Until You’re Ready

Derrick Lennox

The boy working the concierge desk seemed concerned. I was coughing profusely and the back of my throat was stiff and watered. It was no later than seven in the morning and it was just us in the lobby. I got myself outside and took two deep breaths. The air smelled of salt and I was surprised to find that the town of Moss Beach was just as we had left it the night before. It was gray all over and the sidewalks and street were still wet. Across the street from the hotel, I passed by the pub that Martin liked so much. There was no color to the place and it smelled stale. I left before my stomach acted up again.
I took a seat and had a smoke at a table in front of a deli. After a few minutes a young girl in a pink blouse came up to the table and put a menu in front of me. She was a skinny girl—maybe ten years younger than me—and had her short brown hair in a ponytail.
“My name is Jan,” she said, “Can I offer you something to start with?”
She had a pleasant drawl and a nice smile.
“Do you have ham and eggs?” I asked.
“Why yes we do.”
“I’ll have ham and eggs and a coffee.”
“We’ll have it for you in just a minute.” She smiled and went back inside.
I put the cigarette out on the damp sidewalk and looked around. It must have been a trash pick-up day because the other side of the street was lined occasionally by pale, metal cans over-filled with wet waste. In front of the small hotel entrance, I spotted our room on the second floor. The drapes were closed and Elise was probably still sleeping. She always slept in on vacation.
The waitress returned with coffee.
“Are you at the Coachman?” She asked.
I nodded.
“The coachman is beautiful.” She stretched out the last word in a way they only say it in the South.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“I lived back east in a town called Beaufort until my parents moved here.”
“How do you like California?”
“I still go to school on the east coast. But Moss Beach,” she thought for a moment, “people on vacation say it’s a good place to darn themselves up.” I thanked her for the coffee and leaned into the back of the chair.
Across the street, a brown mutt dog walked along slowly, sniffing the people as they passed him. As he moved out of the shadows from taller shops and buildings, I could see his pallid white eyes, which matched the color of his bearded muzzle. I could almost see his ribs but he wasn’t malnourished, he just looked old. He stopped to inspect a trashcan in front of the Coachman. Just then, Martin sprinted out of the hotel, past the trashcan and dog and started pounding on the door of the bar we had been drinking at until someone let him in.
When he walked out, I shouted for him and he held his wallet up in the air and grinned.
“They had it!” He sat down across from me. “See? I knew that’s where I left it.”
“Were you up late?”
He looked at my coffee and looked up at me.
“Is that yours?” He pointed at my cup. “I could use some coffee,” he said. “My I’m dyin’ out there.”
We sat there not looking much at each other. We were both tired. The waitress brought out my ham and eggs and put it in front of me. Martin smiled at her and asked if she could bring him the same thing. And a coffee too.
“How old you think she is? Talks kind of funny, doesn’t she?”
“She’s from Beaufort,” I said.
“Beaufort, huh? The goddamn Bible-Belt, man.”
I started eating but the taste hadn’t come back to me yet.
“Has the trip been a success?” He asked, “what’s the story?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
“Anything happen last night?”
“It’s pretty hazy.”
“Hazy?”
“I don’t think you get it, Martin.”
“What’s not to get? You think Clint Eastwood would take this lying down? Isn’t Clint the mayor of this place? No, wait… Anyway, this is your big chance to redeem yourself.”
“Redeem myself?”
“Come on, it’s not a big deal. Every man lets a girl get the best of him at least once. You just need to reel her back in again. You’re too old to start fooling around with anybody new.”
“And you?”
“Yeah, I am too,” he said, “But don’t worry about me. My old-man good looks are just starting to develop. I’m gonna look like Clint soon enough.”
I stared off and saw that dog again. He was circling around a crooked trash next to the curb of the street. He bent his old joints as much as he could and leapt up onto the rim of the can, spilling wet, brown waste and broken bottles onto the sidewalk. He jumped back at all the noise.
“I just can’t stand the thought of her anymore,” I said.
“She’s still sleeping.”
“I’m not sure. I left her a while ago.”
“No, the girl in my room is still sleeping. Maybe she’s the daughter of someone famous—one of these loaded townies. I met her last night at the bar.”
I looked up and saw the vanity in his eyes and wondered if it made him innocent or ignorant in life. We used to be closer, only now, I wonder who needs to be rescued more.

