Alligator - Lisa Moore [85]
This must have been what she was saying at the podium in Sydney, Australia. But she was thinking, while she spoke, of how she had gone for a swim at Bondi Beach earlier in the week and the tide had dragged her out. From the beach she would have been nothing more than a speck. She could see several bodies in black wetsuits, needle thin in the distance and sun struck. They were walking with their surfboards, which looked like wafers and she watched them wade into the water and lie on their boards and paddle out and then rise up and skim the crests of waves with their arms aloft. She thought about her green canvas sneakers on the sand. Her gold watch and hotel key were in the toe of one of her sneakers. She had wanted to go for a swim and she’d thought, If someone takes the watch, so what. I’ll get a new watch.
Yes there would be a strong message, she was telling them. But this is what she promised on the way. They’d get a story they weren’t expecting. They would belly laugh at least once. They would not be exactly as they had been before. She was saying something of the sort at the podium. She was counting the promises off on her fingers. She was popping her p’s on the microphone.
The ocean wanted her, really, really wanted her. She discovered in herself a willingness to give up. Why not take the easy way out for once. When she thought of the sneakers on the beach she saw it as a shot, veils of sand blowing over them, half burying them, but it would have to be a quick shot or it would be cheesy. Why not cheesy, she thought. What’s wrong with a little cheese? I’m dying here, after all.
She’d made a documentary about the cops carrying guns in St. John’s, she was telling them by way of example, and the question had been would she be able to get the security guard who had gone into a public bathroom and sat down and laid his pistol on the back of the toilet and walked out again to talk on camera.
Who was she talking to anyway? Older women with hats. There were some grey-haired, frail-looking men. She didn’t care who they were, she had almost drowned. Know your audience, she told them.
She was trying to keep it short because there was an elderly poet supposed to talk next and he had leaned over during the break and was trembling and had difficulty speaking, but his mouth was open and his eyes were earnestly trying to communicate his intent. He had to make fists with both his hands to wring out of his withered body what he needed to say and it was that he would die before the end of the luncheon if she dragged her talk on too long. He fought to go first but she was slotted to go first and she wouldn’t give up her slot. Let the old geezer croak, she had thought.
A guy in one of those black rubber suits whipped past her on a yellow board. He nearly knocked her brains out and the board twisted in the air. He was flung into the sky with a blast of white surf and the board smacked down and he smacked down on top of the board. Then a wave curled over him, a fiery green wall of light and rainbow and mist. He was riding toward her through a narrow tunnel. The tunnel was clenching behind him, closing like a fist, and getting narrower in front and he had to crouch and she didn’t have long left because there was no strength in her arms and anyway, it had been a good life. Then he was engulfed and oh well, that was that, but, the surfboard, which bobbed up quite close to her was tied to his ankle and he managed to get her on the board, never mind where his hands grabbed and pinched and how ungainly and squashed and unromantic and snot-covered