Eleven Twenty-Three (26 page)

“So like we’re saying, it doesn’t really
matter,” Marcus chimed in. “It’s done and over with now anyway,
right? You have a new career, after all. So how about those
drinks?”

I went and got their drinks and then muttered
something about a phone call, a dead aunt, a disaster, a terrorist
attack, to my manager before cashing out and walking off the
job.

When he and my mother were arguing, my father
would often take me down to the beach as a kid and we’d sit near
the shoreline. Sometimes he would scoop up handfuls of sand and
show it to me. He opened his palm and would let the first grains
blow away in the sea breeze. Then he would grab more and watch it
fly off in the fleeting beams of the lighthouse as well. He’d do
this three times before rubbing his hands on his pants and standing
up to go back home.

And he would always tell me the same thing
every time he performed his ritual.

“You see this sand I’m holding?” he would
ask, showing me the tinny little white pebbles in his palm. “This
is your grandfather’s generation. Now watch what happens when I
hold it up and a short time passes.”

He would hold his arm up and the sand would
quickly blow away.

“That’s your grandfather’s generation
slipping away, son. They’re here and gone in a flash and when they
blow away they just end up somewhere on the beach. Now look
here.”

He would grab another handful of sand.

“You know what this is?”

I would shake my head, even though I knew
what it was.

“This is my generation. You see this little
broken off piece of shell that’s a little bigger than the rest,
this one here?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“This is me, and this is my generation. I’m
slightly bigger than the other ones, but still…when I hold my hand
up and time passes, I blow away into oblivion just like everyone
else. But now this next handful, this is
your
generation,
Layne.”

He would grab up a final handful, this one
bigger than the first two with a few miniscule sun-bleached shells
mixed in.

“Now what’s going to happen to this sand,
son?”

“It’s going to blow away, Dad.”

“Right. All except the shells, you see. All
that sand, those little nothings, those
ghosts
, will either
fall to the ground or blow away before your eyes. But not that
shell. Not the shell, son. You understand?”

“I think so,” I would say.

“The trick is to always be a shell, Layne. Be
bigger than the rest. Become more than just a grain. Become
something special that lasts and doesn’t blow away in the
breeze.”

Then he would hold out his pile once more and
all but the shells would fall or lift off and disappear along the
beach. I would nod and look at his empty hand, at the broken shell
fragments still lingering in his grip.

“Be a shell, son,” he would say. “Otherwise,
you’ll be forgotten.”

After I left the restaurant that night, I
walked a mile to the nearest beach access and found myself sitting
in the dirt watching the waves break. Terrible thoughts began to
materialize in the shadow of the lighthouse.

It was hot out and I was slicked over with
perspiration. I wiped my brow and entertained my own undoing.

The saltwater would be warm and inviting,
like a bath for a sick man. I began imagining it: the slow trudge,
the water surging through my sole into my shoes, up around my
socks, my shins—and then my pants would soak through, my shirt and
my arms and chest following. It would be a slow walk with a hundred
doubts and second-guesses as my head disappeared underneath the
waves, but my resolve would be strong, and I would finish what I
started. The sea would swallow me up quickly and the tide would
carry this useless grain of sand out into the ocean, toward Africa,
like a strong breeze running along my father’s outstretched
palm.

I picked up a handful of sand and inspected
it in the dim moonlight and neon glare from a nearby seafood
restaurant. As I watched, the wind picked up and it blew away. No
shells were left in my palm and some of the granules got into my
eye and I screamed and cursed the entire analogy, along with the
sand and pebbles it involved and the man who explained it and the
son who would never be the steadfast and storied shell his father
had envisioned.

I stood up and brushed myself off. I took a
deep breath and lit a cigarette. Then I took my first step toward
the changing tide.

“Layne?”

I was so startled by her voice that I dropped
my cigarette and began to gag on the smoke.

