The Moon and the Sand

            by Ishan Mohindroo

 

            The sun was almost gone by the time we crossed the Jamestown Bridge in Rhode Island, and the sky was colored with hues of orange and red. The air was cooler than in New York because of the pleasant sea breeze, but it was still warm and humid. Jamestown is on a small island just south of Newport.  Rachel, Matthew, and Barbara were sleeping, Dick and I were the only ones awake.

            “My parents moved here in 1974 from New Jersey” said Dick as I looked out of the window over the docks and ice cream parlors to the bay beyond.

           

            I was really happy to get away from New York City for the weekend; I had been working really hard. I was doing an internship at Columbia University, doing charity work designing power grids for poor villages in Africa. The work was intense; took up most of the day, and I had a one-hour commute each way to Dick's house. Never before in my life had I actually been stressed out, in the way that working adults use the term. Now I could see exactly what it feels like to be totally shot after a day of work. I needed a break.

            Dick and his wife Barbara are close friends of my parents, and they were nice enough to allow me to stay with them the entire six weeks I was in New York. Rachel and Matthew are their kids; Rachel was sixteen at the time, and Matthew eleven. At first it was pretty awkward between me and Rachel, we were expected to know each other already, but in reality we had not seen each other since we were five or six years old. Our parents figured that we would get along fine like old best friends, but they don't really understand teenagers.

            We rarely talked the first few days; I was basically on my own. But slowly we warmed up to each other, and started to spend time together. She would show me around the city, introduce me to all her friends, and of course we would go out drinking and smoking all the time. Every few weeks, the family goes up to Rhode Island to visit Dick's mother. Since I was staying with them, I went with them.

            By now Rachel and I had gotten pretty close, as if something inside us just clicked into place. She’s one of the few people who really got a sense of me in a short period of time. Her mannerisms around me, and the places we went together, she formulated our time together so perfectly. She could tell when I was feeling awkward, or when I was uncomfortable in a certain situation. For this reason, I felt very at ease around her, because I wasn’t able to hide anything from her, and that was refreshing. It was a three-hour drive to Rhode Island; we talked for the first hour or so, and then drifted off into iPod land.

           

            “Tomorrow we can come down here in the afternoon to get ice cream, it's the best you'll find for miles” Said Dick. It was clear that he liked being here, and felt at ease. The sun was gone now, and the only natural light was that of the moons reflection in the calm bay. I stared at it for a long time, focusing on it as the car moved, noting the masts of pleasure yachts quickly moving in and out of my view.

            “We'll take this road, its prettier.” Dick whispered as we made a quick left turn down towards the waters edge. I could no longer see the moon in the water, as there was a railing blocking my view, so my gaze wandered up to the moon in the sky, full and bright, this time with utility poles crossing my field of view. The family house was on a hill facing north, and the view was incredible. Sitting in the living room I could see the Newport Bridge straight ahead, and the city of Newport to the right. The view reminded me of the view from my own house back in Berkeley, only with San Francisco replacing Newport and the Golden Gate replacing the Newport Bridge. There was a festival of sorts taking place in the Newport harbor, which was about a half mile away across the bay. I could see strings of lights along the rigging of the boats, and their symmetrical reflections in the water. The contrast from New York was profound; it was calm, carefree, and festive, without the hustle and bustle of city life.

            I was exhausted from the journey, but in a relaxed kind of way. I didn't want to go to sleep; I just wanted to take it easy for a while. I sat on a couch in the living room for a long time, Dick, Matt, and Barbara had gone to bed, and Rachel was taking a shower. She came out as I was just slipping into a hypnotic state staring at the moon. She was holding a towel against her body with one hand, and carefully tapped my shoulder with the other.

 

            “yo” She whispered. “Are you up for a drink?”

            “Hell yes” I replied, I hadn't had a drink for a few days, and I really needed to loosen up a bit.

            “Alright so my grandmother has a liquor cabinet above the dishwasher, but we gotta wait till she’s asleep before looting it”

            “Ok.” I said, as I lifted my body out of the deep and cushy chair.

           

            We stood around in the kitchen chatting about our respective schools and friends for about 20 minutes, until we were sure that the only light on in the house was the dim bulb in the hood above the stove we were leaning on. I found a small water bottle in the fridge and emptied it out into the sink. I made Rachel open the cabinet since she knew how to do it quietly (no doubt from much liquor stealing experience).

            I carefully removed a bottle of Beefeater Gin from behind some weird black liquid in a body-shaped container, and filled the water bottle up half way. I went looking for the cap to the water bottle as Rachel put the Gin back in the cabinet and closed it. I waited in the dining room for a few minutes while Rachel went upstairs to change into her swimsuit; I was still in khakis and a t-shirt.

