Decisions are often made with deep breaths.
This deep breath came with a sting, a saltwater epiphany that Brian Shike had to move.
He felt himself sit up and the liquids in his own head-blood, sinus fluid, mucus, saliva-moved in a way that made him almost scream.
He did not scream.
His second breath had the taste of saltwater, but not the depth.
Brian opened his eyes.
An expanse of beach, sparsely populated in the copper glow of early evening.
He turned and again his equilibrium fought him.
The dizziness distorted his view, but any idiot with a tongue full of saltwater could see that it was the ocean.
Brian, who made excuses as though they were sweaters for shivering dogs, made no excuse now.
He was an idiot.
Standing, as though the process was meant to have a half dozen variations, he felt more water at his calves.
A small boy idly played nearby, more interested in Brian than his blue plastic toy and the wet sand.
The boy looked puzzled.
I’m puzzling, Brian thought.
I puzzle myself.
A woman lounged face down on a towel nearby.
Brian saw that the boy saw Brian looking.
It must be the boy’s mother, or aunt.
He did not want the boy to be frightened, so he looked away.
Brian looked at the ocean once more, scanned, hoping for a skyline. A building. A boat with the name of a marina. There was nothing.
He turned back to the boy.
The blue plastic wasn’t a toy at all, just a broken shard of plastic the boy used to dig at the sand, still looking at Brian.
Nausea kicked in, the kind of nausea that starts in the diaphragm and not the gut, a nausea reserved for people like Brian.
Not the nausea of too much.
The nausea of you need more, and you need it now.
He patted his pockets.
There was money, but it would be wet.
He had no shirt, but hoped that any store near a beach would not be likely to enforce any policies.
He could look for his shirt, but why?
The little boy dug with the broken plastic.
Brian wanted to tell the kid “Don’t lose your soul,” or something profound, but he knew better than to talk to a stranger kid with a sleeping mom.
The boy was too young to know anything profound.
But the boy most certainly must know what ocean he was near, and Brian, at the end of a foggy week in a fuzzy year of an occluded life, did not.
***
Dedicated, with admiration, to all my friends in recovery.
I hope it’s his rock bottom. But I fear it’s not.
"I puzzle myself."
I had to read this one three times, just awesome.