Puerto Ángel

2

        Nicholas convulsed himself awake. Shivering in a cold sweat he scoured the room searching for his bag. The high moon shot a beam of light between the window curtains casting a bluish tint across the room. Blinded by his myopia, he didn't notice the shattered glass of water he knocked over as he jerked the bag toward him. He felt his fingers clumsy and retarded as he tried to unzip it and retrieve the cocaine. The desperation was almost too much, and the anxiety had him clawing at the zipper as if he had found the panacea to all his problems. But at this moment he wasn't thinking about his problems because they didn't exist. He was merely servant to his flesh.

        He ripped the bag open spilling cocaine on the Mexican tile and snatched the stack of post-it notes on the coffee table rolling one up tight and taut. Then, as if gravity overcame him, he dropped to the floor and snorted. He felt a sudden rush of heat that overwhelmed his bosom and flowed down his spine and touched his extremities, a sensation of transcendence and luminance that soothed his anxiety and quenched his body's lust for power. He rolled over. The ceiling fan hummed and inundated him with cool air that stroked his hair. As he looked up at the ceiling he felt composed and in control. Things seemed to make sense again. The cadence of the crashing waves outside appeared to pick up its pace flooding his ears with the sound of the sea and magnifying any and every sensation he had to be there in that water bathing himself in what he saw as the balm of Gilead. Death was not on his mind. Not at this time, not during his moment of utter euphoria. Instead, it was the desire to live. To feel invincible and free, to reach up and touch the firmament and know that he was but a speck lost in the eternities above constrained him to push the thought of death onto its side.

        The crest of the waves danced under the moon. It all looked blue under its reflective hue. The water frothed and frolicked as it inched its way up the shore and evaporated just beyond Nicholas' feet. He stripped off his clothes and ran into the water submerging himself in the undertow. The water streamed around his body and his feet dug into the sand. He tumbled as the waves curled on top of him. Drops of water dripped off his beard and left a bitter taste on his lips, and he looked out over the black Pacific following the moon's reflection which looked like a laser beam that hugged the water's surface disappearing into the horizon. A flickering pastel of stars dotted the sky. The air was waft with sea mist and heavy to breathe but he welcomed the way it felt in his lungs. A tinge of seaweed lingered in the air giving way to an odor that smelled more like tangy fish than salt water. He took it all in. With one deep breath he felt all of it. With every dive he heard the muffled sounds of the current eddy around his ears. He felt revived.

        His thoughts turned to Camille. He wanted her to be there with him. He wanted to feel her, the way she stroked his hair, the stickiness of her lips on his, her heavy breathing after making love. He missed her taste. Then he came to the realization, as he had many times before, that she would no longer be a part of his life at least in the way that he desired. She existed to him as an apparition, someone he saw only in his mind and heard on occasional phone calls, there to haunt him, reminding him of what he had lost. He felt an overwhelming weight press upon him as if it would smother him to the ground. He had lost her and his children and thinking about it chafed him raw.

        He dropped to his knees and that vigor he felt moments earlier succumbed to a hollowness that suffocated. The water reached the top of his thighs and he rested his hands open in the water so that he could feel it stream between his fingers. The ecstasy he felt had transformed into a hopeless abyss and the water which had been so inviting became a demon that tempted him to take his last breath. Years of drug addiction and mental and emotional isolation led him to this point, the very reason why he came here. He had planned it all to be this way, far from home, as detached as possible from every connection in his life except for Jonathan. He closed his eyes and saw Camille sitting on the kitchen floor holding her face and sobbing. He saw the kitchen knife in her hand, he, in pain and furor, had blood trickling down his arm. It was these memories which were far too many and impossible to escape that constrained him to find a way to mitigate a waterfall of emotions that drowned him in his own mistakes.

        He was both speechless and thoughtless because trying to put into words and thoughts years of relapsing, lying, hurting, crying, hitting, screaming, drugging, and confessing was like trying to sink a ship with a slingshot. All he could do was cry and clench his fists. He looked down at the water. Its movement now much calmer, the waves farther off in the distance as the tide rolled out. If there was ever a time to end his life this was it, in the place where he wanted to do it most. He could die and float off into the horizon where nobody would find him. He could sink to the bottom of that endless pit and all of his problems and Camille's frustrations and sufferings would end with what he saw as an act of selfless immolation.

        He fell forward into the water lying face down and stiff, his arms outstretched and bobbing back and forth as the water oscillated around him. He kept his eyes and mouth shut and could only hear the water splashing up to his ears. He had never felt as alone as he had at this moment like he was floating in the middle of the Pacific surrounded by an eternal horizon of sea. He couldn't think of anything, not Camille, not his girls. His mind was shut off from the things he believed he would think about most during his final moments. All he could feel was the tightness of his chest in want of air. He felt his lungs constrict and a desperate feeling nearing claustrophobia overcame him. He began to flail, first his arms, then his legs but his stubbornness prevented him from coming up for a breath. The only thought in his mind was to exert every amount of will and strength to remain under water. But once the pressure built up too much in his chest his body could resist no longer and any amount of will meant nothing as he succumbed to natural reflexes. He shot his head up out of the water gasping for air looking like a wildebeest escaping an attacking crocodile. He felt his lungs expand and retract as his body forced as much air in and out as possible. He stumbled through the shallow water and collapsed onto the beach just beyond the tide's reach.

        As he laid there and stared at the firmament he felt helpless. He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill himself, though inside him he knew he didn't want to. To him there was no other exit. He was powerless. He had lost everything that once mattered to him and the thought of rebuilding his life and investing time and energy to sober up felt vain and overwhelming. He laid there dejected and torn and didn't know what to think or do. The moon, now descending, shot a hard light from the west that exploded onto the crests of the waves. The tide began to wane. And the hard realization came that he was going to spend more time here than he thought and that Jonathan would find out the truth.