to the bottom

“Kali’s not nice,” he says.

“That’s right,” Kali adds.

She slides over on the booth seat. Moves away from me.

“I’m a bitch, too. I just haven’t persuaded anyone I’m bitchy enough for them.”

I lean forward. Rest my elbows on the table. Look into my glass. Stare into the beer until a foamy face appears. Elongated head. Hollow eyes. A wide grin. And I think about how it won’t be long before I’m to the bottom again. And suddenly, I can feel her energy. Kali. As far away from me as she can get. But radiating heat. Warming me. And smelling so damn good that all I want to do is bury my face in her hair and breathe. And hold her and stay that way until the day I die. So, I lift the glass. Take a long drink. Wash it away. Send it down deep. Until it reaches the knot and drowns.

“What about your little angel at the pool table?” Kali asks. “I bet she’s the real deal. Pretty, funny and smart.”

“Bet she’s a goddamned genius.”

Jake says this as he slides his glass toward me, nodding at the pitcher.

“A goddamned genius. Like one of those PBCC girls.”

I top off our glasses, but stay silent. Kali says nothing. Jake talks more about the sucker run. He’ll go tonight after the bar and shine the water, he says. He’s got a hard hat and it’s got a flashlight mounted on top. He will walk out onto the end of the big culvert. Lean over the edge. Steady himself. And he will wait five minutes in the dark. Listen to the crickets and frogs and the sound of deer navigating the swamp. Then he’ll turn on the flashlight and hope for a dying run. Because if they’re running steady at night, they won’t run long. Just some quick lovin’, he says. And the more Jake talks, the more I’m convinced that the swimming upstream has more to do with being together than it does with reproduction, life, and carrying on the species. The truth, Jake says, is that fish love like men. They fight upstream for nothing. Only to get beaten and die in the end.

~ from the novella, “Pilgrim’s Bay“