So, yeah, those that know me (all three of them), I did say I was going to take a break, but when Gilligan is hammering on the inside of my head it's hard to ignore the noise...
This little meandering one-shot is dedicated to Courtney, Heather - and John. For their unfailing faith in...well, everything.
Cotton Candy Clouds
Clouds.
What were they made of?
Gilligan squinted upwards, shielding his eyes from the intensity of the sun. Cotton wool? No, cotton wool was boring. Cotton candy? That was much better! Gilligan licked his lips. He hadn't tasted cotton candy in years. Not since he and Skinny Mulligan tried to eat it in a high wind at the Pennsylvania State Fair and ended up with it in their hair and all over their sticky faces. Their dates had not been amused. Well, Skinny's date hadn't been amused. Gilligan's 'date' happened to be Fatso Flanagan's annoying little sister who had tagged along for the day. She thought it was hilarious, until her own cotton candy went in her hair too, and then she started crying.
Gilligan heard voices behind him. Giggling. Whispering. He knew who it was.
"Hi, girls," he said without even turning around.
"Hi, Gilligan!" Ginger and Mary Ann chimed in unison.
"In case you're wondering what I'm doing, I'm looking at the clouds," Gilligan said, pre-empting their next question. He listened to the rustling of their towels as they laid them out on the sand, and then the sounds of the radio being switched on and more giggling. He shook his head. The lagoon was not a good place to come to if you wanted peace and quiet.
"What's so interesting about clouds?" Ginger said, raising her voice over the pop music that Mary Ann had found after twiddling the radio dial back and forth across the airwaves.
"They're all different shapes," said Gilligan. He still hadn't turned around. He didn't need to. He knew what he'd see. Ginger would be in her bikini and sarong and Mary Ann would be in her black one piece and they'd be sitting on their towels half in and half out of the shade with their arms around their knees, laughing at him. Not unkindly. He knew that. But everything he did seemed to amuse them- especially when they were together. He was flattered, in a way.
"Girls are all different shapes too, Gilligan," Ginger purred. "But I don't see you staring at us so intently."
There was a brief pause, and then Gilligan heard them giggling again. He sighed heavily and dropped his shoulders. The girls were always giggling.
Finally he turned around, because he was starting to feel silly standing in the middle of the beach with all of that going on behind him. As soon as he looked at them they stopped giggling and pretended to be all serious, clearing their throats and sitting up straight, although their lips twitched with the effort of suppressing their laughter.
"You never see the same cloud twice," Gilligan told them, hoping he sounded a bit like the Professor.
"You never see the same girl twice," said Ginger, pouting at him.
"I see you all the time."
"I'm never the same girl twice."
Puzzled, Gilligan scratched the back of his head. "Yes, you are. You're Ginger. You're always Ginger."
"Humph," Ginger retorted. "I'm very glad you don't work for the Hollywood Review."
"Don't you girls watch the clouds?" Gilligan came over and sat down cross-legged on the sand. Not too close, because he didn't want Ginger getting any funny ideas. He sat more on Mary Ann's side, but knowing how flirty she could be when she was with Ginger, he kept a safe distance from her too. Gilligan liked Mary Ann a lot, but when she and Ginger were together, it was like two girls against one boy, and he remembered what that was like from his growing up days, having to sit at the back of the beach bus so the annoying girls couldn't sit behind him and put their chewing gum in his hair.
"I used to watch them in Kansas," Mary Ann nodded. "Kansas has the most wonderful skies, Gilligan. With the most amazing summer storm clouds. You could see the storms coming from hundred of miles away, growing bigger by the minute. Great big thunderclouds, tall as skyscrapers."
"Wow," Gilligan breathed, his eyes wide. He was genuinely impressed.
"Clouds," Ginger snorted. "What do they do? Rain on you, if you're unlucky."
"They don't just rain on you," Gilligan said. "And besides, they look like they could be made out of cotton candy." He grinned, rubbing his stomach and making yummy noises.
"That's typical of you, Gilligan. You think even the clouds are made out of food."
"Well, Gilligan, I agree with you about one thing," said Mary Ann. "Clouds can be very beautiful. Like they are at sunset, when they're all red and orange, or when there's a storm coming and they're all purple and brown and grey."
