Ken Douglas - Dead Ringer

“We really went to town tonight,” Gordon said. “It kind of made me feel young.”

“You are young,” she said. He wasn’t, but he didn’t seem old. She started down Corona Avenue toward the beach. She wanted to tell him about the baby, but she’d already made her mind up about it, so there didn’t seem to be any point.

He squeezed her arm as they turned at Ocean Avenue. The gentle surf, tamed by the breakwater, lapped up onto the sand on the other side of the street. A car went past, slow cruising, then another. At first Maggie didn’t get it, then she saw the Whale up ahead.

“I’m going in alone tonight.” Gordon was tense. He seemed eager.

“Really?” She was uncomfortable and now she knew it wasn’t just giving away Ricky’s bird that had him tense earlier. He’d been thinking about going into the Whale by himself.

“Ricky’s been gone for over a year, it’s time.”

“Sure you don’t want me to come in for a bit?” She’d been in so many times with him she was a regular. She’d have a drink or two with Gordon, meet some of his friends. Maybe dance to a couple of slow tunes. But tonight he wasn’t going in for a drink and to meet friends. He was after something more and it bothered her. It shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help her feelings.

“No, I’ll be alright.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” He smiled at her, started for the bar, turned back at the door. “I’ll be fine, really.” Then he was inside and she was alone with the night.

“Damn,” she muttered. She was more than uncomfortable. She was jealous and that didn’t make any sense. She stared at the door, half expecting him to come back out, but he didn’t.

She should go home, she told herself, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to face an empty house if Nick wasn’t there and she didn’t want to face him if he was. Thoughts of the baby filled her head, then the thought of it dead crept in. Abortion, she sighed, the coward’s way out. Was she going to give up on her baby the way she’d given up on racing?

She wrapped her arms around herself, hugged herself and told herself it was the chilly night making her shiver and not the thought of losing her child. But she didn’t believe it, couldn’t and never would be able to convince herself.

The sound of the soothing surf on the other side of the street seemed to seep beneath her skin, drawing her like a wondering child to a magician. She loved the seashore, loved running in the hard, wet sand, loved the way the runner’s high cleared her mind and if ever she needed a clear head, now was the time.

“The guy’s going into that faggot place.” Horace put a hand on Virgil’s arm, stopping him. “The way they been acting, I thought they were lovers, dancing cheek to cheek, walking so slow, whispering.” Wrong about that, not lovers. Something else.

“She didn’t seem like the kinda woman would go around with them.”

“How do you know what kind of woman she is? God damn, Virgil, sometimes I think you are a retard.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Sorry.” Maybe he wasn’t a retard, but he wasn’t Einstein either. “But you gotta think more before you talk.”

“Yeah, okay,” Virgil said and Horace chuckled. He didn’t have to see his brother’s face to know he was smiling. He was always smiling.

Up ahead, the woman was standing outside the fag place, like she was unsure what to do next. Then, all of a sudden, she started across the street toward the beach. Horace held Virgil back until she was a safe distance ahead, no homes on that side of the street to give them cover.

“I wish we had the van,” Horace said.

“I could get it.”

“Maybe.” Horace grimaced at the thought of Virgil driving his van. It wasn’t that Virgil wasn’t a good driver, but the van was new. It usually took Virgil a while to get the hang of a new vehicle. However, the van had been in the Safeway parking lot since noon. How long before they’d tow it away? He thought about it for a second and decided not for awhile. The supermarket was open till nine, so it was probably safe till then. Still, he’d feel a whole lot better if it was close by.

The woman bent over, pulled her shoes off, then tossed them onto the sand like she was throwing a Frisbee or something. Then she tucked her shoulder bag into her side, like a football, stepped off the sidewalk and started to run.

“Stupid woman.” Horace sucked his mustache into his mouth, chewed on it. “She’s gotta come back for the shoes.” Horace spoke the words the instant the thought came to his head. “Think you can get to that store and get the van back before she does?”

“Really?”

He handed Virgil the keys. “Go.”

“I’m gone.” Virgil took off at a dead run.

Maggie took quick breaths. The sand, starting to cool now, sluiced between her toes as she found her rhythm. She was a runner. Throughout the course of the afternoon she’d had five or six drinks. Not that much considering she’d eaten, but too much for her. She’d always been a lightweight, a cheap date.

The water lapping against the beach seemed to be calling her name and she turned toward it. She ran at the very edge of the surf, feet splashing through the water as it rolled up onto the beach. Cold water, cool breeze, gentle waves, almost paradise.

She passed the enclosed Olympic pool on her right and was closing on the Belmont Pier when she stopped to catch her breath and do a few stretching exercises. Here, with the pool complex blocking off the cars on Ocean Avenue on one side and the Pacific on the other, she could imagine she was alone on a Caribbean island, but a horn honk in the distance reminded her she was pretending. She sighed. She couldn’t escape the city any more than she could escape her own depression.

“Damn him,” she muttered. “He’s with that redhead.” She bent down, legs straight, grabbed onto her toes. She held the position, the back of her legs burning. “How could he?” She bent lower, feeling the burn. She straightened up, sucked in a deep breath. All of a sudden, she was angry. Mad at Nick. And he hadn’t done anything. Not really. She was the one who’d strayed. The one who got pregnant. No good blaming him. But where was he? Where had he been tonight?

She bent to the ground again, finished her stretches. She saw two lights far out at sea, green and white, a sailboat on a starboard tack. It had been four years since she’d been on a sailboat, the last time she’d seen her father alive. They’d let her mother’s ashes fly in the wind. Two days later he was dead by his own hand. He just couldn’t live without her.

“Oh, Dad, we could’ve worked through it.”

She’d been too depressed to spread his ashes. Instead she left the job to his brothers. She was depressed now, like she’d been then and it was taking her down. She raised her eyes to the stars. “Oh, God, I want to keep this baby.”

But she knew she couldn’t and it made her heart ache.

She sighed.

Metal against metal clanged up ahead. A city truck was parked at the end of the pier. They were locking the gate, keeping the Belmont Pier safe from the homeless who might spend the night out there. She used to fish the pier with her dad till all hours of the night when she was in high school. Now no children fished with their fathers at night. The pier was locked off. The fish, like the pier, safe till morning.

She sucked in a lungful of air, one more deep bend, knees straight. She dug her palms into the sand. Her legs screamed. She exhaled and eased out of the bend. A chill rippled through her, she felt herself being watched, she stood still, an elk exposed, looking for the wolf. Slowly, she moved her eyes around the night, then bit back a gasp as something moved under the pier. There was someone there. She’d been right, somebody was watching her.