The Next 100 Midnights

*Knock*

It was late; Johnny Clementine set The Rum Diary on the bedside table. He peeled the jack of clubs from the top sheet, slipped it between 190 and 191.

*Knock*

He eyed the doorknob, shining like a brass moon in the dark reflection of the porthole. He rolled over and raised himself off the twin size mattress.

*Knock*

The springs cooed with uncertainty; his body vibrated with possibility. Until-

*Kno*-*Kno*-*Kno*-*Kno*-*Kno*-*Kno*-*Kno*-*KNOCK*-KNOCK*

At ease.

Johnny dropped his shoulders, exhaled all anticipation.

He slipped into the white tee perched over the back of the desk chair. The cotton felt cool against his skin, brought crisp release like dragging whiteout across a diary.

*Kno*-*Kn-*

He opened the door to silence the next knuckled torrent.

The woman seized him by the chin, pulled his face to hers. He felt the warmth of her breath, smelled the cold memory of ice and rum. She studied his lips like scripture, probed the peeling surface with the soft pads of her fingers. Then said:

“You didn’t kiss her.” She pushed him aside and marched inside the room.

“You weren’t there,” Johnny said.

Annabelle Rose leapt onto the bed, the springs shrieking with delight. “No lipstick on your lips-”

“I wash my face before bed,” he said.

“-and Jesus; I remember seeing where your stupid bookmark was back at the pool.”

“What’s stupid about it?”

“About your bookmark? I’d say somewhere you left a perfectly ruined deck of cards.” She thumbed the blue back of the playing card peeking out among the pages. “And how I know about those virgin lips? No one kisses a hot girl then curls up to binge read The Rum Diary.”

“You ever read The Rum Diary?”

“No,” she said with disgust.

“I’ll be finished in a few pages– if you stay real quiet you can leave here with it.”

“Do I look like I haven’t been kissing a hot guy all night?” she sprang up off the bed, flopped down in the desk chair. Their eyes contacted in the mirror. “Because I have.” She pushed strands of her black bob behind her ears. She wore no shoes, a grey pair of gym shorts hanging past her knees, and a Marie Antoinette tee shirt. Kirsten Dunst’s profile bathed in pale light.

Johnny replaced her on the bed. “I got her number.” He stood up. Stretched the duvet across the mattress, eased back down.

“You asked her for her number?”

“Sure did.”

“Bra-vo Johnny.” She felt the pride she said it with. “Did you call her?”

Did I call her?

“Call her?” he asked aloud. “I got it like an hour ago.”

The strands of Annabelle’s hair kept wriggling their way back around the small pink lobes, but she persisted in her attempts. “Text her?”

“No.”

She quit taming her hair and palmed the desk. “You got any beer left?”

“There’s a tall boy–” when she was halfway to the minifridge he decided she needed no direction. He heard the top *crack* as she sprang up beside him on the bed. Golden beer gushed from the can’s mouth onto the duvet as Annabelle tucked her legs beneath her. Johnny watched the bubbles sift and diminish as her hand swept the stain, the way the ocean reels in the tide.

“Relax.” She nodded at the book. “It’ll be dry by the epilogue.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Johnny said.

“It’s always worst when you do that.”

He shrugged; she wasn’t wrong.

She took a short pull then extended him the can. He felt the aluminum bend, the beer rise inside his grip. He glugged twice then rested it on the curdled surface of the duvet. The can was wet but he didn’t care.

Not your bed tomorrow.

“Text her,” she said.

“I just got her number an hour ago.”

She blinked her big, slow eyes. Drops of swollen water falling from the faucet, bursting wide against the porcelain.

Repeated herself: “Text her.”

“It’s almost midni-”

“If you don’t text her I’m gonna jump off this cruise ship.”

Silence. A challenge on her face.

He smiled. “Go right ahead.”

She thought it through. “I’m gonna give it ‘til the end of this beer.”

Johnny sent his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. Took another deep pull, lowered the can back to the bed. He swished it around, felt the cold waves climb, admired the sound of the hollow slosh. She took the beer back and looked down inside its mouth.

“Why don’t you text her?” she asked. He shaped protest with this mouth; before he could voice it, she continued: “I mean really.”

She spoke with sincerity. He swallowed breath, canned his thoughtless reflex.

“You know me by now,” he said. “You know it’s just not something I’m gonna do.”

Her response was simple: “Then change.”

