CHAPTER 6
I get a text in the morning about how excited Ashley is to go fishing, but I’m feeling completely out of it. I’m feeling like shit, but I don’t want to ditch her. Good first dates and bad second dates are the worst way to go about things. I try to compose myself in the best possible manner, so I take a nice, long, blazing hot shower, and then have about four cups of coffee until I was feeling better. I call Ashley and ask where she wants to go, and she says wherever there were fish. I tell her I’ll pick her up at five, and ask her if she had any fishing gear. She says no, but that if they don’t have it there to rent, that we can just make spears.
We get to this pier about thirty miles away from school, and it’s pretty chilly outside, and the pier smells like dead fish. In the back of my mind I’m thinking, please, let her choose something else. But when we get there, she looks around, smells the air, then turns around, looks at me and smiles. So I guess this is where our second date is taking place, whether I like it or not.
We rent two poles, and some tackle, and go out and there’s about four people out there. One guy who looks like he’d been there since Saturday, because he has a full beard and he smells like vomit mixed with vodka. The other guy looks like a businessman who just wanted to get away for the weekend, but he hasn’t caught anything, so I feel kind of sorry for him. Then there were two guys at the end of the pier, just sitting down and drinking, not really giving a damn about whether or not they caught any fish.
“I like this spot.” Ashley says.
It’s about halfway between the smelly guy and the businessman, so I say okay, and we start to get all of the stuff together. Something I didn’t expect her to know was how to bait a hook, but she knows how to do it, and she does it faster than I do. She does it so fast in fact, she actually asks me if I need help. I say no, and in a couple of minutes, we were both fishing.
“What type of fish are we fishing for exactly?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. Great Whites, Marlin, Megaladons. Whatever bites.” She looks at me and I start laughing.
“What if we don’t catch anything?” I say.
“Then we’ll pick up some fish sticks from the store after we leave.”
“No, no. I can’t do that. I’ve got to catch something. I’ve got to keep my manhood in check here. If we walk away without a fish, it’s going to make me look like a loser.”
“Well, I’d say you already look like a loser with that jacket on, but if catching fish will make you feel any better, then be my guest.”
“That’s a bad place to fish, if you want to catch anything.” The old smelly fuck scares us, as he walks over to where we’re standing, his ribs showing through the white shirt he’s got on.
“Why do you say that?” I say.
“Because, the wind’s blowing in the other direction. If you want to catch fish, you need to be on the other side of the pier.”
“But you’re on this side of the pier.”
“But I’ve been here all day. When I first sat down, the wind was blowing the other way. It wasn’t until about an hour ago that it switched up. Besides, I’ve been fishing too long and my bones are too brittle to get up every time the wind changes.” I can’t tell if it’s the smell of the pier or the smell of this old man, but I’m about to throw up at any second and Ashley looks like she’s actually interested in what he’s saying for some reason.
“What does the wind have to do with anything?” She asks.
“Sometimes, the fish go with the wind. Sometimes, they don’t. But when they do, it’s always good to be on the side that’s going with the wind.”
“I’ve caught plenty of fish with the wind blowing in my face, thank you very much.”
“That you might have. But take this from someone who’s sixty years your senior. You catch more fish if you get in touch with the rest of nature, and try to understand it.”
“What type of drugs are you on?” I ask, laughing, and he looks at me with a stern face. If he wasn’t eighty years old, I’d think he was about to kick my ass.
“You don’t appreciate things, do you?”
“I appreciate plenty. I appreciate this pier. I appreciate the girl I’m here with. I also appreciate to not be bothered by old smelly men who sound like they’ve taken too much LSD.”
“When you see a cherry tree, what do you see?”
“I see a cherry tree, Dr. Seuss.”
“That’s what you don’t appreciate. You don’t appreciate the memories that cherry tree has. That tree might’ve been planted especially for the people who lived nearby, so they could wake up every morning and look at it. It might’ve been a little boy’s favorite place to read in the summer. Could’ve been where he had his first kiss. Could’ve been where his father hanged himself from one of the limbs. You don’t appreciate the history of things because you don’t see them with old eyes.” He’s starting to scare Ashley a little, as she grabs onto my arm.
