Take the Lively Air, a novel by Mick Bennett

1

Riley Walker sat alone in the middle of a boardwalk bench shaking his head. Completing his third decade of teaching called for a celebration. Staring at the horizon didn’t qualify. Wringing his hands, he could hear the Friday evening beachfront parade passing by behind him—walkers sharing secrets, joggers puffing, their running shoes thumping the boards, and car stereos blaring top-down dreams along Ocean Avenue.

As the sun took its daily bow, flip-flops in hand he walked down the beach and stood on the cool sand below the tide rise. Gulls patrolled the shoreline. A one-legged bird lighted yards away from others strutting up and down, following the foam. They pecked and scurried from each breaker like skirmishers before a superior force. He stood in the wash. Numbing May water pricked his feet. In the black distance, lightning bolts boxed above the horizon. Thunder accompanied the breakers. Their sound eased memories.

He moved onto the smooth high tide sand and sat cross-legged, massaging his toes until sensation returned. For fun, he scooped sand into a mound and moved around on his hands and knees. He squared the mound and dug a courtyard. Walls formed, smoothed by a flip-flop. When a wall collapsed, he built it up again. He found decorations along the tideline. Muscle shells stuck in halfway served as battlements, bits of straw flagpoles. A silly distraction on an empty beach void of shadows, teeming with ghosts.

By the time he leaned back on his elbows across from his creation, he could barely make it out in the dark. High tide would come about midnight; the castle and semester would disappear together. No more final exams to read. No more grades to file. Tonight, all he had to do was sleep. He’d take a night’s sleep as a good omen.

He’d take a few restful hours any way he could.

***

Curled in fetal position, his pillow somewhere, Riley peeled off sweaty covers and rubbed his eyes. Mornings usually meant relief. Today held promise. Sludge rattling in his throat, he rumbled it clear, swung legs around, and sat up. He wrung his hands as his toes touched the floor. It had rained hard during the night, but now sunlight slashed across the floor through worn window blinds. Summer break would start with an a.m. cruise. Shaving and showering, he thought about where he’d drive after a quick stop at Molly’s. He put on his cargo shorts and favorite Yankee T-shirt.

Outside, morning sun glittered off Stella—his 2010 Firecracker Red Jeep Wrangler. He climbed in and unwound himself. He’d bought her used a few years back. She didn’t have all wheel drive, and the previous owner speckled the cloth seats when he spilled bleach, but nothing beat going doorless and topless on a warm May morning.

“Bare for air!” he crowed.

Now to Molly’s cheerleader smile and coach disposition. Fiftyish and fit, she could transform routine happenings into flashy parades. She liked to joke she and Riley were the same height as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. Before Molly, he strolled through the academic year without ever focusing on matters more than an hour away. Encroaching age, possible ill health, or lack of retirement security never crossed his mind’s streets at three a.m.—too much spectral traffic.

He couldn’t get stoned on Saturdays without thinking about what she’d asked him to do. She called it needling. He called it coaching and found himself fishing for it. They’d been close since St. Paddy’s but agreed not to cohabitate except in case of fire or flood. They enjoyed being alone together even in crowds.

She met him at her kitchen door and jumped down his throat like a tongue depressor. “Your hair tells me you’ve been riding around. I hope you aren’t drinking a four-pack of Guinness for breakfast.”

“Most men my age can’t do this.” He grabbed a handful of his shaggy salt and pepper hair. “As for my passenger, my semester break begins a transition period during which I’ll seek out my anarchist roots and rejoin the poetic half of my soul.”

She put two bowls on the table. “Homemade yogurt and granola.”

“When I toss wild declarations at you as if they’re fresh fish, at least clap your flippers.”

“It’s Saturday night, our date night, and you won’t be good company if you drink on an empty stomach at eight a.m. Don’t forget Klyde’s joining us.”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t spoil your Italian feast. You have your gravy started.”

“You call it gravy. To me, it’s spaghetti sauce.”

“Ambrosia by any name.” He sat. “Klyde sleeping late?”

“He has baseball this morning. Not sure what time.” She poured him a cup of coffee and sat with him. She lifted her head and smiled when he covered her hand with his.

“How’s he doing?”

“Okay. Trying to fit in.”

“The jigsaw analogy.” He twirled a spoon, but the tablecloth wouldn’t let it spin. “Wish I was tucked in the middle of a five-hundred-piece puzzle.”

“Well, you have a few months to relax. Please stop with the spoon.”

He stuck the spoon in the yogurt. “I might be done, Molly. I mean with teaching.”

“Whoa. Where’d that come from?”

“I thought I’d find an important part of myself still kicking when I started at Brookside CC. As English department head, I’d have a say. I’d be a mover and shaker.” He swiveled in his seat. “Horseshit. I’m required. Might as well be water.”

“I’m not serving self-pity this morning. You help your students.” Molly patted his hand. “Don’t talk yourself out of your happiness.”

“I can’t see any good happening anymore. I’m not talking about here at 202 Monmouth Avenue.” He wagged a finger at the floor. “The world’s a parking lot crammed with drivers who refuse to use turn signals. And stupidity’s catching.”

Molly moved the yogurt and granola closer to him. He jiggled the yogurt bowl. The stuff didn’t move.

