Someone Else's Ocean

“A rooster just jumped on my hood!”

“You are shooing a chicken?”

“Is there chicken-speak etiquette?” Apparently, there was, because the chicken came toward me like it knew I had a freshly plucked, chopped, deep-fried and wrapped relative in the brown sack next to me. “It’s attacking my windshield!”

Honking the horn, I stood on my brakes as the rooster closed in. It would have been an easy jump into the open cabin of my Jeep. I was in full-on panic mode as the bird bobbed and weaved like we were in a Tyson fight. I might as well have put hot sauce on my ear because that bastard was ready to brawl and take a piece of it.

“What do I do?”

“It’s a chicken,” Jasmine cackled, “Shoo it away.”

“You are such an asshole,” I screeched, as her laughter filtered through the speakers. I rarely ever spoke on the phone while driving. Car accidents were the most notorious killer. And my Jeep just so happened to be a deathtrap as well. But the Jeep didn’t actually belong to me. It was on loan like much of the rest of my life. I had no choice but to drive it around the mountainous terrain of St. Thomas. The cloth hood made zero difference in safety. I’d checked. Being able to drive the SUV at all was my first milestone in the many I’d conquered in the last year. I wasn’t about to throw them all away for a psychotic chicken.

I had to keep calm.

I looked for anything I could throw at the real-life version of an Angry Bird to keep it from making the easy leap into my passenger seat, then realized all I had was my dinner. The bird seemed satisfied with intimidation at that moment until I laid on the horn. Apparently, the sound was the chicken’s trigger.

“Oh, come on!” The light I sat at had changed three times and I was in gridlock battling a psychotic rooster. “FUCKING SHIP DAY!” I screamed, hurling the bag at Tyson who let me have round two and jumped off the hood.

“Atta girl, blame it on ship day.” Jasmine was still laughing as a group of people next to me applauded.

“I just nailed it with a chicken sandwich. How twisted is that?”

“I would give my left boob to see what just

happened,” she bellowed.

“Is there something you need, boss? Because I’m off the clock, and I really don’t like you right now.”

“No, you love me. You okay?”

And that was Jasmine, a friend first, boss second, but that wasn’t the order we started in. She’d picked me up off the side of my quarter-life crisis and we’d been inseparable since. “Yes, I’m fine. Just really freaking done for the day. I love you too, you jerk. See you tomorrow.”

She hung up as I battled cars, traffic, and new tourists for another half hour to get home. I managed to sip my pinot right as the sun met the water setting off an endless trail of diamonds too elusive to be captured by anything other than the naked eye.

I inhaled and thanked the God I hoped existed for the gift of it.

I dug my toes into the sand as Bon Iver’s “33 GOD” drifted through the speakers off of my porch and melted the rest of my day away.

“AT EASE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT, THIS is Koti.” The next morning, I sat behind my two-inch desk as Jasmine waltzed in with a handful of coffee for us. I mouthed her a ‘thank you’ as she placed the cup in front of me and took the desk opposite of mine.

I listened to Mrs. Osborne ranting and saw Jasmine waiting for me expectantly, a devious smile on her glossed lips, a fresh story on the edge of her tongue. Jasmine was gorgeous, from the tip of her silky long hair to her dark-skinned toes. She was a bit older than me, but you couldn’t tell because of her exotic looking features—caramel brown eyes bordering gold, a heart-shaped face, and ebony hair. She was curvy, and that day had poured herself into a loud yellow sundress that would look ridiculous on anyone else. Oversized sunglasses sat perched on the top of her head, a clothing staple for her. We were night and day in the looks department. Where she was dark, I was light. My mother had gifted me with silver-blue eyes and her body. I was the pint-size version of her. Where she had made millions with her frame, I was a bit more conservative in my dress. My mother kept her signature blonde locks even as she aged and though I’d inherited those as well, I’d razored them short after I landed in St. Thomas.

Blair Vaughn had been one of the first supermodels and ended her reign on her own terms before she married my father. My parents’ Fifth Avenue penthouse was a shrine to her illustrious career. Every room was covered in framed magazine covers she was featured on. She had owned Manhattan in her day in the way I had hoped to in my own. What she conquered with her breathtaking smile and figure, I’d attempted to master with my father’s business sense.

My mother’s smile won, and my smile was erased by reality. So, I created a new reality, where pavement was scarce and there was always a soft place to land. A place where I didn’t have my mother’s high expectations weighing me down.

Annoyed I was in my own headspace with my mother and even more so with the woman who’d called me every hour since seven o’clock that morning, I assured Mrs. Osborne, again, that she wouldn’t run out of water.

“Koti, I find this disturbing,” she yapped on the other end of the phone as if she was now existing in a third-world country.

“I’ll go ahead and send a truck.” You really need a hobby, lady.

“I’d appreciate it. I just think with what we’ve paid for this rental we shouldn’t have to worry about necessities like water.”

“I completely understand.” You old, flappy bat.

Once I’d put her at ease—though I refused to assure there would be no more visits from the pesky iguana who lived there because she was ridiculous—we hung up.