I came to Anna Maria Island on Florida's Gulf coast looking for adventure and I found it.
Here I am, a skinny bearded professor of literature about to get on the back of a motorcycle with a biker chick.
I haven’t even ridden a bicycle since I was eleven and messed up even back then—got concussed and my parents decided cycling wasn’t my thing—books were, and the rest was history.
That is until now. But what am I doing putting on a motorcycle helmet?
Will the real Paul Rutledge please stand up, because I must be dreaming and don’t want to end up in Emerg again.
But Hettie’s oblivious to my fears and reaches back and pulls me close to her.
When she knows I’m securely seated behind her, she roars off down the narrow road and heads for the beach.
Soon, we’re lying side by side on the white sand in the shade of a tree. I watch the long white waves come rolling in.
The wind gently teases her hair.
“It’s kind of lonely,” she sighs, “ don’t you agree?”
I nod solemnly. Words fail me right now.
“The sound of the sea,” she whispers dreamily.
She leans over and kisses me, softly at first, and then, deeper and longer. I close my eyes and drink her in—satiate myself with her essence.
We lie there in each other’s arms until the sun sets and the pale moon rises.
The ocean becomes a black wall of undulating water—just looking at it, gives me vertigo.
I inhale the jasmine scent of her hair.
I like Jasmine—it releases its fragrance while the world sleeps unaware of its beauty and truths.
And I like her.
Just being with her makes me dizzy and giddy.
“You are so beautiful,” I whisper, “lovely as the night.”
“Could you write a poem about me?”
“Yes.”
“What would you say?”
“I’d say your hair is like dark trees of night that move upon the sky.”
“That’s beautiful, Paul.”
I stare at her lovely face barely visible now in the gloom.
“Why did you stop writing?” She asks.
I’m confused. Did I tell her that?
“I think I stopped writing when I stopped believing.”
She props herself up, leaning on one elbow, and looks sadly at me.
“Stopped believing in what?”
I’m swept into a vortex of rustling leaves and leathers.
“Stopped believing in mermaids, I guess.”
“You know, women will find you attractive, Paul—you draw out the soul through your words.”
I couldn’t see her distinctly in the darkness. Her words were some dark alphabet of letters obscuring her face—hiding her beauty.
If I saw her at all, it was through a trellis—a latticework of lines.
“The dreams you stir in women may be the only reality they’ll ever have.”
Did she say that, or did I think it?
Her dark mouth was on mine again and we lay back to the sound of the pounding surf and the cool night breeze soughing through the trees.
When I awoke in the gray dawn, she was gone.
I walk for half an hour back to my car and drive home.
I’ve been back to the restaurant. They don’t know her.
The waitress knows the motorcycle gang, but they never heard of Hettie or anyone matching her description.
“I wish a cool Mama like that would ride with us,” says Hoss, with a rueful smile.
I’m perplexed. I have no explanation.
I’m back in Toronto now, and some nights I spend writing poems and others I spend on dates with beautiful women who say they like my tales.
They say I bewitch with words—I wish it were true, though they insist it’s so.
Sometimes, late at night, I drive to the lake and watch the long white waves rolling in.
I think of white sand, sea oats and chaps.
I think of the mermaid who gave me my beginning in this enchanted world.
