The Beach

         “Everything’s much more interesting when you add the context.”

         She turned over a shell with her toe, in the sand.

         They were talking about a movie they had watched the other day in her room. Something about a war.

         “I mean, if you didn’t know it took place during the era of World War Two, then you’d think it’s some random war with random countries that so happened to include the Germans and the Italians and the Russians and whatever other countries.  Without the context, you wouldn’t know the tension among all of them.”

         “Well, I guess that’s true.  Babe, let’s talk about something else.”

         He put his hand on her thigh.  She was wearing short jean shorts with loose threads at the ends, and she was sporting a maroon bikini top, lined with white, skinny stripes – much more organized than polka-dots.  He was wearing plain blue swimming trunks.

         “But I want to talk more about the movie.”

         “Baby, the sun is out, we’re on a beautiful beach, the water is gorgeous. Come on, let’s not talk about the movie or the war.”  He moved his hand up and she grabbed it and shooed it away.

         She was stubborn and she put her arms across her chest emphatically.  “Well, I want to talk about the war.”

         He was getting fed up.  “You want to talk about the war?  Hey!  Hey everyone!”  He began to flail his arms over his head as he yelled about.  He caught the attention of a few on-lookers.  “Gracie wants to talk about the war!”

         “John, stop it.”         

         “You know what happened with the war?  We bombed Japan and won.”

         Her face showed disgust.  “Screw you, John.  I’m heading back to the hotel.”           

         She stood up and brushed the sand off her legs and feet and started for the hotel, stomping on the sand.  John stared at her in disbelief, then got up and ran toward her.

         “Gracie!  Stop! Hold on a second, will ya?”           

         When he caught up to her, he grabbed her arm and stopped her.           

         “Let go of me, John.”

         “Fine.  You want to go back to the hotel? Go ahead.  I’m going to stay here and enjoy the fresh air.”

         Gracie turned about and left, walking like a soldier toward the hotel. John looked at her in contempt and spat the ground where the water met the shoreline.

         “Always a war,” he muttered to himself.         

         Seagulls sailed through the sky and swooped down to graze the water, and the sun burned John’s shoulders making him think maybe he should have gone back to the hotel too.  He didn’t know if it was the sun making him hot-headed, or if it was the argument – one of many – he had with Gracie.  Most likely both, he thought.

         But he was just as stubborn as she, and it was only a matter of time and talk before they would make some kind of compromise.         

*****

         She lay down on her back on the bed and opened the nightstand drawer and took out the Bible that was placed inside.  Gracie wondered why there were Bibles in every hotel room she’s been in since she was a small girl.  She held the Holy Book in front of her face and caressed the smooth imitation leather.  Dark, deep green that could pass for black.  Over and over again, her fingers danced over the word “Bible,” as if she would gain all its knowledge and content through her fingertips by merely rubbing the word, digging for meaning.           

         Then she opened it, and suddenly heard the door cling.

         She closed the book and looked toward the door.           

         “Gracie.  I’m sorry, baby.  Sometimes, I just want to relax. You have to understand that.  Do you know what I mean?”

         “I guess I was just being a little too pestering with the war, on the beach.”         

         “Yeah,  exactly.  And we’re on vacation, away from our parents.  Let’s enjoy ourselves, huh?”

         “Oh fine, John.  You always have a way with me.”       

         “I bet we just needed to relax.”

         “Yes, I guess so.”  She sighed.         

         John lay down next to her, and they both stared up at the ceiling, seeing a whole lot of nothingness, but knowing there was a lot of something-ness.  He reached for her hand and found the Bible instead.           

         “Babe, were you reading the Bible?”

         “Why?  Would it bother you if I were?”           

         “I was just wondering.”

         “About to – I was about to, John.”         

         “Do you even know how to read it?”

         “Well, I did go to religion school when I was younger.”         

         “You never told me that –”

         “Why would it matter?”           

         “Let’s not get into another argument.”

         “Whatever you say, John.”         