When Martin’s ham and eggs came, we were quiet for a few minutes. My stomach began to feel better.
“How’s your room?” I asked.
“It’s great. It’s in the back, but I got an upgrade so it’s got a king size bed and this Roman bath Jacuzzi thing. What’s your room like?”
“It’s that one there.” I pointed to the window. “Second floor, above the lobby.”
“Nice. Is the bed good?”
“I don’t sleep well anymore.”
“Man, you’ve got to stop being so depressed about everything. She wants you more than ever before. On top of that, you’re in one of the most beautiful towns on all the west coast.”
I looked at my plate and finished what I could. There was still more but I pushed it away and lit a smoke.
“It is a beautiful place,” he said. “It’s too bad that it’s so gray this time of year. We should try and another time to see what it’s like.”
“Moss Beach is like this year around. I read about it in the lobby when we got here.”
“That’s too bad. Maybe we’ll try somewhere in southern California next time.”
“Isn’t Annie from down south?” I asked. He nodded. “Where’d you tell her you were going this weekend?”
Martin laughed.
“She’s a nice girl. I would probably marry her too. That is, if I ever wanted that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I’m just not there yet.”
I leaned over with my elbows on the table and pushed my food around with a fork.
“But see that’s what I’m saying! You and Elise, you are there. You two are crazy for each other. She loves you. All you have to do it take her.”
“You’re a shit for cheating on her, Martin.”
“For just two minutes here, can you not throw all your own problems onto me? Just until I finish eating, please.”
“A real shit, you know that?”
“She cheated on you almost a year ago. You realize that, don’t you? That’s probably less than a quarter of the time you’ve known her. Just let it go. Sometimes you’ve just got to swallow your pride and go with it. Take what’s yours and all that. Christ.”
“Can we just stop talking for a few minutes?”
He went back to eating and I crossed my arms and smoked.
A garbage truck turned onto our street. It stopped and used an obtruding metallic arm to throw the trash from cans into it’s top. I looked over to the hotel. There was still waste spilled over the sidewalk but the dog was gone. Again, the truck beeped loudly and backed up next to the next curb.
“I think I’m going to go back to the room after you’re done eating,” I said. “I need to finish packing.”
“Packing? You just got unpacked yesterday.”
“I’m going home later this morning.”
“No you’re not. Does she know this?”
“I haven’t told her. She can stay if she wants. The room’s already paid for.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to leave me here,” Martin said. “I thought the whole point of this trip was for you to set Elise straight – have you done that?”
“No—” I was cut off by the truck, which was getting louder as it approached us. “This trip is not going to accomplish what I thought it would.”
“If you leave now there will be no chance of repairing things with Elise. That’s what leaving now means and we both know it. She’s waiting until you’re ready to move forward. Or she’s set to leave. Either way, she’s ready for something.”
I looked him in the eyes and saw that he was right.
“Listen to me, man,” he said, “You’re my friend so I’m not going to let you make a mess of things for yourself. It’ll be over if you leave today.”
He pushed his plate away, and we sat there looking at each other. Martin would probably have gone on but the truck pulled up in front of the hotel. It was compacting garbage and made a lot of noise backing up to the tipped trash cans.
I watched as a man in a solid blue jumpsuit eased himself off the side of the truck and turned the heavy can upright with one decisive motion. With big gloves he shoveled the strewn waste back into the can. He waved to the driver and the strong metal arm reached off the truck and lifted the trash and threw it into the top of the truck. Standing on the side of the truck, he pulled his arm across his forehead, using the sleeve to soak the sweat. When they drove away the street was clean again. The sky had cleared up some and the way the sun dyed itself across the ground, it almost looked cleaner than before.
For some reason I suddenly envied the thankless and silent work of those men and for a moment—just a moment—I felt something heavy lift from my shoulders.
“Maybe we should just keep going,” Martin said, “we could hit L.A. by tonight and the border by tomorrow.”
“Hey Martin, do you ever stop and think that one day you’ll pay for all the stupid spur of the moment shit you do?
“I don’t believe in Karma,” he said. “Only women and hippies believe in that.”
I was absolved from that momentary relief and that disgusting, wet weight was back again.
“Screw you, Saint Wonderful. We’re our only friends. So go ahead, give up on everything, just like clockwork.”
The waitress walked out but turned around when she saw us arguing. I put a twenty under my coffee mug and told him that I was going to go finish packing. When I stood up I saw the dog behind me and he just sat there looking at me with his soft gray eyes. I took the rest of my eggs and dumped it on the ground in front of him. The garbage truck was beeping as I passed it crossed the street and I could hear Martin yell out to me but couldn’t make out what it was he said.

In the room the lights were on and the drapes were still shut. I pushed aside one of the drapes with my hand and looked down to the street. Martin was flirting with the waitress, who was pointing over to the Coachman. She looked much younger from where I was looking and I suddenly felt sorry for her. I closed the drapes and scanned the room. It smelled like booze, and all around, the air was stuffy. Water was running in the bathroom and the bed cover was on the floor. I started picking up my clothes and putting them into my suitcase.
“Elise,” I said, “are you showering?”
There was no response so I called her name again. I waited a bit before walking over to the bathroom door. As I reached for the knob she pulled it open. She stood there in front of me and had just done her make-up and her hair was still damp. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a blouse that I hadn’t seen before.
“You’re back,” she said.
“You look surprised.”
“It’s just that you didn’t say anything when you left.”
I walked over and sat on the bed. She shut the bathroom door half-way with the light still on inside and sat next to me.
She put her hand on my slouched back and rubbed it softly with only the tips of her fingers. We sat there for a good while looking at the bed cover. I couldn’t tell last night, but when I saw it that morning, I could see that it was an irreparable old thing: folded over itself and ratty-looking. I had no idea what I should say and it was making me feel lousy. I thought about Beaufort. Was that in North Carolina? In my mind it started to look a lot like Moss Beach without all the fog. I wondered if people in Beaufort were like us. I wondered if they also needed vacations.
“What are we doing today?” she asked.
It took me a minute to think about how to say it. It always takes me time.
“I think we should leave,” I said finally. She slowed the motion of her drifting hand. I could still feel her fingers passing over my back. When the light timer in the bathroom expired, only a small lamp behind us lit the room.
She gave a heavy sigh. I felt its warmth upon my neck and somewhere deep within her breath, I could make out the words, “I know.” She stopped her hand on the top of my shoulder. The room was quiet and she whispered gently, as only someone who loves you could.
“I’ll wait,” she said, “I’ll wait till you’re ready.”