            We left through the kitchen door, making sure not to let the hydraulic screen door slam shut, and used our cell phones to light the path down to the private beach. When we broke through the underbrush, the beach looked amazing. It was a small beach, but typical in nature, the water line arced around forming a small bay, with the obligatory lone palm standing guard against the raging sea at the far end. The sand was illuminated in the moonlight, bits of seashells glinted as we walked along the waterline, and I could hear the water calmly lapping up on the shore.

            There was some seaweed scattered around the otherwise perfect beach, so we walked around for a bit looking for a nice place to settle down. We walked all the way to the end of the beach before we found a spot, and as we were walking I frequently looked back at the house to check if any lights had come on.

            “ Chill. Why are you so paranoid?” She asked.

            “I don't know, I just am”

            “Well don't be, it’s all good I do this all the time. Plus my parents trust you more than they trust me, so they're probably sleeping deeply”

            I remained silent, and we kept walking. We came to our spot, and Rachel put down a beach mat. The breeze had picked up a bit, but it was still warm and pleasant.  Rachel took out a small baggie of weed, and a Philly from her bag, and proceeded to prepare the blunt. I spent a good 5 minutes fixated on her experienced hands unrolling the Philly. She dumped the vile contents of the Philly on the beach beside the towel, and like a true smoker, she was careful not to loose a single fragment of leaf while placing it in the now empty roll. I don't know why I was so engaged in my observation, but the concept was pretty new to me, and since I rarely smoked it was more of an event. I took a swig of the gin.

            When the time came to light the roll, the breeze became a problem. Her fifty-cent lighter was not up to the task, and the dampness of the roll did not help.

            “Wait, move over here and block the wind” she said to me, and I complied. “Shit can you stay still?” She said to me as I sat facing her on the moonlit beach, with the blunt between us, it was quite the sight. twenty minutes and half a lighter’s worth of butane later, the blunt was lit and Rachel was in bliss. I kept drinking.

            “ahhhhhh” she said as she took a long hit, the smoke blew towards me. I find the smell of weed pretty repulsive most of the time, but I was already slightly buzzed from the gin so I didn't care.  “What do you think of me?” She caught me totally off guard with that question.

            I hesitated.

            “Well, You're cool and all that, and you've been really great to me all the time I've been here. I'm very shy naturally and you've made it really easy for me to open up to you and relax” I replied.

            “Well, that’s great, but that wasn't the question”

            “What do you mean?” I say.

            “I mean, what do you think of me as a girl?” She said as she rolled over closer to me and blew a small puff of smoke in my face. I'm sure she could see the hesitation on my face, I'm really bad with situations like this, and I had never really been in a position like it before.

            “Well, That kind of stuff wasn't really on my mind” I said, in retrospect it seems like a stupid thing to say, but the liquor was probably doing the talking at this point. The entire conversation was probably between the weed and the gin.

            “Is it on your mind now?”

            “Do you want it to be?” I replied

            By this point, if it weren't for the gin I'd probably have turned red.

            “heh heh....... do you? I asked first”

            “Uhhhhhh....” The tension rose.

            Silently, she put her head on my chest and took another puff.

            “Are you going to answer me?” she demanded

            “Look..... I...”

            “Dude just forget I said it, really. Don't worry about it its no big deal either way, I'm just curious, and I'm having fun messing around with you.”

            I let out an awkward forced laugh, as I felt the tension slipping away into the sea, as if it were some black serpent that was creeping closer to me as she persisted. She started giggling profusely, and it made me uncomfortable for not sharing the humor in the situation. “Dude you really have to chill out, drink more”. I killed the gin in a few gulps.

            We were silent for a while, and the moon started to jiggle around in the sky as the alcohol diffused into my brain. She finished off the joint and tossed it still glowing into the water, it floated for one or two seconds before it went out. I continued to follow it in the moonlight, but after a few more seconds I lost sight of it against the blackness of the New England water.

            “Is there any more of that gin left?” she asked.

            “Nah, sorry, I killed it” I said in a louder than normal voice, which I tend to do when I'm intoxicated. “Want me to go get some more?” I asked.

            “Chill. There’s always tomorrow.”

            Tomorrow night. Yes, I had one more night here before I went back to work.   Fuck, just one more. For a while I had slipped into the moment, and had not been thinking about the past or the future, yet her simple comment snapped me back into reality. I shook the bottle over my mouth to get every last drop out of it. She rolled her head over on my chest and looked right at me. Dammit, just when I had relaxed. She saw the awkward look on my face and burst into laughter.

            “You gotta stop fucking with me” I said in a friendly amused way.

            “But you make it sooooo easy!”