​A Bloody Mary at the River’s Edge, by Lois Anne DeLong

Despair, by Edvard Munch (Norway) 1892

​A Bloody Mary at the River’s Edge

A Bloody Mary, heavy on the pepper. To Marianna’s eyes, the sky tonight was an exact match for the many Bloody Marys she had downed two years ago in that tiny hole in the wall cafe in Key West called the Golden Sunset. Despite repeated visits to the Sunset while enjoying her last proper vacation in that bastion of individuality and freak flag flying. she never quite figured out just what ingredient had lent the drink that smoky orange colour. Only recently did she notice the hue resembled nothing so much as the stitched NY logo on the Mets cap she wore everywhere these days. Very few people in this part of the country would don such a hat. Indeed, even in New York City it was only true fans of the team that ever dared to wear one. That total lack of ubiquity was exactly why Marianna chose to wear it now.
 
Coming here from New York City, a place where a collective self-absorption granted everyone the freedom to be themselves, it was difficult getting used to the prying eyes of her new neighbours. The stares were as difficult to swallow as what passed for pizza here. Given their obvious interest in the new broad in town–their words, not hers, overheard on her last trip to the supermarket–she enjoyed giving them something to talk about. For now, being the local oddball amused her. It made the waiting time till she could return to bakery bagels, real pizza, and Major League Baseball tolerable.
 
Unfortunately, that return wouldn't be anytime soon. Since she had left the security of a high-five figure income to commit herself to writing full-time, she found herself dealing with a major case of writer’s block and a rapidly dwindling bank account. When her sister invited her to take up residence in the refurbished carriage house on her property in Pennsylvania, her argument was that Marianna was stifling under “that little urban bubble you call home.” Well, so far the change of scenery hadn’t done much for her writer’s block, but at least it was costing her much less money to be unproductive. Still, she questioned if she should have factored in more than just the existence of family when picking her altered scenery. Too small for suburbia, yet not isolated enough to be rural, her current location was a place where she felt unable to get any traction with anyone or anything.
 
The one saving grace of her new location was the river. It was just a short walk down from her sister’s property to the small river inlet where she now sat. A low wall nestled on its banks, about 10 feet from the water’s edge. Marianna was frankly puzzled by the wall’s height. It was much too low to defend against the rising levels that followed a few hard rains each spring. You would think this indisputable fact would provoke the town to build a higher wall. But, instead, those putting up structures in this part of town had established and maintained a tradition of giving the river banks a wide berth. A broad swath of land was left to nothing but the frogs and the birds. Well, the frogs, the birds and the bees, maybe. Though she had never checked it out for herself, Marianna assumed “the bank,” as townies called it, also served as the make-out spot for those with nowhere else to indulge such passions. Every smallish town needed one of those, a spot out of the way of all those prying eyes.
 
Meanwhile, in the daylight hours, her time along the river had taught Marianna a few lessons in patience. The ways of rivers were a mystery to her. Marianna had been an ocean girl all her life, much more used to the pounding waves and rocky shores of Rockaway Beach, Montauk, and the Keys than the slow wandering pace of a river. Yet, she was learning that if she could just sit quietly on that low wall, the meandering journey of the water lent itself to contemplation and a sense of something like peace.
 
And, occasionally, Mother Nature might just throw in a sunset like this one, a smear of fiery orange cutting through a base of slowly darkening blue. For just a moment, the breeze seemed to take on the salty taste of the Atlantic so far away. She wondered if the only bar in town could make one of those mystifying Bloody Marys. Given enough time and patience, maybe that secret could finally be resolved.
​
Lois Anne DeLong

Lois Anne DeLong is in New York City. She is a semi-retired freelance writer-editor who is finally following her heart as a creative writer.