'N' Is for Nowhere

Neal Nelligan was jogging down the oceanfront sidewalk from his new ocean-view condo on Neilson Way. He thought he heard a cat. He came upon the little car, old cheap thing, with its lights on, bumped against the barrier. The woman inside was crying. A head injury. No doubt.

14

Naw, Neal Nelligan thought, peering inside the car window at the weeping woman, she's not hurt; she's just another hung-up chick. They were all over the beach. What was a guy to do? Obviously what the guy she was crying over did. Just move on -- and he did, jogging away from any kind of pain.

Nancy had seen him, saw him move away. Indifferently. Like everyone else, like everything else. Indifferent.

She got out of the car, not bothering with the signs that prohibited parking. The gun in her hand was warm now, a cherished present.

The sun was setting behind a layer of gauzy clouds. Already there was the purplish tinge of dusk. Blue . . .

The blue hour!

Once her mother . . . Her mother? ã Had she ever extended a moment of kindness? No, it had been her father . . . Her father? An absent presence. Oh, it had been Paw-paw -- Paw-paw who had told her about the blue hour, the moments between dusk and night, when the world turns blue. That's when everything is clearest and most blurred at the same time. Clearest because the perception of seeing things as they are, entirely and finally, is sharpest; blurred because it's only the hazy blue light that creates that certainty and carries it away.

Mesmerized, she had walked to the edge of the ocean. Along the beach, others were leaving, fleeing a stab of coolness. Only three silhouettes lingered on the shoreline, lithe dancers performing tai chi, slow ritualistic motions that acknowledged -- what? The inevitable night.

This whole trip had led to a stretch of darkening beach. A stretch of . . . Nothing. That word again, her mother's curse. "You're nothing . . ." Had her mother even seen her? Had anyone ever seen her? Oh, as a girl, sure, Paw-paw -- but, no, he hadn't really seen her, not in that awful dark room . . . Even on this trip of discovery, had anyone truly seen her? Ned! No. She had seen him, so clearly -- the black caped gaunt figure. She had humored his hallucinations about having giant sexual organs. She had even pretended to see them. Out of kindness. Then there was Rip Johnson, who had threatened her, for no reason, as if she was nothing. Nothing. Had anyone along the way even noticed what she looked like? She wanted to shout to the encroaching darkness: "I'm 27, my hair is brown, my eyes are almost blue, and I'm not a bad person!" Who would hear her? "No one. Nothing." Her mother's words were thrust at her from within the rising tide.

She looked down at the gun, her only companion. What had this trip revealed? Why was it undertaken? You're nothing. Words she had tried to prove wrong on this strange odyssey. Or had she confirmed them? Every unrelated step, every fragment of ambiguous experience, every seemingly random twist and turn of her journey had been shaping into her fate, long ago uttered in a curse. You're nothing -- and so it was all as meaningless as . . .

As meaningless as this --

She cocked the gun and aimed at the night. Action without purpose. She pulled the trigger and fired and opened her mouth to laugh and saw: a brightness-smothered sky turned dark stars drowned spinning orbit shore blinded moon a black flower blooming out of perfect darkness -- but before she could hear the sound of her laughter, the bullet she had aimed at the night had ricocheted, gliding off the sharp edge of a rock that loomed like a glowering face, and the bullet hurtled back at her, throttling her laughter.

Nowhere . . .

Nowhere . . .

Nowhere . . .

Nowhere . . .

Nowhere . . .

THE AUTHORS, in order of appearance:

1. Aimee Bender is the author of the story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and the recent novel An Invisible Sign of My Own.

2. Peter Gadol's latest novel is Light at Dusk.

3. Janet Fitch is the author of the best-selling novel White Oleander.

4.Rubén Mendoza is a Los Angeles writer and poet.

5. Hillary Johnson is a journalist and short-story writer, and author of the novel Physical Culture.

6. Benjamin Weissman is the author of Dear Dead Person: Short Fiction.

7.Nancy Rommelmann's short fiction has appeared in Lynx Eye and The Saint Ann's Review. Her new book, Rommelmann's Bar and Nightlife Guide, will be published next spring by St. Martin's Press/L.A. Weekly Books.

8. Jerry Stahl's first novel, Perv: A Love Story, will be released in paperback in January. His new novel, Plainclothes Naked, is due out from William Morrow next fall.

9. Wanda Coleman is a poet and fiction writer whose most recent book is Mambo Hips and Make Believe: A Novel.

10.Jim Krusoe, is the author of Blood Lake and Other Stories.

11. Nicole Panter edited the collection Unnatural Disasters: Recent Writing From the Golden State, and is the author of Mr. Right On and Other Stories.