Joshua Mohr - All This Life

“Okay.” But she barely does.

“Be. Nice. To. Sa. Ra,” he says, hoisting a plate of pad thai at her.

It takes him almost twenty seconds to choke it out, but what Sara hadn’t realized until right this second is that who cares how long it takes him to talk. It’s the warmth behind his words that she craves.

“All right.” She takes it, smiles at him, but sets it down somewhere in the room before crawling into another bath.

She can’t believe they’re calling her Jumper Julie. She hops from page to page, trying to learn more about her, details that will help Sara get a sense of who this woman actually is, but not much has been released about her. Details are sparse to guard her identity.

Sure, she gets her privacy protected , thinks Sara, while my white ass shakes online .

Sara should be feeling better. That’s her mantra in the tub. You’ve gotten away , she tries to tell herself. Traurig and all its drama are in the rearview. Rally, Sara. Feel good.

What would really make her feel good is if Sara can pick up the phone and talk to Jumper Julie. Not for any guidance, just empathy. Empathy that spans all across the sky like storm clouds.

Cumulonimbus empathy.

Instead, she’ll have to settle for another bath — the one that started as Jake tweeted back to Paul — and it’s time to do it.

This is the time.

Sara points herself at a certain URL.

She opens the page and watches it load.

There is a still image, Sara on her hands and knees, Nat behind her, a banner above them that says SKANK OF THE WEEK.

And a link that says CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE ACTION!

It might sound like masochism, this impulse to watch what’s ruined her, but Sara remembers some of her mom’s advice. This was when Sara was seven or eight years old and she couldn’t stop singing the song “Frère Jacques.” It had been in her head for weeks and every time there was a lapse in conversation, that’s when Sara started singing. It was in her head when she fell asleep and when she woke up, in her head while she ate and played.

“Here,” her mom said, “let’s listen to the whole song together. That might help get it out of your head.”

She sat on her mom’s lap, and they fired up a CD, hearing the entire track, and it worked. “Frère Jacques” was no more, though it was replaced by another song. Sara’s life had music back then.

So perhaps that logic can be superimposed here. Perhaps watching her whole sex tape can stop its dismal loop in her head.

Her phone is like a hypnotist swinging a pocket watch, entrancing her. She lies in the bath and hopes this viewing purges all the sick congestion rocketing around her brain.

At first, it forms a trance for Sara, a molested daze: She stares at herself, on her knees sucking Nat’s cock, licking down the bottom of his shaft to the balls, gripping him with one hand and playing with her nipple with the other, and she’s barely fifteen seconds into the clip and that’s all she can take. Her hands erupt like vibrating phones again and she puts the real one on the floor, flexes her fingers.

There’s not enough room in the world for both these Saras. If they are conjoined twins, one is a survivor, the other an unsurvivor, and Sara has no idea which she is.

There are discussions that you can have with yourself in a bathtub in a crappy motel room when you feel like no matter what you do your life doesn’t have any hope, any future.

She might not be able to escape in the literal sense, not yet, but escapism is a possibility. She can use her imagination to leave this room, leave the fifteen seconds of the sex tape behind. She can transform this place into something else. Transform her into something else.

Sara surveys the bathroom for props. Props are key. All that’s around Sara are scratchy and cheap motel towels and a baby bar of soap and shampoo that smells like motor oil. All that’s on the floor is a sad paper plate with two pieces of pepperoni pizza that Rodney asked her to eat—“Eat. Sa. Ra.”—and his concern was so heartfelt that she brought the pizza to her bath, knowing she’d never devour them, slices sitting on the floor next to the tub.

Finally she spies something useful. She peeps a prop that can transform even the saddest motel bathroom into something better.

A bucket. A bucket for ice. A bucket so you can get ice from the machine at the end of the hallway and bring the cubes back to chill your bourbon. A bucket can transform into a helmet if you seize the day and quickly move from the tub to the countertop and place it on your head and scurry back to the water. It’s a helmet with superior powers that makes her invisible, which is what Sara most covets right now.

No one can see Sara’s sex tape when she’s wearing that helmet.

She has been erased.

She looks down at the pizza.

She doesn’t see grease. Doesn’t see sustenance. Doesn’t see ingredients.

Sara removes the pepperoni slices and plops them down, and the second they hit the bathwater they morph into lovely lily pads, bobbing on a serene pond, with crows cawing in the distance, and she swims through the pond, undetectable. No one knows where she is. Moving anywhere. Moving anywhere she likes. Moving anywhere she likes and nobody can zero in on her and make Sara self-conscious, feel like a loser, a slut. She slaloms between these lily pads and now she dives down, experiencing the depth of this serene pond. Swimming lazily through the kelp.

Is there kelp in serene ponds?

There’s kelp in this serene pond.

This serene pond also has other sea amenities too. Such as jellyfish that don’t sting but Sara can reach out and touch their illuminated shapes, tentacles waving in the current. Such as a gentle orca, a docile and mammoth presence that likes to have her belly scratched like she’s the family’s golden retriever. Such as a whole school of sardines, swimming tightly in a swarm, their silvery bodies moving in fast circles, looking like a shimmering tornado, and Sara swims through them into the center. Existing inside the wave of their rolling bodies. Existing and protected from the outside world.

Sara under the water.

Holding her breath.

Holding her breath for a long time.

A true explorer of this pond wants to experience everything, even if it means working to the very bottom. Where there’s a coral reef, and it glimmers with iridescent life. Sara swims and inspects everything. She is invisible and she is happy and there is nothing that can take that away from her.

And languidly hovering by the reef is Jumper Julie. She’s a mermaid, smiling at Sara. Jumper Julie says, “How are you feeling?” and Sara says, “Scared,” and Jumper Julie says, “Your life will get better,” and Sara says, “I didn’t know people could speak underwater,” and Julie says, “We live in a mysterious and wonderful world,” and Sara says, “Why did you jump off a bridge if the world is so mysterious and wonderful?” and Jumper Julie says, “I regretted jumping as soon as my feet left the bridge.”

For a few seconds, she feels wonderful. Like she’s been shot with a happiness bullet. She feels fixed. She is a good person.

“It’s time to go back,” says Jumper Julie.

“I’m okay down here.”

“Please, go back,” Jumper Julie says.

But why go back to the surface when Sara sees lobsters wobbling along the sandy bottom of the pond? There are seven of them. They march in a single-file line, drunken soldiers teetering in an awkward formation. It’s an experience that no other human being has ever had, being so privy to the militarization of marching lobsters.

“Why aren’t you wearing uniforms?” she wants to ask them.

But then there’s knocking.