See No Evil
On Friday Nicole's conscience left her and she was invisible. She was quite surprised by this, although she had never taken very good care of her conscience. She called after it to explain but all it said when it turned to her, thin and shining, was, "You are free now."
"What?"
Nicole noticed that the hair which usually hung down into her eyes was not there. Raising a hand to find it she discovered that she had no hand, no arm, no shoulder, no body. "What did you do with my body? What's left? You can't do this to me."
The conscience, which usually was more than willing to argue, just turned and exited. Nicole felt like a toothpick or an eyelash.
"I thought I had an identity crisis before." She ran fingers she couldn't see over herself to make sure everything was in place. It was very upsetting to be inside of a body with eyes that told her she didn't exist. Every few seconds she had to look around her to be sure she could see everything else in the world. That gave her a strange feeling of being the only thing, the only thing invisible; a unique creature, a one-being species. How wonderful, how awful to be the only thing in the universe that was invisivle. And then it occurred to her that maybe she wasn't the only invisible thing - perhaps there were others. She wouldn't know if she couldn't see them and they didn't make any noise. Nicole breathed heavily to be sure she herself could make a noise. Then she wondered if others could hear her. Then she wondered whether she, being invisible herself, could see other things that were invisible to others. Why should she, she thought, since she could not see herself. But still she wished she had taken inventory of the world an hour before so that now she would be able to notice if anything had appeared suddenly.
Nicole found a chair and sat, noticing that the chair creaked and bent to her shape. How could she make herself visible again? She was fairly sure she wanted to be visible, although she could see many advantages to not being seen. Fun was fun, Nicole thought, but this was life, and she didn't really want to spend the rest of her life invisible. It would be so confusing. How would she explain it to people?
So where would one look for a conscience? Immediately Nicole thought of the church, but there was no reason for her conscience to go there. What would it do? She saw in her mind the conscience wandering up and down the pews, and it didn't seem to fit. The church was the place for tangible, solid things that wished for intangibility, not a place for freed consciences. If I were a conscience, Nicole thought, where ...? She remembered the old joke of catching a rabbit by hiding and making noises like a carrot. If I hid and made noises like Heaven, maybe I'd attract it, she thought. But how could I convince it to come back inside of me? And can I be certain that would make me visible?
She decided the first step was to find it and then figure out what to do. It would most certainly be outside someplace, not still hanging around the house, so Nicole went to the garage for her bike. No, she thought, that would attract attention. She couldn't hitchhike either. She started out on foot, looking around her all the time for a shadow or wisp of smoke disappearing behind a tree.
The city was in a friendly mood because it was spring. Bulbs were having noisy parties under the emerging trees. All the cars glistened with dew as if they had bloomed just that morning. Even the buildings looked clear and sharp, every brick and board stood out and the textures were shadowed like charcoal drawings. On this day, Nicole thought, someone without prejudice might consider this city a work of art; everything fits into place perfectly, everything is balanced, and surely there is some symbolism in everything if one has the time to figure it out.
She passed a bake shop window and, on an impulse, walked in. An Italian woman with black hair in a bun stoo, counting cookies into a white bag. Maria's Fresh-Baked Cakes it said. Maria reached forty, folded the bag down and turned to staple it. Nicole grabbed a handful of the raspberry filled cookies and darted out the door. The cookies, when she put her hands around them, became invisible. She ate as she walked down the sidewalk, still looking up and down for her conscience. As she finished the last one the prospect of getting her conscience back appealed to her less than it had, and she stopped to look in a Sage-Allen window at suede jackets. She wasn't sure she would like one if it were invisible when she put it on, so she kept walking, her eyes now watching store windows. It was dawning on her that she could now have virtually anything she wanted, being able to take items from stores without being seen. Her conscience said nothing - it wasn't there.
At a traffic light Nicole saw a truck with an inviting platform in back, and she leapt onto it, holding the metal door handles. The doors were locked, as she had expected, but the truck started up when the light changed, and she watched the city street roll effortlessly off into oblivion. She glanced around her every once in a while, out of a feeling of duty, but the conscience didn't appear. At another traffic light she hopped off and, mindful of the fact that cars couldn't see her, made it to the sidewalk safely. It would be awful, she told herself, to be injured now. How could a doctor help me?
...
