And the word empty had taken on a new meaning.
Just as I was about to slip into a very French melancholy, I heard the front door open behind me. I turned to see John Horse standing there, back in his usual flannel shirt and blue jeans. Only he was wearing some sort of necklace. That was new.
He just stared. He didn’t say anything or move or indicate in any way that he saw me. He was staring out at the ocean.
I gave up trying to suss out the inscrutable and headed for the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’ I asked him softly.
‘Look at the waves,’ he answered.
I did. There were lots of them, hundreds of grey peaks rising and falling, some capped in white, others curling back into themselves. It would have been mesmerizing if I’d let it be, but I wasn’t interested, not that morning. I went on into the kitchen.
‘That’s what we are,’ he went on, still not moving. ‘The universe is an ocean and we rise up, crest, and then go back to the salt and the water – become the sea again.’
‘OK,’ I said, plugging in the percolator.
‘I only mention it,’ he concluded, ‘because it makes me feel better, when I’ve had a hard day, to know that we’re only waves for a very short time. Mostly, we’re the ocean.’
‘So none of this is supposed to affect me,’ I snapped, ‘because I’m a wave?’
‘No, as long as you’re a wave, you’re going to be affected by the agitation all around you: the other waves, the weeds, the tooth of the shark. It’s just that you’re not a wave for very long. After that, you’re a part of everything else in the ocean.’
I shook my head. ‘Enough with the wise-old-medicine-man shtick. Do you want coffee or not?’
He hesitated, then broke his stolid pose.
‘All right.’ He shrugged. ‘It was worth a shot. Do you have English muffins?’
I swallowed. ‘I’m off English muffins for a while.’
‘Oh.’ He nodded. ‘Right.’
‘I got bagels.’
‘Perfect!’
The coffee finished percolating, the bagels were toasted, and John Horse and I sat at my kitchen table not talking, staring out the big glass doors.
And I didn’t want to notice, but I couldn’t help it: the waves were only waves close to the shore. Farther out to sea, it was calm. And on the shore, they were flat and thin, nearly transparent, running over the sand before they retreated.
‘Damn it,’ I said to him at length, ‘now you got me thinking about these waves.’
He laughed. ‘What about them?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’
He took another bite of his bagel. ‘Our little lives in these temporary bodies, they only exist in a transitional realm, a place between two greater worlds.’
‘I’m sorry I mentioned it.’ I shook my head and finished my coffee.
I took in a breath. ‘I won’t say that all my problems are solved at this point, but I’m a little surprised that a certain latent depression doesn’t appear to be settling in like I thought it was going to. In fact, I don’t feel so bad after all. How do you do that?’
He knew what I was talking about. But instead of pressing his advantage, he went back to the more mundane world of Fry’s Bay.
‘I should probably remind you that there’s a good bit of money in that safe deposit box. Lena left it for you.’
‘I forgot about that.’
‘And I guess it would also help to know that the insurance claim is paying off. Lena and her sister will have plenty of money – wherever they are.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, not looking at him. ‘Wherever they are.’
‘So.’ He sat back, swallowing the last of his bagel. ‘You want to go fishing? Like, deep sea fishing?’
‘Sure.’ I stood up. ‘I was thinking of taking the day off anyway. Just let me change into something more sea-worthy.’
I shuffled off toward my bedroom. John Horse sat at the table and poured himself another cup of coffee, humming a familiar melody under his breath.
‘What’s that you’re singing?’ I called out.
‘Memories of You,’ he answered, ‘the Benny Goodman version.’
An hour later we were both out on somebody’s big boat in the middle of a calm ocean – no waves at all – angling for swordfish and drinking from a portable water cooler filled with gin and vermouth and some kind of bitter herb that John Horse said was supposed to prevent hangovers. That way, he said, we could drink as much as we wanted to. And we wanted to drink a lot.
Sometime that morning, out there in the middle of all that water, filled with Seminole martinis, I forgot everything and everyone. At least for a little while, I was just another part of the ocean.
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