The Middle Man

Seaglass

It was one of her best memories. She could recall walking along the shore like it was yesterday- she could still feel the cool sea breeze against her skin. The vibrant sound of crashing waves still rang in her ears and the salty smell still wafted through the air. The waves lapped on the beach, filling the tide pools and the spaces between the jagged rocks. The jetty stretched a little over 100 feet into the water and several fishing lines were cast over the edges of the mounted rocks and into the depths below. Across the bay there was a line of houses, seemingly small in the distance, in pretty pastels with white picket fences. The sand was smooth and soft, the imprints of feet nonexistent as the tide had washed them away the night before. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon and everything was aglow with an orangey yellow sheen.

In a few short hours, she would arise to the smell of breakfast and would quickly shower. She would pack nothing in her bag but a small bundle of money, a crisp towel, and a change of clothes, and she would be peddling her bike down that long sloping hill, drinking in the morning air until the reached the intersection.

If she turned right: it was a short while to the shore. At the intersection, over the metal rail, there was a field of rocks, a miniature cliff that often drew in various birds. She could follow the road, on its smooth curve, to the parking lot, where she rested her bike against a pole and ran down the sandy hill to the shore.

If she turned left: travel a short distance down the street to the fork in the road. On the left side of this, there was 2 ice cream shops and a toy store, a candy shop and a lemonade shack. There was a souvenir shop, a boutique and a jewelry store. On the right, there was a restaurant and a psychic, a general store and a pub. If she biked down a little farther, past the fork in the road, she would come to a busy street with cars that flew past her and a bridge and a sign that welcomed her to the next town. Here was the end of her world. There was commercial stores there, and for this one week out of this one summer, she pretended that they didn't exist. Her world, for that time, was from the end of that bridge to the parking lot.

Her temporary home in her temporary world was sandwiched between the bridge's end and the parking lot: it was a sizable thing, made of dark wood. The floors were dark wood and the stairs were dark wood and in some of the rooms the walls were dark wood. And if the walls were not dark wood they were a pleasant cream with dark wood supports that traveled up the walls to the ceiling and met with the supports from across the room. There was many rooms, with many beds. The beds were a beautiful dark wood with plain white mattresses and a matching nightstand and dresser. The window bore no curtains. Bare, it overlooked the vast yard. Out back, there was a screen porch where the bikes resided at night, and bright green grass that ran to the edges of the property, where a dense forest sprawled over the lands. On the far left side, so far left you had to stand on the right side of the window and really really look, was a small opening to the forest. There was a dirt path that ran a little ways in, that was full of small bumps and large bumps, and she took her bike there and peddled as hard as she could. It was nature's rollercoaster: the little hills carried her and her bike in the air for a second, before she was back on the ground, and then, in the air again. Coming back up the hill was always more effort, but it was worth it, in her opinion.

In the mornings when the sun filtered through the window of her room, she rose with the light. She had shared the room with her friend, who was no longer a friend. But she still treasured the moments and memories over the years. She found it sad, how memories were lost and buried under resentment. She didn't want to lose these perfect memories of summer nights and beaches and little coastal towns. She knew that her friend had probably lost them, that they were potentially six feet under a heaping hatred that sprouted from senseless elementary drama. But that was okay, because the memories were, at the very least, not lost on her.

She and her friend would awake to steaming bacon and buttery pancakes before riding down that long, long hill. First, they would go left. Then, onto the candy store. It reminded her of the candy stores she'd seen in old movies, with every flavor and every color and every possible shape. The walls were colorblocked in pleasant pastels with white accents, and every inch of the store bore some type of sweet. There was glass dishes of chocolates and tables with doilies of strawberries stacked on strawberries, and a mountain of fudge near the counter. Along the walls there was plastic racks of gummy candy; sour watermelons and blue sharks, chocolate straws and lollipops. There was candies she didn't know existed, and a whole wall solely for the greatest arrangement of saltwater taffy she had ever seen. It was priced by weight, and she'd receive pounds of candy for several crisp bills. She would bike back down the road, to the intersection, and down the beach. With her bike against a metal pole, she'd sit on the rocks with her feet in the water and a bag of candy in her hands. She'd tuck the rest of the sweets back into the basket of her bike, and would walk along the rocks, looking for the seaglass.

The seaglass intrigued her. That things lost, like broken bottles and tableware and shipwrecks, could once again be found. That the little pieces of the universe rolled and tumbled in the ocean for years and years, until all of their edges rounded off, and the slickness of the glass wore to a frosted appearance. It was beautiful really, how things that once mattered, like bottles and tableware and ships, could become lost so easily, but found again, as a part of something else.