         They lay in silence, with Gracie sinking deep in her own thoughts.  Not so much with John, who started to fall asleep.  This was the kind of relationship they had.  Without an argument running their engine, they had nothing to lose and then to regain. Isn’t it true that an army almost always loses some soldiers in its attempt to gain ground?  For Gracie, this was a fact of life, and that’s why she let John get away with this one.

         Of course she still wanted to talk about the war: the dates, the strategies and all the if only’s.  But John was more simple-minded.  He saw the movie for its action sequences: the gore and the blood and the grenades, trenches and explosives.  It was because he knew he was watching it from a safe distance; whereas Gracie was always thinking about how things would impact her life.  A feather falling from the sky, for instance, always had a journey behind it.  There were currents of wind and some poor animal who sacrificed their feather.  And now all of a sudden that feather may be drifting about, fleetingly, in her line of vision.           

John still had the Bible in his hand, but his hand seemed lifeless as he slept passively.

         The sun was still high in the sky.  Gracie stood up and looked down at John, who began snoring.  She slipped into her flip-flops and left the room, making sure to grab a sweater just in case a change in weather may warrant it.           

*****

         She first put her toes in, hesitantly, and then both her feet, despite the chill –the discomfort – and looked out into the horizon.           

         Christopher Columbus was her first thought.  She remembered from grade school how he was, by universal agreement, the first to realize that the earth was round.  But imagine if the earth were flat.  How thick would this disc of a world be?

Gracie pictured it in her head in amusement.  She pictured various sizes of wedged Roman columns.  Then she saw God as a chef, slicing up some pepperoni for a pizza pie.         

         Then again, what if the earth weren’t a flat disc, but a long vertical cylinder?  Now she retreated to her preschool days when she still played with wooden blocks.

         Her life had been educational.         

         Gracie repeated to herself John’s words: I bet we just needed to relax, as she squinted toward the sun.

         “But what’s relaxing to you, John, isn’t always relaxing to me.”  She sat half in the water and half in the sand, and rested.          Eventually she lay down and fell asleep.         

         In two hours’ time, the beach started to get as cold as the water felt when she first stepped in it. She woke up, shivered, and wondered if John himself woke up yet.

*****

         The beach was vacant of other people, and the only source of light now was moonlight.  Gracie’s eyes were glued to the darkened sky as she walked toward the hotel.  Venus was already up: a bright dot skidding the horizon, and not at all sexual like in the Greek and Roman mythologies.  To Gracie, the planet Venus was more scientific than anything.  It’s much hotter and venomous, so to speak, than Mars and Mercury, remembered Gracie from her astronomy studies.  She continued looking west of Venus and saw that the moon was not quite full.  “It’s because we’re in the middle of the month,” thought Gracie.           

         And then, in the corner of her eye, she saw a dark figure running toward her along the shoreline.

She did not react to it with fear, but with interest.

         It was John wearing what looked like a cape.  He started waving at her, flinging his free hand this way and that while his other hand secured the cape around his neck.  “Gracie!  Gracie! Over here!  I got you a blanket!”

         “Yes, John, I see you!”         

         They ran toward each other, and when they finally met, he wrapped her in the blanket.

         “Thanks John, I really appreciate it.”         

         “It’s no problem, Gracie.  I woke up about fifteen minutes ago and saw you sleeping on the beach, and that’s when I decided to bring the –”

         “—Blanket?  Thank you John that was very nice of you.”           

         “You’re not mad at me still, are you?”

         “No, I’m not John.”           

         “And about the Bible –I really don’t care if you had gone to religion school or not.  Honestly. I could care less.”

         “Yes, thank you, John.  I understand.”           

         They began walking together toward the hotel, holding hands. He went on and on about the movie she had desperately wanted to talk about.  However, he was talking about his favorite scenes, wondering how fake blood was made and if they had used real guns.  Gracie listened, patiently, nodding her head and occasionally answering his questions if she happened to know the answer.  The answer was always from something she had read.  His genuine amazement at the theatrics of the film gave her amusement, and she sighed, thinking, I guess this is it.