MIGHT AS WELL...(3rd and Final)

by: Dottie Pond Rothschild

He extended his hand to her as if he'd known her since kindergarten and she trusted him for no reason, they were strangers after all. Her hand was delicate in his but she was dead weight, like a stone sinking to the bottom of the river already.

"You need to use the phone? I mean THIS phone- they put them here for that reason."

She waved her hand in front of her face, " I can't talk to people who can't see me - I walk through everyday, slowly dissolving from view, it's the strangest thing, to be there and not there."

Joey shifted his weight, hands in pockets, making small piles of gravel with the side of his Converse. Jenna stood still, dress and hair plastered than flung around her. Joey moved to kick the telephone post with one foot than the other, eventually adding a little hop.

"I've talked to them you know, not on the phone, the shrinks I mean, the ones who have it all figured out." He peeked up at her, "All that sitting in school and they get to hang their sanity in fancy writing on their wall. If the trick is to leave you running and screaming back to yourself, it works."

Joey picked up a rock and hurled it toward Tarrytown, Jenna twisted to look.

"Some guy lives in that lighthouse, you know, eats, sleeps, goes out and buys groceries." He throws another rock.

Jenna twists back, "they fired me from my unimportant job, well laid me off really, but I work till the end of the year. They plan how things will function when I'm gone and I smile and nod, I go in each day and help tap the nails into my own coffin."

Another twist and Jenna gracefully extends her arms along the cold smoothness of the rail, looking out over the water.

"My boyfriend cheats on me, but he doesn't leave- so I go on believing this is part of our journey, but when he looks at me, he looks through me, not at me. I noticed lately, when I walk off the path, into the dirt, I look to see if I leave footprints."

Joey didn't like where this was going, he felt in his jacket pocket for the individually wrapped rectangles of Dentine gum, spearmint. He shed the loose paper in his pocket and quickly shoved the gum into his mouth. He always carried gum with him, Mrs. O'Leary had started that in the fourth grade. She was a hard ass to most of the kids, she used to be corporate, very important, and then was somehow elementary school. At some point she was put in charge of kids like Joey, the ones who perched not sat, called out not raised their hand, left class for a drink of water and ended up helping Mr. Stickle, the janitor, sweep the floors because the stuff you found in the garbage was just so great. He said that his teacher had suggested he help, boy did he get in trouble for that one.

When state tests came around and Mrs. O'Leary sat the six of them down in a separate classroom for kids who got extra time, before reading the exasperatingly tedious directions she asked "Who wants a piece of gum?"

The first time she did it they all just smiled and looked at each other, thinking she was kidding. But she walked around very business like to each desk in her high, clip-clip heels and offered them a stick of Dentine spearmint from her pack "Chewing gum helps you focus and I want you all to do well."

Joey wanted to offer this girl a piece, but then thought better of it.

" I wore this dress because I wanted to look like a flower floating on the water, you know, something beautiful" She leaned over the rail and studied the water, "but I would sink wouldn't I? I would just sink."

She turned to face him. "I didn't expect to meet anyone up here, I was going to disappear completely, but you saw me here tonight, you saw me."

Then, just like that, she started to walk back toward Jersey, she waved her hand as she descended but didn't turn her head to see Joey standing there, hands in pockets, foraging for another piece of gum.

A light dust coats her worn black shoes and Jenna can feel the dampness through her soles, but she'll wear these shoes till a patch of cardboard, some duct tape and an extra length of lace could hold them no more.

Joey watched her disappear, then lifted the cold receiver on the metal box phone, "I did your job for you, you fuckers!"

The light from the lighthouse blared in his eyes, and his endless questions scurried back into the walls of his brain.

"I'm calling it a night, I'm going home, might as well..."

And he turned and started back toward New York