time is the longest distance between two places.
—Tennessee Williams
So here I am in Florida on a romantic moonlit pier without Callie. Seems about right.
Admittedly, I’m a melancholic, naturally drawn to sad things, and the fetishism of being alone in a romantic place is too masochistic for me to resist—the trip will add another beautiful pain to my treasury of disappointments and losses.
Poor me, I grin cynically, and plod up the sandy bank toward the deserted ballroom.
If Callie had one romantic bone in her body, I’d dance her around that deserted ballroom—it’d be magical on such a night as this.
I stop and stare up at the yellow lamp of the Moon, hazy and lighting the gray dome of the sky.
Moonlight Pier—haunted by ghosts of lovers long dead. It’s depressingly beautiful.
It’s eerie walking several hundred feet out into the gulf, perched on a dubious causeway of wood that could suddenly give out beneath my feet—as if I cared. I don’t—not really.
Life hasn’t turned out the way I planned.
I didn’t expect to hit my mid thirties solitary—but here I am, a modern day Marlboro Man, ponying through the dark night in my Mustang Shelby.
Lucky me, I berate myself, fated to be alone in paradise, because I backed the wrong horse again.
I walk to the end of the pier and stand before the doors of the dilapidated barn that was once a glittering palace of Swing, before the dust of the Thirties blew away its bright hopes and a mushroom cloud removed all doubt the innocence was gone.
I’m feeling so morose I can barely stand listening to my own thoughts.
I try the brass handle expecting the door to be locked, but surprisingly, it’s not, and I creak open a world I thought forever lost.
The interior of the cavernous barn is silvered with moonlight as if stardust rained down here for decades.
I walk to the center of what was once an enormous dance floor and breathlessly stare out at the silvery track of Moon on the waves.
This is incredible—it’s a feeling akin to discovering a clock still ticking in a long deserted room.
As I stand in the filtered light of stars and moonbeams, I hear in the distance the strains of a familiar song. It takes a moment before I recognize it—it’s Glenn Miller’s band playing Moonlight Serenade.
“Beau—Beau Boudreau—is that you?”
A woman’s voice startles me out of my reverie—it echoes hollowly amplified by emptiness and the whispered soughing of waves.
I spin around to where the voice came and see a young girl in a white dress standing beside the raised platform of the stage.
A ghost?
Seems appropriate in this haunted palace of memories—and typical of my life to be tormented by visions of things beyond my grasp.