Escape

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

We escaped for the weekend to Montauk.

After working til 4 in the morning on Saturday night I went home and woke Marie, we took the early morning train from Penn Station to points east under the bright blue sky.

Me, in a sleep deprived, worn out trance as we checked into the seaside motel.

Dropped our bags, went for breakfast at a greasy spoon in town, then set up on the sandy beach, lay there all afternoon letting the sun and the sound of the surf drive out the thoughts of work.

Through over-sized green shades Marie watched couples pass on the beach looking like perfect reflections of each other.turned away from the horizon wanting to know if we were an odd couple with my tattoos, her bonnet and unshaven legs. "Yes we are baby. But it works."

"It does somehow, doesn't it?"

Later we went to dinner, talked, catching up on the week, Marie telling me that I still looked sick, like an apparition as she put her hand to my cheek. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better." I said.

The next day I sat on the faded wooden deck of the motel near the pool looking out over the ocean editing my manuscript for the hundredth time as Marie lay on the beach in the sun next to the umbrella reading.

Hopeful about the manuscript, I went down to talk to Marie. She questioned me about some of the passages. I got defensive, angry. She wilted at my protests. It would take too much time to correct. A month or more. I was upset, not at Marie, but at the process, the time, the struggle. Not moments before, on the deck I'd felt the strange sensation of having my past manifest itself through my words transcending the original event in my description. Elation. I felt close to the end. I was disappointed to know that I wasn't there yet.

"We'll get there," she said.

We stayed an extra night falling asleep to the television, rising at 4:45 in the morning to catch the 5:30am train to get Marie to work on time.

Landed frozen and disoriented in Penn Station as the chaotic morning rush swarmed around us with the sound of the waves still crashing in our heads.

She kissed me and left.

'We'll get there,' I told myself as she disappeared into the crowd.

Love

Reading book I found on subway platform: