‘Round Here by Gabriel Ulman
(Inspired by the Song by The Counting Crows)

About six weeks before Maria died I took her out to a northern pier that served as the location for an abandoned amusement park. It was early afternoon when we arrived. We climbed over the fence and waded through a ghost town of old newspapers and trash before coming to a stop in front of the Ferris wheel. The metal rods were rusted, with bits of blue and red splattered across the bars. The seats were painted silver and graffitied over with various tag-names in neon green and pink spray-paint.

“How can someone leave something like this?” She asked me.

“Some kind of inheritance dispute in the courts. Belongs to no one yet.”

“Shouldn’t it be guarded or something?”

“Eight years ago, yeah. But it cost too much. They fenced it off and left it.”

She smiled at me, “so it belongs to us, now.”

I walked up to the bottom car, and began climbing the bars towards the middle. I called after Maria.

“Come on up!”

“You want me to climb it?”

“It’s pretty sturdy.”

“Yeah but Carnies built it, I mean, how safe can it be?”

“That means it’s only easy to put together, it doesn’t take away from its safety. Remember that people had to ride this thing day in and day out.”

“Uh…fine, sounds okay I guess.” She smiled up at me.

The light bronze of her skin gleamed against the warm one o’clock sun. Her dark brown hair fluttered in the wind as she reached from pole to pole. I wanted to get her out in the sun; I thought maybe some fresh air would help settle her mind. Things had been going bad for her lately, and she was losing her grip on reality.

The structure creaked and wailed, but I knew that it had some time left before it broke. We sat down on the center bar, looking over the ocean.

“Isn’t it strange to think,” Maria said, breaking a soft silence, “that we’re sitting in a gigantic wheel?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, I know it’s called a Ferris wheel, but no one ever takes it anywhere but around, y’know?”

“I suppose…”

“Well, I bet that it’s sad.” she said declaratively.

“What’s sad?”

“The Ferris wheel.”

“What? Why?”

“It wants to move. Its entire purpose in the world is compromised.”

“Uh…”

“And I think we should free it.”

“Free it?

“Yeah, unhinge it and let it loose.”

“I’m pretty sure its ‘entire purpose’ is to make small children throw up and give guys an opportunity for a romantic first-kiss.”

“No, Adam,” she responded calmly, “you already had that. Plus, everything wants to keep moving. Things need to be free or they just shrivel up and die.”

“Christ, Maria, it’s just a fucking Ferris wheel.”

She stared coldly into my eyes.

“You don’t understand.”

Resigned to another eccentricity, I turned away from her.

“I guess not.” I conceded, biting my lip.

#

Seven months into our relationship, over a year ago, Maria took me down to the waterline on a date. I had finally caught a break and was working as a columnist for a magazine. She stole me away from my computer and dragged me out to her old car. It was raining, but we drove to the beach anyway.

I remember sitting there in my white linen shirt, blowing gently across my bare chest, watching Maria dance on the shore. She told me that if she got into the rhythm of the world she could almost dance between the droplets of rain. I laughed at her. I tried lighting a cigarette, and she returned the laugh. She pushed my hand away and looked directly into my eyes.

“So, Adam, am I your sweet lil’ baby?” She asked me.

“I guess so,” I answered, kissing her forehead, still laughing.

#

“What compels someone to kill herself? Is it to ease pain? Is it to just simply leave? Is it to have power over something? Classic as they are, I suppose that it’s all of those things. But most of all, it’s an act of love. Remember that, Adam. Everyone loves their self. Suicide is a way of protecting yourself from more suffering.

Can you really mourn someone who is just expressing their love?”

#

My living room window faces outside towards the street. I sit here typing most afternoons, staring off into the gold-singed neighborhood. I’ve read Maria’s letter twenty times over now, and it lingers like a brush fire in my mind. While packing up my laptop, I remember how one month ago, Maria pulled up in her teal blue lemon of a car and parked it perpendicular to the curb in the cul-de-sac.

She was really big into epiphanies as her condition worsened, and so when she climbed out of her car and got close enough, I could see that the browns of her eyes were almost yellow. I knew that she had something to tell me.

She walked up to the window, looked directly above me, and pulled off her shirt. Her stomach and chest were tinted a light copper, with no tan lines. She then took off her jeans, revealing her long, thin legs. At first I couldn’t move, shocked into submission by her strange behavior. She then removed her bra and underwear, and turned around back towards the car. As soon as she had left the window, I quickly snapped back to reality. Ashamed and awkward, I scrambled for the door and ran outside to stop her.

