SEA CHANGE

Remi stands barefoot in his motel room and stares out into the nighttime world. His breath matches the rhythm of the surf as it finds its way to the shore, where shards of glass glow in the moonlight. Sand lifts up from the carpet and grits against the creases between his toes. The salt-scented breeze from the window calms him. This is the beginning, and he knows what he must do. On the bed the pistol he bought out of the trunk of a Lincoln lays waiting. With his eyes closed, his mind sways with the movement of the sea. When they open he can only think of tourists and baby names. The peace leaves him.

On the nightstand he lifts the phone’s receiver to his ear and allows its drone to lull his thoughts. When she finds her way into his room a ghost, he pushes her memory away and decides to go back to work. The envelopes are waiting.

By the nightstand he switches on the conk shell lamp which sits next to ring box he’s carried around so long its velvet has worn ragged. Restraining orders have fallen behind the nightstand. If he could explain himself he would tell you that this isn’t how it started. He’d tell you that you’ve caught him at a bad time— in between. The envelopes full of songs are waiting by his keyboard. The ocean has a heart too. He would explain that it started with her, that he can’t catch up.

Remi rests himself onto the bed, his fingers find the keys, and again he loses himself.

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The Sanyo keyboard on his lap runs on D batteries, and is covered with Christmas stickers. Remi wrote his name on the back of it with a silver marker when he received it as a child. The keyboard was the first Christmas present he ever played with more than two weeks, and he hadn’t found a way to let go of it after all these years. When it was new it came with a pop rock songbook coded for stickers which he carefully glued on to each key, just the way the diagram in the instruction book illustrated. In his motel room he presses down the B, C, and D in rhythm, playing from page one of the songbook which is in tatters. The electronic notes of “I Just Called to Say I Love You” break the silence, and the telephone’s receiver remains off the hook.

The stickers on the keys are impossible to read now as they are rubbed out and grimy. Some are missing altogether and most look the way dried up spit wads look under high school desks. Remi knows where the missing ones belong, and the first bars come easy. He doesn’t forget things he loves.
The bed sheet gathered at his feet is covered with lyrics that don’t go anywhere. One line meets another like a stranger on the page. The mother voice in Remi’s head sings, “Tina is a special name for a special girl like you. Tina is a sunny day that won’t let your heart be blue.”

Then the mother voice in his head falls away, the lullaby dying. The mother voice is a focusing technique he was trained to use to write the songs required of him, but for weeks it has felt cheap and silly. He pushes the keyboard off his lap and listens to the dial tone drone on. He understands this will be the last song he will ever write.

To start over he puts the receiver back on the telephone, and moves his tape recorder onto the bed. The spools of tape rewind until a light turns green and the microphone button flashes. The tape recorder is waiting for him to make a move.

  Remi’s uncle owns this motel, and he allows him to stay in this room to work after the tourist season ends. His uncle considers it a charitable sponsorship of His uncle considers it a charitable sponsorship of the arts and writes the expense off his tax returns. Remi has told his uncle that he is composing a symphony, and his uncle likes the idea as much as Remi does. It doesn’t matter what the truth is, the idea of a symphony is easier to sell people on. It has the glamour that freelance children’s songwriting lacks. Remi doesn’t believe symphonies exist anymore. His Sanyo keyboard is sleeping.

Last autumn Remi took a songwriting job he found advertised in the back of a local free newspaper, and was issued a list of two-hundred common children’s names. It sounded easy enough to him. All that was required of him was that he match each name on the list with an original three-minute-long song appropriate for children. He was to write songs about how wonderful Johnny was, and what a pretty girl Ellie is. The company warned him about complicated arrangements and words too big for children to understand. They only wanted sing-song happy tunes for vacationing parents to buy. For the last year Remi has written songs dripping with sunshine and puppies, and forwarded them to a corporate office. The checks make him forget the time he has lost, so he continues.

“Tina” is spelled out in big black letters on the cover of a notebook which rests on his pillow. He has saved her for last because she is always there at the end.

The company Remi works for owns factories in Mexico where hundreds of children the same age as its consumers glue plastic mermaids to fiberglass sea shells all day long. They own screen-printing operations in Guam that work around the clock stamping out T-shirts that read, “Sun Your Buns in Daytona” or “One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor.” The company has cornered the market on tourist trap impulse product, including the songs Remi writes which they refer to as “personalized musical mementoes.”

