Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

the marina. His neighbor had laughed to get his attention. He pointed across the slip to the weathered NOAA building made mostly of cinder blocks. A chalky white research ship was docked alongside it.

“So do you think I have a pretty tough commute?” his neighbor said, gesturing with his fingers. They were tiny legs walking on the air.

Mario could only nod. He wanted to get away from this guy. On the way back to the townhouse, he had heard his neighbor shout, “Queequeg! Queequeg!” Then the gray tabby came running.

Mario waited at the end of the dock now. The structure floated on the mirrored water. He stood there in his running shoes and shorts. He was wearing one of his old Eastern Virginia Medical School T-shirts. He had dressed to put in some miles this morning but had yet to start.

He suddenly wondered what Janet was doing, if she had decided to take a shower. He hoped she had simply gone ahead and left for her own place. The last thing he wanted was to go back and find her still there.

Sailboats began to knock against the pilings. Their halyards rattled incessantly. The current seemed equally stubborn. It rocked the floating dock at intervals. In the absence of sails, masts held sheets of emptiness.

Often, he wondered what it would be like to sail one of these boats. To have a destination and yet not have one. He remembered the story of his grandfather, whose name Mario had been given.

“What happened to him?” Mario had asked when he was younger.

“Lost at sea,” his father answered.

Instead of beginning his run, Mario found he was held in place, inert. The water, he realized, continued to move underneath him. He studied the rigging of the boats. Each worn tether. Lines swayed into more rattling.

There was one boat, in particular.

A tiny curtain pulled back. He could see there was someone aboard. The person peered at him. He looked away. When he glanced back, the face was gone.

“Hello?” It was an older woman’s voice. She stepped out of the cabin and walked over near the stern. Though there was a warm breeze, she looked dressed for colder weather. She wore a light lavender sweater, the color of oil on water. White capri pants. A bob of silver hair splashed about her face.

Queequeg came up behind him and began to weave between his legs.

“She’s marking you,” the woman said. “They do that, you know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Her,” the woman said, pointing. “It means you’re hers. You’ll always be tied to her. She’s making sure of it.”

The woman called Queequeg with a series of clicks and baby talk.

“Is this all right?” the woman said.

Her name was Natalie Purcell. She had been born in Annapolis and grown up in a town embedded among the numerous hamlets of eastern Maryland. She and Clay, her husband of nearly forty years, had a friend who had invited them to Norfolk.

Natalie was going to be a grandmother, she added, adjusting the stylish sunglasses atop her head. Mario didn’t ask if Clay would be joining them, nor did he tell her that he wasn’t exactly hungry, that he rarely ate, mornings. Queequeg went to the door that led to the sleeping quarters. It scratched at the bottom. It collapsed onto its back and kept trying to slip its paws underneath.

“That’s darling,” Natalie said.

“Is she going to wake your husband?”

He felt strangely responsible for the cat.

“It’s fine,” she said. “He loves animals. Both of our daughters had cats.”

If he concentrated, Mario could make out the sequence with which the boat brushed against the pier. The ropes stretched taut from cleat to cleat.

“Are you still in med school?”

She pointed at the shirt but then leaned down to place a saucer of milk on the floor. The cat sprang up. It pressed its nose into the milk so quickly that it sneezed.

“Don’t you worry,” the woman said to Queequeg. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Mario could make out the hospital in the distance, his second home. If Janet had gone into work at the children’s ward, she would be pushing a cart around. The cart would be filled with coloring books and other art supplies. She was a happy person, an honest person.

“I’m a surgeon at CHKD,” he announced to the woman.

“CHKD?”

“Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.”

She nodded.

“Our eldest, Trina, is a doctor.”

“Is that right?”

“She went to Hopkins. She’s the one having a boy.”

“Hopkins is a great school.”

“Oh, I think I already mentioned that, didn’t I?” She knocked on her head, like she needed a jolt to set things right.

He stared at her for a moment.

“What is it?” she said.

“And your other daughter?”

“My other daughter?”

“You said your daughters had cats.”

“I did?” she said. “I’m surprised.”

He knew the look she gave him. She could have been a mirror made of water. He could dive within it and drown. Or she could have been made entirely of air, a breath he could have carried with him on a morning run, inhaling and exhaling. Carrying it for years.

“Does she have a name already picked out?” Mario said.

The woman smiled. “She does.”

“Would it be bad luck if you told me?”

He ran.

Ahead now were the homes that lined the inlet of The Hague. Textured brick Victorians. The city’s old money on display. Those stuck in traffic along the Brambleton Bridge could look over and dream.

His legs felt purposeful. They burned. He knew all he had to do was keep going. The woman had never told him the child’s name. He felt lighter for it. He ran past the bronze sculpture in front of the Chrysler Museum. The giant horse suddenly looked real and violent.

He had been proud of himself until he made it back to the apartment. Janet’s VW was gone, the patio door left unlocked. The coffee pot was unplugged. There was no note. He sat down at the table and stared out onto the street.

The street ended.

In his