Seagull Summer: A Novella Read online

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  I enjoy the walk down the road. The air is cool, and I feel comfortable in my jeans, flip-flops, and white linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to my elbows. The sun is setting, and the sky is on fire with orange hues I’ve only ever seen over the ocean.

  I wait to cross the street and manage to have a short conversation about the weather with a police officer straddling a bicycle. He’s nice enough, and I say goodbye when I’m cleared to cross.

  The streets are moderately crowded with adults and teenagers alike, pouring in and out of the shops lining the sidewalk opposite the boardwalk—which is also filled with couples holding hands and eating ice cream cones. In the distance, waves crash.

  I enter the bar and walk up the steps leading to the lounge on the second floor. I can hear the music already. A waitress in black sits me at a circular table in the corner of the small room. The band is in the opposite corner, only about fifty feet away. Drums, sax, piano, and bass. I don’t know much about music, only how it makes me feel. I like to imagine that I can spot talent when I hear it, but I have no idea if my judgments are sound in the world of rhythm and lyric. There are no words to the songs the band is playing, just music. I like it. It’s soothing.

  The waitress asks if I want to order. I glance over the menu. No prices. That’s dangerous. But I’m here to relax, and I don’t think they’d bring me my own pitcher of coffee, so I order some fancy beer and a martini. I’ll make them last.

  A table across from me is packed with family members. One of them, a red-head with a beard, has a guitar with him. He looks familiar to me, but I don’t know why.

  My drinks arrive.

  I close my eyes and listen to the music, let it draw me into its embrace. When the song ends, one of the band members is shouting across the room to the bearded guitar wielder. He’s waving for him to come up, and the familiar-looking guy leaves his family behind. He gives the sax player a hug and leans over the drum kit to shake the drummer’s hand. Waving to the piano player, he then kneels in the background, extracting an acoustical guitar from out of its case. The guy with the sax introduces him to the crowded room as someone who has appeared on Leno, Letterman, Fallon, and a list of other national comedic idols. Maybe that’s where I’ve seen him. I miss his name because the family is cheering too loudly when it’s mentioned.

  Once the guy has tweaked the knobs and plucked a few stretching strings, the band starts up again and he’s playing along with them like he’s been there the whole time.

  My musical ignorance aside, I know the guy is good. I’m dazzled by the way his fingers race up and down the instrument’s neck. His face is relaxed, as if what he’s doing is the easiest thing in the world for him—effortless. I don’t think anything in my life comes to me as easy. Well, besides acting like an ass.

  I drink beer, sneaking sips of martini along the way, and enjoy the band.

  We should talk about something when you get back…

  I know what it is. Part of me hoped she’d forgotten, but I knew she wouldn’t. Back around Christmas time, in front of the fireplace, wine glasses in hand (I don’t even like wine), we spoke of bringing another baby into the world while here in Cape May, during this exact vacation. Not the actual birth part, that would be weird, and I’m not sure all the children on the beach would appreciate the beauty of bringing life onto this spinning rock. But we’d imagined conceiving here, and apparently, she hasn’t moved on from the possibility of it like I have.

  It’s not that I don’t want another child. I do. But now? I spend the next thirty minutes weighing the pros and cons of inviting sleepless nights to accompany my early mornings.

  The band takes a break, and the voices from the tables around me reach my ear. Someone’s talking about seagulls. I cock my head. It’s the table across from me. They’re using hand motions to demonstrate a seagull attack, raising their arms and dipping them toward the table. At first I think they’re talking about my bird incident, about Sam getting plucked in the head.

  “You shoulda seen Rachel! She dove to the ground, screaming!”

  “They were biting my head!”

  “Pecking.”

  “Stabbing!”

  “The lifeguards had to blow their whistles and wave them off! I thought the damn birds were gonna attack them!”

  “Did you see their eyes?”

  “The lifeguards’?”

  “No, asshole, the birds’!”

  “They were red!”

  “You guys are crazy.”

  “They were! They were red!”

  And of course, the conversation turns from the seagull attack to Peter Benchley’s Jaws, which has been said (though I read that Benchley later denied the connection) to have been based on the 1916 rogue Great White that killed four and wounded one between July 1 and 12. There were stupid jokes made funny by alcohol, suggesting Jaws VI could be about a shark with feathers that could fly and other such nonsense.

  But I take another sip and lean back, still listening, a renewed interest in my own seagull experience spreading its fingers in my brain.

  The band starts back up, but my mind is now with Alfred Hitchcock and his movie about birds. Out of curiosity, I do a quick search on my phone and find that the movie was based on a book. Interesting. I never saw more than a few scenes of the movie—never really interested me. Too old and too young, I guess.

  I finish the bottle, drain the glass, and wave for the bill.