Nicole stood sweating in front of the church door, her black dress clinging to her shoulders. She held the silvery handles of the doors with both hands, breathing in soft gasps.
"Wouldn't let me," she whispered, "why can't I come?"
She shivered as she pulled back the doors, which both opened at once. As she slipped inside, faces in the last rows turned to look. The church was dark, like the inside of a cupboard; hot, even in the May morning. And at the center of Nicole's vision, the minister tood in black robes, speaking slowly. He stood to the right of the closed casket. Nicole smelled flowers and flowers, not as flowers in open places smell, but as smoething dark and clawed might make itself smell if it attended church. The long black casket held her grandmother. Nicole saw bony hands and wrinkled mouth, saw it through the wood. Something crept up Nicole's legs and crushed her chest, put an arm down her throat, grabbed her ribs and pulled back. Screaming, Nicole staggered against the closed doors, turned, yanked one open and ran down a set of wite steps, into sunlight. Oh I'm going to die, I'm going to die.
Mist hovered just above the apple trees, and the apple blossoms smelled clean from rain. Nicole ran down park paths toward the ocean; pigeons hurried fluttering from her.
...
Nicole turned a corner and smiled at the sea. Behind railroad tracks and telephone poles the waves lapped calmly, stretching out to the horizon. What would it be like to swim, invisible, in clear water, Nicole wondered and crossed the tracks, running down a small slope. The beach was farther away than she had thought; by the time she reached it she was out of breath.
By the edge of the water with his light tan back to her was a boy with sandy hair. He was still, watching the sea curl its tongue up and then uncurl it, tasting shore sand.
"Hey," she said, forgetting she was invisible. He turned around and squinted at her voice.
"I'm sorry, I'm invisible," she said, lamely.
"Ahh," he said, still squinting. Then, "You come to look at the water?"
"Yes. I wondered how it would be to swim in it. Actually I'm looking for ..." Her words trailed off as she tried to remember what she was looking for.
"It's cold," he said. "The water's cold."
Nicole nodded and waited. She could see the sea with its breath held.
...
He looked back and nodded to it, and it came in. Nicole shifted her feet.
"You do that?" she asked, surprised.
He nodded and drew squiggles in the sand by his leg.
"How?"
"Always have." He shrugged. "What's your name?"
"Nicole."
"Ah."
They silently watched the sea a while.
"It does this all the time?" Nicole asked.
"All the time," Walter told her. "What were you looking for?"
Nicole frowned and then remembered that the other could not see her thinking. "I don't know. I guess I was looking for the sea."
"What about your conscience?" Walter asked.
"Oh, I don't have one, that's why I'm invisible," Nicole said, and then they were silent a minute.
"Can you make it go out and stay?"
Walter nodded.
"Do it," she suggested, but he shook his head.
Nicole picked up the brittle crab shell and blew lightly to clear sand from the curled edges.
...
Walter pointed at the sea with a brown finger. The sea sighed and drew back, rolled upon itself and retreated, leaving swept sand glistening. Farther up where the sand was dry and hot, walter sat, waiting. He stretched his hand again and the sea came in, like a tongue. Tiny slivers of silver exploded apart and fanned their fins in shallows, fought the retreating tide. Motioning, the boy ordered the water out; fish glimmered and were gone.
Stretching his legs out, walter brushed tan sand from creases in his bleached jeans, examined the frayed knees. His bare toes scratched each other. The sea held its breath in the distance. Walter nodded and it rushed in. Gills flapped from water-swept rocks. And walter shook tan hair from light brown eyes, putting his head back. His fingers which supported him were dug deep into the sand and were so close to its color that he might have been made of sand, might have been sand-filled glass, sitting stil, head back, sun-worshipping with shoulder-length hair across his bare back and almost touching the ground. His hair was a waterfall of sifting sand.
And the distant miles of waves calle in giant whispers. Walter lifted his head, motioning to the white fingernails of water. They ran forward across sand, held at arm's length, and with Walter's not, ran back again.
A crab with a dry shell ran across one of the boy's fingers, looking for the sea. Time, time, time, time, time. The crab's shell bleached and its flesh dried and its smaller bones fell into reddish sand.
Walter heard a giggle at the water's edge and saw a small girl wading ankle deep, splashing in blue water. He got to his feet and walked down to her, bending closer to her height. Still giggling she looked up and smiled into his eyes.
