Island

Tom steps out of the diner, weary of doorways and people walking through them. Margot is long gone, as Tom stayed in the diner for a time after she had left, and ordered a mug a black coffee from a skinny, nervous waitress whose apron was a little too big for her. He’s not sure how long he had hung around, but every minute that he stayed, slumped in that booth, the little waitress grew more and more anxious.

He remembers the way she had stumbled about her words when asking if he would, “Li-like anything else with that? That coffee?” Tom looked at her face. She was younger than him, and had big sweet brown eyes, dark as the coffee she served him, but certainly not as bitter. He felt as though he would normally smile at her, but he didn’t this time, as a defiant show of heartbroken solitude, displayed for the benefit of absolutely no one.

“Enough moping.” Tom grumbles to himself as he fumbles with a cigarette and shaky, over-caffeinated hands outside of the diner, eventually giving up. He wanders across the street and down a block. He meanders into a heavily fortified corner shop and purchases a small bottle of bottom-shelf bourbon for a few dollars. Then he drinks the entire thing, standing right outside of the store. As soon as his arm swung down and the bottle was empty, Tom began walking. He walked around the block three or perhaps four times, thinking that the circulating of his blood will push the bourbon through his body faster. He finishes his walking when the winter cold no longer bites the tip of his nose.

Tom feels like a child again. Lost, disoriented, and lonely. He remembers the fair as a child. Coney Island, at first with his reluctant father, then by himself.  “Yes,” he says aloud, to no one in particular. Tom drops the crunchy plastic bottle at his feet and makes his way to the subway. Before he even realizes it, he’s on a train going south. He again attempts to light a cigarette until a mousey old woman yells at him, forbidding him from smoking on the train, “Around all these good, healthy people!” Tom sheepishly apologizes, stuffing the cigarette back into the box, his lips feeling looser than usual. The woman is quick to forgive, citing Tom’s, “Addiction.”

And so the train chugs along, clinking against tracks, stopping every twenty minutes or so to pick up more blurry-faced people, on their way to run an errand, or go to work. Tom gazes out of the window, watching, knowing that he is slowly approaching the island. The winter sea begins to clash with the warmer city air in a fiercely windy display, whistling hauntingly against the side of the train car. Tom remembers making this trip as a teenager. It would be fall and school would be quickly approaching. The whine of the wind would mean he was crossing the threshold and that soon, he would be upon the island, and the island would be upon him.

As he approaches his destination, Tom can’t help but wonder if he had died in front of that liquor store. If he drank some kind of bitter, brown poison and collapsed where he stood. A thick fog surrounded the train, and it no longer made stops to pick up stragglers and errand runners. The milk-white strings of mist quickly became a great wall, filling the atmosphere with its damp, hushing presence. The crowd thinned on the train until Tom was the last left. His fear of death grew as he sat in silence, riding for what seemed like hours into a thick and blinding mist.

But, Tom was alive, as eventually the train reached its final stop. Coney Island. He stepped off of the train into the fog, unsure of whether he was glad to have been wrong or not. Tom then walked off of the platform and towards the island proper. When he arrived he found something that didn’t surprise him. The park was closed. It was January after all, and there was no one willing to man the park at this time of year. So Tom climbed over and between the ropes draped over the entrance of the park and made his way in, boots crunching through old snow, now as brittle and frigid as ice. He spends some time wandering the pass ways and admiring the dismantled rides. He throws uneven chunks of ice at invisible balloons in booths, frosted over and left to shelter the birds in these colder months. He loses track of time for a moment looking at the Ferris wheel, typically bustling with echoed laughs and carnival lights, now stagnant and shrouded in mist.  

Completely without aim, Tom makes his way to the beach-side, looking over at the indefinite vastness of the stretching sea. Tom feels something, but he’s not sure quite what. It’s not actual heartbreak. Heartbreak is far too irrational for this feeling. He remembers being on this island as a child, and again with a girl, the daughter of French immigrants. Tom takes his boots off, then his socks, stepping onto the cold sand of the beach. He wriggles his toes, digging into the sand, feeling each grain scrape against the soft skin that hides between each toe. A shiver sends itself down his spine, and as it subsides, Tom begins walking down the beach, approaching the sea.

Each step takes Thomas deeper and deeper into the fog, until it becomes a blanket tossed over his head. He can still see the sea ahead, a thick slab of grey water peeking out from underneath the heavy-quilted sky. The fog bites frigidly at his face. His feet too, grow clumsy and numb as he meanders forward. He asks himself aloud, “Maybe I just feel new?” and nods absently. The cinematographic value of the situation is not lost on him as he stands alone on this frozen beach, feet bare and nose red and dripping. He smiles a small, meek smile, and with sensations now returning to him, realizes that he is shaking with cold. Knowing it will only be getting colder, Tom turns around and gingerly waddles his way back to the park to collect his boots.