Heaven is Here

Buck and I spent most of the day in our separate spaces, writing. His novel’s characters are taking over the house! I swear, they are talking and getting a little pushy. It’s hilarious to hear Buck talk about them talking to them. “Casey doesn’t want to be written out. He’s not ready to go. And he’s made a pretty good argument for why he should stay in the plot for awhile. . .”

Mine are getting passive aggressive. They closed my study door with a firm, sulky click when Casey tried to come in and enlist them in his campaign to stay in Buck’s book. Sheesh.

It’s great. Our electronic cottage is humming. But sometimes, we have to leave these characters alone to fight it out amongst themselves.

Mid-afternoon, we put down our pens, packed up Maggie, and headed to the Sugar Shack. We stopped by Sonny’s BBQ drive-through window on the way for smoked chicken and potato salad.

I wore shorts and a sleeveless top, which was perfect as long as the sun was still high, but almost too cool as the sun ball fell into the bay. Not complaining. I’ll remember this fabulous almost cool evening when the inevitable all-night heat of mid-August arrives.

There’s nothing like a dock, a sunset, a smoked chicken, a lovin’ man and a sweet as sugar dog.  We watched big pelicans fly in and splash down, mallard ducks swim slow figure eights, and mullet jump.

Even the father teaching his daughter how to drive a jet ski didn’t shatter the late afternoon peace. They were having so much fun, the teenage girl’s laughter was infectious. Maggie was hysterical. Every time the jet ski would come by, she would stand at the edge of the dock, tail up and wagging, and bounce up and down barking and making a growly gurgly sound — the same one she makes when grandkids do cannonballs in the pool.

The jet ski went back to the dock a mile away, and the surface of the water turned opaque and glassy, like meringue that reaches a certain sugar thick glossy stage that signals readiness. We sat close together, holding hands, silent as the sun widened into a large pat of melting butter, and long streaky light in the bay connected the sun to us. That temporal moment sitting on a dock in coastal Florida felt like eternity, an eternity I would choose over streets of gold or pearl gates any day. Any day.

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