The voice has taught me that at least.
Another picture in my head:
I’m with you, in the glow of sunset, sitting squashed together in a lifeguard stand, close to Pier Two. The lifeguard is gone, and the beach is empty apart from a few stragglers, apart from couples like us in the other stands; we were lucky to get this one, though pulling up in the company pickup probably worked pretty well to reserve it for us.
It was inevitable we’d end up here, sometime. We’re both Jersey, and we follow the old paths, the old patterns. It’s in our blood, like bees swarming to the same tree, year after year.
We were a boy, and a girl, and we were at the shore in the summer, and the lifeguard stand was there. Like a beacon.
The late-evening sun is hitting us horizontal, heat-lamp warm on my skin. You put your arm around me, and I feel your strength, the sheer life of it, buzzing, and we spark like a plug and a socket held close together, like an arc welder; the energy of it is a jolt to my heart, defib pads; ka-bam.
A seagull drifts past, eye level, on dirty white wings. Waves break whitely.
“We should do this more often,” you say.
“Hmm,” I say. I am merging with the sun, with the ocean, with you. I look at the white-hot disk in the sky and then my eyes put stuttering circles of light on everything—the sand, the waves, your face.
“And go on a date.”
“Hmm.”
“A real date, like, movie and dinner.”
I frown. “I can’t do that.”
“You can’t do a date?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“My dad,” I say. “I can’t go out at night.”
Now it’s your turn to frown. “Your dad works late almost every night.”
I shake my head. “Too risky. He knows everyone. Someone might see us.”
“You go out,” you say. Accusation is a seam of freezing cold quartz in the rock of your voice.
A moment passes; the sun lowers one more increment; the seagull dives, splashes.
“I …”
“I’ve seen you leave. Take the bus. Last Thursday, right? You didn’t get back till late.”
“Um, yes,” I say. Group, I think. But of course I can’t risk you finding out about that part of me.
“So how come you can do that and you can’t go on a date with me?”
“I just can’t.”
You shift in the seat so you’re looking at me. I am very conscious of the steps leading up, white peeling paint in the sideways sun. I can hear the gulls, the ocean, cars, even, on the roads close to the pier, music. It’s as if the volume has been turned up on the world. I have a brief urge to jump, to leap down to the sand below. I might break my leg. I might not. I half close my eyes instead, and the sun makes butterfly wings of my eyelashes; iridescent. Glow fills my vision like lens glare.
But this is incapable of stopping time.
I know the question that is coming.
I know it like you know the vibration in the track is a train coming, when you put coins on the rails, as a kid.
And I can’t stop it anymore than I could stop a train.
“Where do you go?” you say. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?”
“Yes.” I pause. “You don’t need to worry. It’s nothing like that.” But in my head, I’m thinking: Is that true? Is that true that he doesn’t have to worry? This is a question I don’t even need the voice to ask me.
“I wasn’t worried. I just don’t get why you won’t tell me.”
“It’s … personal,” I say.
“I thought we were in a personal zone,” you say. “Like … getting to know each other.”
“We are,” I say.
“Apart from your telling me about your life. About why you looked so gray when we first met. Why you go off mysteriously. Why your dad seems so concerned about you.”
“Yes,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Yes, apart from all that stuff.”
You sigh. “So what are we supposed to do now?”
I look at the glowing ocean, the boats bobbing far out, the surf, hushing below us. “Traditionally I think the idea is to kiss.”
You smile, slightly, at that at least.
“Okay,” you say.
And you kiss me, and just like before, everything disappears—flash—like a magician’s trick, the stand, the peeling steps, the susurration of the ocean, the town behind us, the calling of the gulls, everything.
There is only you, and the blackness, and the fireworks behind my eyelids, exploding across an infinite sky.
Only …
Is it just my imagination? Is it just retrospect, is it just what I know now that makes me think there’s a hesitation, a slight pulling away? A chink of light, in the darkness, flatter and harsher than the bursting rockets of my blood vessels, something bright and cold, a lamp for examining the cracks of things, for tilting them over, and revealing their flaws.
My flaws.
But it’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay, because he’s still kissing you.