Everything in the room suddenly seems out of order, and Remi stretches his arms to the ceiling to remind himself that he is not the sea or the phone. He notes the chaos around him to cement himself: his toy keyboard, a professional keyboard covered with plastic, the notebook, the envelopes, and the outdated tape recorder in its suitcase. Above his bed he takes in a vision of his uncle’s ex-wife leaning against a palm tree before their divorce, and he wonders if his uncle is aware that she is still here. His arms fall to his sides as he steps over a pile of love letters that belong in the trash.

In the bathroom sink books pile up. One soggy cover promises to name your child by his or her star sign. On the back of the toilet, books covering tribal names, soap opera names, and Celtic names keep each other company.
Remi walks toward the window and sees that in the light of his conk shell lamp the entire world is just a bare reflection of himself. The window watches him turn his back.

Not everything in the room has to do with work. Remi has turned the place into a junkyard filled with the scraps of his life. There are sweatshirts he can’t throw away in the dresser and programs from piano recitals in the medicine cabinet. He puts yellowed love letters back in a shoebox, tying them with a hair ribbon which is now only threads. The gun he slides away in a drawer.

Months ago the world was brighter. His songs were coming along as fast as plastic mermaids on an assembly line. Some nights he would write as many as ten before walking to a FedEx box to have them spirited away in the bellies of overnight planes toward strangers. That time, when the melody didn’t matter, has been almost erased from his thoughts.

Remi pulls a shirt over his head in the hallway and walks toward the stairwell, by empty rooms which hold only the silhouettes of beds and the scent of Lysol. His hands press against his stomach, and he gathers that something inside himself is slowly unwinding. He moves down the stairs with the echoes of his bare feet following him.

The motel is abandoned this time of year. Two cars have been stranded in the parking lot outside. Brown shoots of grass on the lawn haven’t been cut since October, and the neon sign which reads “Sea Queen Motor Inn II,” remains unlit. There is no one to welcome. No visitors to impress. In February the tourists are still huddled up in Ohio or Minnesota, or wherever else they migrate from. Remi feels as if at this moment he is the last man on earth. He is reminded that he is not so important in the world. It is a moment past music.
When he reaches the lobby, Remi feels fever paint his brow. His legs give a little as he imagines himself walking on the surface of the moon…... The sad facts of his life begin to add up in his head. Music majors get silly jobs. They serve accountants lunch at chain restaurants, or get filed away to write jingles for breakfast cereals and Chevrolets.

Powder blue light from a television set greets him in the lobby. The weather report of tropical storms plays silent and doesn’t notice him. His uncle refuses to hire a clerk when there are no guests, and Remi searches through the keys unnoticed. He finds what he is looking for. He locks the front door as he leaves, as he has every night since September, and thinks about the ring waiting for him in the room. After Tina’s song he can disappear. The ring is just another worthless souvenir.

Outside the winds carry the scent of dried leaves as the breeze finds its way between empty hotel towers. South Carolina winters are like that. Remi sits on a wooden bridge and feels the cool rush of air tug at his sleeve. These are the winds that foreshadow winter’s arrival when summer dies. They blow cool with remembrance. At the beach these winds blow all winter long. They follow the past and blow ever onward to the people who stay away when the sun is gone. Sitting on the bridge, Remi knows that at this moment in time no one can touch him. The big bright light of a reborn world remains in the distance.

Remi moves from the bridge when the wind dies away, and walks through the sand until he reaches the sidewalk of Ocean Boulevard. Beyond him in the darkness the sea moves black and blank past the rocks. He understands that it waits for him, and pictures its future as he pauses to rest.

The sea will take lives when the sun and tourists return in the summer, but not because of villainous sharks and riptides. Tourists sleeping on floating rafts will be pulled out to sea by the waves, the shore will disappear and they will be lost forever because they didn’t open their eyes in time. Disappearing on the waves these unlucky few will scream when they realize they have lost themselves. For a moment it seems too much to bare, the starkness of the inevitable, but he straightens himself and continues down the bleached sidewalk.

Along the boulevard, block after block of closed hotels and motor inns sit locked in the geometry of empty swimming pools and parking lots. Next to them are the storefronts where Remi’s songs will be sold to vacationers. They will buy them while old women twist their little girls’ hair into stringy rows of braids. Later they will abandon them in the closets of guest rooms or in boxes buried in garages.

