collapsing

He could make her laugh. Laugh till she became self-conscious of the monkey face she couldn't control. Laugh till she pleaded with him to stop.
At the beach he could slip into the curlicue of a wave just before it couldn't bear its own weight and collapsed. He could swim the riptide, float on his back and be waltzed by the Mediterranean Sea.
He could walk along the beach past the bodies. He could hear a violin play somewhere on the sand and follow its notes to where a proscenium arch of flowers had been set up and a groom waited on his bride. He could tear up at the romance and wretched hopefulness of it all.
Later that evening in the town square, once the parade had gone by, he could talk to people in Spanish. He could put himself into a violent confrontation where a man spat abuse at his partner, where he threw chairs about and tried to grab at his children. He could put himself between him and the terrified, weeping woman and children and hold his eye and talk him down and out of his fury. He could do this: he did till the police came.

What he could not do, watching a live band with his sister and her friends later on, was free himself from his self-consciousness. They danced and smiled easily and urged him to do so. He tried. He resisted. He became more self-conscious that to others he didn't seem to be enjoying himself. He tightened up more. He moved his feet and his shoulders to the beat, but it wasn't dancing. He was moving to try and show that he was fine and content, even though he couldn't unbuckle himself like the others.
He could go home though and lie like a fly in aspic staring at the ceiling and wondering what it would take for him to be at ease with himself. What weight could possibly come to bear that would collapse his self-consciousness? Half an hour later his sister came home and he felt the accusation as the door closed behind her. From the window of his room the happy babble of revellers pass.