Issue 22

Kyle Lung

Beneath the redwoods and past the dumpsters, children scream like they’re playing or being sawed in half. I scratch Matilda’s head, she loves that, she hums. Our tent is a thin shelter from out there, and close by is a dungeon-looking bathroom with showers and sinks, so I guess that makes this glamping. It is seven p.m. at Sunset State Beach, and the gauzy clouds of Santa Cruz have swallowed any evidence of the setting sun, rude. Another throaty scream, my dog lifts its head. Matilda’s perched on my thigh, but facedown, so I ask, “Are you comfortable like that?”

Another hum. Matilda came to see the sunset. I for one came to see if she’d like to wear the two-carat solitaire in my jacket pocket, forever and ever or even just a really long time. She doesn’t say it, but I know she’s worried about the screams. I have to piss, and I vow to look around and make sure the kids are just playing, and not having their limbs sawed off in front of their tied-up and duct-taped parents, forced to watch from pastel lawn chairs, haha ouch. That is my plan: to look around and keep us safe. Besides that I have no plan. I unzip my tent. Chirping birds like a frenetic orchestra fill the air between screams. Sounds nice. I say to Matilda, “We’re the good guys.”

I listen for the saw, look for the blood.

No sign of all that. Just a Honda Odyssey and its progeny: two girls and two boys. Three of them climb the low limbs of a tree. I wonder: climbing to what. On the ground, a boy whacks a stick on the tree from which it came like, how do you like me now! Four kids, all younger than ten. As I walk past, he looks at me, then back to the tree, whack. Bark like earthy shrapnel, his predatory pupils. Young enough to still have some evil in him. To all the hacking, Matilda would say something like, ‘I think you should say something.’

But I keep walking to the steamy bathroom. Inside, it’s all curvy metal and the cinderblocks have pores like a face. By the sink, a man with one eye cups his palm under the running faucet and lifts water to his mouth. I choose a stall and look over. The arm he feeds himself with is his only arm, so it looks like the limb-sawing already happened. Nothing I can do. There’s come in my piss and then I think, in this man’s life there was a day when he lost his eye, another when he lost his arm. See, empathy. I can still hear the boy whack on the tree. During pillow talk after sex, Matilda once asked, ‘At what point does pain become trauma, and not a good story?’ By the sink, not much water is making it to his mouth. She’s right — there are many songs about lost love, less about lost limbs. He is so old it looks like he could die tomorrow. ‘Where do homeless people go when they die,’ that’s a question Matilda would ask. She is so thoughtful, always thinking of other people. The man coughs like if you put gravel in a blender. He spits through lost teeth. Next to him I wash both my hands and hope he doesn’t think I’m bragging. I wonder if Monster is keeping Matilda safe—protection from bad people is a reason I got a Rottweiler. I gave her that name, Matilda, right after I took the bubble wrap from around her face and tummy. Would people scream if they saw her? Maybe the kids would, or maybe not. Kids like dolls, right. She’s the real thing, a whole lotta life and limbs and skin and holes. What it seems like is: the homeless come from nowhere and then leave to the same lightless vacuum from where they came, gone. He is still hunched over and slurping at his skin when I leave the dungeony square that was supposed to be a luxury, but not with a real live cyclops in there haha like what.

Outside under a canopy of leaves, the butcher boy screams at the girls, “I don’t care if you tell the whole wide world,” and I’m like, “Me either big guy, secrets are lies.”

Back in our tent for two, Monster is spread across Matilda’s ass, panting with a big smile and looking at me like, ‘What are ya gonna do about it?’ His tongue hangs out of the side of his mouth, all slobbery. “Where are your manners.” I shove him off my lover. Matilda’s love language is: Acts of Service. She looks sleepy, so I throw a blanket over her face—there isn’t a setting sun to see. “We’ll be back, do you want me to bring you anything?” I hope she knows I’d bring her anything.

