Re: Deck chairs; sitting.
He hadn't sucked down crazy in a bottle. That had been an option. He didn't knock anyone wanting to try crazy on for size for a night, no hard feelings, take your curiosity out on an evening with an orchestral soundtrack and a promise that it would all be over by dawn. No, this guy hadn't picked out looney tunes. He knew that even if the water had shocked the last pieces of why he'd picked the way he'd picked right out of him. It didn't matter anymore. Or it had mattered enough that he had gone into the water in the first place to forget. But neither point was something he felt like making to the guy on the lounger in the sweet shoes.
I mean, trust, the guy was feeling a little sorrier out of the water than he had going in. Going in had felt a little dramatic, a little showmanship in drowning the remnants of memory the quick way instead of the drink-by-drink kind of way. Now he had the reality of soggy jeans but - he pulled one sock off and then the other and stretched out bare feet, draping the wet white outlines with exaggerated care over the end of a lounger - he didn't have soggy feet. "A little," he said in agreement and it sounded a little like a shared joke. The kind of laughter that isn't really taken out and laughed but is kept in the back pocket, waiting.
"You gave me options." He was appreciative of options. This time, it showed. This time, because this guy wasn't constant tonight. He didn't feel much like being himself or feel much like being secret. What he felt, it showed up top. "Ouch, yowch. Whole bunch of spaces in between. Have you never wanted to do something just because you felt like it?"
He looked at the shoes, considered the options. "Nah. I've done that once. Once is enough. They can find another moment. And they're sweet shoes." Nobody knocked them together like Dorothy at the end of the story, like you could find answers in wing-tipped dress shoes. There weren't answers tonight, there were just a whole lot of questions. "Don't toss 'em." He grinned, like he knew this wasn't actually a question, wasn't a discussion item on the agenda, Jim. "You want to be interesting?" This seemed to be a genuine question. This guy was wet and he squelched as he came close enough to sit between the loungers, on the concrete but he picked up his glass.
He wasn't crazy. Maybe crazy would come around eventually, but for the time being, this guy wasn't it.