Dream Me(10)

Then just as I was about to thank him and go off in search of Nuggins or whatever it was, Earl slapped his forehead like he’d just remembered something.

“Your cable and internet workin’ okay now?”

“Yeah,” I said wondering how he already knew about it. But then again, my dad had probably mentioned something earlier. “It’s working fine now. For some reason it wasn’t working last night.”

“I called a guy I know at the cable company. There’s a lot they can do remotely.”

“Thanks, I owe you big time.”

“Now you go have yourself a great day, you hear? And welcome to Sugar Dunes, home of the whitest beaches and bluest water you’ll ever see in ten lifetimes!”

He was right about that.

__________

I finally found Nguyen’s Fish Market and at the same time confirmed once again that a bit could really mean a bit around here or it could mean a lot. In this case it was a lot. A lot of miles away, that is. Turns out it was completely on the other side of the Bay from where we lived, in an area which could best be described as humble. Small, gray buildings that had been beaten up by the moist, salty air for so many years were separated by wide gravel parking lots—one sad building looking just like the other. I was struck by the open space out here. Nobody was fighting for parking places in Sugar Dunes. Parking places were fighting for cars.

Nguyen’s, on the other hand, was jammed. I squeezed the truck into a narrow spot between two other trucks and went in to have a look. I didn’t know one type of fish from another but I suspected everything there was fresh off the boats.

The customers inside waited in two lines. In the first line you gave your order to a guy (an Asian man about my dad’s age), and he wrapped it in white paper, weighed it, wrote a price on it, and handed it to you over the counter. After that you went to the second line where an Asian woman with a thick accent (probably the wife) rang up your purchase. There were so many people in the close space that, in spite of the fans blowing back and forth, the humidity and sight of all the dead fish made me queasy.

I walked back and forth staring at beds of ice chips where shrimp, flounder, grouper, snapper, catfish, and blue crabs competed for my attention like puppies in a pet store. How was a fish novice like me supposed to decide? I noticed a girl behind the counter sitting at a small card table sketching on a sheet of the white paper used for wrapping fish—an ink drawing of an exotic-looking bird, tail feathers draped over the branch of a small tree. It was beautifully drawn; I could tell even from that distance.

When I caught her eye, she put down the black ink pen she was holding and came to the front to help me. She was around my age but smaller, far more delicate, and beautiful without the aid of makeup. Her black hair was pulled straight off her face into a ponytail. I figured she must be the daughter.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked in a soft southern accent.

“Can you suggest something my mom could make for dinner?”

“The snapper’s always good.”

I glanced at the carnation pink fillets and decided that being a pescatarian was almost as good as being a vegetarian. Anyway, it was either that or starve to death.

“Could you give me enough to feed three hungry people please, or . . . I guess I should go stand in that other line.”

In a flash she’d wrapped and weighed the fillets, and placed them in my hand.

What happened next can only be described as an out-of-body experience. I heard someone call out my name just as a mind-blowing pain started in my left foot and ripped all the way up the back of my leg. It seemed to happen in a split second but it must have been longer because when I came out of it, the girl was staring at me.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

I raised my ankle and rubbed away the memory of pain. Probably a leftover from an old tennis injury of mine—an Achilles tendon tear.

“I’m fine. I guess the heat got to me.”

“Do you wanna come in the back and sit down for a minute?”

“No, really, I’m fine. Thanks.”

Back in the truck, I blasted the AC right at my face.





Zat


Walking away from the lights and voices of the center, Zat was filled with a deep sense of regret. His would be a lonely journey into an unknown, without family and friends. He wasn’t sure what had drawn him there tonight—a last chance to strengthen memories of people he’d grown up with? Memories he could take with him to sustain him for whatever lay ahead? Maybe he was hoping for a shot of courage. Or at least someone to take an interest in him, his choice, his future. That didn’t happen.

It was every man and woman for themselves now, and if you weren’t part of a person’s future, you didn’t exist for them anymore. They had no time for you in the most literal sense.

Except Sahra.

But even Sahra didn’t understand Zat. She could never feel what moved his soul. The poetry that spoke to him from a beautiful, messy, chaotic world of long ago. A blue planet shrouded in clouds. A place where people dreamed even when they were awake.

Sahra was practical. Zat was not. They were never meant to be.

He looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again, and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

The dry, powdery soil reached Zat’s ankles creating clouds so thick in his wake they obscured his legs to the knees. He walked slowly, carefully moving the light stick in front of him from left to right and then back again, dragging it through the dust to expose a viper, if one should be lying in wait. Maybe he should have stayed the night at the community center, but he couldn’t bear the isolation. He felt more alone there among the others than he ever felt in his own home. In his own mind.