I leash Monster for a walk, and we head toward the hill where the ocean is on the other side. On our way, we pass the minivan where the dad of I guess the screaming kids squirts too much lighter fluid on charcoal. For all his impatience he gets fire and flames in his face. Mom shouts, “Oh my God are you okay.”

Dad says, “That’ll wake you up!”

“Are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

I say it back to Monster, “That’ll wake you up!” But he doesn’t look at me. Before we reach the wooden stairs that go down to the beach, we pass a group of bald men with face tattoos who came in a decrepit white sedan. One of them is actually using flint to start a fire, the other is sitting in a lawn chair, holding a hatchet. They look at me and then Monster. Sure, their skin is different from mine, but that doesn’t stop me from nodding my head, hello. But they do not. I hear a cough like hell, and over my shoulder I see the cycloped guy walking towards me or the hatchet man. I remember: I left my knife in the tent, by Matilda’s face.

About that face: her eyes are closed, I’m not a freak. We’ve been together for—it’ll be year tomorrow. And when we’re not fucking, one thing she likes to do is: save the world. But if I had to choose between the former and the latter—

Monster guns it for a squirrel but I’m like, “Haven’t you heard of the golden rule haha c’mon.”

Down the hill on the way to the beach there are nature preserve signs and plants with thorns. Monster steps on one and yelps, the plants are like, ‘We can preserve ourselves, thank-you-very-much!’ Haha self-preservation at its finest. I pull the thorn from his paw and say, “I hope that’s not an omen.” I keep it in my jacket pocket so I can show it to Matilda and be one deed closer to making her my bride. Another sign says NO DOGS NO FISHING NO ALCOHOL NO FIRE. So what. When we get to the sand we turn right. Ivory-gray logs are spread across the beach like battleships. Against the wind a small man casts his rod into low tide like, what is life if not a series of submissions and rebellions.

The thorn and diamond are in different pockets, of course.

In the ocean, four surfers float on their boards with their backs to the shore. I think of the man in the bathroom, of how he lost parts of his self, and of how I am going to have sex about seven times tonight in my tent, under the redwoods. The surfers drift in the same direction I walk. Monster pulls hard, really hard, but what does man get for all his toil anyway.

As Matilda would say, ‘If that’s not in the Bible, it should be!’ One time, we ran a bath and her calves were on my nipples when she told me her personal calling is to leave the world a better place than she found it. But when I said, “Go for it!” she frowned and said, ‘Aren’t you gonna come with?’ Her voice is nasally and clear and she’s always pushing me to be a better version of myself, not like my last wife, who is dead to me. She came a little taller than I am, Matilda did, and her curves are nothing to write home about, but one thing I don’t have is: unrealistic expectations for women. I learned that the hard way. And when, during baths or sex, I see for a second that she looks like my last wife, I try to think of something else, anything else, like the ocean, or sex, or the Matilda from school.

And if I am not a good man, you can pull the plug on the baths and watch it go down the drain, round and round like a vicious cyclone. Where does water go when it drains? That’s something I wondered as a child, when my parents would hit each other, about bills or the computer.

Monster pulls hard but why?  There is not another dog. Pulling him back, I walk closer and see it is not a log but a beached seal, navy and gray and maybe dying. Its eyes are locked with Monster’s. For five or twenty minutes I stare at the seal and feel as though god is holding a clipboard, watching me. I hold Monster back and my heels sink deeper in the sand. I want a big wave to do it for me, to come and pull the seal back home. The reason I don’t help is: what if she smells all fishy and then when I go back to make love with Matilda she says, ‘Not smelling like that, you’re not!’ But I want to be good. To make her my bride and run baths and kiss her ribs a million times, or enough until she stays. It takes all of my strength to hold back Monster. I keep telling him, “No,” and eventually he sits, whimpering like a drumming xylophone.

The tide seems timid; the seal closes its eyes. Sometimes, I am good at holding myself back.