It occurred to me that maybe it was the
female voice of God trying to talk me out of it, but when I turned
around there she was: Mitsuko, her face pale with ancestry but her
eyes reddened with a first generation of tears. She picked the hair
off of her face and tossed it behind her ear. This girl was most
definitely not God, unless God enjoyed taking the earthly form of a
beautiful but jaded Oriental curmudgeon who enjoyed smoking
pot.

“Mitsuko?” I stammered. “What are you doing
here?”

“I might be inclined to ask you the same
question,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said hesitantly, looking back at
the ocean behind me. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a rough night at
work. Are
you
okay?”

“I—I don’t know,” she said. “I think Mark and
I are through.”

“Oh shit. What happened?”

“It’s a really long, typical story, Layne. I
doubt you’d want to hear it. What’s wrong with work?”

“Some students came in and it turned into a
Kenneth Anger film,” I said.

“Um…I see? So you just wanted to come down
here and sit in the sand and think about your surreal run-in with
some bratty teeny-boppers? Am I near the mark?”

“Something like that, Mitsuko. It’s difficult
to explain. You want to sit down and talk about the break-up?”

“Not really,” she said, looking back toward
the End. “But I’m through with the beach. I don’t even know why I
always come here when I’m like this. I hate getting sand all over
my car afterward.”

“Okay then,” I muttered. “Do you want to take
a walk?”

She did not answer and pushed the wild black
hair from her eyes. Her stare met mine and there was a ringing
sound that kept growing louder and louder, pulsating until I was
afraid I was wincing and that my ears were bleeding.

“Actually, I could go for a drink,” she said,
barely audible. “How about you? Or would you rather sit here and
contemplate your great escape plan?”

Mark told her that he was having doubts. That
he was too young to be married and tied down. That kids were never
anything he planned on and his parents were being weird about the
whole Mitsuko-not-being-white thing. He said that their entire
situation had basically “jumped the shark.”

Mitsuko’s woeful regaling didn’t begin to
interest me until the second glass was empty and she momentarily
rested her hand on my thigh underneath the table. When I looked up
and our gazes met, her eyes were like cyanide capsules.

We were sitting in Dubliners, a crappy Irish
place I had never been to previously, since local sports car white
boys and the pool-hustling floozies that sexed them frequented it.
Mitsuko and I left her Jetta in the hotel parking lot and walked
the short distance to the bar. We sat in the back and I ordered us
two Long Islands in honor of the bastards at the restaurant. After
those were finished, I ordered another round and everything started
to become fascinating.

“What was it the tippler told the prince in
that book we read in ninth grade?” Mitsuko asked while lighting a
cigarette and starting on the second drink. “The problem is that we
drink, and so we drink to forget our problem?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Hajime and I were in
Mrs. Turon’s freshman English class, not Ms. Charles’s. But that
sounds about right.”

“Speaking of teachers, what are you going to
do now?”

“Well, I have two options,” I explained. “I
could try and leave the county and find a temporary teaching
position somewhere else, or I can keep waiting on tables until that
job in the circus opens up.”

“So just leave the county and teach somewhere
else, Layne. It’s just like you said. It’s not the end of the
world, just the end of the End.
God
, I didn’t realize how
gay that sentence sounded until after I said it. I apologize.”

“It was cute. But seriously, in the long run
it won’t matter
where
I go in Florida. Once the county
passes the charges on to the Department of Education in
Tallahassee, I’m finished. Relations with a student are not
something you come back from, Mitsuko. In fact, I’m lucky it’s not
a
Dateline
episode by now. I’d give it six months at most
before I lose my Florida teacher’s license altogether. So what’s
the point?”

“Did you screw that girl?” she asked.

“Jesus Christ, are you
serious?
”

She folded her arms and waited for my
answer.

“
No
, Mitsuko. Of course not. I never
even entertained the thought.”

“So then move on. Start over. You and the
Great Power know the truth, right? What else matters?”

“Whether the
people
know the truth,
honey.
That’s
what matters. Besides, I’m pretty sure the
Great Power, whatever
that
is, stopped taking my calls a
long time ago.”

