Robert E. Lee Went Down/Up in Flames

I could tell the conversation was making him anxious. I knew that from the second I shook his hand next to the tiki bar. His palm was clammy, confused, shaking; his eyes distant and unable to focus. Friend of a friend, he told me, and you could tell. Even now he couldn’t look straight ahead and his left leg kept giving out a little every time someone shook their head in disgust. I looked at him from the doorway of the bar bathroom. The bar we were in was shitty, named something like Tommie B’s Bar, and I kept losing Ana and the other friends I came with in a sea of the scantily clad. Blonde hair and spandex crowded the island bar in the middle of the packed room, the smell of cigarette smoke choked what little perfume I wore. But he didn’t exactly look at everyone else, and I had my eyes fixed on his hands gripping his thin plastic cup of beer. It spilled as he stood unmoving. His name was Sean. Bad music played. I thought about how I’d give anything to be in New York City in a bar with better beer and better music. Less likely there are better people, necessarily. I overheard I don’t get it dude, why date her when you’re about to leave for Mexico?; Dude, you’re such a, like, fucking idiot. Apparently he just told a girl he loved her, not even a week before he decided to leave to Mexico on a Mayan archeological dig. I didn’t think there was anything left to dig up. I paused before leaving the bathroom, used my finger as a swizzle stick in my frothed cup and stepped toward him. He was no better than the rest of the meathead crew the room was bursting with, except that he wore a Bruce Springsteen shirt directly indicating there was a chance that he maybe, occasionally, didn’t gel his hair. I motioned for him to follow me and we stood on the dance floor next to a large speaker. I dig that you’re sticking with her, I yelled over the music.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.”
I shrugged, drank from my cup and hid my face. I swallowed hard, could feel myself making a face that implied something bitter.
“Also you have someone to bring home cheap shit to," I said.
“Cheap shit?”
“How the hell is she gunna know it’s cheap. It’ll still be foreign.”
“You have a point.” He finished his beer, threw the empty cup at the DJ who was busy watching two people hump on the dance floor. Sean stood empty handed.
We stood and watched everyone dance. I thought I knew a song that played. I didn’t. Small white lights flashed across the ceiling, our faces. My eyes. I leaned close to him and said, “I’m a gypsy too.”
“She’s going to be my wife, I think.”
“You hate being in one place, too, right? That’s why you’re going to Mexico. It makes sense. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere and no one can find you.”
“Maybe she’ll visit me while I’m there .”
“I like places that smell like pine trees. I think that’s the next place I’ll go, somewhere with more pine trees. Big ones, like in Washington state--”

A song played and Sean knew it. He grabbed my hand and we walked to the middle of the crowd of gyrating people. Placing his hands on my waist, the music made the floor throb and he pulled me close. His hands running all over my back, I looked at his eyes looking through my clothes and then right through me. I could smell the beer on my shirt and I could no longer remember where I had placed all the bobby pins that until recently, were holding up sweaty strands of hair. His body moved with mine. The liquor made my skin numb. He leaned in, softly held his cheek against my own and pressed his hands into mine. His left hand toyed with the ring on my right hand. He pulled it from my finger, placed it on my ring finger, then my middle finger, then back to my ring finger. Songs played. He lay his head, heavy onto mine. She won’t leave you, I whispered loudly into his ear. He held me close and said something meaningful back, just before the rest of the night went black.

The next morning, I woke up on Sean’s couch, my friends strewn across the floor on a blowup mattress. Where they were all night, I didn’t know. Ana had her hand reached up under Sam’s shirt, softly snoring as Sam’s face was in the lower back of Azara and Lynn spooning. I looked at the clock blinking 8:32AM and woke up Ana. I used my foot to poke her.

“Up,” I said.

We gathered our things. I had a bruise on my arm I didn’t remember getting. I peed in the bathroom and wondered why there was toilet paper clinging to the sink. I fixed my hair, then hugged Sean goodbye and good luck. His flight was meant to leave that day but now his flight was switched to Thursday. Something about a family dinner he needed to attend. I told Azara, Sam and Lynn I’d see them back in New York. I waved from Ana’s car as we pulled out of Sean’s driveway. His house was salt washed, beige, with a large boat dumped in the front yard with a trailer attachment underneath. The name ROBERT E. LEE sprawled under the hull. My head throbbed and the car stung my eyes with heat.

“I’m cracking the windows,” I said. She said nothing and turned up the music. I pushed down on the window button and the smell of low tide rushed into the car. We were five minutes away from the beach, passing signs told me. I didn’t once see water. As we drove, small, squat pine trees belonging to the Pinelands National Reserve flew by the windows. I thought about last year and thought maybe if I breathed deep enough, I could smell ripe blueberries, bring out the sun and feel like I was being held. We drove along the turnpike and watched as the grey skies rolled over us, music filling the quiet. For a second I felt warm. The mind plays tricks like that.