“But what if it didn’t have those memories? What if that cherry tree was never even noticed? What if there were a thousand other cherry trees around it, so it just…blended in? Not everything has a history worth finding out about. Because sometimes, the history’s too boring. Like, look at you for example” I can feel the grip on my arm get tighter “You’ve probably been out here all day, waiting to catch that big fish. But you still haven’t caught it. You were probably out here yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, still waiting. Because you never caught that big fish, and you probably never will. And you know what? If I had to sit here and think of the history of everything on this pier at this very moment, I would rather think about that light pole, or that piece of wood, because chances are, it’s got a more interesting life than you have.” Ashley’s grip loosens up and I notice her backing away, and then I see tears coming from the old man’s eyes.
“You goddamn kids. You never grew up in the time I did. You have no idea what it’s like to grow up with nothing and end up with nothing, with no place to live, and nothing to eat. All of your family, dead. Either in the war or hanging from a tree. You don’t understand.” He starts to really sob at this moment, and for some reason, for the life of me, I cannot pity this man. I try my hardest to do it. I try my hardest to take some of what he said and make it mean something to me, but I can’t.
“I think we should be going now.” Ashley is tugging at my sleeve as the old man huddles back to his bench, and sits down and puts his face in his hands.
We get back to the car, and I ask Ashley where she wants to go now, and she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t say a goddamn word. So I start thinking it’s because of what I said to the old man. The old man who probably would’ve eaten us if he didn’t catch a fish tonight. But I can’t muster up an apology. I can’t think of anything to say that would make her feel better, or make me feel better for that matter. So I don’t. I don’t say anything. I don’t say anything, and I just start driving back to her apartment. She gets out of the car, and doesn’t say goodbye, or see you later, or anything. She just gets out, walks up to her door and slams it behind her, and I drive off, back to my apartment.
I get back, and Patrick is sitting at the table, looking at some books he had picked up on Engineering or some boring shit, and he’s about to fall asleep.
“What’s going on? Where’s Sarah?” He picks his head up.
“Oh, hey. Didn’t hear you come in. She’s at her place tonight. She said she wanted to get some sleep and get started on homework. I told her I had to do some reading. She said she would stop by if she finishes early though.”
“Okay. You two usually do your homework together, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but we were just drained. What are you doing back so early?” I pull up a chair and sit down at the table.
“Eh, it’s hard to explain.”
“Aren’t all of your stories hard to explain?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. We got there, and everything was going good, but this old guy came up and started lecturing us on how we should be fishing, then I kind of went off on him.”
“Why’d you go off on the old guy?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think why. I don’t even know half the shit I said. I was just caught up in the moment. He was talking about cherry trees, and then I just lost it.”
“What did Ashley say?”
“She didn’t say anything. She just got in the car and I drove her back to the apartment.”
“Damn. Well, I’m sorry to hear that, man. At least you know you recovered from Jessica.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I had such high hopes for her too. I actually liked her.” “There are more fish in the sea. Wait, that’s probably a bad metaphor to use.” I laugh at him, and pat him on the back and head back to my room.
“Sorry! I really wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean anything by it.” I close my door.
That night, I have a dream. In this dream, I wake up and I’m back at the apartment. Everything seems the same, except Patrick isn’t there, and the door to his bedroom is locked. I start to worry, and I’m banging on the door yelling his name, but nobody replies. I go to get my phone to call Sarah, and the door unlocks behind me. I walk in, and he’s sleeping, but there’s someone else in the room with him. It’s an old woman sitting in a chair by the window, just looking out of the window, like it was a piece of art. I ask her what she was doing there, but she just keeps looking through the window. I ask her again, and she tells me to “be quiet” and that Patrick needs his rest. I go over to the bed and there is no one there, just pillows where a body should be. Then I turn around and see myself, hanging, my legs, kicking back and forth in front of me, my neck tied to the fan by a makeshift noose, and my nose was bleeding. I wake up from the dream, and it’s daylight, and I get up and actually look around the room for a moment, just to make sure that it was a dream. I walk into the kitchen and I can hear Patrick snoring from his room.