Marine Park(18)

            We would stretch out on the grass, so that just our heads were next to each other. We came here often. On the ground, looking up, you could pretend there was nothing but sky. She reached her hands behind her to cover my ears, and I did the same with hers, and reached farther down until they were on either side of her neck. She got up and we stood together, her hands clasped on my back, trying to push me through her. We didn’t kiss. With my head on her shoulder I could see the water, the Marine Parkway Bridge in the heat-fog, where the ocean started and the city ends. Let’s go to my house, she said. I couldn’t talk, so I just squeezed her wrists.

            Avenue U, the cars on all sides, where I was learning to drive without my father. The instructor, from another company, was a Vietnam vet who wanted to get into Republican politics. He let me into four-lane traffic even though I wasn’t ready. I told her about it. We made it to Kimball without letting go of each other’s sides. The B89 wasn’t running for the weekend, so we took car service instead. In the backseat, she sat in the middle, me on the end, and she put her bag on my lap. Her hand went underneath. I held it there for a little, then let it go. The driver was listening to a station with words I didn’t understand.

            She was looking out the window. Motorboats went by on our left. Flatbush Avenue to the Parkway Bridge that goes to Rockaway and out toward the Hamptons. We didn’t want to know anyone who lived in the Hamptons. Summers, I’d thought about going there, somewhere right on the tip: bike out or borrow someone’s old Camry, sleep in the backseat; have one sleeping bag and throw it on top of us all unfolded, like a tent we hadn’t battened down. We drove past the hangars, the empty Air Force land where nothing grew. The bridge hummed beneath us. Her parents’ apartment, over Riis Park, before the houses started.

            I paid the driver. We took the stairs up. Her keys in the door and the voices of her family, her parents and sister. They were in the kitchen, and I just walked straight to her room. When she came through the door she closed it, and turned the lock. On the edge of the sheets, she put a hand over my mouth. They’re having dinner, she said. I hadn’t taken my jeans off. We stand by the curtains and start all over again. We go slowly. The lifeguards are gone from the beach. Their chairs are bare and flecked with paint. Her hair smells like sand, like the worn sea glass Lorris collected when he was little, to put in jelly jars, the blunt edges never scratching the glass. I see another, he would shout, making constellations in his palm. There’s another, with the glass grainy in his hands. Another, there’s another.





VAMPIRE DEER ON JEKYLL ISLAND





They were just getting out of dinner at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel Grand Dining Hall, the one where jackets are recommended, where the places of origin of the waiters are written on their golden name tags: Hungary, Kenya, Mozambique. Courtney had had too much to drink, gin and tonics, and Timothy was watching her as she navigated the steps, leaning on the wicker railing.

            I’m fine, she said.

            At the bottom of the stairs, Timothy waved off the valet, who was rummaging for the keys to their BMW. The valet stopped rummaging. The BMW had been one of the nicer cars in the lot, which surprised Timothy. Courtney was walking ahead of him, toward the water. He took long steps to catch up to her. When he did, she was stopped in the middle of the road, watching six deer stumble gracefully across.

            Are those deer? Timothy asked, happily.

            Of course they’re deer, she shushed. They were small, canine except for the long legs. They were eating at the seeds in the thick tropical grass in front of them, undisturbed by the human presence.

            They should be moving, Timothy said. Like, running away.

            Courtney took two steps forward and stamped her feet. The deer looked at her.

            They’re caught in the headlights of your gaze, said Timothy.

            What’s that? Are you really quoting right now? she said.

            Sure, he lied.

            The deer stayed where they were. They watched. I don’t like it when you do that, Courtney said.