At this point she was climbing on top of her car’s hood. She lied down, her back against the windshield. She threw her arms out and crossed her ankles. I wanted to ask her what she was doing, but before I could utter anything except “why—,” she turned her head towards me and said,

“I think I’m closer to God than I’ve ever been, Adam.”

I closed my mouth and walked over to her. I picked up an old sunbathing towel from the lawn and placed it over her chest. She kept her position constant, and stared off into the sky. I watched her gaze for a view minutes before I sank down on the street with my back against the driver’s door.

“Maria…” I sighed, “What are you doing?”

She paused before responding.

“Birds fall before they fly. Did you know that?”

After a few seconds I managed to say that I didn’t think that was quite true.

“The big ones do. They beat their wings up, up, up into the sky and then let themselves fall. God does the rest. He says, ‘you’re not really flying until you’ve surrendered yourself to the sky.’”

I sighed and pressed my palms against my eyes. Moving my hands to my temples, I looked down at the boiling asphalt, watching the heat crash waves over the tiny little stones.

“You’re getting sicker, kiddo.” I finally managed to tell her.

She didn’t respond.

“You’re hearing things, Maria.”

“Yeah, but I know that only I can hear them.”

“So?”

“So I’m not sick, just singled out, that’s all.”

The last few weeks with Maria had been constant conversations like this. She grew more and more unstable, but I couldn’t leave her alone. Maybe it was some kind of fucked up lover’s instinct in me, or maybe it was that I just couldn’t let her go.

I moved my head to look at her.

“Adam,” She began, “Why are you so sad all the time?”

I looked away.

“Why are you?”

“I am so you don’t have to be.”

“No,” I sighed again, “Maria, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I will take it from you. I will take it all away from you.”

“Fine, let’s say you can. Then where does that leave us?” I asked her.

“Right here, of course.” She smiled.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Adam,” she turned towards me, “we are that we are.”

#

Remember how I explained flight to you? Remember when you caught me behind a locked bathroom door two nights afterwards? You said that you could hear me crying. The kind of almost ‘inaudible half-whimpering’ that really breaks your heart. You sat out in the hallway, asking me what was wrong.

Well, Adam, it’s that we’re all just dying and it hurts so badly. It’s that sometimes the weight is too much for even God. It’s that we’re all so damn lonely. It was too hard for me to carry it anymore.

And did you know that God flooded the world when living became a struggle for the people on Earth? It was the ultimate act of love.

Everyone, Adam, deserves peace.

#

Two nights before she killed herself, Maria and I spent the night in my house watching MTV music videos and eating cold pizza. My magazine had gone under and I was living off of whatever freelance writing I could get published. I had inherited the house from my grandparents, and just in taxes alone I was no longer able to afford it. Beginning in the next month, I would have to start renting it out. I was going to have to move.

“I love this song,” Maria said, referring to TV. Under the Bridge, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was playing.

The song was how we met. Two years ago I was bussing tables at a small diner when asked me what song was playing over the radio.

“Under the Bridge.” I had replied.

“It’s a neat song,” she smiled at me.

“Yeah, I guess it is. Reminds me of home.”

“Home?” she asked, beckoning me to sit down across from her. “Where’s that?”

“Here, actually.”

“So the song reminds you of ‘here?’”

“Well, no, I suppose it reminds me of home. Like home with my parents. When I was twelve. That kind of home.”

“Yeah,” she mused, twisting her straw in circles, “‘that kind of home…’”

“Yep… Well, I’m Adam.”

“And I’m Maria.”

“And where’s home for you, Maria?”

“Some forty miles south of here and sixteen years back.”

“And now?”

“Why don’t I show you after you get done?” She winked at me.

I left work and we went back to her apartment. We talked well into 3am before falling asleep together. I woke up and she was hugging me, cradling me close to her. I barely knew her then, yet I didn’t find it strange at all. I just looked out the window above me, watched the light tell me it wasn’t yet noon, and went back to sleep.

Back in my house two years later, she was lying with her head in my lap. I let my hands glide across her smooth hair as we watched the video. Our lives were in severe trouble, financially and mentally, but at that moment we chose to leave it alone. We took swigs from a bottle of cheap tequila and let the loneliness drain from the room. Once the infomercials began, we grabbed the liquor and retreated back into my bedroom. We turned on the lights, undressed each other, and had sex. We didn’t speak a single word. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone, just as I knew she would be.