I ordered more drinks. Mitsuko smiled.

“Are you just going to keep waiting on tables
and feeling sorry for yourself then?” she asked. “I mean that’s
fine, if that’s what you want to do. There are plenty of saggy
middle-aged schleps that have been doing just that for years. But
it just seems kind of—I don’t know—
anti-climactic
a
denouement for a reasonably smart guy such as yourself. What does
Tara think of your troubles?”

“She thinks we should watch a movie and
forget about the whole thing.”

“Yeah, she looks like an ignorance-is-bliss
type of girl. What about moving out of state? I heard that Florida
pays their schoolteachers shit, anyways.”

“I would have to go through the entire
certification process all over again if I moved out-of-state. And
even then, my record might follow me and it would just be more
wasted effort. Besides, where am I going to pack up and move to
until I get set up? Oregon with my dad? Georgia with Tara’s idiot
cousin Mickey? And what happens when I lose the next teaching job
in a different state? What then? Let’s just face it: I’m a
past-tense history teacher. I’m ironic. Nothing more.”

“Do you even
want
to teach anymore?”
she said. “It doesn’t sound like it. You’re being a Negative
Nelly.”

“I’m actually being more like a Reality Ron,
Mitsuko, as long as we’re playing the Alliteration Name Game. But,
back to the point, the fact of the matter is that I’m fairly
good
at teaching, so it’s a shame—”

“But do you
want to
teach, is what I
am asking. Quit tap dancing around the issue.”

“Okay…In a completely different environment,
I suppose so, yes. Otherwise, I don’t know
what
I want to
do. I need to see my senior year guidance counselor again. She
always knew what was best for me.”

There was a reflective pause. Mitsuko lit
another cigarette and stared at the neon Bailey’s sign perched on
the wall across the bar.

“Sweetheart, I’m not our hairy-armed guidance
counselor, but I
am
a travel agent who’s been known to spin
good advice every now and again.”

“Yeah, Mitsuko?” I grunted. “So? Are you
fishing for a compliment right now? I don’t get it.”

“
So
?” she asked incredulously. “So…I
may have a good career idea of my own, you knob.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that maybe you should just go and
teach English in another
country
,” she suggested, rubbing my
leg with her hand and sipping from her Long Island. “I’ve heard
that some schools in other countries will reimburse you for your
flight out there, set you up with an apartment, and get you a
phone— the whole deal, basically.”

“What? Like in Japan?” I asked, raising my
eyebrows.

“Yeah, like in Japan. Except I’ve heard it’s
pretty hard to get a position teaching there, now that Americans
have realized we are cooler than you in every way and the market’s
saturated. Maybe you could go to Thailand or Russia or China or
something. At my mom’s company this guy our age left last year to
teach in Beijing and he
loved
it. In fact, he called my mom
and said he was staying for another year. Maybe you should try
China. With the Olympics coming up next summer and with China
supposedly emerging as one of the dominant world economies, I’ll
bet they’re hurting bad for English teachers.”

I mulled over the idea for a moment and lit a
cigarette.

“I wouldn’t want to go over there alone in my
pursuit of the McDonaldization of the East,” I said. “Do you want
to go with me?”

“To
China
? I think not, darling. My
parents would have a conniption fit. Besides, wouldn’t you rather
Tara be the one to go with you?”

“Tara would never go for it. She doesn’t even
like the Chinese food at the mall. She wouldn’t want to leave the
safety of our borders for
that
kind of uncertain future,
believe me.”

“So go by yourself,” Mitsuko said, laughing.
“Do what you need to do. Some journeys are meant to be taken alone,
right?”

“Yeah, maybe, Gandolf,” I said, putting my
cigarette out. “I’ve got to do
something
, though. And soon.
I don’t know how much longer I can take the restaurant thing.”

“It would certainly be an adventure if you
did
go. A lot more exciting than staying here in Lilly’s
End, for god’s sakes. This town has Down syndrome.”