Ava,

Your last letter in that packet has me worried. I know you didn’t want me to email back, but I had to, after reading those letters. I miss you. I’m in Port Elizabeth and everything is a mess. The weather is not cooperating and Jonny is AWOL, and Marta and I, well…you’ll understand when you read the letters I’ve written you. But now, after that poem you wrote, or proem, or whatever you want to call it…I hate this.

I really hate this.

Please email back.

Always yours, even now,

Chris.

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

Amstpierre@hmail.com

Technical details of permanent failure:

The server tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

* * *

“The phone number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please try your call again later.”

* * *

It’s four in the morning, and I’m unable to sleep. She’s deleted her email address. Shut down her cell phone. I’m not sure what to do. I’m horribly worried for her. She’s never had the best relationship with her parents and rarely sees them even though they only live a few hours away in St. Pete. She has an older sister whom she was close to growing up and still corresponds with her regularly, but Delta lives in Chicago and is a single mom, so it’s unlikely she’d be able to visit Ava in Ft. Lauderdale.

If anyone could be there for Ava, though, it’d be Delta.

I call Delta, but she doesn’t answer. I leave a voicemail, but I expect nothing back from her; I’ve never been Delta’s favorite person, for reasons I’ve never totally understood.

I’m terrified for Ava. The poem, I mean…damn. That was intense. She used to write poetry a lot back in the day, but not as much as of late.

What do I do? Ava has always been unpredictable…at least, she used to be. Now I’m not sure I know who she is anymore. The Ava I knew loved to eat, and always took her nutrition pretty seriously. Not eating at all? That’s not like her. But then, neither was getting day drunk, but that became a constant reality.

Henry’s death shattered us both. Altered us totally. I’m not the same man I was. I haven’t reverted to the person I was before Ava and success found me, but neither am I the man I was before Henry’s illness and death.

What do I do? What do I do? Abandon the journey and return? Find Ava and fix things, if they can be fixed?

I hear noise, footsteps, muttering in Spanish. I’m in the saloon, sipping tea when he stumbles in. His shirt is ripped, his eye is turning black and blue, his lip is split, and his knuckles are a mess, and he’s three sheets to the wind.

“The hell happened to you, Jonny?”

“Bar brawl, amigo. You should see those pendejos, though. Thought they could take Jonny Núñez. No gringo pendejos can take me. Not even four of ’em.”

“You all right?”

“I’m good, man. I’m good.” He grabs a pair of beers from the fridge, twists the caps off, and hands me one. “What you doin’ up at four in the morning?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Well, no shit. You’re awake, therefore you can’t sleep. Why, though?”

“Ava. She closed out her cell account and deleted her email address. Even her blog is down. Just a pinned post saying she was taking an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons. Sent me a bunch of letters all together. Lots of intense stuff.”

“So you’re worried about her?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“So?”

I frown at him. “What do you mean, so?”

“So what’s the problem? You love her, you’re worried about her, you go back. Jump on a flight back to the States and check on her. I can watch the Hemingway for a few days.”

“If I go to her, I’m not sure I’d be coming back, Jonny.”

He rests his elbows on his knees and hangs his head, nodding. “Ah. I see.” He glances at me. “Do what you gotta do, man. I’ll be all right no matter what.”

“Will you, though? I feel like I’m a bad friend. Seems like you got shit going on of your own, but I’ve been too occupied with my drama to ask you about it.”

Jonny waves a hand dismissively. “Nah. I get like this every once in a while. Got no home, no family, no roots. I live my life on the sea, always have and always will. But sometimes I just get…homesick for a home I won’t ever have. Not a big deal. Get drunk, fight some bitches, fuck some bitches, and get back out to my one true love: el mar…el mar hermoso.”

I have the fireproof, waterproof safety box full of my letters to Ava. “You’re gonna call me crazy, but…will you make me a promise?”

He eyes me silently for a moment. “Anything it’s within my power to do, it’s yours, mi hermano.”

I hand him the box. “If anything happens, give these to Ava.”

“Chris, amigo—what do you think is gonna happen?”

“You know what the sea is like even more than I do, Jonny.”

Jonny hangs his head again, nodding sloppily. “Sí, this is true. She is a capricious mistress, as they say.” He takes the box from me, and the key that opens it. “What’s it, then?”