"Wet," she said. He grinned back, with white teeth like shell insides. Reaching in a jeans pocket he drew out a piece of bottle glass which had been worn into a rounded diamond shape, dotted with bubbles inside.
"Look," he said, and put the piece in her palm. The girl ran a finger over it and said nothing, but looked up again shyly. "Glass," he said, "old bottle glass. For your pocket." They smiled at each other. The little girl danced a few steps down the beach while Walter straighened and pointed to the water. When he looked back she had leapt from stone to stone and out a few yards. Seaweed swayed around the rock her feet were on. She leapt for the next one and landed wquarely, balancing with her small arms.
"Come back, " he called to her and she giggled, jumping again. When he waved the ocean in it lightly covered the rock she was on and she laughed, putting one foot out as if to walk on water.
"No, that's deep. It's deep out there, come back in," he yelled.
"Make the water go out," she said.
"No. You come in."
She squinted back at him from the mossy rock. "Make the water go out. I never seen that before."
The water hesitated, lapping her feet. She shifted her feet and one slipped, and suddenly her light arms waved desperately. Then she was in the water, holding onto the rock and yelling. Walter stood watching. The water did not recede. Clinging to the rock the girl spluttered through mouthfuls of water.
"Help me!"
...
Walter sat in the summer sun, twining the salty shoelace around his wrist. He pulled with long fingernails at the fraying end, knotted it once, untied it. Particles of sand sprinkled onto his faded white jeans. He looked out at the sea with eyes squinted, trying to catch the splash of a gull's dropped shell.
"Alright, now come in." The waves folled up to th ebeach. The gull lifted, circled, and flew away. "Go out." The waves went out, hitting each other in their hurry, dragging a light layer of sand back, back.
"Come in," Walter told it, and it came in. Long, flat, green seaweed, wavy at the edges like palm leaves, turned rhythmically, rubbed its tail on the sand. "Go out." The seaweed was swept back into its green birthplace. Walter got up sighing lightly and brushed sand from folds in his jeans. He looked up, remembering. "OK, come back in!" Sand clung to his bare feet, up to the ankles, up to where he had waded in the water that morning, the sun rising on the right and lighting misty rays through the lifted wave tips, so he could see the tiny grains of fish. Walter bent and rubbed absently at the sand, admiring the pattern of yellow and brown and black pieces, the black being mussels, and white. He turned to the water again, which held itself taughtly stretched up the sand. "Carry on like that," he said, and it sucked back in its breath, retreating. The boy turned and waded up the beach, holding his arms straight. He was tall but walked bent from leaning into the sea and walking in the sand. Blonde hair bleached nearly white, nearly transparent, fell straight to his shoulders. Behind, the sea faltered, and he spoke to it. It continued.
Walter saw the man before the man saw him, because the man was out of place, new, and dark like the earth. He stood with feet spread out, surveying the expanse of yellow sand running east. When he turned and saw walter, he smiled solidly and ran a thumb around the waistline of his brown slacks. He thumb made a soft dent in the flesh, like a finger in a wave.
"Hi there."
Walter raised his fingers a little in greeting, and walked slowly towards him.
"You live around here?" The man squinted at Walter's sand-color face, looking for the eyes. It was hard to see ...
"Yeah. I live over there." He pointed a bony arm across to the west and the man saw a shack in the distance.
"Oh," he said, confused. "Uh, well, is this, this isn't your land is it?"
Walter grinned and brushed hair out of his eyes. "Why, is it yours?"
The man laughed easily and put his large hands into his pockets. "Actually, yes, I bought it a few months ago. Yes." He lifted his chin to gaze over Walter's bent shoulder, his eyelids closed slightly over dark blue eyes.
"Man in thought," Walter said to himself, softly.
The man looked sharply at Walter, who started with surprise and then closed his mouth. Smiling still, but frowning a little the man looked down at the sand by his feet. "Well, I was thinking about the cottage I'm going to have built. Right, about, there," he pointed, considering, over Walter's shoulder.
"A cottage."
"Yes."
"I'd have to move?"
THe man tilted his head to one side. "Uh, not for a while," he said slowly. "It will take a while. Find a builder." He scratched his cheek. I'll have to get a good design, you know. I want a large window facing, facing the land, and one facing the sea, yes," he said, thinking.
