She’d managed to stay with him longer than anyone expected. Sticky-footed as a fly, she held on, no matter what direction he turned, no matter how abruptly he went the other way.
She didn’t expect anyone else to get it, really. There were so few people, she’d found, who inspired her to want to burrow deep under the surface of their skin.
Warm me up, she said. I didn’t ask for air conditioning in this car.
He took a solid drag off his cigarette, let the smoke loose in the air. He shook his head. I know what I want when I see it, he said.
She laughed, because that’s how she’d been trained. But it was icy laughter, the kind so brittle it breaks if you give it any kind of opportunity.
She built a house at the edge of the saltwater pond, and swam there every morning when the weather was good enough. It was green, the pond, on days when the light reminded her of the heat of his smile, and she felt the salt drawing all the liquid out of her skin, plucking at her memories until she emerged, warm and shivering at the same time, naked with anticipation for the new.
“Another glass of the Coturri?” asked the waitress.
“Of course,” I said. “If it ever goes off the menu I’m going to be so sad.”
“And it will,” said the waitress. “And the next year’s vintage is going to be totally different.”
“I know, I know,” I said, already mourning the loss of this fire-seared wine. “Nothing is permanent.”
“I went to see Sherlock Holmes. I don’t recommend it,” said the wild-haired man in line at the mini-mart. “It’s a whole lot of fighting, and they didn’t do that much fighting back then. Not as a doctor of forensics.”
At lunchtime, we learned a body had been found floating in a suitcase in the Bay.
This is why I’m a vegetarian, said the receptionist, who had chosen a hummus and vegetable wrap for lunch that day—no knife required. I can be disgusted by the story, not by the story AND my lunch.
The rest of us examined the slab-like chicken breasts on our salads.
I think this is going to need more Thousand Island, said the staff accountant, who already looked a little washed out at the prospect of swallowing.
I will take care of the problem, he said. I will solve this, because it is mine to solve.
But he had no idea where to begin, and that was probably why it had all started in the first place. There was no compass nor starlight on his particular sea, yet whenever he returned to land, his legs wobbled so much he couldn’t walk straight. He didn’t know how to tell her the extent to which he had gone adrift.
100 Proof 