#

I’m going to fly, Adam. I’m going to fall and let God do the rest. I’m going to the center of it all, to where everything moves around you. And I will finally escape it; I will finally unhinge the whole damn thing.

#

A week passed and I did not see her again. I went to her apartment to find her. Her landlord let me in.

The place was completely empty. Everything, down to the desk and light bulbs were gone. Upon walking in I noticed a letter on the ground with my name written across the front.

“What compels someone to kill herself?” it began.

#

After reading the letter, I sped towards the pier, not sure what to expect once I arrived. When I pulled up to the beach I found the Ferris wheel very much in tact, standing next to the water just like it had been for years. If this wasn’t what she meant, than I had no idea where she had gone. I got out of the car, cigarette in hand, and walked over to the ride.

“Where are you, Maria?” I called out to the emptiness.

A wave crashed into the rocks below.

“You said you’d unhinge it. You said you’d be here.”

An old magazine blew across the walkway.

“If this isn’t it, than what is it, Maria?”

A couple of seagulls passed overhead.

“If this isn’t where you are, than where the fuck are you, Maria?”

I paced around the park grounds, trying to think. I picked up an old beer bottle and threw it at the bottom car. It shattered, spraying green glass all over the place.

“Where… the fuck… are you?”

But nobody was there to respond to me.

“Goddamn it, Maria…” I fell onto my knees, “You can’t fly, baby. You can’t fly… No one’s gonna catch you, baby. No one’s gonna catch you…”

That night, on the ride home, I called the police to report a missing person, probably a suicide. They took a description over the phone. They sent officers over to my house early the next morning to talk with me. They asked me if she were going to kill herself, where would she most likely go? I stared out the living room window, nursing a hangover with another pack of cigarettes. I thought, how could someone answer that question? If I knew, did that mean I could have stopped it?

A week went by, and then two. I read the letter over multiple times, each time searching for another clue. She was dead, I was sure of it, but I needed to know how she died. How could I even begin mourning her if I didn’t believe in her? I needed to know that at least she thought she found peace.

And then, late one night, as I was watching MTV, they played Under the Bridge again. I listened to it, carefully, treasuring every word. I remembered our last night together, and her last words. “I love this song,” she had said in a rare moment of clarity. And right then I knew. I knew exactly where she would have gone.

I called the detectives and let them know.

“She would’ve gone to ‘the center of it all,’” I told them. “She would’ve gone to the Harbor Street Bridge downtown. She would have thrown herself into the river. She would’ve rode it all the way out to the ocean.”

#

We’re all just carving our names into old dead trees, you know. They flicker with radiation in the face of God. Our names, I mean. But the tree will die and everyone will forget us. We are not permanent.

But for that moment we have burned our place into God’s eyes. He will not forget. He says, ‘Until you find yourself you must keep moving, children. Keep moving for there is much forest to cover. Keep moving because only I will remember your being here.’

So goodbye, Adam.

I love you…I’ll always love you.

#

I’ve packed everything away and moved out of the house. I’m renting it out to a couple of young guys looking for whatever it was that I was originally looking for in this town. It’s all very romantic, I suppose. Maria’s letter has really been weighing down on me, recently. So earlier tonight when I got in my car and drove to the pier, I thought that maybe I could finally put an end to this nonsense. Now I’m standing in front of the Ferris wheel, a set of large tools next to me, and a couple of mild explosives Maria and I bought down in Mexico a year ago.

The way I figure it, this thing can’t be that hard to take apart. I mean, it basically rests on two main joints at the center. So I climb up to the middle and sit down. I look over the ocean that now holds my Maria, and I begin wrenching away at the bolts. I leave them barely intact and place the explosives next to the dangling pieces of steel. I light a fairly long fuse and climb down. The whole thing creaks and wails like never before. I run a safe distance away. Soon, I hear the small bang, and the wheel wobbles back and forth a little, before tilting to the left and crashing over the side of the pier. It just lies there, jutting out of the shallow shoreline, mangled broken metal dotting the green waves. The noise is small, all things considered. The mess is also small, all things considered. I pick up my tools and return to my car.

“Goodbye, Maria,” I look over and call out to the ocean.

I put the key in the ignition and make to drive up the coastline.

“I loved you too.”