I.
“It wouldn’t be a lot of work. I’d provide you with the raw video, give general direction on what I want, then we can work it out together online.”
“Who is this? Do you have photos of her?”
I direct him to ipanemic. I tell him that it’s mostly one and one-half minutes of porn we’ll be throwing together. Teasers. Trailers. For her site. “I have to go, though, because I only have limited minutes on my phone and I’m trying to not burn them up before the first.”
The conversation echoes through my head as I toss and turn. I have anxiety over my minutes.
II.
Sunlight is coming through the window above my bed. Coffee. Mayday left coffee for me. There was only enough last night to make one small pot and he didn’t use it this morning. I realize again I have an awesome roommate. I picture Mayday going to a market this morning and grabbing a coffee on his way to work.
I brew espresso. It overflows. Must have been water already inside the tank. I picture Mayday realizing, after filling the espresso maker, there’s only enough for one pot and leaves it for me. Such a nice guy. Coffee is now everywhere. I shut off the machine.
Outside, I reach for my cigarettes. An empty pack. There were ten here last night when I went to sleep. I step inside and see a pack of Marlboro Lights on the table. (I switched to Camel Lights a few weeks back to help Mayday and I identify whose cigarettes were whose.) I open the pack. Three inside. I step outside and, under the already blazing sun of South Beach, the sun that hits our side of the breezeway throughout the morning and throughout the day, I smoke a Marlboro Light. I finish it and light a second. I should empty Penelope and Alejandro’s ashtray; I’ve put enough cigarettes in it.
III.
The world begins to come into focus. My head begins to wake.
“Last night was a good night, bro.”
“You smoked all of my cigarettes. You woke up Mayday at 3am to find out where his cigarettes were and you smoked nearly all of them. I smoked two of his last three this morning and drank the last of the coffee, thinking he wasn’t here. Then I watched him stumble from the bedroom into the kitchen. You took my keys and took my scooter last night. This morning, after Mayday stood over the sink with his head down (presumably taking stock of the situation), he walked to the store to get more smokes because I didn’t have my keys to the scooter. Last night was a good night, bro, up until I went to bed.”
This conversation never happens, at least my end of it. And I’m not really mad at Chaz. At all. How could I be? He’s one of my best friends. And he spotted me a twenty this morning to buy smokes. But I like to have my coffee and cigarettes in the morning.
He tells me about what happened last night after I went to bed; he tells me this as I’m working my way through Choke. I wonder which is more important: our conversation or the book. Probably neither. But I’m content engulfing myself in either.
IV.
At the buoy, Giselle says, “Let’s swim farther out.” The buoy, I note, has a little sticker on it. With a website address. The buoy in the middle of the ocean.
Chaz, Giselle, and I swim past the buoy.
“Do you think I could swim to that boat,” I ask Chaz.
“Sure, bro. With your side-stroke, you could make that.”
The boat is a tanker that is easily three miles off of the coast. It looks like a toy boat from where we are. I think about the swim and decide that I won’t. I don’t want to be eaten by sharks. That’s not how I want to go.
Yesterday, the water was like glass. Like glass for an ocean, anyway. Like glass before a storm, anyway. And I stood there watching as lightning cracked in the distance, sending bolts of white light down to the water.
Utterly calm. Utterly serene. Utterly peaceful. I got out of the water, put my headphones on, and laid on the beach. When the first drops of rain came, I left.
Giselle and Chaz are still swimming. I see Eugene on the beach and walk my way through the waist-deep water to the beach. Low tide. I dry off and go to talk to him. He tells me about trans-fats or something. Eugene is a mumbler. I wonder how different my life will be from his at that age.
I wonder how different my life really is from his now. The only real difference between us is that he buries his possessions in the sand by the volleyball courts in Lummus Park and I keep mine in cabinets. I ask him about vitamins. And then he begins to talk. And talk. And talk. Maybe he was talking about something else before I asked him about vitamins. Maybe he wasn’t talking about anything at all health-related. And I wasn’t really looking to him for health advice, just conversation.
Chaz and Giselle come up. Eugene continues to talk as if two more people have simply wandered into class. The toenail on his left foot, beneath the sand covering it, is pulled back. Eventually, Eugene begins to walk down the beach again, cardboard signs in hand. Still talking. He stops a few feet down and has left a sign behind. I don’t think he dropped it. But maybe he did.