Other than the smell, another reason I don’t save the seal is that would require me to let go of Monster. If I do this, I do not know if he would nuzzle her back home or dig his teeth into her neck. In the seal’s eyes is not fear or pain or pleading, but certainty. I do not know of what. She has only looked at the dog, as if a monster is her hope. I am scared of finding out if my dog is a good Samaritan or a heartless, killing Darwinian carnivore. Also scared of the blood squirting from the seal’s pierced blubber, of it getting on my hands like when Mom handed me the trash. I want to help, but not as much as I want to come in Matilda’s pussy again and again haha. The sourceless energy behind creation, that’s my favorite.

The seal croaks, and I’m like, “God fucking dammit ,  thing is dying right in front of me.” Monster pulls hard at this fleshy tube with who-knows-how-many breaths left. I pull him back. Maybe the surfers could save it—they’re already fishy from the ocean. I look up and see them, then immediately three black fins. The surfers seem calm, but I don’t know if it’s because they know they’re just dolphins or because they know panicking will get them chomped. The fins disappear beneath the water; the pathetic limbless seal tries to move in the drying sand. I’m like, geez, I wish it was my lover on her back in the sand instead of this big dumb blue nonhuman thing haha seriously.

One thing my last wife used to say is, “Aren’t you coming to church.”

Jesus, I wonder, is everyone gonna die. And what should I be doing, as a person with a brain, mouth, heart, and hands.

Then, above the hollow roar of the ocean, I hear the piercing or gleeful shouts of the four children from the tree. They stand above the seal like surgeons and shout,

“We have to save it, back to the ocean.”

“Let’s push it back.”

“Thing is SLIPPERY.”

“Abby you’re not pushing right,  push to the ocean like this.”

“You guys if we can’t save it, it’s gonna die here and stink.”

Like soldiers, three of them push hard against the seal in the direction of the ocean. But their feet keep giving in the sand. Beneath me, the sand has only moved from holding back Monster. Past a rising wave I see the three fins again. The surfers are not looking. I mean, in every animal is a killer, that’s how you live. The surfers wouldn’t hear my shouts anyway. I hear a meaty whack.

The same boy with the stick is hitting the seal, over and over. My dog is barking, and Abby is pissed like, oh-no-you’re-not!

“Joey STOP.”

“I’m hitting it in the direction of the OCEAN.”

“No you’re NOT you’re HURTING IT.”

“I’m HELPING I’m doing MORE THAN YOU.”

“You’re HURTING it and being STUPID.”

“STOP.”

Abby stomps over and body slams Joey, whoa. With her forearm on his face, she wrestles the stick from him and throws it in the ocean. She screams, “NOW YOU CAN’T HURT IT ANYMORE.” Joey is about to run at Abby, to retaliate, when a park ranger pulls up in his SUV golf cart. Those formless brown pants and a shiny medallion that says, Hey everyone listen to me. He asks, “Is everything okay?”

With breathless sincerity the kids explain the scene. I have not moved since I first saw the seal. The park ranger assures the kids: seals do this all the time, they need a vacation at the beach just like we do. The kids say, “So we don’t need to save it.” He assures them no. He assures me more. I think: I was right the whole time.

The ranger gets in his cart and leaves. He drives past me, but looks only at Monster. Joey is all like, “You threw my favorite stick in the ocean!”

But Abby isn’t having it, she yells back, “It’s not your favorite anything, it’s a killing machine!”

“It’s my favorite stick and you owe me a new one!”

“I do NOT Joey, because you’re bad!”

Like actually bad or bad like Michael Jackson haha who’s bad, I’m bad. They leave in a V formation like a murder of crows, minus one. I stay put. These selfish clouds won’t share the sun, and now it’s getting dark. Joey’s stick washes up near the seal. Who would throw a man’s favorite stick in the ocean like it was nothing? I walk over and grab it, try to give it to Monster for chewing, but he’s like, ‘No thanks, I prefer bones.’ I toss it by the seal, maybe she wants it. Smell ya later!

We walk back to the woods, where Matilda will be where I left her. Thick saliva gathers in the back of my mouth. Peppery lust for what is sure to come.

