100 Proof

I sail a small ship, she said. I have only room for two.

He had been swimming for so much longer than he had ever expected, and the weight of it all threatened to pull him under the stony surface of the sea.

It’s just me, he said, releasing the seaweed-wrapped cables that trailed behind him.

Come aboard, then, she said, extending her hand. What are you waiting for?

Under the waned moon, she sorted small stones and buttons, setting them in piles on the ground in front of her. They disappeared into the gloom of the grass, but she trusted they would reappear by morning. The night above her sparkled like faith, and the wind skirted where she sat.

Though it was no longer summer, she saw fireflies in the trees. Though it was no longer summer, she heard someone talking through a far away open window. She emptied her hands, stone by stone, button by button, making way for the season to come.

While they slept, the fog rolled in around them, and when they woke, the world had become invisible.

Trust it’s out there, he said. Weather always changes.

She had seen enough bad weather to stay skeptical. She rubbed her eyes.

He took her hand in his. Don’t worry, he said. It’s only a matter of time.

He had just about given up on her. She wandered away from him on the shore, turning over sand dollars as if there was treasure underneath them.

It’s just sand, he hissed. It doesn’t mean anything.

Maybe she didn’t hear him, her ears filled instead with the sound of the waves, the scurrying of hermit crabs, the wind in the sea grass. Maybe she had just decided not to listen anymore. No matter the story, she was walking away, leaving footprints behind her shaped like small, gasping fish.

On that very morning, he noticed the sign in the window above the restaurant:

I miss you. I like it when you miss me.

Though he didn’t know who put the sign in the window, he let himself think of her again, the way she touched her fingertips to his forehead, the time she ran across the busy street impulsively, the last phone call before she slipped from his life as if she’d just been a strange interlude, a dream, a figment.

I will miss you, she’d said.

I would rather you just stayed, he’d replied.

Like Anna Karenina, she was drawn to trains. She imagined lying under them as they raced over her. She imagined feeling the heat of the metal wheels against the track.

That whistle, she said. Do you hear what it says?

He never paid attention to such things.

It says goodbye, she said. And it says mercy. And it says freedom.

She preferred intervals to long distances, moving fast, then slow, rather than holding a consistent pace that eventually bored her. Long ago, she’d found she got further without meaning to by following this pattern.

“How do you do it all?” her friends asked, and she smiled, thinking of all the walking she did between sprints. It was secret, this walking. It was better they didn’t know about it, anyway.