“Let the conch shell tell him to go to hell, and pop that
Tommy Bahama collar while you’re at it, and fix me a Cosmopolitan, frozen,
served inside a pineapple with the top cut off, and a nice long pink straw, and
at least two but no more than five drink umbrellas, preferably of different
colors but not excessively as in not the entire rainbow, but when you cut the
top off serve that with my drink please, so that I can put it back on and take
it home with me, or walk with it on the beach, no I won’t get a ticket, it’s
not an open container with the top on am I right? Ok and please no real fruit
in the drink, other than the pineapple, I don’t need that, just frozen slush,
but finely blended, no chunks please, and while you’re at it you might as well
make it two, because I will drink them.”
“Right away,
Ms. Kensington.”
Ms.
Kensington kicks off her bamboo-and-dried-palm flip-flops with a big pink fake
daisy on the nexus of each respective thong, but not quite kicks them off but
rather crawls out of them on her tippy-toes, while sitting down. The flip-flops
are left under the circular tiki-bar, while she lifts up her legs and curls her
toes around the bottom rung of the tiki-barstool, stretching her arms straight
up and then slowly down to either side, letting them hang there for a moment
while the comfortably wet night-ocean air ruffles the wings of her
one-size-fits-all linen shirt, magenta, and then turns her head all the way
around to watch the bartender finish her drinks. She leans over the bar,
although it is quiet and she is the only one there. The bartender hangs up the
conch phone.
“That will
do, thank you. No more umbrellas, please.”
“Sure thing,
Ms. Kensington.”
“Honey, tell
me why this wet ocean air is so comfortable, huh? The temperature’s so
nice I honestly can’t even notice it, and these drinks, Jesus, thank you Jesus,
they are--just--divine.”
Beyond the
sexy halo of the circular tiki bar there is sand spiraling outwards from the
planet that is Ms. Kensington, seashells caught in her orbit. Then, the
outskirts of the earth that blend into the sea.
“No place,
I’d rather be. Bartender, make that three. I want to drink, yes, drink, until I
can’t see. You see, it’s just you and me. And that swaying palm tree. And I
want you to toast, and agree.”
She winks.
“To what,
Ms. Kensington?"
“To the most
transcendent night of our lives.”
“You said
that yesterday, Ms. Kensington.”
“And I meant
it! But that was yesterday. Today is a new night and it will be--the--most--transcendent.”
And the bartender
hands Ms. Kensington her pineapples, she places one in front of the empty seat
next to her, she holds one in her right hand, with her left hand she removes
the spearmint gum from her mouth and sticks it to her pointer finger, and she
raises up her pineapple and taps it to the bartender’s pineapple and they go
along with it.
The sea offers a
warm breath on the back of her neck. The wood beads hanging from the toggles of
her linen shirt bump and sound like a tropical wind chime, but in reality they
only look like they made the sound because Ms. Kensington is looking down at
them, when in reality it is the half-coconut wind chime hanging from the
thatched roof of the tiki-bar. There are five in total, equidistant from each
other, marking the points of a pentagram, but probably just a regular star. Ms.
Kensington hocks a loogie and arranges five drink umbrellas into a mimicking
sequence, stabbed into the fleshy lip of the circular pineapple lip, and then
she places the top back on top because she is finished drinking it.
The flip-flops return to Ms. Kensington’s
feet and she hops off of the bar stool, taking the second pineapple in her left
hand and says:
“Good
Evening, dear sir” to the bartender while bowing her head and crossing her legs
and removing the top of the second pineapple like a hat.
“Hello, how
are you, Ms. Kensington?”
“I’m fabulous, and I must be
on my way. You will put this on my tab.” And she secedes from the sacred circle
of the tiki-bar into the satin sheets of night.
The night is
gargantuan, though only leaving a gargantuan-esque impression on Ms.
Kensington, as she has been granted her wish of blindness while walking to the
hissing sea. She smiles profoundly, she pictures the tiki-bartender, Tommy
Bahama shirt unbuttoned completely, flapping in the breeze, tickling his
nipples, grazing against the tops of liquor bottles. She listens to the
knocking of the coconut wind chimes behind her becoming fainter, becoming her
pulse.
The alcohol
is palpable. Ms. Kensington giggles, then sighs lovingly, then giggles for a
prolonged measure of time, then gasps, then cackles, then gasps, then cackles,
then gasps, then screams, then laughs hardily while nodding “no” with closed
eyes and whispering something to herself like “oh, that pineapple” or
“Tommy…Bahamas?” or “and that wonderful coconut!”, then sighs therapeutically,
then smiles, then tears up, then starts giggling, then starts sobbing, then
starts cackling while sobbing, then rolls to the ground and flops her body out
like a starfish. Nothing was spilled from the pineapple so she downs it all in
one go. Ms. Kensington twirls a blue drink umbrella above her eyes, squints.
“I can’t see
what color this is? What color is this. Let me think. The bartender gave me
three umbrellas with this pineapple, two were pink, and one was blue, I
believe. I’d guess it’s gold, then.”
The groans
of the sea swirl around her, sounding of crashing waves and wind, a distant
flock squawking, the splashes of jumping dolphins, the mourning of a big blue
whale resonating with the nothingness of it all. Ms. Kensington listens to the
song of the seals. The lyrics are about spinning around forever: Forever’s
just another word for nothing left to think. Nothing’s just another word for
nothing left to drink.
Ms. Kensington
removes her linen shirt and bamboo flip-flops. She digs into the sand between
her legs with her hollowed pineapple. She uncovers the padlock to a rusty safe,
blowing away some sand with her mouth, jimmying open the lock with the three
drink umbrellas, skillfully. She opens the safe and pulls out her skin. She
zips up into her skin and pulls out her ukulele. Ms. Kensington sings a song
about spinning with the bartender. Now she can see everything, as she leans
back, and says “how are you” to Big Dip, Lil’ Dip, and Orion. The top of the
pineapple is her pillow.