By the tents there’s a fire in front of the white sedan—the flint must’ve worked. I wonder if the tattoos by their temples mean they’re in a gang. Gangs are bad, but I’ve heard once you’re in one, they take care of you. Only problem is they still kill people haha so net-neutral at best. The car’s headlights cast parallel beams through smoke. Tat-guy and the one-eyed, one-armed man sit side by side in the seraphic light; he feeds him oatmeal. All the smoke and white lights, so it looks like they’re in heaven. The old man chews with his gums and coughs food onto his belly. His son maybe cleans him with a washcloth. I wonder if my dad fed me no I bet he probably did. I have never fed another person, never risked one of my limbs. Even bad people and surfers do that. I think, oh shoot, I forgot to see if the surfers made it out okay without being chomped.

My mind wanders, I run baths for Matilda, I do not hurt people. And if I ever have to stand before the Big Man Upstairs and give an account to get through the pearly gates, that’s what I’ll tell Him: I do not hurt people. There’d be no arguing with that. “Show me one person I’ve hurt,” that’s what I’ll say; hell have to let me in.

I tie my Monster to the tree Joey deemed for whacking. Matilda and I are about to have some of what you could call: alone time.

In the tent under Orion’s Belt, I come to the screams of cicadas. And after we’ve fucked each other to heaven and back, we have pillow talk and I lie on her tummy, with my ear on her navel like a suction cup. We’re still getting to know each other, on an emotional level, so tonight I ask her if she prays. She says, ‘I can only pray for those who suffer, I cannot pray for myself.’ She’d be mad if she knew I tell other people we “fuck,” she prefers, “made love.” It’s like my ear is there, trying to suck her guts out, that’s how bad I want to know her. That’s how it is when you love someone—not like my parents, who fucked without love. Even now I’m like, everyone knows that doesn’t work haha c’mon you’re the parents. Then she threw him in the dumpster and said to me, Son, why don’t you take out the trash, and the last thing in my house was a funeral party and I was in my little suit when people put their hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll never be alone, you’ll always have us.” On the coffee table were snacks and knives, which was rude, because knives were the reason we were there.

I’ve always thought: it shouldn’t be so hard, being together. You just be nice, over and over. And when you want to hurt each other, about the laundry or beer, you just don’t instead! It’s the little things about being together that make it so nice: talking about your day, a hand on your face that’s not your own; I love it so bad. Matilda’s organs are my pillow and I could honestly stay here on her tummy for seven days straight, go eat a snack, then come right back and ask, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

I feel for the ring with my right hand and tell her about the seal. About Abby, Joey, and the body slam. Matilda says, ‘All right, girl power!’ But my eyes are closed when I tell her I saw fins by the surfers. I feel bad, because I know Matilda wants me to be a hero, to be the man who swims out to save surfers from sharks and bring them safely to shore like, wow that was a close one but don’t mention it! God dammit I cannot be that good, cannot save the surfers or seals or Dad.

Matilda’s scratching my head and says, ‘Sharks don’t swim together, but you better go check on the seal, it might need your help. Maybe the park ranger was being lazy, maybe the seal was counting on you.’ I say, “It’s dark.” She rolls on her side and looks me right in the face. Her plastic caramel eyelids reflect the little light there is. She asks, ‘What if it were me, dying on the beach?’ I pull her close, call her a silly goose, and now here we go again.

Sometimes, I am not so good at holding myself back.

Then it’s all the way dark, fit for dreaming. And after the people with the cameras and binders gave me a new mom, I began to daydream all sorts of ways to get knocked into a coma, so the prettiest girl in school would fall in love with me. Her name was also Matilda, big surprise — I know. I’d watch the daydreams in my brain like movies, and my favorite was the one where years later I’m playing shortstop for the Red Sox, with the first Matilda as my wife. I’d close my eyes and then there I am, punching my glove like hey batter during a night game at Fenway.

