COLD MORNING LIGHT

James lit his fiftieth cigarette since the last time he'd awakened to the alarm. His throat felt like the adhesive side of a strip of duc-tape. But it wasn't like he'd smoked them all in one day. He simply hadn't slept since forty-eight hours before.

For every one there comes a moment at the end of even the most consuming affair when he admits it's all over. Ironic it had happened on the phone, while James sat in a hotel room overlooking Myrtle Beach, cobwebbed in November hibernation. Carole's voice, just the memory, stung him now. He passed a hand over the short buzz-cut she'd suggested, hell, practically demanded. She'd convinced him he was too vain about it, at forty, he shouldn't be wearing his hair on his collar.

He'd quit smoking at her request, too but something in him -- some smarter brain than the one he had right now -- had made him, standing bored and strung out in the Scotchman up the strip two mornings before, buy a pack of Camels. Walk a mile, he thought. Almost. He had walked, in fact, at three this morning, seven city blocks. Lucky as hell the fucking hippie sleeping behind the counter was still on an all-night shift. Most of the stores in Myrtle Beach closed at midnight in the off-season.

It had been a cold walk in a thin Oxford. Almost as cold as the walk he'd have had in Toronto, if the weather on the TV was any indication. Of course, it would be the same in Toronto tomorrow, but as likely be fifty or sixty degrees here.

"They leave, you know," he'd spewed across the green formica counter at three in the morning like a smoker's sneeze. The dirty fluorescents made the whole store look like something out of a Troma film. It was seven in the morning now, still dark outside, cold with the lapping ocean sound in the background but a little more bracing since he'd opened the window.

He'd turned off the heating unit in the wall hours ago, it had seemed to be dispensing a scent reminiscent of rotted flesh or last week's forgotten garbage. But when he'd opened the balcony window he'd discovered it wasn't the heater; it was the air itself, as if Myrtle Beach were one huge festering corpse, one damp gray dung hill.

James recalled there was a paper mill in Conway, that had to explain the odor, but he'd never smelt a paper mill before. Must be tits for the tourists in the summer, he thought, that smell. Bad enough on a cold damp night, imagine the middle of a ninety-degree day breathing that in and out. But plenty of his friends raved about summering in the place. He'd only been in the off season when the golf supply stuff sold best.

"Who?" the drowsy but cheery enough young man had asked. James had doubted it was human interest as much as a sort of journalistic curiosity that had made him ask, but he answered anyway because he didn't have enough open on his credit card for the Psychic Friends Hotline; wasn't desperate enough for the suicide crisis line yet.

"Women. They leave."

"Oh, yeah -- tell me about it. I'm from Indianapolis -- I'd still be there if I hadn't had my fifteenth crash in about that many months," the guy had scowled at him, shoving a cloud of dark hair back. James had been surprised at the incisive squint. Maybe he'd judged wrong. Not everybody in Myrtle Beach must have been a dope-addled moron. Some of them were dope-addled intellectuals.

The young man had slapped a pack of Camels on the counter. James didn't recall until he forced his fried, sleep-deprived brain back, the guy had been on shift at seven the previous morning when he'd rolled into town from Charleston, too. Selling golf junk to the country clubs. Dad's business. Nice job if you can get it. Right. That's why he was standing half-lit in a quick-stop being abused by a psychic hippie at three in the morning.

"Pretty good memory."

"You've got a shitty hair cut. I always remember shitty hair cuts."

"You got some room to talk..." James had snapped back, tapping the pack smartly on the counter. The guy grinned at him.

"I got no haircut, pal. It's better than a shitty one."

"Better give me a couple more," James sighed, reaching into his wallet for a ten dollar bill. A green one, that was. Dead of winter, no cashier in his right mind would take a lavender ten-spot with a pretty lady's picture. Or was it a groundhog? A loon? James spent much of his time in the States, that's where all the golf business was, he barely remembered what his motherland's money looked like these days.

"Hey, kill yourself..." the guy snorted, making change that looked too small. It had been three Carole-years since he'd smoked, though, and it was much bigger change than he'd have got of a tenner up north for three packs of smokes. Three packs was about fifteen bucks at home.

"So what's your story now? Got a woman who's gonna leave?" James asked. The guy laughed, shook his head.

"No. I got close friends and hot showers, beer and Cinemax. I don't need chicks right now. Maybe later, when I'm ready for the meat grinder again. For now... no."

James tapped a Camel out of the pack and blinked up. The guy lit a Kool and shoved the lighter across the formica at him. James lit up too.

"Mine broke it off on the phone a couple hours ago. That really sucks, you know?"

The hippie slouched on a stool behind the cash register and studied the dead, vapor-lit street outside. He nodded vaguely, absently. Knew more about it than James had given credit.

"Listen, I been kissed goodbye so many ways I don't even remember `em all. Had one scream at me while we were fucking in the back seat of my car, `oh, David, this is beautiful -- I can't see you anymore!' Can you beat that?"

Back in his chilly hotel room at ten after seven on a Saturday morning, no, James couldn't beat that. In fact, he laughed at the idea. No, he couldn't beat it. At least Carole had the consideration to wait until he was almost a thousand miles away and do it on the phone, so she didn't have to deal with him, and he didn't have to deal with him either.

He sighed and finished the twelfth beer he'd had in about six hours, set it atop the pyramid he'd carefully constructed in the middle of the hotel table. He'd have had to be a bloody simple fool to think anything was ever sure. There wasn't any guarantee on a relationship. He'd been married and divorced already, long before Carole. He knew damned well nobody could give him any ironclad warranty on somebody loving him. The ones who didn't leave, he'd left, it always hurt -- more when you were dumped than when you did the honors, but always a little. Carole hurt a lot, though. They were alike, they liked each other, they were good together both in and out of bed.

Maybe he should have been a priest like his mother wanted him to be. Except he wasn't Catholic anymore, since the divorce, or at least he didn't want to be. A voluntary excommunication. And he'd been married, and had bedded too many women to ever qualify anyhow.

Other than that, though, he thought he was probably as jaded about physical-emotional relationships as anyone. Maybe the next time he should wait until the second or third date before he bought the box of Trojans. Just let it ride and wait until she asked. It wouldn't be as much fun, but there was only so much fun you could cram into forty years and he wouldn't always be able to have the women he wanted. He'd better get down to earth and earnest with one in the next few years, or he was going to regret it.

If he didn't figure out the formula soon, he was going to end up like those poor geeks he saw at all the conventions his dad made him go to, fifty-five years old with bad rugs, rubbing up against the waitresses for a little thrill, passing out drunk in bed smiling to memories of the last good girlfriend.

Maybe Carole was it.

If James had had a gun, he would have shot himself in the head at that moment. If Carole was the last good girlfriend, he was in danger of his life.

He had to check out of the room, he was drunk and it was cold outside. It was November in South Carolina, the sky and the ocean were an almost uniform pigeon gray when he started the rental Buick and prayed not to be pulled over. He'd go to the Scotchman and sit it out with a big mug of coffee, if he could. Or find a donut shop and pack on the carbohydrates. After all, maybe the next one, if she came, wouldn't harangue him about his love handles. Carole had. But she'd expected him to be Jean Claude Van Damme. James didn't fool himself. He wasn't even god-damned John Travolta. Hell, as far as Carole was concerned from now on, he was Claude Rains...

Carole had a lot of growing up to do, he thought, meticulous about backing the car from the space, cigarette grasped between his knuckles, filter resting against the steering wheel. A lot of growing up to do.