Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 95 - Maggie

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Charlie wore his shimmering black low-quarter leather shoes with a shine that reflected like an obsidian mirror, so clear he could see his face upon the toes. A black web belt was wrapped around the waist of his wide-legged dungaree trousers, and his sky-blue shirt was clean and pressed with sharp lines and collar. He reached up and felt the dixie cup sailor’s hat beset upon the crown of his head.

On the far end of the concrete pier stood a woman in a flowing yellow sundress. Her hair was cream-colored, alternating dark and light.

“Josephine?” Charlie called out.

The woman turned, and in a blink, Charlie moved from one end of the pier to where the woman stood fifty yards down. Below them, the waves crashed against the beams and bearings without making a sound. He heard instead Josephine’s breath cascading like the ocean as she mustered a faltering smile.

She was as young as he ever remembered her, and it dawned on him that this was where they’d met. She came to see her brother, but that night, she ended up dancing with Charlie to jukebox music at Captain Tony’s on Greene Street, moving side to side, her dress sliding across her thighs like an unending tide, cresting and falling, her eyes closed, and her hair smelled like coconut oil when he pressed in close, and she didn’t pull back.

“Do you remember what was playing that night?” Josephine asked.

“How did you know what I was thinking?” Charlie asked, and as he did so, it was as if he could hear Josephine singing the song in his head.

“The morning sun, when it’s in your face, really shows your age,” he heard Josephine singing a cappella, but her lips didn’t move.

“How are you…?” Charlie started to ask, but her voice rose in volume.

“But that don’t worry me none; in my eyes, you’re everything,” she continued.

Charlie raised a hand to his right ear and tapped it like he was trying to tune in a radio signal.

“You stole my soul, and that’s a pain I can without.”

“Maggie May,” he said. “Rod Stewart.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Josephine said. “You deserve that much.”

Then, somehow, they were back in Captain Tony’s.

Her body moved against his again, but suddenly, other memories flooded like a rush. He remembered drinking at this same bar two years later, buying shots for himself and others until his cash was gone. He’d stumbled outside onto the street, his shirt sticking to his skin. Josephine was gone, her betrayal fresh as a wound, raw and bleeding.

He’d stumbled forward as if drunk, and the waves could be heard again, the sound roaring across the street and down the dunes, a rushing current that he now dove into headlong as the sadness of the past fifty years pulled him under like a chain around his neck.

He was blinded then, not by the water pulling him down but by bright light and heat. He was back on the beach now, the sun beating down in a parched midday burn. On the rocks, he saw a man and woman leaning tightly against each other as they watched the water splash and churn.

“Come watch with us, Charlie,” the woman said.

Though he’d never seen the woman before, instinctively, Charlie knew this was Marie, with a bobbed hairdo cut at her jawline and a broad, sweet smile across her plain but beautiful face.

“There’s no more past, Charlie,” the man beside her told him.

“Gordon?” Charlie said. “You look different.”

“So do you,” Gordon said. When Charlie looked down, he saw his navy clothes had been replaced by a white shirt and shorts.

“Where did my wife go?” Charlie asked. “Josephine?”

“Does it matter, Charlie?” Gordon responded, and the three stood silently together, staring out over the ocean as it faded into a dark orange line on the horizon.

“No,” Charlie said and slid his hands into the back pockets of his shorts. He arched his back and stretched. “I don’t suppose it matters at all.”