Down the boulevard, Sam’s Diner is open twenty-four hours. It is the kind of place no one plans to go to, they just end up there. Inside the diner one long linoleum countertop runs the length of the restaurant separating the paying customers from line cooks with criminal records. At the counter every level of society eats shrimp burgers and fried clams shoulder to shoulder.

As Remi sits on a cracked leather stool a melody moves down his arms toward his fingers. He orders a coffee and nervously pours one sugar packet after another into it until it tastes like a brackish malt. The coffee listens to the song his fingers tap out on the counter, and he can’t bear to drink it.

Tina’s song has to be special, not another fluffy singsong piece like he has written in the past. The words to “The Sun Doesn’t Shine Without Austin,” and “Bedtime for Bethany” return, and their memory brings only shame. He struggles to forget the shallowness of his art as his fingers continue to tap the countertop, as off-beat and awkward as first love. When he can, he leaves.
Walking back toward the motor inn, he accepts the fact that the rest of his family is smarter than he is. No other member of his family ever bothered to learn an instrument or sing outside of a church choir. They have ordinary jobs. They work in education, engineering, or defense contracting. Some, like his uncle, own businesses successful enough to take for granted. His family members have 401ks and fantasy football teams. He knows that at different times they are the same as the people who come to the beach to forget about their old lives and get sunburned in lazy rivers or walk through outlet malls. The other members of his family can tell anyone on the street what they do for a living in five words or less. They can let go.

When people ask Remi what he does for a living his face contorts as he begins to explain.

“Have you ever seen those kiosks at the beach that sell sunglasses and postcards?” He will ask the interested party, and they will nod.

“Have you ever seen the ones where you can buy an album with your child’s name in a song?” They frown or look back dully, shaking their heads from side to side.

“That’s what I do. I write the songs.” The people will laugh in amazement, or simply smile politely. Then they leave him feeling nakedly frustrated and ridiculous.

To compensate for this, Remi has begun to make up stories when the questions come. The cashier with the scars on her face at Sam’s believes he was fired from Broadway for drinking too much. She has invited him to AA meetings and offered to say a prayer with him on more than one occasion. His uncle believes he will be the next Mozart, though he has no idea who Mozart is other than a name, and his parents believe he is getting better now that he lives where the air is fresh. It is easier to like the person they see in him. Curious parties never want to know more about what he does for a living, so they never learn the truly worst part of all. When you write songs for names, not people, you have to write happy tunes for names that hurt.

When people name their child they face two dilemmas. First, most of the names they like are taken. They belong to cousins, celebrity babies, some coworker’s newborn or the kid down the street. The second problem is that a lot of names have already become stained by their past lives. You can’t name your child Jason if some kid named Jason picked on you in grade school. Names are little scars, and everyone has some name souring in the back of their psyche. Tina is Remi’s scar. First loves always have the worst names.

Wandering from the sidewalk and up a flight of oak stairs toward the fishing pier, Remi thinks about Tina. Not the Tina from his past, but the name itself— joined syllables in the air. Tina is one of those names, trailer park like Crystal or even worse Krystal with a K. Tina is a bad blonde dye job with creeping roots. It’s almost as terrible to Remi’s ear as when he says Candy, or any name when the middle name is Jo, Jean or Lynn. If he could explain himself he would let you know that he doesn’t believe all Tinas in the world are ruined, but he does believe the ratio is skewed toward the negative in general. He keeps hope alive.

But for now there is only the name creaking from the boards under his feet. The sound of it scratches the inside of his ear canals leaving tiny claw marks on his anvil, his horseshoe, the drum of his inner ear next to his mind. Staring through the boards at his feet, he can see the ocean beating beneath him. Silver sharks dart through the waves searching for spare bait. Sand crabs carry shiny chewing gun wrappers down beneath the water to places only they can go. They are biding their time.

Following the concrete path back to the motor inn, the weight of galaxies presses down on Remi from above and hums. The motion of stars encourages him to run for cover. He races toward an ending.

In his room a book covering classical Greek names falls from the bed. Remi pulls the notebook to him and finds only ill-fated beginnings without end. Things are how they should be. With an ink pen in hand he struggles to focus. “Tina is a special name/ For a special girl like you/ Tina is a sunny day/ That won’t let your heart be blue.”

The lyrics lie, and welts of Indian ink cover the words in black tornadoes before the inspiration leaves him. At the window he searches the void sky for peace, but finds only the story he can’t forgive playing in the night.

