I stay in this place for a while and meet some people, one is a woman with long, ash-blonde hair (it reaches down to her waist) with whom I fall into an affair. Quick and passionate, she disappears, probably back to a spouse of hers or perhaps just another lover. I'm left feeling cold in a tropical climate, and confused because...she didn't come off as ordinary, or, I mean, the kind of person who would do something like this and then have the disposition to take off, she seemed to move slower than that (at least that's how I felt when I was with her and could look at her eyes), in fact she gave me the impression she hadn't been seeing anyone for a while. I do think she might have a spouse, though, that I think is possible. For the rest of my time down there, I walk around feeling lonely and get down on myself. I find work, actually, but give it up when I realize I don't need the money I was earning to survive, and anyway the drinks here are dirt cheap most nights of the week and food is basically free. Hunger doesn't really occur to me in fact. I think a lot about this woman and wonder where she could have gone to.
After a furious dream cycle, I awake one morning on the beach (where I've been sleeping for the most part) to a gut feeling to go. Over the water, it's a short trip by flight and I'm back at home, or around "home", in what felt like minutes. The "trip" is "behind me" and already I feel regret in having made such a split-second decision, but I resolve to "live with it." Apparently, this ash- blonde-haired woman has not left my consciousness although I've left "that" world.
Dinner, or lunch maybe (again, mid-day, not clear) with some friends from high school, junior high, actually. Calm, I feel calm there, this is for sure, but I also feel disturbed, wrong, and for this reason "scared", scared of death, scared of the fade to black that I can actually see forming over a set of trees beyond the house we're eating outside of...I just feel bad, really, sad, and yet I feel calm too, like someone who's hurt me is holding me close.
"Alan Napier is dead," says one of them. I wonder if my silence appears unsettling to them, so I chime in, "Dead, like, he died today? Or do you mean he's been dead?" They say nothing in response, only smiling at me and continuing their conversation, now discussing women at their respective workplaces. Around now, I remember I don't know who Alan Napier is and feel a cold wind blow down on my neck, my body has grown used to a tropical climate and is now feeling fucked to be back in the suburbs, where even though it's still warm it gets cooler the second half of the day.
That's it, I need to say something, I think. One of them is staring at me with a grin, his fork held in the air next to his head, a gold earring dangling from his left ear. He's like a clown. Without waiting for an appropriate moment, I jump in, "I'm not sure what I'm doing here right now, but I was just away, like in another place on a trip or something, and I'm not sure exactly how I made it from there to here, in fact, as far as I know it would make more sense for me to still be there." They all watch me carefully and I feel that when I speak I'm looking directly at each one. I continue, "I think I know all of you from a while ago, but I'm not sure that I do, you all seem familiar in some way, but um, I hope I'm not being cruel or rude but I really don't know what I'm doing here, I sort of, I just don't think this is where I'm supposed to be, that's all, because I was just at this other place for a while, and actually I left there sort of abruptly, but I think that is where I belong. On top of that, even though I think I remember leaving there, and as I said it was sort of abrupt, I don't really know how I left, and how I got here." No one speaks, and instead they all continue to eat and talk, smiling and laughing, having picked up from their conversation where they had left off, without acknowledging what I had just said. One, with a kind of fat, pig face and broad shoulders reaches across the table and grabs my left shoulder. He gazes at me with a twinkle in his eyes and tells me, "That was a great story." Last thing I remember about being there is falling asleep with my head dipped in mashed potatoes. I might have been crying, too.
Later (that same day, I can guess) I'm back at home sitting in my sister's room, staring out the window as the sun sets - there's really nothing like the setting of the sun in the summer time, from about seven o-clock to nine, it's beautiful. Can take your attention away from even the most disturbing aspects of "suburban life". Hopefully not much else does because enough people know how to do it themselves. Now at home, really at "home", I can see exactly what I should have and not have done, whilst the details of how and where I did what I did are still vague. Lying on the sofa, gazing out the long, folding windows along the wall into the gray and gold evening, I realize I've fallen but there will be another opportunity to rise again and it will probably come soon.
Suddenly, a person appears walking past the window. She has brown hair and is dressed in a gray shirt and black pants. What is she doing on my property? Before I have time to process it any further, another person appears in the window frame. It's the woman from my trip, with the ash-blonde hair. She's wearing a brown and tan jacket that reaches her knees (this weather probably feels "cold" to her) and boots and black pants. Slowly she walks past the window, appearing to be looking for something. I feel excitement. My heart starts to race and my arms are shaking. Clumsily I try to stand up to run to the window and flag her down but I slip on an electric hair dryer left carelessly on the floor. I put myself back together and stand up, dashing to the window. I can still see her out of the corner of my eye, looking around, for something, she's looking for something - it must be me, she must be looking for me! Why else would she be here? She's come back, or here, rather. I push the window furthest to the right wide open and punch through the screen, which breaks into millions of tiny pieces, like fireworks, and I roll out of the window. I look around and it's pitch black, I can't find her. The sun hasn't set, it's gone. There is no light anywhere. I hear a voice in the distance, drifting away, it sounds like, "Michael?"
Routine kills, I don't like routine but in my weaker moments, like after the aforementioned incident, I am susceptible to falling into situations in which I am not "there." Distraction, in other words. So here I am, a few towns over, with some friends and their friends to who I'm naturally considered another friend. My mind is on the woman who walked past my window who is the same woman I met while on my trip. For whom I felt something and left me without notice. Maybe she can tell me something about everything that's going on, how I got here and how I can get back there. I wonder how she feels about me, too.
One of my friends announces that we're going to go swimming. "We are" going swimming. This reminds me of the weather outside, which is now strangely cool considering it's mid-day in August, for at least in the summer evening it's normal for it to cool down. It must be three-o-clock in the afternoon and yet it feels like autumn outside. Around me, no one seems to be dressed to go swimming or to have any intention of going in. A couple of my friends, two girls, one whose company I enjoy quite a lot and the other who is just sort of there, start talking to me about the pool. It seems like they're trying to convince me to go in. I understand that they are but their "words" are becoming increasingly more cryptic. One of them tells me I look ready to go in, and I ask "what do you mean?" She says, "You're wearing a suit, that's all." She pulls back and looks at me with contempt, as though I had taken a jab at her or something.
At a loss for words, I give in and jump in the pool, a part of me hoping that if that water does not reveal itself to be the Southern Atlantic Ocean then the second best thing would be for it to disappear and for me to crush my head on the concrete. The water is just pool water and I'm under water now, breathing through my nose. From now on, I cannot do anything that doesn't feel right to me. I'm freed in this way, and death is just death now, while life is literally an opportunity, "the" opportunity. No more distractions. That's settled. I'm ready to come up for air now. Get out of the pool and maybe look for her some more or maybe just get out of here and go back down South. Either way, the first step is to get out of this pool. But I'm stuck. I'm really stuck now and I wonder about getting out of here. You have to do it when you have the chance, not when it happens to you.
