Long After Midnight

«Try telling that to a girl in love,» said Latting.

«Now a man,» said Carlson, lighting a fresh cigarette, «lie just gets himself drunk, says to hell with it, no use killing yourself for no woman.»

They drove in silence awhile past all the small dark ach houses with only a light here or there, it was so late.

«Maybe,» said Latting, «she was going to have a baby.»

«It happens.»

«And then the boyfriend runs off with someone and s one just borrows his rope and walks up on the cliff,» lid Latting. «Answer me, now, is that or isn't it love?»

«It,» said Carlson, squinting, searching, the dark, «is a id of love. I give up on what kind.»

«Well, sure,» said Moreno, driving. «I'll go along with you, kid. I mean, it's nice to know somebody in this world a love that hard.»

They all thought for a while, as the ambulance purred between quiet palisades and now quiet sea and maybe two of them thought fleetingly of their wives and tract houses and sleeping children and all the times years ago when they had driven to the beach and broken out the beer and necked up in the rocks and lay around on the blankets with guitars, singing and feeling like life would go on just as far as the ocean went, which was very far, and maybe they didn't think that at all. Latting, looking up at the backs of the two older men's necks, hoped or perhaps only nebulously wondered if these men remembered any first kisses, the taste of salt on the lips. Had there ever been a time when they had stomped the sand like mad bulls and yelled out of sheer joy and dared the universe to put them down?

And by their silence, Latting knew that yes, with all his talking, and the night, and the wind, and the cliff and the tree and the rope, he had gotten through to them; it, the event, had gotten through to them. Right now, they had to be thinking of their wives in their warm beds, long dark miles away, unbelievable, suddenly unattainable while here they were driving along a salt-layered road at a dumb hour half between certainties, bearing with them a strange thing on a cot and a used length of rope.

«Her boyfriend,» said Latting, «will be out dancing tomorrow night with somebody else. That gripes my gut.»

«I wouldn't mind,» said Carlson, «beating the hell out of him.»

Latting moved the sheet. «They sure wear their hair crazy and short, some of them. All curls, but short. Too much makeup. Too ?» He stopped.

«You were saying?» asked Moreno.

Latting moved the sheet some more. He said nothing. In the next minute there was a rustling sound of the sheet, moved now here, now there. Latting's face was pale.

«Hey,» he murmured, at last. «Hey.»

Instinctively, Moreno slowed the ambulance.

«Yeah, kid?»

«I just found out something,» said Latting. «I had this feeling all along, she's wearing too much make-up, and the hair, and ?»

«So?»

«Well, for God's sake,» said Latting, his lips hardly moving, one hand up to feel his own face to see what its expression was. «You want to know something funny?»

«Make us laugh,» said Carlson.

The ambulance slowed even more as Latting said, «It's not a woman. I mean, it's not a girl. I mean, well, it's not a female. Understand?»

The ambulance slowed to a crawl.

The wind blew in off the vague morning sea through the window as the two up front turned and stared into the back of the ambulance at the shape there on the cot.

«Somebody tell me,» said Latting, so quietly they almost could not hear the words. «Do we stop feeling bad now? Or do we feel worse?»

Nobody answered.

A wave, and then another, and then another, moved in and fell upon the mindless shore.