All at Once

This is it. All of it. And I don’t even know your last name. No ID in the wallet. But I did leave the wallet in the suitcase and left the twenty in the wallet. Someone else should be here, doing this. Not me.

I don’t know if this is what you would have wanted, with the whole ocean thing. Some people get their ashes dumped in the sea. This is like that, I guess. And you like the ocean, said you loved the smell. And even from up here on the pier, the salt is thick in my nose.

I weigh the suitcase, not ready to throw it over from the pier. With something like this, as right as it seems, it also feels wrong. I wonder if people feel this way when burying someone in the ground. I guess it all comes down to what else am I supposed to do.

Maybe putting your stuff in the ocean is more wrong than putting you in the ground. Especially because the ocean already swallowed you whole. I’m just giving back your stuff. You’re somewhere out there. Maybe you sunk, or you’re floating. I don’t want to know.

“Are you her husband?” That’s what the lifeguard asked me after you got pulled out and they couldn’t find you to pull you back in.

“We just met. Like ten days ago.” That’s what I said.

“Does she have family close by?”

“She never said.” I was staring hard at the ocean while this was happening, at the spot where I last saw you. “She was just passing by she said. Just passing through.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Just passing through. Like a road trip. I met her here, man, on the beach. She’s been staying with me, but I just met her, really.”

“She’s someone’s kid, right? Or sister or something. We gotta tell someone, right?”

I was not able to give him an answer.

So now, with the suitcase you left in my apartment, maybe it’s wrong to throw it in the ocean. Like insulting maybe. But what else am I supposed to do?

Of course, you stuffed that suitcase with all that you are but could not be bothered to tag it with a name or address or maybe a phone number. Like the number you called from my apartment lobby phone that first night. When you hung up right away.

“Nuh uh, no thank you,” you said, smiling. “They’re the type of people that are best to talk with via answering machine.”

It was cute then: this twenty-something surfer, road warrior with cargo shorts and yellowing tank top, bikini underneath instead of a bra. Like woah, this chick is just living, as alive as I pretend to be. You’re not alive now. But that Ziploc of dimes you used on the phone, that’s still in your suitcase. I expect they’ll jingle when I throw the bag over.

“So where you running from?” I asked on night one, after you rolled off me, naked and sweaty and I could still sort of taste you in the air.

You were golden and pink and like glistening. And I was thinking about how when you hit the road again, my heart would break.

“Running to, babe, running to,” you said.

“Running to then?”

You shrugged, both an awkward gesture laying on your side and a magnificent one when done naked. “No clue.”

I wanted to say something clever like ‘If that’s where you’re going, then I’m going too.’

Instead, I said: “Sorry about the AC. Landlord swears it’ll be any day now.”

“I don’t mind. My car doesn’t have it either.” You popped up, standing on the bed. “I am gonna go use that shower though.” You do that magnificent shrug again. “With the door open if that means anything to you.”

After you were gone, I tried to find that car you were talking about. I did not have much to work with. Just a single, generic key. The key could have opened any door in the beach parking lot. I was hoping I would just know your car when I saw it. Ya know, the car you said was fine right where it was when I asked about it.

“If they ticket it,” you said, “I’ll just leave town. If they tow it? Fuck it, they can have it.”

I prayed every night they would tow it and maroon you on this island called my apartment.

That single key is in your suitcase too, with the single keychain loop around it. I never found the car. Never found your license plate with hopefully a name attached to it, someone I could call and let them know to pick up the car and that also you’re gone for good.

Is that what you would’ve wanted? You said ‘running to,’ but it really did feel like running from.

“Just throw the car in the sea with the bag.” That feels like something you would say.

What’s really weighing the bag down is that book. I saw you pull it out every night before bed. But I never saw the bookmark move much. It always hovered at the middle of the book. I wondered if you’d ever get the bookmark to its destination. Or would the mark linger in limbo, too far from where it started and not anywhere close to the end. But in all fairness, with a book that big, how much could a bookmark move in our ten days together.

Ten days. A lifetime of could-have-beens crammed into ten days. All that’s left of you smushed into a suitcase. The wallet, the keys, the book, that pair of cargo shorts, the yellowed tank top, a pair of jeans cut and fraying just above the knee. There’s a t-shirt with ‘Dad went to the Grand Tetons but all I got was this—’ The rest of the shirt is cut off with the same haphazard slices on the jeans. There’s a granola bar. A granola bar wrapper. A toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste squeezed bone dry. A shooter of some cheap whiskey, lid cracked, half drank.

Do I pour the rest out for you? What’s the point? It’s all coming back to you soon anyway. But as much as I know I should heave the bag up and over, I can’t help feeling guilty.

You came from nowhere in particular, but you were headed somewhere. Now you’re not going anywhere and neither is your stuff. Everything about you stops right here.

Not the worst thing in the world, right? I’ve spent my whole life here. It’s like the ocean drowned me the moment I was born. Like you, I end here, eventually.

What else am I supposed to do?

An idea does come to me. A laughable one. But it’s also an idea that makes me look down at your suitcase. It makes me flip the suitcase on its side. And unzip the bag and shove my hand in, using my fingers to find the key.

I stand back up, surveying the beach and twirling the singular key and loop on my finger. Surfers are wading out past my spot on the pier. Shirtless guys in baseball caps toss a ball and tackle each other on the sand. A wave slices a sandcastle down and a pack of children begin to cry. A line of women laying on towels all flip onto their bellies at the ring of some timer I don’t hear. And there’s that sun that never shuts up.

Some part of me has already made a decision, and I let that part take control. I start to run down the pier. The suitcase wheels clunk against each wooden board, popping into the air. I go fast enough, the clunks rapid fire now, and the bag almost like levitates. I reach the sand and lift the suitcase off its wheels, hobbling now, marching like a penguin.

I reach the parking lot barely noticing the sun-baked black tar on my bare feet. I check the closest car. The key doesn’t even remotely fit. Okay. So I check the next one.

I’d have to check every car in the lot to find yours? Sure, I’ll do that then.

I begin to weave in and out, up and down, the suitcase’s wheels gurgling across the pavement. I try another car, look up, and see someone looking back at me through the window. I move on.

Someone yells: “Need something, dude?”

I keep going, door after door. I look crazy or doped up or homeless. And now more people are shouting or watching, whispering to each other. I think someone might be chasing me? I think I’m laughing.

How many cars are in the lot? Every single car in the world? Is yours even here?

“Someone should call the cops,” someone says. “Want us to call the cops, asshole?”

“Find a phone!”

“There’s a booth on the other side of the lot.”

“I’m gonna go use that phone, man. I’ll call the cops, man.”

I leave them behind, moving onto another row of cars. At some point, I do hear sirens. I realize getting arrested is worst case scenario. They’ll confiscate the suitcase, and your journey really will be over.

The sirens are definitely getting closer. Then there are more sirens coming from the other direction.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” I say. To you, I guess.

I almost don’t believe it when the driver door on a white Toyota pick-up opens with the key. I’m still laughing. I pitch the suitcase into the passenger seat and hop in. The cops are on my ass now, or it sounds like it anyway. But I guess they’re going to get more on my ass if I stick around.

I drive. Pedal to the metal approach. The crowd I’ve gathered disperses as I launch through the parking lot, hop the curb, tear through grass, and u-turn it into traffic. Oh, I can hear those sirens now, baby.

But your truck’s like a mad stallion, and after ten days in the stable, it rips like a war horse. Those sirens fade, and I wonder how long that will last. I’m out of breath from laughing.

I turn and look at you in the passenger seat.

“Alright, baby. Where you wanna go?”