“Oh. No. I’m fine. Thanks,” I say, doing a shit job of concealing my sulkiness at being cock blocked like that.

He tucks the fresh joint behind his ear. “Nice seein’ ya, Crow. Don’t be a stranger, eh.”

“Hey, maybe we can, you know . . . go for coffee.” My shoulders lift in a fake-casual shrug, doing my non-verbal damnedest to remind him that “going for coffee” was our secret code for getting high and having sex in random parking lots, bushes, and occasionally beds.

“Yeah b’ye, that’d be r’oit awn,” he says. No flirty wink, no devilish eyebrow arch, no goodbye pat on the arse as I get out of the truck. He peels away in a dusty grey haze, which my squirrelly vision tinges with swishes of murky blue.

Under the grandiose influence of unobstructed land, sea, and sky, with a goodly dose of pent-up sexual frustration and primo medicinal weed, I meander up onto the wharf and get the urge to do something crazy. Jump in the water with all my clothes on, maybe. No. Even crazier. A quick skinny dip. I shimmy out of my boxers and tank top. Do I do a flying leap off the wharf, dropping six feet straight into the deep, dark water, just like I did when I was a kid? Or do I go down to the shoreline and tiptoe in until there is enough cold and courage to force me to get ducked, the way the lame old grown-ups used to do when I was a kid? Leap or be lame? Leap or be lame? C’mon Crow, what’s it gonna be?

While I’m psyching myself up, a long bank of blackish cloud comes out of nowhere and swoops in front of the sun, thwarting its warmth and light. The wind picks up. The water gets choppy. The rush of feeling cocky and crazy and cool was fleeting. Suddenly I am cold. And naked. Stoned, sick, and stupid.

I yank my clothes back on in a hurry. Then I walk back to Mama’s, dragging my feet in the roadside dirt the entire way.

2 THE DUST

The Wharf is the second-most sacred place in the world to me. Back at Mama’s I retreat to the first: my bedroom closet. I crawl in, just as I used to do when I was a drama queen of a kid. That closet was, and still is, a comfortable disaster that always made me feel held, contained. The late-August morning light that streams through my bedroom window is filtered and softened by the rainbow tie-dyed sheet that hangs over the place where a closet door should be. It’s cozy and dim enough to curl up and fall asleep, but too dark to do what I’ve crawled in here to do. Especially since I’m old, stoned, and my vision is all screwy. I flip on the little night light that Mama installed when I was five to keep the monsters out, and begin to dig through the pile of long-neglected throwbacks. The only monsters here now are memories, and I need to touch every goddamn one of them at least one more time.