ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 62
a few blessed minutes now. Her body dried, and his hand rubbing
her thigh made a faint sound, like sand crowding into the waist of
an hourglass. Things are better in black and white, she thought to
herself. It’s for my own good.
The exhaustion that followed was productive for them both, and
some stability set in. The rent prices and tourists were constant
reminders that they lived in some form of paradise, but for the relentless fog. They both craved isolation and reliable sun. He found a
vacation rental outside of Santa Cruz - a small furnished cabin.
“It’s available next week,” he told her. She nodded.
He had the car loaded and was trying to find some way to occupy
himself and not pick a fight as she did her last-minute packing. In
their closet, she looked up to where the black drawstring bag sat
on the shelf above the hanging clothes. She had resisted asking or
looking for so long, knowing that this mystery was necessary. She
climbed up on a footstool and grasped the bag. The thing inside was
hard and textured. The word ‘premeditation’ wandered around the
Broca’s area of her brain, but she didn’t utter it. She tucked the bag
in her duffel.
“I’m ready,” she called.
As the car wound along the coastal highway, she tried with her
eyes to find the horizon line between the sky and the grey water
reflecting it. She spotted a whale spouting and imagined the molecules in the mist of its spray, exhilarated, and considering that
they’d been freed from gravity in that moment, only to fall back
down, engulfed once again, shoulder to shoulder in the abyss beneath the surface. She hijacked the stereo in the car, and he let her,
only once suggesting she turn it down so they could talk.
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