To the Sea

of clarity and peace
when she comes
to lay it all down.

Four blocks from the pickup address she’d gotten from Joey, Shane started to shake uncontrollably. She pulled to the curb, shut off the engine, wrapped herself up in her own arms and began to rock back and forth, just like she had for so many years on the street, being her own comfort, knowing there was no one to hold her, touch her, console her, or love her. She could feel tears filling her eyes. It enraged her to know that she’d fallen so far and so deep that someone could make her cry. She squeezed and blinked them back until her eyelids hurt from the effort.

She felt like she’d shed her vital skin, only to tumble into some horrific corrosive bath of feeling, of spirit. “Stupid,” she smacked her forehead, “dumb fucking bitch, let someone play you like that? Did you honestly think it had anywhere to go?” What was it Cherie had said? Rank little lovenest? Was that the reality of the only future they could have had together.

Something in her hardened to steel around her heart. “Yeah,” she nodded her head. “Exactly.” Age, class, breeding (not to mention those pesky little details of husband and a daughter almost Shane’s age)… it all stood between them, always had. Just for one truly foolish moment of time, Shane had allowed herself to do something she’d abandoned long ago: hope, which she knew was the ultimate form of self-deception.

She hit the ignition, twisting the key with more violence than she intended. The starter whined, and the engine coughed hard before sputtering to life. She pulled out onto the nearly deserted street, which had taken on a blue-gray tone of abandonment, and drove on to the house to pick up her momentary exit from all this so unnecessary pain.

A sixty-second deal, two glassine packets from his hand to hers to her pocket.

“You got works,” the slump-eyed gofer asked and laid a greasy-fingered hand on her shoulder. “‘cause I could….”

“Don’t need ‘em, thanks,” Shane shook him off, and walked out, grateful for the dull thud of the door shutting behind her. She checked in the glovebox for a straw, pulled out her pocket knife, and cut it to length.

For a long minute, she sat with dope and straw in hand. Here and now? No. This was the last place she wanted to nod out. Then where? Home? She didn’t really have one. She had a place where she slept alone, when there was no one else who would have her for the night. Her roommates would freak.

Then where? Suddenly, like Lucinda, she wanted to “watch the ocean bend the edges of the sun there.” She picked up the highway and drove until she could see the sunlight, slanting over her shoulder to glitter on the waves lapping at the night-cooled sand.