There’d be a pop fly to shallow left field, and I’d break for it like ‘I’m gonna get it,’ but the left fielder is like ‘No I’m gonna get it,’ and we both dive for it and then bam! I’m hooked up to a breathing tube in the hospital with Matilda by my side, who is hysterical, seeing her all-star-slugger husband like that, comatose with a breathing tube. I’d watch it in my head, over and over, in class or on the bus or before bed, the last thing I’d see. But then I’d forget to even say hi when I saw Matilda in real life, go figure. I had a few movies like this: one where I get kidnapped for ransom while doing humanitarian work in Latin America, another that involves a falling chandelier.

It’s not that I don’t need a savior, it’s just that I’d rather not be one. You know.

The closer I get to sleep, the more my head fills with thoughts. Tonight they’re random and religious. Are we the first humans who will not kill our food. Did Cain kill Abel or did Abel kill Cain. Matilda’s sleeping bag is full and warm and vital—she is in it, and I like that. There are more screams, and as they oscillate in pitch, so do their meaning, you would think. Screams can say, Wow this is so fun I’d like to do this forever! Or, Stop. Matilda is faced away from me and I worry she is fake sleeping, waiting to see if I’ll go and save the screaming children on my own without her telling me to. What she could do is: effectually hold our alone time hostage until I prove to her I’m good. The thing is, since the Dad and dumpster stuff, other people have told me other people aren’t my responsibility. But the sound of footsteps comes near, maybe eight of them. I was close to sleep. Will they slice open my tent with a machete or chainsaw. Matilda has to be awake. I guess I could get up, kill ‘em all, and then Matilda will know I can take care of us, and I’ll propose with their blood on my hands. But knowing her, she would say, ‘You were supposed to help them, not kill them,’ and I’d be like, “Oh right haha.”

Now Monster is barking and I rise to my knees, hand on the tent’s zipper. I reach in my other pocket for the knife, but get the thorn. I feel around the dark tent and find it beneath Matilda’s feet. I open the knife, tell her not to worry.

Then outside the tent, Abby says all sassy, “Joey, would you calm down, it’s just a game.” Haha that Joey. I put the knife away and crawl in Matilda’s sleeping bag, but as I try to flirt, the static in her hair shocks my tongue.

In the morning, we sleep in and have breakfast in bed. She laughs when I say porridge like a British boy. It’s good because my dad made me pancakes but I’ve never done anything for anyone but who says people can’t change. I feed her and wipe her messy face like they do in the gang. I ask, “Would you like to go for a walk?” She bites her lip and says, ‘Yes please.’ Ahh- choo. After she sneezes, her nostrils flutter, they do not. If the sun comes out today, I will do it—I will get on a knee and give her a diamond. I check my pocket, it’s still there. “Let’s go to the beach.”

How we go for a walk is: I fold up her limbs and put her in my backpack, duh.

And every couple has a song! Ours is: I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who walked — it’s quirky and classy, like we are, as a couple. We sing it all goofy on the way to the beach. I find a big long stick, perfect to walk with—walking with a big stick says, Now it’s an adventure. I wiggle the backpack back and forth, which in turn wiggles her. When she hugs me around my back, I feel like I really could walk all those miles, so I empathize with the song; those guys knew what they were talking about. By the white sedan, the gang folks are cooking breakfast with fire. I bet face-tat guy would never guess what’s in my backpack! That’s what you call: intimacy. Secrets, stuff no one else knows—every good marriage has them.

And if my last wife could see me now and unzip my backpack and say, “What the fuck,” I’d look right at her and say, “Why don’t you calm down Heather Marie! You know as well as anyone: nothing is forever,” and then maybe wink, or spit in her face. She’d probably say something like, “God you’re a freak,” but I wouldn’t make a scene. I would just walk away and ask Matilda, “What do you think?”

