Susie, lying face down on her bed : I said "Neat," Frank. Who the fuck says neat these days? It's not neat to say neat but I said it anyways because I'm fucking stupid.
Frank, reading a comic book : Don't beat yourself up too much, Susie. Everyone gets nervous sometimes. Remember what I did when Julie asked me out ?
Susie : Didn't you thank her ?
Frank : *closes the book and looks at the ceiling* I fucking thanked her.
A particularly cold day in the Fog makes Kate remember some warmer days. Things Frank never experienced...
2409 words
The cold arrived without a warning.
Not the usual cold of the Fog – this one, Kate has gotten used to it – or even the harsher cold of Ormond. No, this cold was very different. It was harsher, more bitter, with a way of slipping through clothes no matter what. As if the Entity itself was messing with the temperature. Or maybe the unpredictable Fog just decided to do that...
Kate was curled up beneath Frank's jacket – wearing it over hers, which gave her an illusion of warmth – knees up, guitar laying next to her because her fingers were too stiff to play properly. Frank was sitting next to her, seemingly absolutely unphased by the cold as if he was ignoring it out of spite. He lived in Ormond. He was used to it.
"You lived some time with this..." said Kate, her teeth slightly clenched.
"Yeah, I've seen worse" Frank replied, looking towards her, the kind of gaze he had when assessing situations. "You're cold..."
"Just stating facts, uh ?"
"You stealing my lines, now, birdie ?"
"What can I say, they're so...stealable..."
He lets out a noise – the closest thing to a chuckle he can give – and slipped closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, his warmth against her. Kate welcomed it gladly.
"Thank you" she says.
"I didn't do anything."
"Sure you did..."
The silence of the cold.
Kate was watching the Fog, which took a different tint this evening : clearer, almost milky, something vaguely ressembling the sea mist, with her squinting and with a bit of imagination. It made her something feel something particular. Not sadness, but rather a particular sensation of happy memories in a dark place, the way that past good things have to gently hurt...
"What are you thinking about ?" Frank asked.
At this point, he was able to do that – read through her like a book, without always expressing it, just some question at the right time.
"...California..." she replies.
He slightly turned his head towards her.
"You've been there ?"
"Multiple times..." She smiles towards the pale fog. "While going all around the country. Had a truck – well, if you could call that a truck. It looked more like some rust pile on wheels. But it worked."
"Reminds me of Joey's car." Frank said.
"Exactly, I guess."
Something happened between them, this silent recognition they had sometimes, two completly different lives joining in unexpected ways.
"Tell me about it" he says.
Kate looks at him. "California ?"
"Yeah."
He looked almost nonchalant while saying this : eyes towards the front, relaxed posture. But she knew Frank now. She knew the difference between his actual indifference et when it was just a facade.
He wanted to know.
And it makes her smile.
"It was in August" she says. "I've been playing two evenings in a row in some bar in Portland. Not much, roughly fifty people, but it was nice. Had enough money for two weeks. So instead of going for the next bar right away, I just...drove South."
"Alone ?"
"Alone" she said with a nod. "It was often better to drive alone. Less negociations on music, less compromises on where to stop."
Frank let out a sound that ressembled approval. He understood the need for autonomy.
"I drove along the coast," Kate continued. "Highway 1. I don't you know it, but-"
"I think I've seen photos of it."
She shook her head. "Photos don't do it justice. It's the highway along the ocean, one side next to the cliffs, and the water on the other. Sometimes the sea mist covers everything and it feels like you're driving in the clouds. Then it suddenly goes away and there's the Pacific right there, immense, blue-green, and the sun reflecting onto it, and-"
She stops.
Realizing she closed her eyes.
Opening them back on the cold, pale Fog.
"I'm sorry..." she says.
"Why ?" Frank's voice was different. Attentive.
"I got carried away..."
"Keep going."
Kate looked at him.
He was staring at something in front of him, his face neutrak – something he did when something reached him and he didn't want it to be seen. But his hand on her shoulder had slightly changed its pressure. More present...
He really was listening.
