Jesse was a fisherman. His father was too, and his father, and his father before him. That’s how it goes for his family—you fish, marry, have a son. Die. Repeat. It was all Jesse wanted, honestly. He wanted to fish, do his job, fade away. That was his purpose, right? Fill his role, follow in his family’s footsteps. There wasn’t much choice in that. 

After he brought his catch from that morning to the monger, Jesse wanted a drink. He roamed the closed stalls on the pier, advertising everything he couldn’t have.

Jesse continued down the pier, getting closer to the edge. Getting close to giving in, leaving, in search of his garage fridge at home, where he’d sit under the hum of a fluorescent light to drink his beer. 100 feet, he thought. Just to the end of the pier. And so Jesse roamed onward, and soon stopped short. 

There was a bar, weary and tired, but stood strong against the wind. How had he never noticed it? Jesse had roamed this pier hundreds of times.. A child, looking for pennycandy. A teenager, sneaking a beer with his girlfriend. A first time father, scared of home. And now an old man, hair gray and skin thick with time. A lazy sign attached to the last post on the dock reads its name: “Time in a Bottle.” Below, it read, “Try our famous ‘blood bank’ cocktail!”

Jesse pulled open the door and was hit with the smell of stale beer and pineapples. Odd, he thought. It was January. 

“Welcome,” a man said from behind the bar. His silver mustache curled on the ends, with horn-rimmed glasses and four rings on each hand. “What can I get you?”

“Sam Adams, please.” Jesse sighed as he put his head in his hands. The bartender slid it over, and Jesse’s hands closed around his bottle.

Something else hit Jesse’s elbow. He raised his head, and reached for the book now next to him. The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath. He’d never heard of it, but the cover intrigued him. It was a fig tree, each fruit a little different than its neighbor. He thumbed through it, and one page was tabbed. Highlighted in blue, it read, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.” Jesse watched as the narrator traced every life she could’ve lived. A mother, a professor, an explorer, a lover. Engrossed, Jesse didn’t realize as the bartender pulled the book out of his hands, and wiped the old man’s tear off his cheek. 

“Sorry, brother. Don’t know what came over me there,” Jesse sort of laughed, sort of sighed. “The moment got the best of me, I guess.”

“Don’t apologize, Jess.” Jesse didn’t recall sharing his name, but assumed he just missed it. 

“Did you like Plath?”

“She’s got it all figured out, man. So many paths, but there’s no such thing as a fig tree. You have one fruit. It’s just one life. No tree. No branch. One fruit.”

“Can I offer you our afternoon special?” 

Jesse nodded. The bartender pulled down a dusty bottle, deep blue in color, like seaglass.

“What’s in it?”

“We give this to every soul who wanders through and goes right for the Plath. She does a number on you fishermen.” Both men laughed, and Jesse didn’t consider that he never told the other man his job.

“Fill me up, then.” The bartender poured out the remnants of the dusty bottle, which looked unopened. Jesse reached for the drink, deep and red like blood, but the bartender put a hand on his arm, stopping him. 

“You have a choice, Jesse. Drink this, and you start over. You won’t be a fisherman, or marry your wife, or have your same children. Or maybe you will, but it’s your choice. Your father isn’t your father, and his father wasn’t his. This time, you won’t be born into a family who tells you what to be, or who you are.”

“Come on, man. I was starting to like you.” Jesse got up to leave, shaking his head, but he noticed that the door he came in through was gone. He shuddered, and sat back down. 

“Believe me now? Have you ever seen this bar before? It shows up when it's needed. I serve people who need this drink. People who need to slow down.”

“I loved my parents. My mother was a saint, and my father worked hard.”

“Do you only want to be remembered for working hard? Is that a life worth living? There are so many fruits you could become. You could be a writer, a lover, a painter. You’re not a fisherman. That isn’t your fate.”

“Who are you to tell me what my fate is? I have wonderful children, with wonderful children of their own. I’ve lived a fulfilled life.”

“Jesse, if you drink this, you’ll live a thousand fulfilled lives. One as a mother, one as a father. One as the writer, one as the muse. You have every fate available to you, if you drink. Drink, Jesse.”

Jesse shook his head, pulling at the silver tufts of his hair. The moon streamed through the skylight above the two men, landing on the bartender. What a twisted spotlight he was in, Jesse thought. Oddly, the only thing Jesse could remember was a line from a book he’d read to his granddaughter. “Life is only worth living because it ends, kid. Take it from a god.” Wouldn’t that be what he’d become? A god, with infinite lives and chances? 

“What would you do?” Jesse asked.

“Blame the alcohol or the full moon, but it’s your choice in the end. I can’t tell you what to do with your life, but you see what I’ve done with mine.”

“I think that a thousand lives defeats the purpose of it all, you know? You live and you love and you age and you run out of time, and you don’t get to do everything, but that’s the point. I have more to see. My life wasn’t significant for you, but I’m proud of it.” With that, Jesse grabbed the book, and highlighted one more passage. “I’m not wasting any more time.” Jesse walked out of the door that was back in its place, and walked home in the moonlight.