He felt the knot and the dried blood on the back of his head. Maybe Bill was right. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital. The soreness seemed to be spreading, and the cigarettes felt like they were making it worse.
Ethan nervously paced the big beach house and the walls seemed to close in on him. He tried reading, then working on his book, but nothing could hold his interest. The clock continued to tick him closer to twilight.
The sun finally came out and was forcing its way through the blinds on the patio doors. It exploded in thin rivulets almost searing the living room rug with its harsh, hot light. Ethan sleepy
-
eyed and with his head pounding avoided the places on the carpet where the heat of the rays would hit his skin.
His cat, Buddy, stretched and yawned giving little notice to his passing master. He lay luxuriating in the warmth, his black fur soaking it up like a magnet.
"Sorry Buddy," Ethan said as he adjusted the angle of the blinds, "this is just a little too bright for me this morning. If I don't close these I think I'll puke."
The cat scampered, running up the stairs and sitting on the balcony railing. He glared down from the bedroom loft at Ethan contemptuously.
Ethan had slept terribly and felt slightly queasy. He glanced down at the blue-purple bruises on his arms and felt more bruises in places he couldn't see. Standing with his hands gripped tight on the curtains he leaned against the window underneath. Small slivers of light still entered the darkened room. Ethan closed his eyes and tried to cope with the heaviness and aches crying out in his body.
Why is it so hard to wake up this morning? Was it from getting hit last night, he wondered? Do I want to eat? No . . . not on an empty stomach.
He was trying to decide whether to make a pot of coffee or go back to bed. Whatever he chose, he knew he'd have to move . . . or at least open his eyes. He decided to try opening his eyes.
A brilliant sparkle of sunlight bounced off the distant ocean, temporally blinding him. It made him wince in pain. Slowly, he opened one eye at a time and scrutinized the light diamonds of an incoming wave.
It's easy in this town to forget the ocean. Isn't the water the reason I moved here in the first place? Why I paid all that money for a beach house? And I keep my damn blinds closed and curtains drawn?
Ethan was transfixed by the emerald green of the ocean with its foamy
-
white breakers. He stared at the horizon thinking about Europe on the other side. France, England and all the places he had always meant to visit again; at first he couldn't because of the cost, now because he was busy on his next book. Besides he couldn’t imagine going alone.
That's a hoot; I haven't written ten pages since Sophia left. Who am I trying to kid?
He thought about what it had been like when he first moved to the area. It was five years ago he rented the apartment in Chesapeake. All he could think then was moving closer to the water. Now he lived 150 feet away, and hadn't been on the beach in months.
When was the last time? Oh yeah, the night Sophia had asked—or rather told me she was getting a divorce. When was that? November? December? That's right it was January. She said she didn't have the heart to ruin my holidays. My holidays . . . bah fucking humbug! Three weeks later it was over, done, kaput, divorced. He had nearly made it to mid-May in this horrible funk.
The beautiful, powerful, Atlantic Ocean made him feel better than he had felt in weeks. He opened the drapes and watched the sunbathers. There were fewer than he could ever remember for this time of year and this comely a day. He watched the few that were there frolic carefree on the sand. He wished he could change places with any one of them, to trade his many problems for their seemingly few. Nothing, in Ethan's opinion, was working out right.
The book he was working on was about a squirrel getting locked inside a candy factory and his desperate attempts to get free. The little guy never realizing that everything he ever wanted was right at his little squirrel fingertips. Ethan hadn't worked on the book in months. He felt too much like the main character.
He sat on the floor cross
-
legged not really looking at the sun
-
soaked scene in front of him. And what about last night? Did Bill and I do everything we could have or should have? Did we really have to kill those people? Did we have to kill the girl? Even with the disease, couldn't she fathom we were trying to help her?
He couldn't get the face of the dead woman out of his mind. Had she really looked like Sophia or was it a trick she played on him because she needed his help? Ethan shook his head bewildered, or was my mind just wanting it to be her?
Much more than the book, more than even the senseless waste of the previous night, Ethan was plagued by thoughts of Sophia. He got up, threw the curtains closed, grabbed his journal off the coffee table, went up to his bedroom and plopped down on the bed.
Ever since college he had used bound ledger books to write his stories and to keep his journals. He was at the halfway point in this particular volume as he opened it to the first available page. He propped two pillows beneath himself and reached for a pen on the bedside table. Before his pen touched the page, he noticed that the penmanship of the previous two days was similar. He dropped the pen and began to thumb quickly through the preceding entries. Not only were they similar, they were exactly the same.
This discovery wouldn't have struck most people as strange but to Ethan it was an ominous sign. He knew his handwriting changed daily, sometimes hourly, depending upon his mood. Even his signature, which usually changed the least, could look as if two different people had written it. The handwriting in all the journal entries looked precisely the same. He flipped through more pages, looking for the date of the first entry in which the pattern had started. He found the page. The date had been back in January—the day his divorce had become final.
There was something else he needed to check; he got up frantically, went to his desk and opened his unfinished manuscript. The writing was the same small script with jagged loops and i's that were like dagger wounds on the paper. He sat in a quandary on the bed.
Even to this very moment, he had not given up hope that Sophia was going to come back to him. Not until the black and white of his writing hit home did he realize the futility of the torch he had been burning. Even when she had moved in with another man a month ago, he had looked at it only as a minor setback. Something that would just take a little bit of time.
Ethan's confusion turned to anger. Rage directed inward for the fool that he had been. For the foolish things he had done. He had blamed himself and all his inadequacies for Sophia's departure, never removing her from her lofty perch. He blamed himself that she would have to run to the arms of another man for comfort, even if that man had turned out to be her lover, and current roommate.