“Letters.” He glances quizzically at me, and I tap a thick envelope on the table near my hand. “Those are the originals. I’ve got backups with me. I’m planning to bring them to her myself. I know I’ve got to go back, but I’m just…part of me doesn’t want to. I just got back out here, and I’m worried if I go back to Ava, I’ll never get back out onto the sea again. But…” I sigh. “I know I have to go see her. I have to try to fix things. I can’t just run away from it all. I needed time to heal, and I think I’m as healed as I’m ever going to get. At least…until I’ve either repaired my marriage with Ava or gotten closure from it.”

“So we sail back to Florida.”

I nod. “Yeah, sorry.”

Jonny waves me off again. “Eh, no sorry needed. I’ve been east before, nothing out there I haven’t seen. I’m with you to the end, Chris, no matter what. You know that.”

I drain my beer, reach out a hand, and he claps palms with me, which turns into a standing hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jonny.”

“Get lost and be lonely.”

I laugh, slapping him on the back. “There might be some truth to that.”

He guffaws, pulling out three more beers. “Where’s Marta? Get her ass up, we need to do a toast to rounding the Horn again.”

I let out a breath. “Um, Marta’s gone, actually.”

“Gone? Gone where?” he asks, popping open two of them.

I shrug. “Not sure. Another berth.”

“Wait, like off the ship and gone, gone?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“What happened?” He eyes me, putting away the third bottle. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

He wipes his brow with a dramatic flair. “Whew. Thank god. I was gonna have to kick your ass.”

“I almost did, though.”

“Fuck, amigo. You told me that wasn’t a problem.”

“It wasn’t. Until it was. Valentine’s Day, I was drunk and lonely and melancholy, and so was she, and then she kissed me and things got out of hand. I couldn’t go through with it, though. I was sober enough to know what I was doing, drunk enough to not care in the moment. Figured things were over with Ava, might as well feel good for a minute, right? Wrong. I was this close to having sex with her, and I realized I just…couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“She wasn’t Ava.” I shrug.

Jonny just eyes me. “She wasn’t Ava? That’s it? I don’t get that, man.”

“She didn’t…feel the same. Didn’t kiss the same, didn’t touch me the same, didn’t…she wasn’t Ava. I wanted to be able to have sex with her, because it’d have made it easier to stay out here. I think I knew even then, deep down, that I was going to end up going back, and I didn’t want to. I really don’t. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to suck. I’m going to have to face myself, and my emotions, and hers, and everything. Going back means giving up sailing, for the most part, unless she’s changed enough to want to try again, which I doubt. But Marta, man. She was gorgeous, and cool, and a great sailor. We could have been good together. But I couldn’t go through with it.”

“So she left?”

“It was…I think it was necessary. For both of us.” I shrug yet again. “I think she had feelings for me, and that would’ve made things impossible. Things were getting awkward and difficult between us, and I also think she realized I was going to go back to Florida and Ava, and she wanted to go her own way, in that case.”

“Glad you controlled your dick, even if it was at the last second.”

“I think it was more a case of my dick controlling me, but in a good way for once.”

Jonny laughs. “I think that may be the first time in history a man’s dick has led him out of trouble ’steada into it.”

“Truth, brother, truth.”

“So.” Jonny holds his bottle up toward me and I clink mine against his. “To rounding the horn twice in a month.”

“We’re crazy, you know that, right?” I ask, laughing.

“Always have been, always will be.” A pause. “When we leave?”

I shrug. “Day after tomorrow, today, whatever you want to call it. Get some sleep, check things over, and leave next dawn.”

“Sounds good. I’m crashin’, then.”

“I’m gonna try to do that myself, again.”

It takes a long time for me to finally fall asleep. Well past dawn. And when I do, I dream of Ava.

Except, in this dream, she’s on the shore, reaching for me. Pleading. I can’t hear her, though. All I hear in the dream is a roaring, rushing wind, and snatches of her voice. In the way of dreams, I’m seeing her clearly, up close and in perfect detail, but she’s somehow far away. As if I’m seeing her through an impossibly powerful telescoping lens. She reaches out, pleading with me. Weeping, begging. But I can’t make out her words. She’s so thin she looks sick, frail. Her black hair is whipped by the wind into her eyes, and sticks to the tears running down her face. She falls to her knees in the sand, and a storm surges around her, hurling sand in stinging curtains, flattening dune grasses, pressing her clothes against her nearly skeletal frame.

Please, Chris, please. Please. Please. Please.

Please what, Ava? What?

I’m coming. Wait for me. I’m coming.

She shakes her head, reaches out across the ocean. I could grasp her hands, but I’m incorporeal, without a body, only a soul in the wind. Her agony, her terror is palpable. She’s desperately trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what.