Welcome to the Lounge

That is until the accident. F*****drunks always live. Someone else always dies. He’d seen it time and again as a patrolman, arriving at the scene of early morning accident. Twisted metal fused with torn bodies. Fireman prying apart what was left of a car in vain hopes of rescuing a victim already gone, while on the side of the road some drunk stumbled down the white line, still alive.

But it was always someone else. Tough luck. Too bad for them, right? He could always go home and forget all about it. You can’t take horror of the streets home with you or you wouldn’t last very long. You have to leave it there. At first he felt guilty about feeling this way. He wanted to do something. To fix it. But he was a rookie then, and rookie cops all think they’re Superman and can save the world. So he’d make the arrest and write the report and go home for the night and forget all about it. And on weekends they’d sail.

That is until he got the call. This time was different. This time it was his wife in the twisted 
wreck. This time, it was his life that changed. No leaving this one at work.

Margie had worked late that night. She had started at the firm 3 months earlier and had thrown herself into her work. Most nights she left at 6 and headed home, just down the 15 from Corona. They’d have dinner and watch a movie, or maybe go out. That night she had stayed late. She called him at 9:30 to say she was on the way. She never made it. A drunk had crossed the line and that was that. He’d got the call and driven to the scene, only to find what was left of her and her car covered in a yellow tarp. And his world collapsed.

So he had taken 3 months off, sitting in the dark in his house and searched for answers in bottles of Jack Daniels and Jameson and smoking cigarettes. 4 ½ years of a wonderful marriage to a wonderful woman – gone. The house was dark and meaningless without her. So he drank and slept, and drank some more. No answers came. Maybe there were none. She was his world, and now she, and his world, was gone. Each time he tried to move on, to get back to some semblance of happiness, his thoughts of Margie came back, and he descended down a dark tunnel into the depths of despair. The darkness crowded him, smothered him, like someone holding a pillow over his head. It was a scene out of a bad murder novel, and sometimes he hoped he died.

He lost his drive to work, or think, or live. He saw no point in getting off the couch, except for another drink. Sailing seemed so far way and so meaningless without her. 

Now, the boat sat covered on the side of his house. He hadn’t taken in out since then. He’d considered selling it but himself he was too busy to deal with it, now that he was back to work. The truth, he knew, was that selling it meant leaving her, or the memory of her, as if to say, I’m over you now so I don’t need this boat any more. And he wasn’t ready for that. So the boat sat idle, baking in the hundred degree Temecula heat. Maybe, someday, he’ll take her out one more time.