"You've never been to the ocean, have you ?" She asked softly, without judgement.
"Never left Alberta, I think. And with the others, we didn't moved much. Well, I moved. But never too far..."
"So, the Legion neither ?"
"We planned to..." He pauses. "Made a list of cities. Vancouver was on it. There's the ocean, there, right ?"
"Barely, but yeah, there's the ocean there." Kate comfirmed.
Then there was a small silence...
"So tell me," Frank ends up saying. "Your stop in California."
Kate cuddled up against him, eyes half-closed, trying to find the memory piece by piece.
"Stopped just North of Santa Barbara. A beach called...I don't remember exactly, something with 'El'. El Capitan, maybe ? Not a huge touristic beach, just some place on the side of the road with a gravel parking lot and a trail down towards the sand.
"How's the sand ?" Frank asked.
"Depends. There it was true californian sand, thin, almost white, the kind that sticks everywhere and you find in your shoes three weeks later. Hot on the surface – like really hot, you can't walk on it barefoot at noon – and fresh if you digged deep enough."
Frank listened without a word.
"I parked my truck, took my guitar and a towel and I went down. It was about 2 in the afternoon. All sunny. The beach was almost empty, just some fammily further on the right."
"In August ?"
"Touristic spots are usually full, but this one wasn't as well known. Found it on some old map in a gas station."
Kate closed her eyes again, letting the imaginary sun warm up her skin for a moment, just the time to believe it.
"I laid down my towel," she continues. "And then...the thing about the Pacific that you find out the first time you go there, it's the sounds. Before even seeing it from the parking lot you could hear the waves. It's a discreet sound like with a lake or a river. Something much deeper. Regular. Like a gigantic breathing."
"Breathing..." Frank repeated.
"Yeah..." She opened her eyes towards the Fog. "You feel like something living is breathing there, right in front of you. Something gigantic and absolutely unbothered by you. It's humiliating, in a good way. You feel so small, yet it's not scary... It feels good."
Frank doesn't say anything for a moment.
"And the water ?" he says finally. "How was it ?"
"Cold..." She chuckles softly. "The Pacific in California is deceiving. The sun is hot, the sand is hot, you'd expect the water to be hot, but nope. It's cold, invigorating, the kind of cold that leaves you breathless for the first second, then you get used to it and never want to get out."
"So you went in ?"
"Up to my shoulders." She paused, a smile on her lips. "Didn't have any swimsuit in my truck that time. So I went in my underwear."
Silence.
"No one saw you ?" Frank said. His voice had something slightly different.
"Nobody..."
"...I would've liked seeing that..." Frank said, a playful grin on his face.
"I bet you do." Kate let out a sound, something between amusement and something else.
Kate raised her eyes towards him. He was watching the Fog in front of him, but something on his face was different : less closed, something ressembling a picture he was building somewhere within him.
"Keep going" he says, his voice a bit lower.
Kate looks at him for a second more.
"Frank."
"What ?"
"Still thinking about me in the water ?"
"I'm thinking of the coastal geography of California."
"Of course..."
"Keep telling me."
She laughs, truly, warm, that laugh that slipped out of her sometimes and always did something to Frank, even if he only showed it by a slight relaxation of his shoulders.
"After the swim, I played my guitar on the beach. Just for me. No audience. Just me, my guitar and the sound of the waves."
"How was it ?"
Kate thought for a moment.
"It was the first time I played for no real reason in a while. Not to impress, not for money, not even to compose something good. Just playing because the moment was too beautiful to not put some music to it."
Frank stays silent.
"And the sunset..." she adds softly. "On the Pacific, towards the West, the sun goes down directly into the ocean. Not behind mountains or buildings. In the water. And the light right before makes all of it so surreal. The sand becomes orange, water becomes golden, and even the foam..."
She pauses.
"Stayed up until it was completly dark. Slept in my truck in the parking lot, one window open to listen to the waves..."
There's a silence between them. The Fog was still cold around them, yet somehow less present, as if the tale of Kate's memory créated a warm bubble around them.
