Lighthouse Nights

10

“sarah?” gabe cleared away the alarm clock and stack of magazines, then balanced a tray of food on the nightstand beside the head of his sleeping stowaway. her pillowcase was smeared with charcoal streaks of eyeliner and gabe remembered waking up to her midnight ramblings.

“sarah?” he said again, louder this time. 

her eyes yawned, then flicked left and right as she reoriented herself in the bedroom. she locked on gabe and narrowed her brow.

“i made eggs,” he said.

she pushed herself up, grappled a butter knife from the tray and held it to her face. it took gabe a full ten seconds to realize she was using the knife’s reflective surface as a mirror; pursing her lips, adjusting the curve of her smeared liner, testing the grip of the black jewel on her nose and straightening fallen strands of hair. she sighed, placed the knife back on the tray, and hugged the sheet around her bra. she noticed her mess on the pillow and rubbed her thumb on the dark streaks. “shit,” she said. “i normally sleep on my back.”

“no worries.” gabe hid his amusement from the butter-knife charade. “it’s just the case. if you ruined the actual pillow, we might'a had problems.” 

he could still see a black outline of lacy bra through the covers. sarah was the literary foil to rose-the-photographer; her dark and dramatic style stood in diametric opposition to the airy floral dresses of the bitch who stood gabe up. 

he pried his eyes from her chest and grabbed a tee from the floor. “here.”

sarah took the shirt, shook out the wrinkles, and pulled it over her head. “thanks.”

he placed the tray on her lap and rolled the office chair to her side of the bed. breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs (sprinkled with green peppers and cubes of ham), toast, bacon, and orange juice.

“you didn’t have to do this,” she said.

gabe took a bite and observed sarah’s fork picking the eggs like edgar’s beak searching for sunflower seeds. he mentally slapped his forehead. “you’re a vegetarian, aren’t you?”

sarah tried to hide her first genuine smile. “maybe.”

“city girls; you’re all crazy. there’s no ‘animal’ in the toast or juice. promise.”

(over the last several months, gabe began to grow sheepishly aware of the creature living inside of him. it had always been there, clamoring for the panzyish longing of wimps and self-loathing depressives: SYMPATHY. when he was a kid, friends called the urgings “pissy fits.” the art-institute critic called them “romantic.” the more gabe communed with the ridiculous THING, the more he could control it. but now the creature smelled the moist aroma of GIRL and battled with gabe’s brain and tongue and lips to coax out a silly statement that might finally bring a healthy serving of pity.) “i’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said.

(sarah’s quick response squished the creature and hampered his heart.) “you still don’t.”

gabe covered his embarrassment with a gulp of oj. “i didn’t mean...” he stammered, “i was just tryin' to break the ice. my parents’ll be in and out of this house until evening. that means i get to spend the day with you, and i’d like it to be less awkward than it was last night. i told you something about myself; that i’ve never had a girlfriend.”

“you really wanna get to know me right before we off ourselves?”

“why not?”

sarah set her fork across her untouched breakfast. “i’ve never been on a boat.”