Inside New Jersey, deep in the pines of Lambertville, Jon sat across the table in a hole-in-the-wall bar with his woman of the mountains, Lauren Connors. She had sat next to him all through grade school until Mr. Connors took a job in the city and he moved his family one state over. She no longer sat huddled over—but she now sat up tall and slim. She batted her green eyes slow in the smoky tavern the same way she had done when they were young. And it still made Jon blush all these years later. The two sat to the silence of the low radio, exchanging eyes often as they picked at their food with matte silver forks—swirling and tipping their drinks bottoms-up down into their stomachs.
“I’ve waited five years for that call, mister,” she said, tugging at the lapels of her purple businesswoman suit cutting low on her thin, flat chest. “Five years, can you believe it? That long since the reunion. Gosh darn, does time fly.”
Jon sat back. He swirled the amber liquid slow in his glass, tipping it back frequently as he nodded at Lauren.
“I wish we all got together more frequently. I mean, it’s great that you were in town and had my number and all. But why only have reunions on decades. Most of us still live in the tri-state, even,” she said. “I even bumped into Robert Gully not more than a month back.”
“Gully?” Jon questioned. “You saw Robert?”
“Yea, in the market. Or was it the Wal-Mart. Or the Target. Or the K-Mart. I don’t know. One of those marts. He’s doing well, though. Three kids and the head of his firm. Lives on the river in Teaneck, now. You should see his wife’s nose job.” Lauren felt the tip of her nose—pointing and prodding it with her fingers. “You think I need one?”
“Need one what?”
“Some work done?”
“Some what done?”
“A nose job, silly,” she flicked her nose and stuck her tongue out, “I think it needs some shaping. A little sculpting.”
“Your nose looks fine,” Jon said. He gulped down half of his drink, finishing with a tight lipped grin. “No need in fixing what’s intended for you.”
“Or all the needs in the world to fix what our parents gave us.” She held her nose down with two fingers, looking past Jon and at her reflection in an old ale advertisement mirror. “C’mon, Jon, it could use a little trim, don’t you think?”
Jon sat stilled. He stared over at the red brick wall splattered with intermittent black bricks. He thought of if he too moved to the mountains way back when, how different things would be. Would he know the sea like how he knows it now? Would he even care if he didn’t? Would he only care about rivers and mountains and plastic noses and Teaneck, New Jersey?
He broke his stare and he swirled his drink before pouring the last of it into his mouth. The whisky warmed his stomach. He looked down at Lauren’s emptied glass. Then he looked up into her mossy green eyes. His lips curled downward, losing all life.
“Oh, we have so much to catch up on, Jonny,” she said, smiling. “Let me fill this up for you.” And she walked to the bar. Jon’s eyes traced the shadows of her curves cutting through the smoky yellow light shedding from lanterns stemmed above each table.
He smiled. He liked how Lauren looked as an adult. Her brown pigtails had turned into long blonde hair flowing down onto her shoulders—hugging her petite face. “She’s too perfect,” he thought. “She’s beautiful in every way. But she is too perfect. Too—,” he paused, searching for the words in his mind for a moment until it came to him. “Too unnatural. She is nothing of the sea. She is consumed with false beauty. She is a magazine ad.” He frowned, pulling on his beard. He looked up at Lauren returning with his whisky. He pushed his bottom to the edge of the seat and he grabbed the glass before it hit the table. His taste for Lauren had succumbed to his taste for warm scotch over ice. His eyes grew leaner with each tip of his glass to his lips. He had no longer been caught spellbound by her handsome clothing—her perfected hair—her picket fence of white teeth orchestrating a smooth professional monotone. He felt awake. Alive. And he gulped down his drink, returning to the bar before Lauren had even taken a sip of her bright pink drink named after a flamingo or something he would never remember. Their conversations thus far had taken them down the old memory lane, but Jon had begun to blur the night into the thin-blooded reality of the darkling dive bar one state over in the mountains. He was four pours of scotch to her two pinky drinks and he was motioning for another. The barkeeper poured a triple shot of blended whisky that curved through the thick cubes of ice.
“So, do you ever shave anymore, or what?” she said. “Or do you keep growing it out like a wild beast? I bet you are a wild beast.” She leaned herself forward, allowing her necklace to fall away from her flesh—the pendant swinging between her breasts. She dampened a napkin in her water glass. Then she brought it to her lips, patting them softly. She then patted her neck, down to her bare chest before she rested the napkin back on the table.
“I shave sometimes. But not often. The beard is good for the ocean. Keeps the wind off the face.” Jon’s memory flashed back to a tour out at sea. Three seasons back. “This beard has kept me warm many-a-time,” he said. “You get lost at sea for a few days. A storm throws you up north in the dead of winter. You got yourself staring at subzero winds blowing in from the arctic. A beard is a man’s only defense on days like that.” He focused on the light over Lauren’s head. Then he slowly shifted his eyes back down to the necklace bobbing from breast to breast. He blinked hard and long. Then he looked back into Lauren’s eyes but she looked down at the table quick.
“But didn’t you say there were no fish to catch? Then why the beard still?”
Jon took a long sip at his whisky before pushing the glass down to the table hard. “It’ll open up,” he said. “No doubt. She’ll open up soon enough. And I’ll be ready.” He pulled on his beard, curling the ends under his collar. “I’ll be ready for her.”
