A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

The Shore Line at Sunset

Tom, knee-deep in the waves, a piece of driftwood in his hand, listened.

The house, up toward the Coast Highway in the late afternoon, was silent. The sounds of closets being rummaged, suitcase locks snapping, vases being smashed, and of a final door crashing shut, all had faded away.

Chico, standing on the pale sand, flourished his wire strainer to shake out a harvest of lost coins. After a moment, without glancing at Tom, he said, “Let her go.”

So it was every year. For a week or a month, their house would have music swelling from the windows, there would be new geraniums potted on the porch rail, new paint on the doors and steps. The clothes on the wire line changed from harlequin pants to sheath dresses to handmade Mexican frocks like white waves breaking behind the house. Inside, the paintings on the walls shifted from imitation Matisse to pseudo-Italian Renaissance. Sometimes, looking up, he would see a woman drying her hair like a bright yellow flag on the wind. Sometimes the flag was black or red. Sometimes the woman was tall, sometimes short, against the sky. But there was never more than one woman at a time. And, at last, a day like today came …

Tom placed his driftwood on the growing pile near where Chico sifted the billion footprints left by people long vanished from their holidays.

“Chico. What are we doing here?”

“Living the life of Reilly, boy!”

“I don’t feel like Reilly, Chico.”

“Work at it, boy!”

Tom saw the house a month from now, the flowerpots blowing dust, the walls hung with empty squares, only sand carpeting the floors. The rooms would echo like shells in the wind. And all night every night bedded in separate rooms he and Chico would hear a tide falling away and away down a long shore, leaving no trace.

Tom nodded, imperceptibly. Once a year he himself brought a nice girl here, knowing she was right at last and that in no time they would be married. But his women always stole silently away before dawn, feeling they had been mistaken for someone else, not being able to play the part. Chico’s friends left like vacuum cleaners, with a terrific drag, roar, rush, leaving no lint unturned, no clam unprized of its pearl, taking their purses with them like toy dogs which Chico had petted as he opened their jaws to count their teeth.

“That’s four women so far this year.”

“Okay, referee.” Chico grinned. “Show me the way to the showers.”

“Chico—” Tom bit his lower lip, then went on. “I been thinking. Why don’t we split up?”

Chico just looked at him.

“I mean,” said Tom, quickly, “maybe we’d have better luck, alone.”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said Chico slowly, gripping the strainer in his big fists before him. “Look here, boy, don’t you know the facts? You and me, we’ll be here come the year 2000. A couple of crazy dumb old gooney-birds drying their bones in the sun. Nothing’s ever going to happen to us now, Tom, it’s too late. Get that through your head and shut up.”

Tom swallowed and looked steadily at the other man. “I’m thinking of leaving—next week.”

“Shut up, shut up, and get to work!”

Chico gave the sand an angry showering rake that tilled him forty-three cents in dimes, pennies, and nickels. He stared blindly at the coins shimmering down the wires like a pinball game all afire.

Tom did not move, holding his breath.

They both seemed to be waiting for something.

The something happened.

“Hey … hey … hey …”

From a long way off down the coast a voice called.

The two men turned slowly.

“Hey … hey … oh, hey …!”

A boy was running, yelling, waving, along the shore two hundred yards away. There was something in his voice that made Tom feel suddenly cold. He held onto his own arms, waiting.

“Hey!”