“Listen to me,” Mrs. A says. “InTbilisi Nights, Yelena fall in love with Nikolai, but he is not interested in schoolteacher. He is trying fix Viktoriya, make her life better so she can stop being, how you say, sex worker?”
“Okay,” I say.
“Is just same how Colin was trying help you!” she exclaims. “When is last time somebody goes out of their way for you like that?”
I consider the question and shrug.
“Never Scott! He was too much about Scott!”
“That’s true,” I say.
“This boy is trying love you,” she insists.
“But I said such awful things to him. He’ll never take me back,” I say.
“So, you fix it. He was trying fix for you; now you must try and fix for him!” Mrs. A says.
Olga places her whole palm on my forehead. “Shh,” she implores me. Her palm is sweaty and smells vaguely like beef. She closes her eyes and wrinkles her brow. “You are hiding,” she says. “For one revolution of the moon, you hide. Give planets a chance to line in order. You plant new seeds, and you see what will grow.” She opens her eyes. “This is how it is written in stars.”
Mrs. A claps and cheers loudly. “Bravo! Bravo!”
I feel like I’ve checked into my own personal seaside circus.
I tell them I’d best be going and decline Mrs. A’s ample offers for food to take home with me. I carry my empty Frappuccino cup and my wrapped breadstick out of the park with me, and head back towards the footbridge, wondering the whole way why it is that I always think I’ll be able to come down to the beach for solitude and reflection.A smarter person would have learned by now, I conclude. But I’m smiling, and I feel a little bit better, so it’s not all bad.
Colin
I am never drinking again.
I woke up to the sound of a man’s voice booming in my ear. “Get up, kid,” the voice said. It was accompanied by a three-fingered hard tap on the shoulder.
I was wet. And cold. And I couldn’t see. When I tried to open my eyes, I was blinded by white-hot fire trying to burn its way through my retinas.
“C’mon, guy. Don’t make this worse than it has to be,” the voice roared.
“I can’t see,” I managed to say.
Suddenly, my eyes felt cooler, and I only saw blackness. I felt a strong hand on my forearm. It pulled me up to a seated position. The raw, slippery brick wall against my back drew attention to what felt like hammers pounding into my frontal lobe.
“You got ID?” the voice asked me.
My hands worked independent of my brain, fishing out my wallet and handing it over. I tried opening my eyes again. This time, I could make out a figure. His oversized silhouette was backlit by the neon glow of a twenty-four-hour Krispy Kreme.
“You live right here?” he asked, pointing.
I nodded weakly.
“All right, let’s get up then.”
Again, the grip attached itself to my forearm. It pulled me up to my feet, and my unwilling body slumped against the bricks.
“Now, kid. Up,” the voice demanded.
I managed to figure out gravity when he handed me a piece of paper along with my wallet.
“What is this?” I slurred. I did not sound right.
“It’s a ticket for public intoxication. And the reason it’sonlya ticket is because you’re going straight home now, got it?”