" A window facing the sea?" Walter's greyish eyebrows lifted. "Ah. That's right."
The man looked at him for a minute, then nodded. "And I want a sun porch, I think."
Walter shifted his feet, toes sinking into the sand slowly. "Are you taking over, then?"
"Taking over what?"
"Well, the sea. That. Are you going to take care of it now?"
Completely confused, the man squinted at Walter, trying to see him. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
"The sea," Walter said patiently.
Walter looked back and was quiet for a long time. He turned around and looked at the sea. As he looked it poised in between coming in and going out; not freezing but settling still, not coming in or going out. It rocked slightly, waiting. Walter turned back to the man, frowning. He shook hair out of his face. "Go back," he told the man kindly, and the man turned, walked clumsily thruogh the yellow sand, into the distance. Turning, Walter smiled at the sea. "All right, go out now." And the sea rocked slightly forward, then rolled back as if cut loose, small waves slapping each other and blending, green, fading, blue, under the blue sky.
...
"Dead," she said wonderingly. "What must it be like?"
"Not like anything," the boy said softly. "Like nothing. Like not being. Like this, you keep going, the blood and skin become other things, but you stop being. Like this," and he waved at the water.
"Awful," she said.
"Simple, easy, the easiest thing there is."
Nicole ran a finger over the bumpy shell and then dropped it back into the sand. She heard a sound behind her. Turning, she saw herself standing, holding the shell. She looked back at Walter, then at herself. Reaching her hands out she found the conscience and covered herself with it, like a blanket. INside she stretched her fingers out to the tips of the glove-like skin and turned to walter. "There," she said proudly, but he was gone.
The sea came in.
Nicole put the shell in her pocket and walked back up the slope, with water sounds behind her.
"What?"
Nicole noticed that the hair which usually hung down into her eyes was not there. Raising a hand to find it she discovered that she had no hand, no arm, no shoulder, no body. "What did you do with my body? What's left? You can't do this to me."
The conscience, which usually was more than willing to argue, just turned and exited. Nicole felt like a toothpick or an eyelash.
"I thought I had an identity crisis before." She ran fingers she couldn't see over herself to make sure everything was in place. It was very upsetting to be inside of a body with eyes that told her she didn't exist. Every few seconds she had to look around her to be sure she could see everything else in the world. That gave her a strange feeling of being the only thing, the only thing invisible; a unique creature, a one-being species. How wonderful, how awful to be the only thing in the universe that was invisivle. And then it occurred to her that maybe she wasn't the only invisible thing - perhaps there were others. She wouldn't know if she couldn't see them and they didn't make any noise. Nicole breathed heavily to be sure she herself could make a noise. Then she wondered if others could hear her. Then she wondered whether she, being invisible herself, could see other things that were invisible to others. Why should she, she thought, since she could not see herself. But still she wished she had taken inventory of the world an hour before so that now she would be able to notice if anything had appeared suddenly.
Nicole found a chair and sat, noticing that the chair creaked and bent to her shape. How could she make herself visible again? She was fairly sure she wanted to be visible, although she could see many advantages to not being seen. Fun was fun, Nicole thought, but this was life, and she didn't really want to spend the rest of her life invisible. It would be so confusing. How would she explain it to people?
So where would one look for a conscience? Immediately Nicole thought of the church, but there was no reason for her conscience to go there. What would it do? She saw in her mind the conscience wandering up and down the pews, and it didn't seem to fit. The church was the place for tangible, solid things that wished for intangibility, not a place for freed consciences. If I were a conscience, Nicole thought, where ...? She remembered the old joke of catching a rabbit by hiding and making noises like a carrot. If I hid and made noises like Heaven, maybe I'd attract it, she thought. But how could I convince it to come back inside of me? And can I be certain that would make me visible?
She decided the first step was to find it and then figure out what to do. It would most certainly be outside someplace, not still hanging around the house, so Nicole went to the garage for her bike. No, she thought, that would attract attention. She couldn't hitchhike either. She started out on foot, looking around her all the time for a shadow or wisp of smoke disappearing behind a tree.
The city was in a friendly mood because it was spring. Bulbs were having noisy parties under the emerging trees. All the cars glistened with dew as if they had bloomed just that morning. Even the buildings looked clear and sharp, every brick and board stood out and the textures were shadowed like charcoal drawings. On this day, Nicole thought, someone without prejudice might consider this city a work of art; everything fits into place perfectly, everything is balanced, and surely there is some symbolism in everything if one has the time to figure it out.