On the way to the beach, Matilda bumps on the kidneys I’d happily give her. Thick morning fog hides the sun, and I think to pray for the sun to come out, but that’s not a big enough problem for god. We walk over roots and stones and I ask Matilda if this gives her motion sickness. She says, ‘Nothing like the time we went fishing on the little boat!’ and I’m like, “Oh right, not so good on the waves.” As we pass the thorny plants that hurt Monster, I throw my big stick at them like that’s what you get for hurting my friend. The dog’s leash is a slipknot around my wrist and behind the clouds the sun is yelling, ‘Let me in, let me in!’ but the clouds just retort, ‘Sorry did you say something.’ Retort, retort, retort — if Monster wanted to sprint and drag me and Matilda through the sand and look back like, ‘Who’s the animal now, huh,’ he could.

I put my free hand in my left pocket and again the thorn pokes me. Just a little blood, I keep it still. The logs are in the same place as before, which makes sense because it’s not like people get paid to come here and move them in the night. There aren’t any surfers. Acidic guilt fills my chest and stomach, which is exactly what other people told me not to do. I like the weight of Matilda on my spine, and now Monster is pulling again. Was Newton talking about things or people. To the dog I’m like, “Geez can you let a single drop of blood through my veins.” But I can’t blame him—I tied it around my wrist like a noose. This was my choice. He pulls hard to the air in front of him. I grab the leash with my other hand and try to slip my wrist through the knot, but it’s the leash that slips, and now there’s a monster on the loose.

I say “Fuck,” Matilda asks, ‘What?’ Monster is sprinting at the seal. Little explosions of smoke-colored sand kick up behind his paws, and as he closes in on the dead or dying seal, I think: is he good?

I run and catch up. Monster is at the seal, jumping on his hind legs and squealing a sound I haven’t heard. I look down at it. Its eyes are open and looking at nothing. Open mouth like a moaning statue. Is it dead? How do I — a pulse — any movement — eyes. I don’t wanna touch it. Heimlich? No, stupid stupid. Do I touch, is there a — . No. This is mine.

Zipped up with her eyes by her knees, Matilda says, ‘Pee-yuu, is that a dead fish? How many are there?’ Monster’s squeals turn to crying barks, and for the first time since I unpacked her in my room, Matilda says my name.

‘Lucy, is that the seal from yesterday?’

What happened was: we decided if I named her, it was only right that she could name me, too. That day, we were sitting on the edge of my bed, holding hands all timid and horny like when you’re home alone for the first time like, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Her bubble wrap was by my feet, by the receipt for returns. Kept thinking, will this one stay? I was tickling her hand when I asked her, “What shall we call me,” and she replied so quick; she said, ‘Lucifer.’ I said, “Whoa haha, kinda intense, are you sure that’s what you want.” And it was one of those marriage things where you know without saying it: that’s that, and we will never speak of it again. And we haven’t, and that’s why this works.

But high tide is here and the ocean crashes around the seal. The receding waves fill its open mouth and Monster digs at the sand beneath its stiff gray belly. Water comes around my ankles; I take a step back. She’s raising her voice at me now, ‘Lucy, answer me. Is something dead?’ She knows what I know: that she’ll tell me, ‘I asked you to go back, you should’ve gone back, but you always want to just talk and fuck.’ She will say, ‘You are always thinking, but only of me.’ This is what she will say.

The Pacific pulls back for another punch, and the ocean’s foamy bubbles pop on the seal’s taut jaw. Its whiskers are wiry like straightened paperclips. The smell is horrible, worse than looking at it. Matilda yells, ‘Lucifer, let me see.’

The reason I like comas is you’re alive but not. Everyone feels bad and loves you and you don’t even have to do anything. It’s like they love you more than when you were alive. Good or stupid, Monster is still trying to save the dead seal.

‘Lucifer—’

I take her off my shoulders. Wish Abby could see this! Wind at my back, I sprint towards the ocean and fling her as far as I can. Far enough that I do not hear the splash. For now, she floats. Around my shoes the ground is sinking. The icy tide hisses a curse.

