He was thirty-one with yellowing teeth and yellowing finger tips and he did not have any tattoos on his forearms, but he did have some thin, stylish, expensive round glasses perched on his narrow nose, over a thin face and scrub-covered chin. His drab blonde hair was short and a tad bit oily, except for a small ducktail in the back, which was not short, but fanned out perpendicularly across the back of his neck. He wore a Detroit Pistons basketball jersey over a light blue wicking athletic t-shirt, and a small square black-faced watch on his left wrist, and he wore regular old blue jeans that were dirty around the cuffs over some nondescript sneakers.

His thin lips moved slightly as he talked to himself in his head.

It was late one summer night and he sat outside of Mara’s Diner in a coastal suburb south of Portland. He had just finished a cigarette while he sat there thinking. It had sprinkled fiften minutes earlier, but it was just damp on the plants around the parking lot now.

His girlfriend had kicked him out of their apartment that morning. They had had another squabble about his late night absences lately, when he had been at Chuck’s playing video games. It was nothing! Video games. We’re not out with hookers or doing hash, he protested. You are not finding another job, she shrieked back, eyes blazing, hair billowing like a mushroom cloud. You always do this, she yelled, over and over, high and loud, so the neighbors next door banged on the wall to try and shut them up, but she didn’t care, and he yelled back.

And then she went off, throwing stuff, including his old laptop, a few game discs in their cases, his favorite set of chillout earphones, and his porcelain bust of Bill Laimbeer, which his father had won in a radio contest back in Motor City. Laimbeer shattered in a cloud of shards and dust, and when the bust did, so did something deep inside his teetering heart. He yelled a long phrase of nasty profanities at her as he spun around and made for the front door to get the hell out of there, shaking because she scared him. He knew the cops would show up next, soon, anytime. He left quickly, on his bike, and rode down to the waterfront to check out for the day.

He had just finished two Mara Mayonnaise Burgers and a boat of overcooked fries and a side of baked beans and some iced tea, when despair found and swallowed him.

Mara’s sat on a lot 150 feet above the sea, over a road that trundled straight down onto a thin slip of beach.

His stomach distended and his brain addled, he thought “I have no where to go tonight.” He was scared of her. Chuck had left for Idaho that morning. Eric and Jana were also out of town, Darren was sick of him, Zags hated him after last week, his family was far away, and he was here in this hamburger joint lot on what may be his only possession at this point- his glossy gray Craigslist bargain department store mountain bike.

He was drunk on pity and fried potatoes.

And then the dark idea entered his mind.

Sad and sullen, his mind turned off, and he tossed the thick paper box his meal came in onto the chipped paint top of the metal table he leaned against. Tears ran down his face. His hands were sweaty. He took a long draw of tea, set the cup on the table, and he looked down the unfurled road.

It was three-quarters pavement going down that, until it faded into thin gravel and sand. It was bisected by one cross street halfway down, where four stop signs sat facing each lane as sentries. And on both sides of the narrow road were yards and bushes until the path opened onto the short beach which was, after 15 feet, a moody breaker of sea.

And he pushed off from the table in the parking lot, crossed the black tarmac, and rolled out onto the lane extending away from it.

Suddenly, it was like everything went into slow motion. Everything became silent, except for a swooshing sound in his ears.

He pedaled, and he thought about her yelling about his lazy ass.

He thought about his lame work history and his frustrations at being poor at his job.

He thought about his mistake at coming west after high school.

He thought about his parents not talking.

He sped up and saw the intersection closing in on him.

Four stop signs.

The sound of a car approaching somewhere below.

My sad life.

He closed his eyes.

His bike shuttled toward the intersection, and then rolled into it…

And through it…

His eyes still closed, he waited for contact, and it did not happen…

He opened his eyes and he and his bike were rolling rapidly down the serious incline now, whistling past a few beer bottles cliqued by the curb, and then two trash cans near the public access point, and the road began leveling off, soon to dump him onto the beach, and then shortly after that, into-

And then a sprinting chihuahua came from nowhere out of a bush to his left and froze in front of his runaway train act! Move, you stupid mutt! And he jerked the bike handlebars to avoid the dog and suddenly, he as plummeting at an odd angle.

He bulleted cockeyed into the four foot tall banister of wet shrubbery to his right.

His bike stopped immediately in the thick plant, and he launched off of it, flying sideways like he was doing the breast stroke, left arm raised, his right shoulder down over the earth, he a human missile until his flight was quickly ended when he met a moss covered rock.

His right shoulder made a loud crackling sound and exploded in ache like it had suddenly smelted into a ball of fire.

His breath was gone for two minutes.

And when his breath came back, he opened his eyes and realized his glasses were gone.

He moaned, prostrate there, his shoulder smashed, throbbing in waves of pain, his nose wet and warm with blood running from it.

The little dog had skittered on up the road toward Mara’s, stopping to sniff around and wet on the trash cans by the road.

It started to sprinkle again, and as he lay face down on the moist earth, shoulder crushed against the rock, he heard the water sloshing 30 feet away on the beach below and he thought of his lost glasses and the size of the dark sea so close by and his mom’s funeral and when he should have left for Alaska and the marbly white Bill Laimbeer exploding against the wall.

After several minutes of just laying there, not moving to not make it hurt worse, rain falling, head spinning, eyes wet from the shower and from tears, he heard a scuffle behind him, a sound of dragging feet approaching, from the road behind him. The sound was the rapid dragging of little feet. His head spun, he couldn’t get up, his shoulder screamed so loudly in pain. He quivered. And the scuffling that had been approaching stopped back by the shrubbery.

It was quiet except for the muted splash of waves.

From behind him, a voice spoke.

“Mister- are, ere you okay?”

He gurgled something unintelligible into the ground beneath his face, and breathed shallow breaths trying to quell the pain in his body.

“Say, mister- you dropped your wallet”, the boy relayed.