Ginger tossed her head petulantly. "Storm clouds say only one thing to me, Mary Ann. Frizzy hair."
"Oh, Ginger. We're the only people who ever see you with your so-called 'frizzy hair'. And what about mine? Always sticking to the back of my neck the moment the humidity rises."
Gilligan shook his head. That was another thing girls were always doing. Complaining about their looks. What did their hair have to do with clouds? He folded his arms around his knees and looked skyward again. The clouds were especially fat and fluffy today. He wanted to reach up there and tear a piece off the largest cloud and stuff it in his mouth. It looked like it would taste of vanilla, or maybe Angel Food Cake, or fresh, ice cold milk. As he watched the clouds and listened to the music on the radio and the girls' chattering, he got a strange feeling of...what did the Professor call it? When you thought you'd been there before. Something about the colour of the sky and the way the clouds scurried across it, and the radio tuning in and out, going a bit crackly and then coming back loudly, and the distant voices of disc jockeys and news readers and familiar advertisement jingles. And the soft breeze that tickled the end of his nose and drifted across his lips like a kiss. Or, like he imagined a kiss would be if he actually liked kissing. Which he figured he probably would, if anyone tried to kiss him besides Ginger, for whom kissing was more like facial warfare, at least where he was concerned.
A kiss from Mary Ann would probably be a lot nicer, he decided. Then realised he'd had that thought before, too.
Gilligan shook his head again. Girls' hair, kissing, he was meant to be thinking about clouds! And what that word was, for thinking you'd been there before.
He decided to ask the girls.
"What's that word for thinking you've been someplace before?" he asked, interrupting Ginger as she primped herself in her clam shell mirror, which she always carried with her everywhere she went.
"Depends on the place," Ginger replied, wiping some lipstick from the corner of her mouth.
"Here."
"Then the word is 'unlucky', Gilligan."
"No, Ginger, I don't mean I've been here before. At the lagoon. Although I have been here before. In fact I come here every day." He frowned thoughtfully, his eyes almost crossing.
"Now look what you've done, Ginger." Mary Ann smiled sweetly. "You've confused him."
"Face it, Mary Ann, it's not difficult." The movie star smiled just as sweetly.
"It's just a feeling I got," Gilligan explained. "Looking at the clouds. Listening to the radio. Like I'd been here before. But I don't mean yesterday. Or even the day before. I mean, some other time."
Ginger laughed gently. "Gilligan, you're never fully here, or anywhere else, for that matter."
Gilligan shot her a wry look. "Says the girl with ants in her belfry."
"'Bats', Gilligan," smiled Mary Ann.
"I guess it's the sky," Gilligan continued. "The sky is everywhere, right? This same sky can be seen from Hawaii. Maybe even some of the same clouds. And the radio stations, they're from all over the world. Real far away places, too. Like...like India, or China! Or...or Constantinople!"
"Where?" said Mary Ann.
"With this radio?" said Ginger, staring at the small, slightly battered but innocuous looking device that had served them well for the past three years.
"Everything's always moving. The clouds are always moving. The ocean's always moving- never the same waves. The sand..." he picked up a handful, let it fall through his fingers. "Always shifting. People. Always moving."
"Gilligan- always going round in circles," said Ginger.
Gilligan ignored the interruption. "Everything moves. You think it all looks the same every day, but it's not. It's different clouds, different waves, different sand. It's all different."
"Except girls, who are apparently all the same."
"Okay, I take that back," Gilligan grinned. "You're like the clouds too. One day you're all pink and pretty, the next day you're like one of those Kansas storms Mary Ann talked about."
"Should we take that as a compliment, Gilligan?" Mary Ann smiled.
"Sure. Why not? Clouds are beautiful, and so are..." Gilligan stopped suddenly, biting back the rest of the sentence, covering it up with a loud coughing fit.
"So are what, Gilligan?" Mary Ann raised one eyebrow, teasingly.
"Nothing, Mary Ann, I just got some sand in my throat." He coughed again, going bright red.
"So, we agreed everything changes. What's your point, Gilligan?" Ginger said, eyeing him curiously.
