The Frenchman and the Sea

He drank far too much alcohol.
Sangria, and then a beer. And another. And another. And another. And...
To convince himself that it was socializing and not thirst, he ordered me a drink when he collected his own. 
And the glasses of wine lined up on the table, waiting for me as though they were spare sodas.
There was no way I could drink them all.
I tried to understand him: the train of thought. The ideas. They were jumbled in  his head and in his words. Every time I thought I could address one of these, hold it down and analyze it, it skidded away from me like a cockroach in the light.
"Docotor," he said to me, his eyes bleary and the consonants in the word pronounced independently. "I find you very attractive."
"Thank you," I told him.
But I did not want him. Sjors is still the only person I want. Fantasize about.
But I like Marc. With his crooked nose and his celtic, devil-may-care attitude and his encyclopedic knowledge of American action films. He asked me, "Do you find me attractive?"
"Have you not listened to me?" I ask him. My eyes still sting with the tears that come, even now, unbidden every time I think of Sjors.
"I'm in love with someone else."
He shows me pictures of his three-year-old son in France.
"His mother...tries to erase me," he says. 

Out on the Spanish coast, the waves crash. Full of too much wine, we scramble over the wall and I walk, sand sloshing into my sandals.
"There is a philosopher," he says. "He said that there are men who are dead, men who are alive, and then there are sailors."
I laugh. It is a loud, raucous laugh that seems the match the waves. Maybe he is talking about himself but, to me, he describes Sjors. I know that if I stop laughing long enough, he will take my clothes off there on the beach. I don't want him to.
"I am here," he tells me. "Because my life in France is shit."
I nod. Overhead, the sky is dark with stars. Behind us the city lights from Rota are glowing in the the drunken haze.
"You are here," he tells me. "Because your personal life is shit."

I look in the waves in the dark. I think about another ocean. One year ago. I would have gone out into it. Into the darkness. I would have stopped things then. Ended the pain.

And I wonder: what I have I gained by staying here a little longer?

He wants to come back to the hotel. He wants to order champagne. I order him a taxi.

"Do you find me attractive?" he asks me.

But I have gone beyond attractive long ago. When I decided to stay alive. Something about this has changed me.

He is angry when he gets into the cab. I cannot give him more. I don't have it to give.