A buzzing wakes you up.
Not the swarm of bees in a flower garden, or your air conditioner after the compressor kicked over, or your old coffee grinder if you left it on after all the beans had been atomized. No. It's just the buzzing of your overactive, undertaxed mind. You've slept and overslept until queasy, popeyed wakefulness is your only option.
You get off your bed of leaves and stretch, looking out at the endless sea.
This is your world; this is your hallucination: There's you and this girl stranded on an island the size of a Walmart parking lot. Palm trees and mangoes and scrub grass, bubbling freshwater, the rotting clothes on your backs, your Swiss Army Knife and fire. Passion, too. And History.
A curtain of dullness drops over everything, wraparound sunglasses for your mind.
"Good morning."
She's already got breakfast for you both at the driftwood coffee table. A sliced mango, a clam, and yellow stuff. "What's the yellow?"
"That's egg. Remember the nest?" She's smug; she thinks she's better than you, but doesn't care whether you know it or not, as long as she does. You marvel at this quality.
"It's good," you say, eating your morsels with a fork you'd whittled. She eats with your second, better rendered fork. She's done some whittling of her own.
"Thanks."
After breakfast you sit, back against the driftwood table. "So what's new?"
"You're real funny, you know that?"
"Just trying to keep positive," you say, laughing, and again comes that smug look.
"Junking?" she asks, when you get up again.
"Like every day."
You slowly follow the perimeter of the beach down to the far side of the island. Nothing new has washed up. Your best find was a half- gallon milk jug, now holding your drinking water.
On the far side of the island you stare at the same nothing on the opposite horizon, watching the waves roll in, foam up and recede, roll in, foam up and recede, roll in, foam up and recede, roll in, foam up and...
...this wasn't fair.
Or, maybe it was. Maybe you wound up here by choosing not to choose, freed from the responsibility of making a decision; if you don't decide which donut you want, when confronted with the full selection including both the limited holiday flavors and manager's specials, the pressure of making a bad decision is lifted.
Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you should have picked a donut after all. Or gotten a dozen assorted ones, and tasted all of them until you were full without committing to any one particular flavor...
