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Show Blue Run/56 said, and that's just what she did, just pulled right over to the curb. She drove away and she never came back. I remember standing there, not believing it happened. Then I traded my wristwatch to a cabdriver for a ride to the bus station, where people like me always ended up, standing at the payphone saying, "I'll pay you back. You know me. Please, just this one time." But this night is easy. We order a pizza and eat on the patio looking out at the gulf where a couple dolphin surface minute to minute. Sunday night, we've hit on slow time, the place is dead save a few construction workers drinking beer three units down I've backed the Pathfinder in up front so the plates don't show. Tomorrow's a new day. I'm going home. This is when the salt taste starts, right there in Pensacola on the day we've driven up and across Florida, followed DeSoto's trail through St. Augustine and the Fountain of Youth. I'm staring out at the still gulf, drinking vodka and tonic with Renee, Lara chewing limes. "This pizza's too salty." Inside our lawn chair circle, the pizza box yawns open and closes in the after storm breeze. Lara's fixated on the dolphins that cruise the shallows out in the low tide. It occurs to me that we're just right for sunset We face West, where our real home is two thousand miles away in mountains where frost falls on sage "Not really," Renee says "Maybe it's just salty in your head." "Does it make a difference. Inside your head or out?" "Hard question. Lara, don't eat those limes." "I've been here before." Renee says, "I've been feeling that all day. Ever since we left the beach " "A long time ago." |