himself up to a dog position, panting from the effort. From this position, he raised his torso and steadied himself enough to manage peeing into the bowl.
Mission accomplished! He felt practically euphoric. He flushed, washed his hands, savoring the feeling of water. He dried his hands, and crawled slowly back toward the bed on his hands and knees, feeling every ache and pain. The progress proved quicker than belly crawling. He now faced his final hu
rdle: getting back into the bed.
Higher than a standard brass bed, the top of the mattress hit him at chest level, when he knelt beside it. He didn’t have the strength to lift himself up onto it. He tried grabbing the bars of the headboard but couldn’t pull up even his diminished weight. Exhaustion prevented him from getting back into bed. He recalled how effortlessly he used to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and how he’d shuffled back to bed without so much as a second thought. He promised himself that he would get strong enough again to take such a trip for granted, but he probably would always remember not to.
The bed had pulled away from the wall at an awkward angle due to his struggle. He sighed deeply. Tiredness overtook him. From a distance, he thought he heard the sound of Gypsy bells and horses. He drew his pillow off the bed and the blankets onto the floor. He curled up with them, the bells were louder now. Smiling, he imagined spooning Dacey, and fell asleep.
Chapter 5
I wake up with Terry on my mind, reviewing a conversation from months ago, that has been in my thoughts a lot lately.
Before I knew my marriage had splintered on the rocks of disappointment, before Terry got sick, we sometimes used to catch each other on the phone. Usually we discussed books and hung up before the conversation turned too personal. Except for one subject.
“One of the last times we talked, you spoke of Gypsy bells. Do you remember what you said?”
“Yes… I’m with a caravan, with horses wearing bells and sometimes we’re going to a town, sometimes just leaving. I still dream about the Gypsies. Once I dreamt you were with us.”
“You did?” I worried about this; mostly because I was still married, quite miserable about it and largely because I so desperately wanted to run away from home. Gypsies sounded like a romantic escape. Often, on my way to work, I entertained ideas of where one wrong turn could lead me. It might take me hundreds of miles away by the time certain parties noticed their dinner wasn’t on the stove at six p.m., magically cooking itself. With a little planning, I could be lounging in a beach chair with an umbrella cocktail on the west coast by the time they figured out I wouldn’t be home in time to make breakfast.