The Blue Line
Rated PG-13 for mild profanity.



Only when it rained were his nights disturbed, now. Only when the hiss and rush of a heavy downpour on concrete or the swish of an arc of water, forced from the gutter by passing tyres, mimicked the sound of the ocean, was he roused from the velvet solace of sleep. His hand would grope around the expanse of empty sheets beside him, his heart, racing and his legs pedalling to propel him upright for his momentary skirmish with the air as he grappled for the light switch. With the lamp on, he knew that it was now and not then and he knew that his apartment was miles from the beach and the taunting of the waves.

Often, he reached into the nightstand for a cigarette, only to smile and return it to the packet and toss it back into the drawer because he’d managed to quit months ago, shortly after moving into the new place. Always, he shook, though. His counsellor had told him that it was normal to tremble, that the adrenaline would do that to him – put him in fight/flight mode, perhaps for a long time, yet, but at least he knew he wasn’t going crazy and that he wasn’t going to spend six hours every night hugging himself and rocking in the darkness, praying for the sun to either come up and put him out of his misery or to simply die below the horizon and let the whole goddamn world join him in his icy, desolate hell.

Tonight, Sean simply got out of bed, as he’d been advised to do on these occasions, and went into the kitchen. When he hit the switch, the stark, white light made a wall of black out of the window. Diagonal slashes of silvery rain appeared but that gave him an uneasy, claustrophobic feeling, so he killed the main light and opened the refrigerator door instead. The soft, warm glow was strangely at odds with the appliance’s chill breath, but he stood before it and perused its contents. No beer because he’d quit that, too. Drinking hadn’t succeeded in numbing his pain anyway, so there seemed little point in indulging at all. These days, Sean Vetter was a lean, clean, healthy machine.

He grabbed a handful of grapes and sat at the island, reached for the notepad he kept there and drew a vertical line down the middle of the page with a ballpoint pen, then by the light of the refrigerator, he prepared to list on each side of the line, all of the good and all of the bad things in his life. It was an exercise he’d completed scores of times and he’d taken each list along to his counselling sessions and discussed the contents and over time, he’d come to learn that the items on the page were unimportant in themselves.

Early lists were laden with words like loneliness and pain, tears, exhaustion and despair, hopelessness, fear, whilst the opposite column remained empty for some considerable time, but eventually, the column on the right began to contain words and that is what was significant in his recovery. It didn’t matter that a couple of hot, heavy tears hit the paper as he wrote because at least he was writing and in spite of the pain in his throat, it felt good to remember. Hell, Stacy Vetter deserved to be remembered so what were a few tears?

Tonight, though, he looked at the page with the practiced line and at the two carefully penned headings but there were no words on either list and for a moment he wondered if he was lapsing, losing the ability to communicate his feelings again. Shit, not that. He couldn’t ride that roller coaster of bile and bullets again, separated from the rest of the world by a barricade of ire and hurt, but then a swell in the downpour roared like the ocean again and the faintest notion occurred to him – that breakfast at a beachside café would be good.

Sean smiled and popped another grape into his mouth, then gave a soft, breathy snicker, sonofabitch, shaking his head at the realization that he didn’t need to make any more lists. Rotating the paper, he scribed onto the horizontal line, tore off the page then slapped it against the refrigerator door under the magnet with his appointments. He yawned as the door closed and found that he didn’t mind the dark at all, although the clouds had broken sufficiently to let the moon light the way back to his bed and to illuminate the bold, blue script…“Goodnight, Stace X.”

END

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