Now like using a defroster on a dewy windshield, the reality, the absurdity of the whole affair was clear. There had never been an unannounced competition between him and Mr. Wonderful, Kevin or whatever the hell his name was. There wasn't a giant column 'A' and column 'B' with his bad and Kevin’s good points in them. She hadn't left him because her new boyfriend’s dick was bigger, or that he was smarter, or had more money. It wasn't anything that made him a better man than Ethan, and he was just recognizing this. It was the choice of a single person, a person that had demonstrated many bad decisions in the past.
Hell, Ethan thought as he was starting to feel some enormous weight being lifted, maybe she left me because I was too good. Maybe she wanted someone she could control. Someone that would ask how high when she said jump, because that was exactly the kind of man she ended up with. Well, if she wanted a pussy, she definitely got one—a declawed one at that!
He thought about the kind of people they had been when they first met. He had been working in a bank, nine to five and holidays off. The banality of his life then was the inspiration for his nightmares now. His only form of personal expression was the creative way he had loved her. Not only was their lovemaking always exciting and fresh, but even going to the grocery store had been an adventure. She had urged him to pursue his dream of writing, and to make her proud. He did and for that he would always be grateful.
They were married in July, and the sale of his first book in the YA, young adult
genre came out in August. The Kidco Publishing Company was so excited, they had asked for anything else he had written. That Christmas the $19.95 box
set of three broke all previous sales records at Kidco. The money and security, and contract for five more books brought a freedom into their lives that they had never known.
Freedom to Ethan meant having the time to branch out and stretch his pen in other genres. He published two articles: one for "Soldier of Fortune" magazine and the other for "Guns and Ammo". Both were published under his friend Bill's name. Writing the children's stories gave him the chance to try to make a difference. He felt children, more than adults already set in their ways, were the perfect receptacles for his message of patriotism, honor, and justice. He got a thrill disguising his messages to them cloaked behind heroes the kids loved.
Freedom meant being able to spend more time with his buddy Bill, being carefree like teenagers: riding four
-
wheelers on the beach, fishing, even surfing. It meant being able to find and afford the house of his dreams, furnished with the things he had always wanted.
Most importantly, freedom gave him the opportunity to love and lavish Sophia to no end. Freedom meant something totally different to her, though.
Freedom to Sophia meant lack of structure, lack of discipline, and too much free time. While Ethan was busier than ever before, she quit her job. She derived much of her self-worth from her job. She bored quickly of the tennis lessons. She thought she wanted to go back to school but quit after the first class saying that she felt out of place with all the younger students. After a while the shopping seemed to lose its magic. It was in the last six months of their marriage that she decided to have an affair.
She at first tried to keep it from Ethan, then began to flaunt it openly. He, instead of getting mad and raving at her, calmly said it was something that they could work out. That was the final straw. Before the reality of the affair could set in, she was already filing for divorce. Within one month of the divorce, she got her old job back, and moved in with a middle
-
aged, slightly overweight, overworked, divorced with two small children, accountant—somebody she could ‘change’.
Ethan had even considered giving up his writing and getting his old job back at the bank if it meant they could be together.
In the dark cave of his bedroom, six months later, he was thanking himself for not making that mistake.
Thank god I've got a little sense left, he thought as he flung the journal at the wall. He climbed quickly out of his bed and threw open his bedroom curtains. A flood of warmth and illumination flooded the room like a dried sponge soaking up water.
An hour later he had showered, shaved, and put on his favorite shorts; a pair Sophia used to say made his buns look cute. It feels good to have sweet cheeks again, he thought. He lunched on the patio in the bright sunlight and in full view of the beach. His appetite even surprised him.
While his heart still ached, he was able to breathe again. He felt fifty pounds lighter despite the big meal. He watched the sun riding left to right on the top of an incoming wave and thought how much he had missed the ocean, hell, missed life. He had put everything on hold. Aside from his outings with Bill, he had sat by the phone waiting for Sophia to come to her senses and call. The phone never rang.
With his full stomach and feet propped on the table he leaned back in his chair and watched the people on the beach with renewed interest. He felt hope, not only for himself, but for the sorry bitch
-
of
-
a-time the world was having. He saw a pregnant woman with a toddler building sand
castles; a white
-
haired elderly man jog
-
walking at the water's edge; assorted surfers, windsailers, and sunbathers all seemingly oblivious to not only the disasters in his world, but also to those that besieged the city. People are amazingly resilient.
He watched a lone renegade cloud try in vain to blot out the sun, and then thought of Sophia. What are she and her ready
-
made family doing on a day like this? The sensible side of his brain knew that they were working and that the kids were probably at daycare, but his emotional side saw them with clinking wine glasses frolicking on the beach. He felt some of that old heaviness start to come back, then the phone rang and scattered the thought.
"Hello," Ethan said as he answered the phone without standing or taking his eye off the cloud.
"Hey."
"Bill, I'm glad you called
-
-" he thought about telling him of his revelation about Sophia but decided to keep it to himself for a while. No use celebrating prematurely. "You sound like you're in a good mood."
"Actually ole buddy, not really,” he said still sounding cheerful.
"Why do you sound so optimistic then Billy?" Ethan asked as he stood and walked to the railing. Three women sunning themselves 50 feet away caught his attention.
"I'll be over at about eight. The department and a troop of National Guardsmen are going to be heading into Oceanview tonight. Maybe they can get the area under control. I figured we'd tag along and help out."
Ethan remembered agreeing and not much else about the phone call. After he hung up the phone he continued to watch the three women on the sand. He watched until they got up and moved off down the beach. He smiled and lay down on the sofa. Yeah maybe I was right. People are pretty resilient after all.