The Price of Why

What do you mean, it's taking too long? How do you know how long it's supposed to take? It takes what it takes.

You asked me a question and I'm telling you.

It's important that you understand why. I don't want you thinking.... It's just important you understand.

I know what happens when there are misunderstandings.

I just know, okay?

Okay?

Okay then.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, in the bathroom, the phone call; the dog....

I love that dog. He's not one of those love-me-love-me-love-me dogs, in your face all the time. More like he's on a schedule and he'll fit you in if he can type of dogs. Suits me just fine. Don't know I could handle more than that.

I found him in a shelter. He'd been rescued and then rescued from the rescue. People say they want a big dog and then are surprised when the dogs get big.

People lie all the time.

Dogs, never.

I miss my dog.

This was all about the dog, you understand?

I didn't start out that way. Pretty sure it didn't—at least for me. But they made it about the dog and that's not cool.

Tug was our game.

“It's just up here on the right, if I'm not mistaken,” I said to the Mark. “Of course it's all different now, but it should be just ahead.”

It looked just like it did in the brochure, but I supposedly hadn't been here in more than two generations, so I had to dress it up a bit.

It was a bright, early Fall day.

For maybe two or three weeks out of the year, the weather is the ideal mix of cool and dry and bright and clear. It's easy to be outside and it feels like a concert encore: the last of the end before everyone has to go home.

We pulled into a parking area overlooking a rocky beach.

The season over, the restrooms and snack shack were boarded up and the grass had the bad taste to grow after the mowers had been put up for the year, so the place looked a little seedier than in the brochure.

But it seemed clear it was a popular place during the summer. There were lots of cigarette butts still evident in the grass and along the edges of the parking lot. Paper cups rolled back and forth, like a hanging lamp on a wave-tossed lamp.

This was a place when, during the season, kids come to play, teenagers to rehearse and people of my generation to remember playhing and rehearsing.

Slowly, we made our way across the parking lot and on to the paved trail that lead to the beach.

The sea grass on the top of the dunes was getting a Zumba-style workout in the wind blowing in off the ocean.

The sound of sea meeting shore is always impressive, always intimidating, always hypnotic.

The asphalt path had taken us to a boardwalk bridge over the dunes and then to a flight of stairs leading down to the beach.

In the two months since the end of the season, the beach had already started to reclaim these man-made intrusions. Drifts of sand made parts of the boardwalk almost impassable.

On one of the many landings before the beach, there was a large drift and it had a single shoe print and single paw print right next to that.

A sign.

“Eldon wants to go with you,” called the Mark.

I had decided I wanted to walk out to the water. It had been a long time since I had set foot on any beach and I was certain that this might very well be my last time.

I had offered to help them down the stairs, but the Mark was worried about her balance.

So, I left them there, but I guess Make-Believe Eldon changed his mind.

Salt air and thousands of hands had taken this season's finish off the handrails and so, while we needed them for support, we couldn't rely on them because you could see the slivers of wood waiting to find a home in the squishiest parts of your hand.

Getting to the bottom was not the end of the road. There was a brief isthmus of sand and then a large sandstone terrace that dropped another five feet to the broadest section of the beach and the ocean.

A minefield of trip hazards.

Step-stop-step-stop, rest, plan, step-stop-step-stop. Repeat.

When we got there, the beach was broad and firmly packed. We could walk more easily.

We turned and waved at the Mark.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Up to you,” said the Man Known as Eldon.

“Who are you?”

“I'm the key.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt certain I would die of old age and still not know what the hell was going on.

“You want your life back, I can make that happen for you..., in exchange for a small service.”

“Back to the Palace, I know, but what's the play? Why all the smoke?”

“I thought you were a professional. Be a professional. Take the deal, don't take the deal, but don't whine. I can't stand working with whiners.”

“But you're not working with me, are you?” I said. “What's to stop me from dropping you right here and walking off the board?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

I could feel the phone in my pocket start to vibrate.

“You don't know me,” he continued. “You know nothing about my background, but I think you have, by now, some sense of my skill set. You want to take the chance that I won't break cover, that's your perogative, but there will be consequences.”

He reached over to brush something off my chest and that's when I saw it.

“She's very good,” he said.

It was hard to pay attention to him, I was fixed on the red dot that danced across the back of his hand before returning to the mid-point on my sternum.

“The sheet cake was supposed to be the end of all this. They put me out, threw me back to the world. Why, after all this time, would you want me for this side show?”

“That's not important.”

“It's important to me,” I said.

“Why costs. You're a how person: how do we get from A to B? How to we make an elephant disappear on cue and under fire? Why is above your pay grade.”

He was absolutely right, of course. How is the state where operators live. Why is where you move when you get older. How is the menu, why is the price list.

“You obviously have an infrastructure,” I said. “Why can't you get whatever you need through your own people.”

As soon as I said that, I knew the answer.

“Exactly,” he said.

“I'm not....”

“No.”

“Who's the Mark?” I asked after we had walked a little more.

“By the time you find out, it'll be too late,” he said.

We walked a little more.

Every few steps, I would look down.

It was still there.

“I think we should turn back, don't you?” he said.

I felt the phone ion my pocket vibrate again.

We turned and Make-Believe Eldon waved at the Mark.

She waved back.