Chapter 5: Salt Air

I didn't go back for anything.

I sat at the stop sign until a man in a pickup leaned on his horn.

Then I drove.

Down Highway 90 with the Gulf on my right.

Past the harbor. Past the restaurants with families in the windows.

Past the Walmart where I'd pushed a cart every Tuesday for twenty years.

Three thousand, eight hundred dollars.

If I was very careful, that was two months in a cheap place.

I checked into a motel on the beach road called the Sand Dollar.

Fifty-nine dollars a night.

The air conditioner rattled.

The bedspread had seashells on it and was older than my marriage.

I sat on the end of the bed with my two suitcases.

I lasted about ten minutes.

Then I cried.

Not pretty crying.

The kind that folds you in half and makes noises you don't recognize.

When it stopped, the quiet was worse.

So I washed my face in the little sink.

I put on a clean blouse.

I left the ring on.

I didn't know why.

Across the road there was a bar with a blue neon pelican on the roof.

I'd driven past it a thousand times.

I'd never gone in alone.

Wives like me went home.

Tonight I didn't have one.

It was loud inside.

Blues on the speakers. Salt on the floor.

I took the last stool at the end and ordered a bourbon.

The bartender looked at my red eyes and my wedding ring.

He poured it without a word.

The first sip burned all the way down.

Good.

Burning was simple.

In the mirror behind the bottles, a woman looked back at me.

No makeup. Gray at the temples. Mouth pressed flat.

Forty-eight years and one day old.

I laughed.

"Something funny?"

The voice came from two stools down.

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