Frank was looking in front of him. He was somewhere else, and she knew it. Not entirely in the Fog. Somewhere on a coastal road he had never seen, with a picture he made up from her words.
"You would have loved it," she says softly.
"I don't know..."
"I do." She laid a hand on his thigh. "The spot few people know about. The paper map from the gas station. The unexpectedly cold water..." She pauses. "...and no one to tell you what to do..."
Frank turned his head towards her. There was something in his eyes – not exactly sadness. Something more complex. The look of someone measuring the distance between the life he had and the life he could've had.
"Joey's car would've broken before we could even cross the border, let alone make it to California," he says.
"He could fix it."
"Yeah, at least three times."
"And you would have made it anyway."
Silence
"Yeah..." he finally says. "Maybe..."
Kate sit up slightly, looked at him.
"When we get out of here..."
Frank frowned. That way he had to react to the word "when" applied to leaving the Fog, as if it was something impossible to him, which may be true...
"Kate..."
"Listen to me." Her voice was firm, yet soft. "When we get out of here, we take a truck, no matter what state it's in, then we drive to the coast. No matter which first. Then we keep going 'till California."
"Are you serious ?"
"Absolutely."
He looked at her for a long while, searching for any ounce of irony or pity or anything close to a breach in her unwavering optimism.
He found none of it.
Just Kate, serious, her eyes clear despite the cold Fog around them.
"You'd teach me how to swim ?" he finally says, hesitantly.
"Teach you ?" she replies with a chuckle.
"...You heard me..."
Kate stopped. Looked at him.
Something had just happened with that sentence, something small yet huge at the same time, an open window in a wall around him. Frank Morrison asking to be taught something. Frank Morrison thinking of learning something new in an hypothetical world after the Realm.
Frank Morrison thinking about an "after".
"Yes," she says. "I'll teach you how to swim."
"I'm a fast learner."
"I know."
"And the thing about the water being unexpectedly cold, that's true ?"
"Promise."
He nods silently.
"And the beach," he says. "El something."
"El Capitan."
"You'd go back there ?"
"With you ?" she smiles. "Yes."
Frank watched the fog for another moment. Then he does something unexpected : he lays his legs in front of him, sitting differently. He leaned against Kate's side again, his hand in her hair, and closed his eyes.
"Tell me again," he says.
"What ?"
"The sunset..." His voice was low, as if he was about to fall asleep. "...tell me about it again."
Kate looked at him. Her man, usually rough and closed up, asking her to describe a sunset over the Pacific so he can picture it beneath his eyelids. It made something within her squeeze softly.
"The light comes from the West," she says gently. "Around seven in the morning in August. It's orange – not yellow, truly orange, as if the sky slowly lit up on fire. The water takes the same color, and the waves breaking over the sand leave some shiny foam. Everything seems to be bathing in gold. Even the people on the beach looked like their skin turned golden..."
She felt his breathing slow down against him.
"The sun goes down pretty quickly at the end," she keeps going even more gently. "It looks like someone's pulling it from below. And when it touches the horizon, there's a second where part of it is in the air and and the other is in the water and everything stops. Everyone on the beach stops..."
Silence, apart from Frank's breathing, deep, steady.
"And then," Kate whispers, "the sky turns purple. Then deep blue. Then the first stars start shining. And the sound of the waves is still there, steady, like a huge breath. And you realize that the ocean does this every evening, sunset after sunset, since before we existed and until long after we'll be gone, and that this evening, it did it just for you..."
Frank fell asleep. Not the half-sleep he mostly has. Something deeper, more vulnerable. His head slightly leaning, no sign of tension, his face he had in one of those rare moments where he truly felt at ease.
Kate looked at him sleep. Thought of a gravel parking lot North of Santa Barbara. Thought of a truck with a list of cities written with a pencil on the dashboard.
She picked up her guitar, slowly and gently to not wake him up, and started playing lowly. A familiar tune. Something reminding her of the waves over the sand, the orange light over the horizon, the breathing of the ocean that two souls have never seen together.
