Read Online Salt Water by Charles Simmons - Free Book Online Page A

ocean in the evening. Tonight it was unusually still. Small waves broke quietly on the shore. On windless evenings in summer I thought the ocean was false. How could something so big and heavy in the body be so dainty in the fingertips?
    I didn’t hear Zina approach and started at the touch of her hand on my shoulder. Her face was blue and pink in the dusk. For a second I could have kissed her. I don’t know why I didn’t. It would have been the perfect act of love. She bent down, picked up a shell, and scaled it, hollow side up. It skipped twice in the water, floated for an instant, and sank. I scaled a shell, hollow down; it captured air, hovered, tipped, and slipped into the water. Gulls circled overhead,thinking there was something for them. Zina took my hand like a child’s, looked down at it, and said, “You’ve been avoiding me. You’re angry with me.”
    I said I wasn’t.
    “Let me try to explain something to you, Misha. I know you don’t like me talking about Melissa, but I want to say that at first I was sorry for Melissa. But when you told me what happened the night of the party I decided that she can take care of herself. It’s you I should have been concerned about. I’m not saying you should be grateful to Melissa, I’m saying don’t burn your bridges. Give yourself a chance, give Melissa a chance. You may not think so now, but—listen to me! don’t look away!—you may want to do again what you did that night. Don’t burn your bridges, is all I’m saying. Is that something to get upset about?”
    “But I don’t
want
to do it again.”
    “Maybe not now.”
    “Now or ever. You’re trying to get rid of me.”
    “
No
, Misha! All right, not another word. But don’t be angry with me. I’m only trying to help you. Say you’re not angry.”
    I had lost my breath. “Come up to the house and meet my friend from school,” was all I could say.
    As we walked barefoot through the soft sand she took my hand again and said, “Things are running through you very fast. Be careful!”
    How do I do that, I thought.
    Everyone was on the bayside porch. “You found him,” Mother said.
    Mrs. Mertz was there. As she drew on her cigarette, her eyes glistened. She looked like a vampire. “As for me,” she was saying, “I adore it, every part of it, even the heartbreak. Being in love is like driving up the California coast. It gives you the illusion that life will work out.”
    “How about when it’s over?” Mother said.
    “The secret is, do it again, instantly.”
    “You’re saying you can fall in love at will.”
    “If you are predisposed, if you are in the
mode
, if you are looking for love—love will find you.”
    “It sounds like being in heat,” Mother said. “How can you do it at will? It does take someone else, or does it?”
    “Of course.” Mrs. Mertz paused to sip her drink. “Let me say that I believe one is born with the capacity or not.”
    “I still don’t understand why it’s so prized. Is it good to be vulnerable?”
    “Is it good to take a chance? If we don’t take a chance we don’t have a chance. Love, like butter, makes things better.”
    Out of the corner, where he was sitting in a deep chair, Hillyer said to Father, “You never said, sir, whether you recommend love.”
    “I recommend it to mankind, Hillyer, but not to each andevery member thereof. Love and its works were intended as a consolation for the human condition. I expect there were times when it wouldn’t have taken much for us to give up the human enterprise. We need all the rewards we can get. What do you think?” he said to Zina.
    “It seems to me my mother is describing something pleasant, but it doesn’t sound like love.”
    “Ah!” Mother said with satisfaction.
    “You’re speaking from experience?” Father asked.
    Zina said nothing.
    “Are you?” Father said.
    “Maybe Zina doesn’t want to tell you,” Mother said. “As for me, I don’t think love is a consolation for the human