Either the Beginning or the End of the World by Terry Farish Read Free Book Online Page A

Ashworth By the Sea. My father and I don’t come here. But I know this is where we visited that Christmas years ago, a motel room on a side street that my mother rented. I know that some fishermen’s kids work here as waiters and dishwashers in season. Luke opens the door.
    â€œFood here?” I say.
    We enter a dimly lit dining room with white lights strung across the ceiling like stars. We have entered a universe. I glance at this guy I am with, then around the Ashworth overlooking the seawall and the ocean. It’s a dream to come here with him to eat dinner, two people who are very nearly strangers, but I can’t remember not knowing him.
    We have our pick of tables since the only other people here are zipping their parkas and paying their bill. We sit at a window table where we hear the waves crash on the seawall. I take off my coat. Then I take off my Dunkin’ Donuts apron. I stuff it inside my coat to hide the scent of sugar and chocolate and coffee, but the smell is in my hair. Luke drops his cap on the table. Then he folds it and puts it in his pocket. I see his hands shake on the table. His eyes are green, wary, and bloodshot. His hair is dark. He plants his palms on the table. I think this is to steady them. We scan the menu and order fish and chips from the waiter.
    He gives me his crooked grin. “Found you,” he says.
    â€œMaybe ’cause you gave me this,” I say and slide his dog tags from my pocket. He glances at them.
    â€œI wanted to set your mind at ease,” he begins.
    â€œI’m at ease.” Like a challenge.
    I look at him through my hair that I know is blown wild.
    He shrugs.
    â€œYou mean about the gun,” I say with an airiness I don’t feel. “I’ve seen guns. This is New Hampshire.” I laugh at my joke about a state where people come across the border to buy any kind of gun, rifle, handgun, AK-47.
    I pull my hair back off my face and glance at him. He shrugs. It occurs to me there’s no room with him to be fake.
    â€œMaybe it’s my mind I’m worried about,” he says. “I’ll quit obsessing over yours.”
    His eyes shift to the door, to the waiter bearing water. We hear the click of saltshakers that a busboy gathers on a tray. Is it like the click of a weapon when it’s engaged? We’re not going to talk about what he was doing with the gun. The question just sits on the table, a little groggy, while we watch each other and glance away, trying to pretend we’re not.
    The waiter is vacuuming. We are the only customers. Snow has begun to fall harder over the boulevard and into the sea. The food comes, and we dig in, famished.
    â€œThis place haunted?” Luke says, shifting his eyes to a dark hallway where the waiter turned off the lights.
    â€œOh, probably.” I press my palms to my head, laughing. “Maybe it’s the statue of the lady across the boulevard. It says, ‘Breathe soft ye winds.’ She’s asking the waves to be gentle to sailors who died at sea.”
    He eats fast. He’s cleaning up. He motions, eat, eat, at me and my plate that brims with golden fries. He eats, and I begin to tell him things. I tell him my mom is moving in.
    â€œHeard a few things about that,” he says, and I think of the long hours my father and he had on the boat. Did they talk about me?
    I say, “She was sixteen when she had me. I hardly see her. When I was little I told my teacher she was a selchie, a seal woman, and she’d gone back to live in the ocean. Dad had to go and talk to the teacher.”
    Luke hoots. “A seal woman?” He lifts his chin, downing a beer. I smell the beer. I smell some scent, maybe the wool of his sweater. Some smell that is him. “You said she became a seal?”
    So I tell him the Scottish tale about the carpenter who fell in love with a woman and they had a child. But she was also a seal, and when she found her sealskin, she