87...

"Hey there," Frank said with a mirth touched slur. He put a cigarette to his mouth and inhaled as if his very life depended on the smoke getting where it needed to go.
"Hi," Alexis answered back. She tried her best not to smile, trying to adhere to a blank poker face on coming into the first contact with this guy. But she couldn't help it, there was something about the blurry eyed swagger that made her want to count him in a conspirator, something to the sideways smile that spoke of a home of some sort. "You look like you're up to something."
"I am," he said with dry giggle.
"And what are you up to outside of my boyfriend's place?"
Frank pointed with the glowing end of his smoke towards the window beside him, glowing blue with the flicker of a television. His eyes widened comically and questioningly.
"Larry?"
"Lou."
"Right. Well," he began, and then swayed hard enough to set his feet into a shuffling dance step. He righted himself, slapped his cigarette hand on the concrete step just above his head, and took a swig of the concoction in his plastic cup. "I belong to one of the ladies upstairs."
"Not Rachel?"
"I wish," he sad with an exaggerated eye roll. "Mary."
"Oh, she's..."
"A pain?”
“I was going to say nice, actually.”
“You are the one being nice." He took another deep drag, followed quickly by another swig of his drink.
Alexis laughed quietly and he gave her a questioning look.
"It still doesn't really explain what you're doing here underneath the stairs."
"No," he pointed at her with his cigarette. "You're right, absolutely right."
He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, closed his eyes and let out the breath slowly.
"I'm not supposed to be doing this," he said in a stage whisper, waving the cigarette in front of her face.
“And she can’t see you down here?”
“She’s…” He waved his hand distractedly as if that explained what she was and then took another large swallow from the plastic cup.
“She’s what?” Alexis asked with another quiet laugh.
“She’s passed out. So I came down here, to have quick smoke and make a decision.”
“A decision about what?”
“About whether or not I finish this smoke, chug this cocktail, go quietly back upstairs and wash my hands and my face, brush my teeth real good and then slip unnoticed into Mary’s pastel colored bed.”
Alexis waited for a moment. “Or?”
“Or I say screw that routine and walk the mile and a half home.”
Alexis put her arms behind her and leaned against the staircase that would carry him up to Mary. Frank leaned towards her like a conspirator.
“I’m leaning towards the latter,” he said in a whisper.

86...

Watching the movements of the waves, or more specifically, watching the white foam of brine catch the moon and ambient light as the mad swell of water crested could hypnotize a person. It was possible to drown in that water hundreds of yards from where it met the sand.
Alexis let it happen. If she let those waves overtake her, it would drown out the voices fighting for her attention; voices all full of snarls and sharp edges, voices that refused to let her forget. She cast her mind out onto the blackness, the extent of which made her feel a little dizzy, a little nauseous. She watched white crests birthed from out a seemingly seamless force, curling out and so full of immediate purpose. She saw these as ghostly white fingers, strumming an epic guitar in a heady lullaby. The fingers stretched, webbed out, and after a held breath moment on an edge, crashed to the brutal sand and chased further dreams, someone else’s dreams, until they were fully spent.
Occasionally, Alexis would shake off the tender, self imposed webs to steal a quick glance up and down the beach, a surreptitious look around the parking lot to see if she was in the clear. But all too quickly the seething anger within her would come calling and she fought her way back out through the surf.
She would actually hold her breath as she considered the feeling of falling down below the surging shelf of water, out where it undulated secretly without tell tale sparks of foam to direct the eye on where it all was going. She imagined it crushing around her, going from the comfort of a blanket to something tighter and more primal, but somehow so, so similar to that swaddling blanket. She imagined the continental shelf sliding below her pale, bare feet, falling and falling until it gave up any preconceived notions and simply fell away into an unimaginable abyss.
Her body would sometimes overtake her willful mind and force her to breath. This broke her reverie momentarily, but now instead of a chorus of demons awaiting her return, she would catch a glimpse of Frank's smiling face.
A couple came stumbling up into the parking lot from the beach. The guy had a tartan blanket slung haphazardly over his arm and he was stumbling violently. The young woman did her best to stabilize him, and would flash a patronizing smile when he spoke in what was undoubtedly one big slur, but when she looked up towards the car they were heading towards she had that look of tight lipped anger that could quickly shift to rage. After a few minutes of comic pushing and cajoling, the young women got the guy in the passenger seat of the car and slammed the door. She stormed around to the driver's side, got in and got the car out of there. That left three cars in the parking lot.
Alexis could see two bonfires down on the sand, both a pretty good distance from the parking lot. She would wait a little while longer. She rolled down the window and took a closed eyed moment to fully breathe the salt air. She lit up a cigarette and sent her mind back out to the waves. But try as she might, she could not escape the memory of Frank's smile; that drunken, shyly cocky smile he had on the night she had met him.
He had been standing beneath the stairs in front of Lou’s apartment, the stairs that led up to Mary’s place. He had been swaying slightly as if to a song from within him, a large plastic cup filled with God knows what in his hand, and that non-hesitating and open smile when he noticed her come walking out of the darkness.