Lauren pushed herself back, thrusting out her chest as she glanced over at the paraphernalia of the town’s history splattered across the brick walls between beer ads and liquor posters. She leaned forward and she draped a thin white sweater over her shoulders. “Getting chilly in here,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
He nodded. Then he sipped on his drink. His eyes had colored to a bloodshot red. His lips shivered to a dark purple-blue around the outer edges.
The night pressed onward. He had finished his fifth and then his sixth drinks through the mumbled conversation with his childhood love before she felt it was time to leave. Time to abandon any and all thoughts of the romantic evening she had wished for. She slipped her arms through the sleeves of her sweater. “I’m afraid I must be going, Jonny. I have errands to run tomorrow before court,” she said. “But we should do this again real soon. Maybe dinner instead of a bar, though.”
“Sure thing,” he said, showing her off to her car.
“You aren’t leaving too?”
“No. In a bit. Figured one or two more drinks in me before I head off. Got a long drive home.”
“Those two don’t go together,” she said. “You can always stay over my place. Leave early in the morning.”
Jon stepped back from her car. He tried to press the hairs standing on ends down, but he was unsuccessful. “No need. I can drive a team of drunken sailors drunk. I can drive an old beater two hundred miles on straight paved roads.”
Lauren leaned in and she kissed Jon on the side of his cheek. She caught the edge of his lips and the edge of his beard. She giggled, wiping at her mouth. “That tickled. You should really shave. You’d look much more handsome,” she said. “More professional.”
She got into the car and Jon closed the door shut on her. She geared the car in reverse to the fringe of the asphalt. Then she propelled forward and down the road.
Jon stared at the car until it disappeared over a hill, where he then returned to the bar for a
double scotch with no ice. He swished the warm liquid between his teeth, closing his eyes as the aromas floated down his esophagus. His mind had drifted to the memories of the sea—to the ideals he placed in the image of Lauren. He could not compare the two. They were completely different in concepts. “The sea, my God,” he proclaimed aloud, “is my savior. And will save my family again.” The bartender shot eyes over at Jon who sat at the end of the mahogany bar, mumbling to himself. He noticed the bold looks from the barkeeper, so Jon moved himself to a table to keep to himself. To keep to his liquor and his mumbled thoughts that floated up over the music, at times. He could not drive out the images of his body walking step by step into the salty sea ‘til his head disappeared under the crash of dark blue waves. His hands beat heavy on the table. He grabbed at the glass of liquor. His eyes were tired, surrounded in fiery red veins. He could only think of the sea as the natural balance of life. Where Lauren counteracted the sea as an unnatural force—an unnatural being. And then he thought of all of Lambertville and all of New Jersey and of East Marion—and all the world. All of the urban and suburban towns throughout the world. “All unnatural. The deterioration of what this God has given us,” he cried out until the barkeeper grabbed Jon under his arms, throwing him out onto his bottom.
“Go home, you crazy,” the bartender yelled. “You had enough, my friend. I am cutting you off. Go home and clean yourself up. The only thing that is unnatural is you. So clean up and sober up and tomorrow you’ll be natural again.”
“This whole bar is unnatural. This whole town. All of humanity.” He pulled himself up onto the hood of his car. He looked up at the sky until it was cut off by the tall peaks of mountains not far in the distance. “‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’”
“Get the hell out of here, you crazy. And if the man stops you, you didn’t come from here.” The barkeeper spat at the ground and he walked back into the bar.
Jon shifted his key into the ignition. The car sparked into propulsion, in route two hundred miles east—back to his East Marion.
It was late and he was drunk and the roads were cleared and straight. He had no troubles guiding the sedan through the wide-open roadways. And not before long, he pulled into his driveway as the sun was dawning—casting a Victorian-estate shadow up over him. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His face wore dark blue crescents under his still red eyes. His pupils were wide, hugged with a slice of gray, thrown into both fire and water. He turned the key over and the car stopped its hum, settling into the drive. He let the sound of the waves crash into his mind. He smiled and then he closed his eyes—falling into a dense slumber.
His mind escaped back to voyages past out at sea. Dreams encapsulated Jon back to the times of joy and prosperity. A time of profits. He kissed each fish that they caught in their nets. He kissed the blurred faces of each crew member.
“Where have you been?” awoke him with a slap across the upper part of his cheek. His beard unable to catch the force behind Elea’s opened hand. “You disappeared all day and all night and then you show up passed out and hung over in your car.”
Jon rubbed at his eyes. He then jumped at the sight of Elea’s hand rearing back for another swipe. He placed his hands on the steering wheel, stretching his arms, locking his elbows. “I went out with Bennie for a few drinks.” He scratched at his beard, pulling out pieces of napkin that had embedded in his whiskers. “I must’ve had a little too many and dozed off in the drive when I got home.”
“Bennie?” she questioned, keeping her hand up and ready to strike.
“First mate, Bennie. Bennie Flannigan from Orient, Bennie. He’s out of work, too.”
She dragged her hand down to her side. She pulled at the seams of her skirt and she headed back to the house. “If you want breakfast, toast and eggs are out. Barry finished his. You’ll just have to nuke yours up a bit.” She walked through the front door. The metal slamming shut behind her.
Jon took a deep breath. Then he cracked his knuckles back one at a time on the steering wheel. He felt a rush of guilt flood over him. He got out of the car, walking to the yard to watch the small waves pound against the shore. He closed his eyes. Then he whispered softly to the sound, “I’m home. To the sea,” and he headed for the back porch—to the kitchen.