Driftwood - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,1

that question: "What, down the hole? Where else would I be? Dumb shit."

Longer pause. "I'll, uh, get help."

"Don't do that. I'll be fine."

"Someone'll have some rope in their truck."

"Why don't you have rope in your truck?" she couldn't resist asking.

"Don't need it."

It was amazing: the man (nice voice—deep, calm, almost bored) sounded as indifferent as a… a—she couldn't think of what.

"I don't, either."

"Don't either what?"

Nice voice: not too bright. "Don't need a rope. I do not need a rope. No rope!" No, indeed! A rescue right now would be disastrous. She could picture it with awful clarity: heave and heave, and here she is, thank goodness she's safe, and what the hell? She's on—She's on fire!

As her hero, Homer Simpson, would have said: "D'oh!"

"How did you even fall in there?" her would-be rescuer was asking. "It's impossible for there to be a deep hole on the beach.

The sand would fill it up."

"I'm not a marine biologist, okay?" she snapped.

"Geologist," he suggested. "You're not a geologist."

It was amazing: she'd spent the day alone, in hours of silence, terrified of the sunlight, hoping she wouldn't face an ugly death, and now she wanted her rescuer to get the hell lost.

"Get the hell lost."

Pause. "Did you hit your head on the way down?"

"On what?"

"You seem," he added, "kind of unpleasant."

"I'm in a hole."

"Well. I can't just leave you there."

"Oh, sure you can," she encouraged. "Just… keep going to wherever you were going."

"I didn't really have anywhere to go."

"Oh, boo friggin' hoo. Is this the part where I go all dewy between my legs and talk about how I'm secretly lonely, too, and how it was meant to be, me falling on my ass and you hauling me out? And then we Do It?"

"Did someone push you down there?"

"Shut up and go away. I'll be fine."

"Maybe the fire department?" he mused aloud.

"No. No. No no no no no no."

"Well. You can't exactly stop me."

She gasped. "You wouldn't dare."

"Even if you are crazy. I can't just not help you."

"Go away, Boy Scout."

"It's just that I can't hang around too much longer."

"Great. Fine. Have a good time, wherever you're going. See ya."

"I have this thing."

"Okeydokey!" she said brightly, her inner Minnesotan coming out, which was an improvement over her inner cannibal, which wanted to choke and eat this mystery man, claw strips of flesh from his bones and strangle him with them, then poke a hole in his jugular and drink him down like a blue raspberry Slushee Pup. "Bye-bye then!"

"But I could maybe keep you company until it's time to… for me to go." Another pause, then, in a lower voice: "Although that might not work either."

"Aw, no," she almost groaned. "You're going to talk down my hole, then go away?"

"Yeah, you're right. That won't work."

"For more reasons than you can figure, Boy Scout."

"I don't have a cell phone, is the thing."

"Me neither. Aw, that's so sweet, look how much we have in common; too bad we're not having sex right this second."

Pause. "You keep bringing up sex."

"Yeah, well. It's been a long fargin' day."

"Fargin'?"

"Shut up, Boy Scout."

"It's just that you don't have to worry."

"That's a humungous load off my mind, Boy Scout."

"Because the thing is, I can't… you don't have… it's that I'm not attracted to you at all."

She clutched her head. "This. Is. Not. Happening."

"I don't mean to hurt your feelings."

Insanely, he had. "Hey up there! For all you know, I'm an anorexic blonde with huge tits, skin the color of milk, and a case of raging nymphomania."

Another of those maddening pauses. "Anyway, that's not really the problem. The problem—"

"Bud. I so don't need you to tell me what the problem is. Please get lost."

She heard a sudden intake of breath, as if he'd come to a quick, difficult decision, and then there was a whoosh and a thud, and he was standing next to her.

Chapter Three

Five minutes later she was still screaming at him. Right at him. The hole was only about three feet in diameter. They were chest to chest. And she was loud. Really loud.

"… left your brains up there, Boy Scout, not that you ever were that heavy in the smarts department in the first place!"

"It just seemed like a good idea, is all."

"Seemed like a good idea?"

"Wow. You're really loud. While you're yelling, I'll make a step, and throw you out."

"You'll make a what and what me what?"

"Make a step with my hands. Like this." He bent forward to show her, and they promptly bonked skulls.

"Ow!"

He could feel