10 Written by Thomas Miller

    Later, the crunch of footfalls as Dap and Feeney return.  “The astronomy club is packing it in,” says Dap.  “So stupid only one hour till peak.”
    “Too cold,” says Bruce.  “We should go, too.”
    “I won’t force anybody to stay,” says Dap.  “Well, I would force everybody to stay, but I left my numchucks at home.”
    “We’re going,” says Feeney.  “Get Blix and we’re out of here.”  Bruce shoves his arms back into his coatsleeves and pulls on his gloves.  Cold air lashes over his bare wrists and he shudders.
    “Where the fuck is Blix?” asks Feeney.
    There’s a flurry of meteors overhead, faint ones in a tiny patch of sky.  Up in the parking lot over the sand dunes, a car engine grinds and catches.
    “If he’s hiding, I swear to God,” says Feeney.
    “He and a couple of the astronomers went swimming,” Dap ventures.  “He tried to drown Yan-Min and then everybody ran up to the van to put on the heater.  But I didn’t see Blix with them.”
    Sweat pricks at the small of Bruce’s back.  His calves tremble.  The feeling is perfectly familiar.  When he’s on call at three in the morning in the little room in basement of the student union in fact that’s the name of the counseling service, The Little Room lying on his cot, counting the hours, composing in his head long confessional letters to Feeney and Georgeanne that he will never write, and the phone rings, the heavy old phone, whose receiver is solid enough to bludgeon someone to death with, these same shakes overwhelm him.  Bruce thinks now of the line that never fails to calm him, the old joke from one therapist to another that hangs in The Little Room: Don’t just do something, sit there!  What they ought do is just sit there.  Wait it out.  No way to find Blix if he’s hiding.
    “We should leave,” says Feeney.  “Scare the shit out of Blix.  He deserves it.”
    “Let him hitchhike back,” says Dap.  “I can see it.  ‘Scuse me, guvner, give a bloke a lift?  Perfectly happy to pop into the boot of your lorry, I am.  Frightful weather.‘“
    “I’m the one with the car and I say we’re not leaving without him,” says Georgeanne.  “Feeney, he’s gonna call in the middle of the afternoon, and you’ll beg me to drive all the way back here to pick his ass up.”
    “Probably swept out to sea,” Bruce says.
    “I have the worst fucking luck with men,” says Feeney. 
    “Can he swim?” asks Bruce.
    “Of course,” says Feeney.  “He’s Canadian.  They all know how to swim.”
    “That’s hockey,” says Dap.
    “Well, he doesn’t know how to play hockey, so he must have learned to swim,” says Feeney.
    “Riptides,” says Bruce.  “You’re supposed to cut across them to get out.”
    “I’ll be sure to remind him,” says Feeney.  “Do you know CPR?”
    “Mostly,” says Bruce.  “You give him mouth-to-mouth.  I’ll do chest compressions.  Might break his ribs, though.  That happens a lot.”
    “Please do,” says Feeney.  “If you don’t, I will.”
    Georgeanne climbs to her feet and beats the sand from her coat.  Feeney draws little circles in the ground with her toes.  Dap shakes his flashlight, which glows dull orange in the night, but casts no light.
    “Mon capitaine, let’s have a decision,” says Dap, looking down at Bruce.
    Bruce opens his mouth, but can’t find his voice.  A grain of sand squeaks between two molars as he clamps his mouth shut and swallows.  “Feeney and Georgie, go that way,” he says, pointing down the beach with his right hand.  “Dap and I will go the other way.  Team that finds Blix doesn’t have to sit in back with him on the way home.  We get the flashlight.”
    “Call if you find him,” says Feeney.  “And don’t call like ten seconds from now because you’re screwing around.”
    The two women link arms and begin walking.  Bruce continues to lie on his back, watching the meteors.  Five at one-second intervals, almost perfectly timed.  It looks like the end of the goddamn world.  He dials Feeney’s number and lets it ring and ring.  She knows better than to pick up.  They should get moving.
    Bruce jumps to his feet, but his legs go out from under him. He lands hard on his butt. 
    “You okay?” asks Dap.
    “No,” says Bruce.  Red and green spots swim before his eyes like fishscales.  “Can’t feel my head.”  Dap wraps an arm around Bruce’s back for support.
    “Just take a minute,” Dap says.  “Take all the time you need.”

{poagebreak}
    With the moon setting, the tide has begun to ebb, exposing an ever-larger expanse of beach.  Bruce watches the sky as he walks.  He’s shaky on the count.  Call it two hundred twenty.
    “Feeney would make a smoking hot widow,” says Dap.  “Give me your blessing.  If he’s dead, I mean.”
    “No,” says Bruce.  His cheeks are numb and the words feel strange on his face as he speaks.  “Absolutely no.  Article VI in the Old Tin Boots Constitution: thou shalt not date within the group.”
    “Article VI is murder,” says Dap.  “VII’s dating.  Besides, we repealed it.”
    “State of Massachusetts has a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun but no waiting period to ask Feeney out.  Which is more dangerous?”
    “You’re over her, yes?”
    “I’m ninety-percent over her.”
    “Ohhhh snap!  We have to fight a duel now.”
    “Ninety-one percent.”
    “I’ll give you a nine percent head start to ask her out, then.  Because she had about a nine percent crush on you before she met Blixie.”
    “I know,” says Bruce.
    “Just as a public service announcement.  Because sometimes you get left out of the loop.”
    “Blix told me, after,” Bruce says, his voice dropping to Cpt. Slaughter Funderburke, RAF. 
    “That smarts,” says Dap. It still does.  Irrationally, since Bruce can’t remember a time since he was eleven that he hasn’t had a crush on eight people at a time.  Including Ingrid.  Especially Ingrid.
    “I have a crush on you,” he’d blurted out one Wednesday night, stretched out in bed beside her, a heavy book titled Clinical Approaches to Depressive Behavior laid out in his lap, a history of the French Revolution in hers.
    “We’re dating,” she’d said.  “The crush is before you go out.”
    “I think I have a crush on you anyway,” he’d said.
    “That sounds nice,” she’d said.  “I think I’d like that.”  She had leaned over and kissed him on the brow.  The book in his lap fell shut.  The nervous energy that animated Bruce slipped, just for a moment, into something else entirely, something warm, low and sustaining.  Absolutely terrifying.

Posted on February 9th, 2009 in Fiction