It was midmorning on the beach, and she’d stretched luxuriously on a peacock-blue cushioned lounge chair in the sun, mojito in hand, while she’d watched the ocean through her over-large sunglasses. A group of birds walked along the edge of the water, drawing close to the surf, and then running back whenever the water came up onto the beach. As the water drew back, they stood there together, some balancing on one leg, and at first she smiled at how silly they looked, and then she was impressed by their balance and poise, and finally, as they moved along together down the beach, her smile faded.
She’d been fiercely proud of the fact that she had come on this trip alone, that she hadn’t missed having companions in the airport, in her hotel room, or next to her, there, on the beach. She had gloried in her solitude, had revelled in the opportunity to do exactly whatever she wanted to do. She was on her schedule and no one else’s. In years past, she’d been on her fair share of random road trips with her friends in college when they’d had to pool their money and stay five to a room, but had spent more time laughing together than sleeping. When they’d gotten “real” jobs after graduating, and had “real” money to spend, she and her friends had taken more lavish vacations, springing for spa days, fancy dinners, and nonstop roundtrip flights, toasting each other with drinks bought on the plane. For years, she’d been insulated by her friends; they were a unit: coordinated, exclusive, supportive. However, there were also the trip moments when she felt buffeted by the big feelings of others, stuck in the middle of petty disagreements over the itinerary, needing to find reasons to spend time in her room alone, and she had wanted a trip without that.
The sun had slowly shifted from energizing to broiling as the day moved from morning to afternoon, and she’d moved from her lounge chair into the lobby bar. She’d had lunch and now sat solemnly nursing her fourth mojito of the day. In the mirror behind the bar, she watched people arriving to check in, and leaving once checked out. Women on girls’ trips, families with young children tugging and twisting in their parents’ grips, many couples. There was a veritable parking lot of luggage trolleys, some with just a couple of bags, others packed to capacity with suitcases of all sizes, like a Tetris game. She found herself glad that she didn’t have to deal with the hard parts of group travel, but in all of the noise and motion of the moderately busy lobby, she also had no one to laugh with, to lean towards and comment upon the people-watching.
She turned on her stool away from the bar to face the lobby’s activity and let her mind wander as the hotel guests and staff hustled and bustled to and fro. She crossed her sun-kissed legs in her flowing sunset-colored beach cover-up, clutched her glass, and imagined that at a moment like this, a handsome stranger would arrive in a black car, his sleek black leather carry-on bag in one hand, pulling expensive sunglasses off as he climbed out of the back seat. They’d lock eyes as he crossed the lobby, a well-timed sea breeze ruffling his unbuttoned short sleeve shirt so that she could see the definition of his perfect abs under his undershirt. They’d maintain eye contact as he walked past the bar, until he collided with a bell-hop pushing a luggage cart, and after he apologetically helped to put the bags back on the cart, he’d look back at her with a charmingly crooked smile — “oops” — and then a longer more loaded stare until his attention was finally claimed by the man at the reception desk. He’d disappear up the elevators, and she’d reconcile herself to the idea that she would never see him again, except, oh my, at dinner that evening, as she sat alone at a table for two, having her glass of red wine, she’d hear, “Excuse me, but can I join you?” He’d sit across from her, look deeply into her eyes, and tell her that she was stunning, which of course, she would be with her perfectly tanned skin awash in the soft candlelight of the dinner hour.
She blinked and slurped the last of the mojito from the bottom of the glass, bits of mint leaves and lime coming up through the straw. Not one handsome stranger alighted from any car, black or otherwise, so there would be no surprise romantic dinner; she’d dine alone like she had the night before. Meanwhile, all of the activity of the hotel lobby continued to move around her as though she was in an invisible forcefield of solitude and self-sufficiency, caught between her feelings of loneliness and pride.
A group of women travelling together came and sat on the stools next to hers, radiant, all different, but somehow a matching set, their laughter and chatter buoyant in echoing space of the lobby. She knew both the sound and the feeling of that group of women, and both missed and didn’t miss it at the same time.
One wall of the hotel’s lobby wasn’t a wall at all, but a latticed structure dividing the hotel’s interior from the pool deck and beach outside. From her vantage point, she could see the sea, silver-glazed in the late-afternoon sun, and she thought of those funny birds again, balancing on one skinny leg, but together, in the surf. She slid from her barstool and for just a moment, she tried surreptitiously balancing on one leg, and then the other. She knew that she looked nowhere near as casual and as restful as the seabirds, but maybe just as silly. Perhaps it was easier by the water’s edge. She leaned against the bar. Perhaps it was easier when you knew something was holding you up.
About this picture: I traveled by myself to Chincoteague during Spring Break of 2021. The world was still locked down to a large extent, but also beginning to emerge from the quarantine in to a new version of normalcy. I spent most of my days in the national park where I saw the famous wild ponies, and, as I sat — fully clothed — on the beach huddled against the crisp early-Spring wind, these birds also huddled together, at times balancing on one leg, at other times, running together from the advancing surf.
Pictures Worth a Thousand Words 