Three nights ago, after brushing my teeth, I looked into my spit and saw bits of eaten blueberries that I was sure were not mine. And two days ago, at the beach, I put on a pair of flip-flops that were not mine. It was at Cabana Row – a series of adjacent cabanas separated by two thin strips of concrete and a semi-vast area of sand where those who were too lazy to walk down to the beach sat and intentionally spoke loudly about their lives. I had just stepped out of my friend’s cabana and found the spot where I thought I had left my flip-flops. But I saw these flip-flops that were blue with white dots and mine were green and black. Maddie said that they were not hers and I looked everywhere. My flip-flops were not inside the cabana and they were not in its vicinity either. Amidst the chattering of the old women and the crises of some children, I panicked.
I couldn’t walk across the panels of wood because I did not want splinters on my feet and I would not allow myself to wear those strange flip-flops. “I wish I could wear my sunglasses. It’s driving me crazy – I swear. We shouldn’t have even come to the beach today.” Dr. Huntsman had advised Maddie that she must not wear any glasses for three weeks because they might ruin the nose.
“I still can’t find my flip-flops.”
“I’m always losing my stuff around the cabana. And believe me, I know how frustrating it is. It just makes me want to strangle those loud fat women, and I just want everything to be their fault. They never shut up.”
I walked over to one of two ladies discussing their sons’ happiness. Their cabana was two over but their voices were here. I held up the blue flip-flops with white dots – they hung off my fingers. “Excuse me, are these your flip-flops?” It was the kindest tone I could come up with. I got three no’s and walked away. They did not whisper about me after I left.
I looked down at the sand and I saw specs of deli cold cuts and the paper that holds sandwiches filled with them. A child’s unclaimed pail longed for its shovel but feigned satisfaction with dumped salami. “I want my flip-flops back.”
Maddie was almost laughing. “I’m sure you’ll find them. I usually find what I’ve lost around here.” She didn’t even say it in a comforting way. She always seemed to be on the verge of laughter. I really do love her though. “I think I lost half of my sandwich. I’m starving and now I have nothing left to eat.” She really was complaining anytime that I paid attention to her. I was almost jealous because I really didn’t have much to complain about.
“I wonder what he did with the bump. Dr. Huntsman.”
“It’s probably nowhere. But I would love to hear a really ridiculous story about what he really wants to do with those extra bumps.” I think that Maddie really wanted to see the discarded bump because it would make her feel accomplished even though it was Dr. Huntsman who performed the procedure.
“You can try the lost and found – but I rarely find anything I’ve lost there.” I wasn’t aware that we had stopped talking about her nose. She gave me a foul look when I laughed at the image of a woman looking in the lost and found for Maddie’s bump.
“Did you hear what one of those fat old ladies just said?” I think that Maddie just had a precise percentage of her aural energy centered on just listening to these other conversations.
“No I did not. What did they say?” She would have told me anyway. It was something about snoring. And Maddie loved hearing it because Dr. Huntsman told her she would never snore again after the operation.
I told Maddie I was going to go to the bathroom but I walked up and down Cabana Row undressing the minds of possible suspects. I stared them down and attempted to distinguish the altruistic ones. I was unsuccessful because they all seemed so complacent. No one was able to look through my eyes. The children were overly loud and it became almost unbearable. And when I saw one begin to cry, I thought that it was the most deliberate action I had seen all day. I walked back to Maddie’s cabana.
“I think I’m going to go around and just ask everyone I see if these are their flip-flops.”
I proceeded toward the sand and the army of chairs that faced me.
The pair of blue and white-dotted flip-flops rested on my fingers. No one seemed to notice me as I trekked the mini beach. Almost immediately I found myself lost in conversations.
“You know what’s weird? Every night before I go to sleep I plan what songs I’m going to listen to the next morning when I go on the treadmill. It seems like a very daunting task to pick exercise music at the last minute.” The words came from a woman who looked about forty who sat with two other couples that both looked married. Maybe her husband was in the bathroom. When I asked them if they owned the flip-flops, they all shook their heads and one of the men gave a communal no.
I remembered that tonight Maddie would be able to sleep on her stomach. For the past two weeks she’d had to sleep on her back, which she constantly complained about. I know I’d never be able to sleep on my back.
I saw two men and a woman sitting in bulky chairs. One of the men was talking about how he had wanted to take karate but couldn’t because all of the classes he found were given at night and his bartending duties prevented him from being able to enroll. The way he spoke about karate made me want to enroll in a sewing class.
“Are these your flip-flops?” It looked like I was only referring to the karate man, but I was speaking to all three of them.
They understood because I received three no’s with an especially generous one from the woman.
The breeze seemed to bring additional throngs of sun worshippers and I was partly disgusted as I watched them in their revelry of each other. I had resigned to asking these people about the flip-flops.
The sun came out again and it made me want to walk down to the beach. I had this introspective desire to stay and listen to more conversations while I inquired about the flip-flops but I ignored it. I walked past Maddie without her asking me where I was going, and I wasn’t extremely worried about splinters on my feet. And then thinking about the long trail of wood that led to the beach made me breathe a little harder, but not so much that one of the fat old ladies looked up at me. I don’t think they ever looked up at people.
“I keep telling him that he’s too smart to be a musician,” I heard one of them say. I followed glares of sunshine toward the wooden path.
Sand and the grass that grows near dunes surrounded me and as I walked, with the flip-flops still hanging from the fingers, I began to slowly jog.
The slow jog became a sprint. I think, at the time, I blamed it on the sun. I like a good sweat.
I kept running and I stopped just where the ocean seemed to begin. I dropped the flip-flops and watched them float out to the horizon and I thought that maybe some tribal people living on an island would get them and make interesting use of them. Or maybe tomorrow the tide would bring them back and some fat ungrateful person would wear them.
I walked back to the cabana barefooted and I went home with nothing on my feet. Maddie didn’t even question me. She drove me home and a couple of hours later I felt a rash on my right foot. That night I knew I was going to have trouble falling asleep with my infected foot but I knew that Maddie would not and that she would probably breathe a sigh of relief as for the first time in two weeks, she would be sleeping on her stomach. And I know that I will never know what it’s like to sleep on my stomach for the first time in two weeks.
The next morning I called the podiatrist, after I realized that Dr. Huntsman specialized only in rhinoplasty, and we made an appointment. “It’s not your foot,” Dr. Steinberg said, in his sterile little room. “You have no rash. Your discomfort must be coming from somewhere else.”
Logan Scherer, an English student at Princeton University, has never before been published. A bit ashamed of his conventional, drab suburban upbringing, he thrives on trashy pop culture for true inspiration.
© 2007, Logan Scherer
Halfway Down the Stairs 