Out of Focus

She wakes up sweating, tangled in sheets, suffocating. She remembers driving through the desert in the middle of the night—the windows down, Devotchka on the stereo, cool air blowing in the car, the moon bright and low over the far off mountains—and imagining car crashes.  Every time she drove underneath an overpass she envisioned a car careening over the guardrails and smashing down on hers, spraying bits of glass, crushing metal. A popping tire, the wheel jerking to the right, cigarettes and loose change flying through the air as the car flips over and over through dusty desert.  Deer in the middle of mountain passes caught in headlights, her swerving into an endless canyon, the silence before the collision. She couldn’t make it stop; they played on repeat in her mind no matter how loud she turned the music up.

She kicks the blankets off and rubs the sleep from her eyes.  The sun is coming in low through the blinds and the clock says it’s only six.

She looks around the hotel room, at her pile of clothes on the tiled floor of the bathroom, at the remote control velcroed to the TV, at the white, white walls.  She catches her reflection in the mirror.  She stands up and walks towards herself and she studies the tiny red veins in her eyes and the purple circles around them and the hollowness of her cheeks, and the more she looks at herself the less she looks like herself and her stomach aches and she turns away and falls to the ground, hyperventilating. 

Why did she come here?  Why did she think this would make her feel better?  She was rash.  She never thinks things through.  She should’ve stayed, she should’ve, she should’ve …

She puts her hands on the side of her head and holds it steady.  She breathes in and counts to ten and sits up and steadies herself against the wall with her knees pulled up and her hand on her chest.  She feels her heartbeat slow.  She waits until her head stops spinning and then she stands and she brushes her teeth and she concentrates on the bristles rubbing against her gums and the burn of the mint on her tongue and she shuts her brain off.  She just needs some sun.

There isn’t any sun and the boardwalk is closed.  All of the rides are shut down and the kiosks are abandoned and a dozen people are scattered around the beach.  Raggedy strings blow from the volleyball nets and she has her old-fashioned twin-lens camera and she puts The Black Keys on her iPod and the headphones in her ears and she shoots an entire roll of empty rides and locked grates and chained staircases. 

She sits down in a bumper car and smokes a cigarette until a security guard comes over and makes her leave and as she walks down the planked pier she tries to notice everything around her—the elongated, wispy shadows of the horses on the carousal and the squawking of hundreds of seagulls on the sand and the crashing of the waves and the unnatural blueness of the hazy sky—just so she doesn’t have to think of anything else.  She buys Des and Jake glass bottles on the wharf and some salt-water taffy at a candy shop.  She does some lines in the sandy public bathrooms and gives the taffy to two brothers fishing at the end of the pier.  She takes a picture of a pelican with her cell phone and sends it to Ben and the phone rings almost instantly

Where the hell are you?

Santa Cruz.

… California?

Yeah.

Emily!  What the hell?! When did you leave?

Last night.

At the party?

Yeah.

What the … Why?  I thought you just went home with someone…

I just wanted to come to the beach.

God … That’s so cool.  You’re so cool.  What’s that noise?

It’s a foghorn.

Is it foggy?

Well … Yeah.

Where are you?

I’m sitting on the end of the pier and there is fog billowing into the bay and I can’t see anything around me except for the pelican I just sent you a picture of and the waves are crashing around me and I can barely hear you.  And there are sea lions.  They’re barking and clapping …

Ah, I’m so jealous, that sounds so cool.  When are you coming back?  What are you doing?

I don’t know.  I’m just, you know …

Hanging out?  That’s cool, man, that’s cool.  Are you going to be home for the Halloween party?

In two days?  Probably not … Feed my cat, okay?

Yeah, sure.

They hang up and she lights a cigarette and stares out into the dense mist and counts the seconds between each blow of the foghorn.  A seagull lands on a white post near her and stares too, still as a statue.  There’s a man fishing a few benches away and the seagull suddenly dives into his bucket and flies away and the man yells after the bird and mutters to himself as he baits another hook.  The sun is warm through the fog, but the wind is cool, and everything is white and glowing.   The foghorn blows again and startles her and she drops the cigarette from between her fingers and it falls through a crack in the splintered planks.  She brings her knees up to her chest and pulls a strand of hair from her mouth.  A man walks by and smiles at her and she tries to smile back, but she’s not sure if she does.  She fumbles around in her bag for another cigarette and gets tobacco stuck underneath her fingernails and a man on a bicycle stops beside her and says,

What’s that noise?

The sea lions.

I don’t see none. 

They’re down there.  Under the pier.

He leans over the railing, trying to see, and she thinks he might fall over the edge, but he doesn’t and he spots one and says,

Oh damn, he’s a big fucker,

and yells,

Hey boy, clap for me, clap clap,

and she tries to light her cigarette, but the wind has gotten stronger and she can’t and the man asks for one and she gives it to him and he tucks it behind his ear and hands her a flier for a Halloween party before riding away.  An Asian couple is holding each other, looking out into the bay and she watches them until they pull apart and walk into the fog, holding hands.  It makes her feel very lonely and small and she closes her eyes and focuses on the laughter of the kids running around behind her, chasing the birds, before the sadness can take hold.  She breathes in the ocean air and it’s salty and clean and it clears her head and she opens her eyes and blinks into the sunlight as the foghorn blows and a sailboat glides slowly out of the mist.