Read North of Nowhere, South of Loss for Free Online

licking its way across the mangrove swamps and mud flats, though the tide is far out. God, it’s hot! She reaches to her right and yanks at the mosquito net, tucked under the mattress, and lifts it to let in some air. Uhh … bite! Bite, bite, bite. God, they’re fast little blighters, noisy too, that high-pitched hum, it could drive you crazy in five minutes flat. She hastily tucks the net in again and swats at the stings. Greedy bloated little buggers. By moonlight, she examines the splats of blood on forearm and thigh.
    â€œWho’s making all the fucking noise?” complains someone, drowsy.
    â€œCan mosquitoes spread AIDS?” Beth asks.
    â€œAhh, shuddup ’n go to sleep, why don’t ya?”
    But if dentists can …? Beth wonders. She is fighting sleep, she is fighting the wave coming in.
    She fans her limp body with her cotton nightie, lifting it away from herself, flapping air up to the wet crease beneath her breasts. There is no comfort. The tide is coming in now.
    Every night the tide comes in. It seems to well up from her ankles. She feels this leaden heaviness in her calves, her thighs, her belly, her chest, it just keeps rising and rising, this terrible sadness, this sobbing, it can’t be stopped, it bubbles up into her throat, it is going to choke her, drown her, she has to stuff the sheet in her mouth to shut it up.
    Then she goes under the wave and sleeps.
    Black water. Down and down and down.
    Beneath the black water, beneath the wave, in a turquoise place, the pink flamingos swim. Their breath is fragrant, like frangipani, and when Beth vacuums the bright pink ribbons of their spit, pouff , tables appear, and waitresses in halter tops and gold lame shorts. This way, the waitresses say, and Beth follows, though the sandy path between the tables twists and turns. There are detours around branching coral, opal blue. Here and there, clamshells lurk with gaping jaws. At every intersection, the bright angelfish dart and confuse.
    â€œWhere is he?” Beth calls, and the waitresses turn back, and beckon, and wink. “Is he waiting for me? Is he still here?”
    The waitresses smile. “He is always just out of reach,” they murmur. “See? Can you see?” The waitresses point. And there he is beyond a forest of seaweed, fiery red. He sips a piña colada that wears a little purple paper parasol like a hat, but when she fights her way through the thicket of seaweed, he’s disappeared.
    â€œTerribly sorry,” the waitresses say, winking, “but he’ll be right back. Dental emergency. Floss on, he says, and he’ll join you as soon as he can. He really really likes your work. He really likes you, you know.”
    And all the waitresses line up and link arms and kick up their legs in a can-can dance. He really really really really likes you, they sing, but they roll their eyes to show it’s just a sick joke and then she sees that the waitresses are Peggy and Liz and Corey and Matron herself and she throws the piña colada at them and they disappear.
    But their laughter stays behind them like the guffaw of a Cheshire cat. Sook, sook, sook , it splutters, hissing about Beth’s ears. We can hear you crying in your sleep.
    No, Beth protests. Never! Never ever.
    Nevermore, the waitresses sing, offstage. He’s gone for good.
    No, Beth argues. That isn’t true.
    And see, he’s coming back, he is, she can’t mistake his coat, there it is, yes, white against the brilliant coral, starch against sea-hair flame, but she won’t turn her head, she’s not going to make a fool of herself, she pretends not to see. She wants to be surprised. She wants to feel a light touch on her cheek and then she will turn and then …
    And then? And then?
    The dream falters. The water turns opaque with thrashing sand. Shark, perhaps? The pink flamingos avert their eyes. There is something they know, it’s no use pretending, the suck