TEMPTERS OF FATE

Looking from the inside out he could tell the clouds rolling in were coming from somewhere deep and hidden; somewhere secret and kept that way on purpose.  The black rolling horizon was his fault, he knew.  No one else realized it.  They all incorrectly attributed the misting rain and bubbling grey sky, the gathering, marching fog, to storm fronts and falling barometric pressure.  But that side of him had taken on a life of its own and was on this walk, along for the ride with him, following closely and making occasional observations.

For instance, he was the one who first pointed out the thunderhead in the distance, the one that would soon bring sheets of rain, though they had little recourse, his mother, daughter and he, against the coming soak, having already consented to this nature walk and committed to going wherever the path along the rocky coastline would take them, being thus, as was family tradition, tempters of fate, flouters of convention and general ne'er-do-well's, as a rule.

"That's an interesting formation," the other said, pointing to the clouds on the horizon.

No one else could hear him, he knew, though not out of any magical occurrence, he was no secret and private ghost/guardian angel, silly notions all.  But for the rest of the world he wasn't "real" in the conventional sense.  But "real" was a wholly arbitrary notion when you got right down to it because he was completely and quite powerfully "real" to the person to whom the comment was addressed and his ability (the other's) to effect his behavior, his moods, and sometimes the things he actually said were already well documented and an accepted part of his life, so much so that he had long ago stopped thinking about how strange it was to have someone who looked, acted and sounded exactly like him, a virtual double, along with him wherever he went, no matter what he did.

"Is that rain, you think?"

"I don't know, it might hold off," his mother answered though not realizing that he wasn't speaking to her. 

"She's right about the first part, she DOESN'T know.  It'll rain for sure."

"Hmmmm, that could be," he answered them both this time.

He had gotten good at that too, that pitching of his replies, through word and inflection, in a way that was general enough to answer as many questions or comments as he could at once.  In this way though he had begun to fade a bit, to diminish as one might when committing to being less opinionated, say, or to going more along with the flow.  This habit of generalization had muted him and flattened his resolve.  Maybe this was, in itself, the thing that brought him - the other him that is - out in the first place.  Maybe it had something to do with Newton's physics, about equal and opposite reactions or matter not occupying the same space at the same time.  It was something in there he suspected as he watched the curtain of rain actually move across the bay and hit them all full in the face. 

"So much for holding off," his mother chuckled and then slid on a wet rock losing and then at once regaining her balance. 

The other him snorted over what though he didn't know.  It might've been about having been right or just as easily been about his mother's slip.  He had a mean streak, the other one did, and found people's misfortune amusing in an almost sinister way.  But he was never that way with him.  He was loyal to a fault in matters related to him and came vigorously to his defense at the drop of a hat.  The motive behind this attitude nagged at him though and he was never able to unlock the puzzle.

The others moved on briefly leaving the "two" of them alone with the view over one particularly sheer wall down to the boiling sea.

"What would happen, do you think, if someone jumped over this wall?" the other asked using one of his more innocent tones of voice--he had a library of them and their astounding variety was a source of pleasure to him (meaning the "real" him, in this case). enjoying as he did, virtuosity wherever he found it.

"Well, you would fall, for starters."

"Yes, I know, but what do you think it would feel like?  I mean, if you fell straight down, feet first, you'd surely break your legs initially which I imagine would be very painful, at least for a second."

"This fall isn't really high enough for my taste.  I mean if you're going to jump, to your point, ideally you would want to lose consciousness on impact, if possible."

The walk carried them along a rocky beach with gigantic stones in a crag of prehistoric escarpment.  He had an overwhelming urge to lay down there and just surrender.  Even the other him had already negotiated half the distance to the bridge built to pass from these stones to the more evenly paved continuation of the three-mile trail they were on, in the shadow of seaside homes and long-defunct vacation hideaways for the idle rich of a bygone era.  His mother and daughter stood, he could see at a distance, for a moment gazing up at a stone mansion of rough brown, sitting in its own harbor of green manicure, the empty windows looking back down at them, impassive yet jealous of the life between them.  They, in their turn, imagined, perhaps, a happier time--gay balls, lawn tennis, petticoats, servants bearing intoxicants, secreted romances and manhandlings suppressed and choked-on across the years, a long dead poison even the grass found a resistance to. 

He stood wanting to lay, to stop, forever, to come to an ultimate rest already, an early end to a now pointless journey.  What better place to finish, here with the oceanic omega.

"I wanna show you something."  The other was back again in an instant and then leading him along the path, past the women, and to a bridge over a canyon.  The bridge was a gentle arc over a steep vee of smaller stones.  At the bottom, a lick of ocean waved in and out, indecently he thought, a relentless fellatio, though cold and foamed, rabid.  The surfaces of the arch were unadorned except for two grey stone pillars at either end of both bridge walls.  Standing, the two of them again, leaned on the outer wall, facing the ocean which plained out to a dark, setting sun, muted by the uneven cloud forms, the wind gusting stings of rain against their cheeks.  They paused in silence, side-by-side.

"Remember the guy who hung himself in that movie?"

"Godfather 3," he knew instantly the reference, part of the stupid and useless knowledge at his fingertips for no apparent reason.

"Yes that's it!  You couldn't do that from this bridge."

"ONE couldn't."

"Indeed, 'one.'"  he made little quotation signs in the air.

"I suppose not."  He looked around at the bridge.  "How would you tie off..."

"Exactly what I was going to say.  There's no where to tie off the rope.  Although I suppose you could rig it so that..."

"Dad?"

He turned to his daughter, interrupted.

"Granny can't make it over the rocks."

He turned and looked off to where his mother sat on a big boulder.  She wasn't so much frail as unsure of her balance from time to time he knew.  She sat there looking severely out at the ocean, taunting it almost, her white hair like a cloud of bonfire ashes in the wind, haloing her head.  As he approached her she said "this is the last time I'll be out here I guess."

"Wrong again," he heard his other say back behind them as he offered his hand and helped guide her along the troubling section of rocks.  His daughter climbed on his back and they walked, the three of them, without destination or schedule, moved and gusted by occasional forces of rainy wind.  He didn't look back but he knew the other stayed on the bridge, figuring over the placement of rope, in case it might be needed.