Through his window he can remember each note of failed romance. Two students in love. Mistakes. How scared they were. The trip to a clinic that turned her eyes to empty pools, and later when she lost the words for him. Each of these memories is an awkward echo which has followed him to this moment. Her hands had covered a ring that promised a new world; one already lost. He was young and he believed her. He could forgive her leaving with another, years ago marching toward this moment, and all his nights alone. Behind the sky he can see the moment he first mourned the half of himself she killed inside her. He can grieve the fact that it never was given a name or a place in this world.

As he turns to the phone, he knows that she is happy. She can let go.
From underneath the bed Remi pulls love letters stained with perfume and affection. Underneath the letters she wrote so long ago lie his responses still sealed and unsent. After she fell from his life, she told him that she loved him with a part of herself that he couldn’t love back, so he wrote her letters she could never read. It was an answer for then, but he couldn’t stop. He is certain that he has spent too many years writing things she will never hear.
Her most recent phone number is on the nightstand. She has become harder for him to reach, but regardless of what the courts say, this night is for her. Remi wants her to understand because it is his only hope. He wants you to watch him make it through.

The pages of Remi’s notebook are running out, and failure litters the floor. “Tina is a special name/ For a special girl like you.” Some day this song will be wrapped in cellophane on a rack next to someone airbrushing hearts onto a license plate. His eyes are open. The words in front of him don’t matter anymore than a pink plastic mermaid. Three months from now all his efforts will have all the significance of a shark tooth necklace. “Tina is the terrible name/ That’s been given to you/ Tina was the heartless bitch/ Who broke my heart in two.” The mother voice inside him is dead. “Tina was an evil girl/ Who laughed when I cried/ Tina won’t return my calls/ She always loved in lies.” The green light from the tape recorder flashes. The wheels turn the tape slowly to devour each word.

Remi seals the master tape in an envelope and stacks it with the others. As he walks down the hall his fever returns to steal his gravity. Tomorrow morning this song will fly away with all the others. Inside his chest there is new slack, and his ears ring like feedback from a busted transistor.

  Lying on the beach, Remi thinks about what is ahead of him while the sun is off warming the rest of the world. He looks above him and sees the grand connections of everything in existence. One thing leads to another. Hands touch hands. Some let go. Some don’t. He returns to his room to finish.
Love letters cover the bed like rose petals as the gun waits for him next to the phone. With the window open, Remi breathes in the rolling black endless outside his room. The television across from the bed scatters loud static into his world like a mantra. This is the sound of the undertow, and the song covers him.

Each letter is read again and torn in two. Remi reads so he can forget. It is a moment past music spinning forth the crescendo. Remi cocks the hammer of the pistol back as he dials the phone. His ears are on the crashing of the sea breaking in static and hum. The toy keyboard waits in his lap.
“Hello,” she says after a moment, half-asleep.

Remi wraps the phone cord around his arm and says, “Tina. This is for you.” It ends like this as Remi swims back to the shore, his fingers on the keyboard.

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The gun fires a big bright light into the telephone, shattering the plastic receiver. Fumes of gunpowder flood back into the room as Remi staggers back and rips the cord from the wall before collapsing onto the floor. It is the last she will hear of him. The gun falls from his hand and he is free for the first time. Now she has something to think about when time rolls slow, and her own questions that won’t be answered.

When he can collect himself, Remi walks to a construction dumpster to shed the memories. Love letters fall onto drywall dust, the gun vanishes between scraps of wood. The ring he keeps to let go later. It is time for him to make his move.

Wading into the surf, Remi feels his feet bury and unbury themselves in the sand. He can feel the sea change, the winds turning back the tide as it comes to greet him. The ring flies from his hand against the field of stars above until it meets the waters. He swims out to sea as sand crabs skitter out from the foam to drag the ring down into places only they can reach—silent places under the rhythm of the sea.

The waves crash against Remi as he returns to the motel reborn. He wants you to know this is the beginning.

Mike Hampton grew up in Eastern Kentucky and earned his M.F.A. in
Writing from Spalding University. His work has previously appeared in
publications such as 3am Magazine, The Southeast Review, and
McSweeney's. He currently lives in Cincinnati where he writes at night
in a basement packed with Christmas decorations, pop culture
postcards, and dime novels he has every intention of reading at some
point.