Change.

She waited.

“Change takes time,” he said.

“Change takes time?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Sure it does. Just in this case it’d take about–” she calculated. “–nine seconds of time.”

No one said anything. She looked at the ground. Back to him. “Gimme your phone.”

“No.”

“I’m not gonna text her, I’m gonna prove a point.”

He didn’t move.

“Fine.” She drank from the beer and passed it off to him. Grabbed her phone from the desk, flashed the stopwatch. Then went to work.

.

.

She raised her phone:

00:10.79

His buzzed on the nightstand.

Belle : U up

“See?”

He took a plug from the beer; thing was dying fast.

“An action’s only a–”

She interjected: “Only a what?”

“–a consequence,” he said, passing the can back to her. “Action can’t precede authentic change.”

“Oh don’t give me that change comes from within bullshit.”

“It does.” He eyed the grey stain from the golden beer. “The only times I ever changed took effort; a lot of it. Effort without time is nothing.”

“You know Johnny, I bet each change you’re thinking about did take time. But the problem is, change doesn’t last. Change is,” she set the can down against her legs, danced her fingers to summon false spirits. “It’s a sum of your actions.”

“That’s almost my point,” Johnny said.

“But it’s a sum at any moment.”

He smiled. “Your definition suits you.”

“My definition suits YOU. And guess what?” she dropped to a whisper: “Change changes.” Returned to full voice: “It goes away, then like a lost fucking dog it comes back. You wanna lose 100 pounds? Quit smoking? Alright fine; measure in years. Seek help outside yourself. But don’t spin your fear about going after a girl you like into anything more than some–” she buffered. “–self-soothing paralysis.”

“This isn’t spin; it’s a choice.”

“You’re really not gonna text her?”

He said nothing.

“That guy who went and got her number tonight– aka you, in case you forgot– that guy would text her.”

He sank. Reached for the beer, swallowed mouthfuls of bravado and twisted pretense. “I didn’t ask her for her phone number.”

A question crossed her eyes. Johnny explained: “When we said goodbye tonight, she gave it to me.”

He expected a lashing, but her smile exploded with opportunity. “My GOD that makes this even easier.”

He didn’t see it. “How?”

“Johnny, she lives in Irvine. You think she’s trying to start a long-distance relationship?”

He bounced his ankle on the bed. “Maybe she just wants to keep in touch.”

“If she wanted to– how’d you say it? Keep in touch? If she wanted to do something like that, she woulda given you her number at breakfast tomorrow before we dock. She gave it to you tonight to– you know.” She bit her lip. Rocked her hips, stretched the springs into a slow frenzy.

“Jesus Christ Belle.”

She winked. “I can’t speak directly enough to it– but some part of you knows everything I’m saying is right.”

“You came close.” He passed her the can; one, maybe two swallows remained.

“You’re really not gonna do it?”

“No I am not.” He smiled.

She set the can on the bedside table. “Guess I gotta go jump off this cruise ship then.”

“Feet first,” he reminded her as he followed her to the door.

Johnny watched until she took her last step around the corner of the hallway, when his vision dissolved into a runway of empty orange light.

-

Late night sank into early morning. Johnny turned one final page.

Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air;

He remembered the beer on the nightstand. Took the last plug, tapped the aluminum belly of the can to free the remaining flat drops.

sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of–

A fast white dagger flashed in the porthole.

Johnny lunged forward, watched the dagger disappear among the dark layers of ocean.

I’m gonna prove a point, she’d said.

One goddamn hell of a point.

He replayed the vision in the window. A star freefalling through a black sky of indifference; a signal swan-diving without regard for outcome or circumstance.

He shook his head, evicting all rumination.

He set the book on the bed, flipped the jack of clubs face down on the peeling cover. He opened the notes app on his phone:

22:43 “Hey it’s Johnny. What......”

23:19 “Yooooo guess who it.......”

23:32 “Hey [REDACTED], just…”

And deleted each one.

He looked back toward the porthole with a wide stare. He saw wallpaper patterns and hex-headed screws; saw soft light and his own round face reflected in the glass. Slowly, his vision narrowed. Narrowed beyond periphery and reflection, until only the black folds of night remained. Folds that would be there the next 100 midnights; the same folds that he’d never see again.

He picked his phone back up.

*Swoosh*

-

In a room across the cruise ship an expectant phone *ding*-ed.

Johnny Clementine : You up?