“You didn’t drink that four-pack’s twin for breakfast, did you?” she asked.

“Speaking of coitus, Walter Landale, a close colleague, regularly has affairs with adult students. I reject such opportunities. Before you and I met, the last decade of my sex life had been as colorless as a white board.”

She shook her head and stood. Stirring her sauce, she turned to him. “I’m sorry your job has you down, but you’re done with it for a while. My pasta dough’s ready.” She smacked the white blob atop her flour-sprinkled counter. “I need to get rolling.”

“I encourage second-chance adults and teach twenty-somethings skills they missed in sex ed.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” She smiled and shook her head. “Such as?”

“My younger students are keenly aware of social, political, and financial realities, but they know nothing of foresight and foreplay. They don’t carry condoms.”

Molly turned. “Girls or boys?”

“Why would girls—”

“I rest my case.”

***

He escaped Molly’s yogurt less. Ah, to cruise on a peaceful morning. The sun stretched shadows and shimmered off an empty ocean and a bare beach.

But vehicles were arriving. They’d park in the diagonal spaces along the boards to unload beach chairs, umbrellas, Tommy Bahama buggies, child carriers, and Yeti coolers. Tourist-toted beach sundries would clog crosswalks in Amazon Prime parades. Whoops. As two women pushed baby strollers across Pine Avenue, a pickup revved its engine and froze them in the street’s center.

Riley gave the truck a voice. “Watch out, bitches. I’m in town, and my tourist dollars trump your infants.”

He cracked open a Guinness and dumped it into his mug. Tan foam bubbled over. He slurped, finished pouring, and crushed the can, all while sitting on his unfastened seat belt. He didn’t like feeling strapped in. Cruising down Ocean Avenue with only a couple of weeks until Memorial Day… Damn. He could have lit a cigarette if he still smoked.

Back home, he thought about firing up a nice bud. Not all of it. He wanted to save a taste for tonight. But he figured Molly would smell weed on his clothes. On his overstuffed, bedroom-corner chair, he uncovered an old sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves underneath his sweatpants and shorts. In the summer, his chair served as a closet. Clothes he wore frequently sat on it or hung over its back. Soon, it would change colors from school drab to summer bright.

Pop-Tart in hand—unfrosted cinnamon went best with Guinness—he climbed back into Stella and took off toward Spring Lake. A nice drive through town. All decked out in Mother’s Day hanging baskets.

Back on Ocean Avenue, he found an empty spot along the boards to pour Guinness number two. He instinctively checked over his shoulder and imagined an Asbury Park Press story: A Brookside Community College Professor was arrested Saturday morning for possessing an open container of alcohol in his vehicle. Naw. Too boring… Prof’s Pouring Pisses off Police.

Hello, ma’am. A woman, with tan arms and legs, sauntered past and gave him, his Guinness, or Beethoven a thumbs up. The can sat in plain sight with Stella bare for air, but on Ocean Avenue, cops were easy to spot. Why get older if you couldn’t be immature?

He cruised from Inlet Bridge to the big Spring Lake gates, up and down. By his last trip, he had wavers on the boards who recognized Stella. He switched CDs from Beethoven—Ode to Joy had turned a boardwalk jogger’s head—to Bach.

Helen loved Bach.

His gut burned like grill grates. Guinness didn’t douse stomach acid. Another charming facet of aging—spontaneous heartburn. He could head uptown for some Tums. Better put a sippy top on his mug. He could joke this ain’t an open container.

He never made it uptown.

Morning Bach and beer buzz jump-started his emotions as a nostalgic hobgoblin commandeered Stella. She turned right, gunned one block down, and came to a dead stop alongside what used to be old lady Murphy’s rooming house. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d driven past it. Now a cozy B and B, 102 Surf Avenue was a white, three-story Victorian where he’d taken a room for a summer two lifetimes ago. It sat on a corner along one-way streets. He eyed its postage-stamp side yard. The old fence had been torn down. Faded blue shutters waiting to be painted leaned against the building, and a lawn mower sat in the middle of the overgrown grass. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” filled him. Gazing, memory searching, Stella and thoughts idling.

A black pickup’s horn jarred Riley back to the intersection. Sporting a bright yellow Gadsden flag license plate, the truck had stopped at the corner, heading south on Surf. Stella faced west on Fisher. Riley caught the driver’s eyes under a cap cocked at a jaunty angle. The driver stared him down. Fat fingers opening and closing around the top of his steering wheel, the driver drifted his truck forward ever so slightly, an interloper longing for intersection nuptials.

The driver lifted one hand off his steering wheel, pointed a curled forefinger at Riley, and wiggled it for him to go. Then his four fingers waggled back and forth. He kept at it. They weren’t traffic-cop cool; his arm and shoulder never moved. They weren’t spread-apart, slow old lady fingers. They insisted. No—demanded. A regular fucking traffic Moses waving fingers instead of a staff. Proceed!

Riley’s mind lost ground to his heart as long morning light poured down the blacktop wet with last night’s rain. As Bach’s strings rose, he remembered hearing Helen’s cries that night thirteen years ago, the car’s high beams gleaming off the road, glaring slick with black ice as the car swerved toward the phone poll, a magnet pulling the car, spinning it sideways until metal and glass and wood all screamed at once.