Before dawn it was surreal on the island almost as though Alfred Hitchcock himself had set the stage. Christmas lights are strung over Butler Avenue and had hallows around them giving holiday spirit a ghostly feel. The moisture is suspended in the air not quite falling and reflects light into a wetness that slowly dripped nowhere. A black heaven is suspended overhead and the stars and the moon have been kidnapped so the only illuminations are artificial.
I stop the car in the middle of the road and roll the window down. The sound of the waves crashing is loud and ominous. There is no traffic to be seen from one end of Butler Avenue to the other. No one is walking or jogging at this time. The air smells of wet salt. If peace on earth has a sound it is the quietness of a morning like this.
I sigh.
Then I cuss.
It is a morning for deep thoughts. If love never dies as the Saint proclaims then where does it go when it disappears? If God is love then she must often take long Sabbaticals. Is it really living when you co-exist with someone? What happens to love when your lover dies? And when love flees from your life and you are left alone with an empty gnawing in your stomach where do you go?
If Hitchcock were here I could hear him asking these questions as the prelude to tonight’s episode.
Taking my foot off of the break I coast on to the Breakfast Club. From the outside looking in it is warm and inviting. I see friends, people whom I love and another guy. As soon as I sit upon the stool at the counter there is hot coffee and greetings that have come to mean a great deal to me.
Soon it is 7:00 and as the place opens the others at the counter leave and I sit alone. Chris, one of the Chefs comes to me and laughs at some of the things that I had said at last night softball game.
The Breakfast Club has a softball team that inexplicably made it to the tournament. They all showed up for the game looking like homeless people who had just been dumpster diving looking for food. The other team had red shirts, red caps and white pants that all appeared to have been recently dry cleaned. In my role as Chaplain of the Breakfast Club I made fun of their uniforms throughout the game pulling for my beloved underdogs. It almost worked and the Breakfast Club almost rallied to win but Satan or Hitchcock or my heckling caused them to lose.
For the longest time I am the only customer in the Club which is the rarest of rare things. Chris and I talk about love and relationships and living alone. Phil walks up and joins us though he is married.
“I would get drunk and take all of my clothes off when I lived alone,” he said which stopped Chris and I from whatever it was we were saying.
Dawn arrives and the sky turns grey. The Christmas lights flee and the rain decides to fall after all. I leave and roll with Goddess in the floor before taking her on a wet walk. She loves puddles and has never met one that she didn’t want to wallow though, lapping her tongue in the water and shaking her ass has she does so. I laugh at her for the thousandth time as she does it.
Then I take a solitary run on the beach. No one else is out and at one point I look over my shoulder and for perhaps a mile there are only my footprints. I think to myself “Well that’s kind of the way that it’s always been, just me doing these things!”
Soaked with sweat and rain I decide to baptize myself in the outdoor shower. Hot water mixed with cold rain makes me linger. I wonder how many people do this. I think of a friend who likes to dance in the rain. If love never dies then where does it hide? The baptism doesn’t answer the questions.