"My point?" Gilligan stopped coughing, raised his eyebrows. "Oh. I guess...um..." He dug his fingers into the sand, tried to grasp his train of thought before it derailed entirely. "What I mean is, today's clouds won't be tomorrow's clouds, today's ocean waves won't be tomorrow's ocean waves. But they'll be tomorrow's ocean waves. They'll be right for tomorrow. But sometimes you might get a memory one of yesterday's waves or yesterday's clouds, and think you've been there before." He shrugged philosophically. "And maybe you have. Who knows?"
Ginger's brow furrowed. "Are you feeling okay, Gilligan? After all, you've been out in the sun all morning."
"I'm fine, Ginger. Don't you get what I'm saying? Today's clouds and tomorrow's clouds and yesterday's clouds are all different, and all the same. They'll always make you think you've been somewhere before. No matter where you are, or who you're with, you'll get that feeling that says you were already there, once upon a time."
"If I'd ever been anywhere with you before, Gilligan, I'm pretty sure I'd remember it," Ginger laughed, and then she threw a grape at him.
"I think I know what Gilligan means," said Mary Ann, looking fondly at the first mate, who had caught the grape and was now eating it. "Sometimes I do look at the sky here and think it reminds me of Kansas. Especially when the wind is blowing a certain way and suddenly I'm convinced I can smell the wheat, ripening in the sun."
Gilligan smiled back as Mary Ann's expression grew wistful. "And you wait for the sound of voices," he said. "Lots of voices, coming in on the breeze. Music, laughing. The State Fair. The smell of hot dogs and cotton candy."
"Yes, Gilligan. Yes! But only when the wind is blowing in a certain way."
"That's exactly what I'm talking about, Mary Ann." Gilligan was delighted that Mary Ann at least was taking him seriously. "I wish I could remember what it's called, though. That feeling."
"I know it! It's called deja vu!" Mary Ann rested her chin in her hands. "The feeling that you've been somewhere before."
"Yeah! Deja vu! That's the word, all right. Deja vu, deja vu, deja vu."
"Now I'm getting deja vu," sighed Ginger.
"The Professor says the Earth spins," said Gilligan. "So if it spins, then it must come back to the same place all the time, right? Around and around, and around the sun, too. Always coming back to the same place. Which means we always come back to the same place. So, maybe, when we think we've been here before, maybe it's because we actually have."
Ginger snapped her mirror shut at last. "I think we've been here so many times now you should just change the subject, there's a good little Gilligan."
Gilligan tipped his head to one side and stared at the movie star. "All right, Ginger, since you're so smart. What do you think the clouds are made of?"
"All of your hot air, Gilligan," Ginger replied, then laughed at his bemused expression. "No, silly. They're something to do with water. That's why it rains. Although how water gets up there in the first place, I have no idea."
"And what about you, Mary Ann?" Gilligan looked at his friend, who gazed back at him, thoughtfully. "What do you think the clouds are made of?"
"Well, sometimes I think they're made of soft velvet," she replied. "And you could sink down into one of them and sleep like a baby forever, with a smaller cloud for a pillow and the warm sun shining down on you from above. And then sometimes I think they're made of mountains of my father's shaving foam. The way he would cover his face with it and pretend to be Santa Claus when I was very little."
"Yeah," Gilligan said, thoughtfully. "I like that. Pretending to be Santa Claus."
"That's when I get a deja vu moment," said Mary Ann. "When clouds make me think of people I'll never see again."
Gilligan and Mary Ann looked at each other in silence for a few moments, and then Mary Ann dropped her gaze, examining instead the soft little hairs on her forearm, which made her own skin feel slightly velvety as she stroked her fingertips along it. "And you, Gilligan?" she said after a while. "What do you think they're made of? Besides cotton candy, that is?"
Gilligan grinned. He shaded his face from the sun, lifted it to the sky and chased the fluffy white clouds with his tranquil blue eyes. Then he looked back at Ginger and Mary Ann, who wore identical expressions of amusement and anticipation as they both looked back at him, awaiting his response. "Sorry, girls, but it's got to be cotton candy," he declared firmly. "The clouds are made of cotton candy. And that will never change."
"And neither will you, Gilligan," said Ginger, throwing him another grape. And they laughed. All three of them, together.