I stand still. They always leave, but never in order. With each wave, the wet sand swallows me an inch more: feet, ankles, calves. How long until it’s a burial? I think, geez haha pretty soon the kids are gonna have to save me too, but what if the park ranger comes again and is like, “Nah, leave him.”

It’s like my dad used to say: “You got yourself into this mess, and you can get yourself into a deeper one.” He would always say, “Trust me,” and with the cementy wet sand around my shins I’m like, believe me, I do. I try to step out but I can’t, and it’s a kind of paradox, but the way I get out of the sand is by free-falling backwards, into it. I plop on my back and my feet come up from the earth like a fulcrum or zombie, but show me a zombie who would run after his lover in the ocean.

Sprint and splash, the water is around my ankles and then shins and thighs and chest. Then the horizontal commitment from running to swimming, face and hair and salt. The wind and waves mute Monster’s barks. In front of me the backpack floats and bobs but does not come closer. Beneath me there is no ground. After enough coldness, I do not feel it. I breathe some air, some water. A dad said, “That’ll wake you up!” Dads always have those sayings and when you grow up you’re like wow haha those were true. What’s also true is I may freeze here and die, but it feels good to care, to breathe hard and try. The waves come, but they do not push me to shore. I swim and swim but do not see the backpack. Has she gone away or down. I gargle and cough; my clothes are heavy. Is my heart beating really fast or not at all. Getting heavy and kinda sinking, I wonder if you have to try to float. About to drown, I take the ring out of my pocket and shed my jacket and shoes. I had to try, and now I float. Tilt my head back—it seems brighter than before. The sun is like, hey I’m here.

So for a while I just float with my face to the sky. How can anything live in water this cold. Skull and limbs numb, I think you could saw off my arm and I wouldn’t even feel it. Ankles, arms, like a limbless log—I wouldn’t even feel it. Invincible, right. But then I think, that ain’t no super power! When I’m a dad maybe that’ll be my saying. In different voices, I close my eyes and practice saying it to the sun. “That ain’t no super power. That ain’t no—”

I feel a brush against my head. Nearly blinded by the saltwater, I flail in terror. I look for fins, or seals, or surfers. None of that, just the backpack. Still above water. What I think is: she’s hollow enough to float, but the backpack is clothy enough to sink. Keeping afloat in a sinking bag—classic Matilda. Around us, the moonward tide eases its pull. The ring’s velvet case is mossy in my hand. She doesn’t say so, but I know she doesn’t want it. Treading water with a diamond in my hand—I bet Dad would be proud. He never said this, but if he was here I think he’d say: no matter where you go, there you are. And here I am. So even though I don’t feel them, I kick my legs and swing my arms. With a little effort, the tide beckons me to shore.

Like a good boy, Monster is there waiting, giving me a look that could pass as a father’s were he not a Rottweiler. The seal is just as dead. I look down and say, “I’m sorry,” and to the dog I say, “Let’s go.” I hold the wet leash in my fingers and we leave without looking back. Maybe Matilda will float to Australia; maybe she’ll wash up next to the seal. Where the sand is the perfect amount of wet and dry, my foot leaves no print. Beach to our backs, we walk up the stairs, and I toss the ring in the thorn bushes.

We head to the tent past the families and dumpsters. Matilda’s sleeping bag looks boneless. I see her earrings and think, whose idea was that. The tent is emptier than before and Monster looks at me like, ‘What did you expect, Einstein.’ Haha touché. I want to come but instead I nap. Like they do, thoughts come from nowhere. The redwoods are so tall, like my childhood church, where the ceiling was high and made of wooden beams. I always thought it could burn down so easily, all that wood. There, the preacher always said, “If you don’t go to heaven before you die, don’t expect to go when you do.” He spoke of salvation like it was possible to perish; he said it was better to be saved than good. Languid, Monster uses one of his remaining breaths. I think, aren’t we all. Now there’s a pop fly to shallow left field. Between breaths I hear the ocean churn like a factory of things very big, and I ask my Monster, is it gonna be like that forever.