Untitled Short Story
4-5 minute read
Amateur anglers tease their lines; three turns of the reel and a quick tug. I guess that’s what the fish like nowadays. I wouldn’t know, I gave up fishing.
Thirty yards out, a blue and silver-bellied salmon leaps skyward, taunting the fishermen and women on shore. Another thirty yards out, their winged predators lurk.
Further out still, an Evergreen cargo ship—impressive in size, but not of purpose—transports product into the sound. A boat of whale watchers glides by in the opposite direction. Tourists lean over the rail and peer through their binoculars, hoping to glimpse the barnacle-covered underbelly of one of Earth’s largest creatures.
The beach is busy today, the first holiday of Fall. A woman—I’d guess twenty-eight and five foot six—lays her towel on the sand ten yards away. I see dejection in the way she examines the water, or perhaps just an exceeding doneness. I’ve been on the water’s end of the same look before.
She glances in my direction as she lays down, and I smile back. There’s no reason for me to say hello to her, or anything at all—people don’t come to the beach to meet strangers. But then again, in this all but zero-sum world, we don’t tend to meet new people anywhere we go.
“What are you doing here?” I decide to say.
“Trying to enjoy my Labor Day,” she says, unsurprised by the question. “At least what’s left of it.”
“Not the long weekend you were hoping for?”
“It was—and then it very quickly was not.” She looks to the water. “Funny how that goes.”
“Yeah? Care to talk about it?” I ask, thinking how a question like that once hadn’t felt so presumptuous.
“Thank you,” she says through a pursed smile, “but I’m not really in the talking mood. I just came to enjoy the last bits of sunlight.”
Handfuls of sand sift through my fingers like time and I nod as if I know what she means. The way she takes in the sun, you’d think she owned it. Five minutes pass before we make eye contact again.
“Listen,” I risk, “I was just about to go for a cruise and get a little closer to that sun of yours. You’re more than welcome to join.”
She gives me the eye and a clever grin. “After all these questions, I wouldn’t have taken you for a sailor,” she says.
“I might be half of one. And I get enough silence as it is.”
“Joining a talkative old man on his sailboat—that’s what’s left to save my weekend?” she says to no one and the entire world.
“I’m not promising I’ll save anything—but I can stop talking,” I say. “There’s just not much left for me in sailing alone.”
Again, she looks to the water, then back to me. “I don’t have any other place to be,” she says. “Let’s go.”
* * *
I sit at the helm, one finger on the wheel. She sits in front, two hands on a drink. I steal a look and watch as she scans the gradient of violet to pale orange, and everything lost in between.
“How come you don’t drink?” she yells back at me. I throttle down to a talking speed. “Cause I overdid it,” I say plainly.
“Then why still carry booze on board?”
“Cause not everyone has yet,” I say. “And my wife liked a drink at sunset.”
“Where is she now?” she asks.
“Gone,” I say.
She nods apologetically. A minute passes before she tries to lighten the mood.
“So are you in the habit of taking pretty women like me out on the water?”
“You’d be the first,” I say, not lightly enough.
“I wasn’t sure about it at first, but it’s really nice out here,” she admits. From the beach to the water, there’s a change in her eyes, and I see something leave her with each deep breath. I start to think I’m not the only one benefiting from company. “I think a lot of people could use what you have to offer.”
“Last I checked that wasn’t a whole lot,” I say.
I look straight at her, and then down at the water moving quickly past the rail. Somewhere far out at sea, a remora clings to the side of a shark; cleanliness its toll for hitching a ride. Far down below, a clownfish rids an anemone of bacteria while accepting its protection.
“You’re easy to talk to,” she says plainly. “And lots of people don’t know what good a shared sunset can do.”
“Maybe I’ll start doing this as a side gig,” I joke.
“You absolutely should,” she says, too serious to ignore. “I’d come back.”
* * *
I begin to see the ocean floor rise and I kill the motor. It’s not the patron’s job, but she helps me catch the dock and tie down.
“Same time next week?” she asks.
“I’ll keep Mondays for you,” I say. “And thank you.”