She passed a bake shop window and, on an impulse, walked in. An Italian woman with black hair in a bun stoo, counting cookies into a white bag. Maria's Fresh-Baked Cakes it said. Maria reached forty, folded the bag down and turned to staple it. Nicole grabbed a handful of the raspberry filled cookies and darted out the door. The cookies, when she put her hands around them, became invisible. She ate as she walked down the sidewalk, still looking up and down for her conscience. As she finished the last one the prospect of getting her conscience back appealed to her less than it had, and she stopped to look in a Sage-Allen window at suede jackets. She wasn't sure she would like one if it were invisible when she put it on, so she kept walking, her eyes now watching store windows. It was dawning on her that she could now have virtually anything she wanted, being able to take items from stores without being seen. Her conscience said nothing - it wasn't there.
At a traffic light Nicole saw a truck with an inviting platform in back, and she leapt onto it, holding the metal door handles. The doors were locked, as she had expected, but the truck started up when the light changed, and she watched the city street roll effortlessly off into oblivion. She glanced around her every once in a while, out of a feeling of duty, but the conscience didn't appear. At another traffic light she hopped off and, mindful of the fact that cars couldn't see her, made it to the sidewalk safely. It would be awful, she told herself, to be injured now. How could a doctor help me?
...
Nicole stood sweating in front of the church door, her black dress clinging to her shoulders. She held the silvery handles of the doors with both hands, breathing in soft gasps.
"Wouldn't let me," she whispered, "why can't I come?"
She shivered as she pulled back the doors, which both opened at once. As she slipped inside, faces in the last rows turned to look. The church was dark, like the inside of a cupboard; hot, even in the May morning. And at the center of Nicole's vision, the minister tood in black robes, speaking slowly. He stood to the right of the closed casket. Nicole smelled flowers and flowers, not as flowers in open places smell, but as smoething dark and clawed might make itself smell if it attended church. The long black casket held her grandmother. Nicole saw bony hands and wrinkled mouth, saw it through the wood. Something crept up Nicole's legs and crushed her chest, put an arm down her throat, grabbed her ribs and pulled back. Screaming, Nicole staggered against the closed doors, turned, yanked one open and ran down a set of wite steps, into sunlight. Oh I'm going to die, I'm going to die.
Mist hovered just above the apple trees, and the apple blossoms smelled clean from rain. Nicole ran down park paths toward the ocean; pigeons hurried fluttering from her.
...
Nicole turned a corner and smiled at the sea. Behind railroad tracks and telephone poles the waves lapped calmly, stretching out to the horizon. What would it be like to swim, invisible, in clear water, Nicole wondered and crossed the tracks, running down a small slope. The beach was farther away than she had thought; by the time she reached it she was out of breath.
By the edge of the water with his light tan back to her was a boy with sandy hair. He was still, watching the sea curl its tongue up and then uncurl it, tasting shore sand.
"Hey," she said, forgetting she was invisible. He turned around and squinted at her voice.
"I'm sorry, I'm invisible," she said, lamely.
"Ahh," he said, still squinting. Then, "You come to look at the water?"
"Yes. I wondered how it would be to swim in it. Actually I'm looking for ..." Her words trailed off as she tried to remember what she was looking for.
"It's cold," he said. "The water's cold."
Nicole nodded and waited. She could see the sea with its breath held.
...
He looked back and nodded to it, and it came in. Nicole shifted her feet.
"You do that?" she asked, surprised.
He nodded and drew squiggles in the sand by his leg.
"How?"
"Always have." He shrugged. "What's your name?"
"Nicole."
"Ah."
They silently watched the sea a while.
"It does this all the time?" Nicole asked.
"All the time," Walter told her. "What were you looking for?"
Nicole frowned and then remembered that the other could not see her thinking. "I don't know. I guess I was looking for the sea."
"What about your conscience?" Walter asked.
"Oh, I don't have one, that's why I'm invisible," Nicole said, and then they were silent a minute.
"Can you make it go out and stay?"
Walter nodded.
"Do it," she suggested, but he shook his head.
Nicole picked up the brittle crab shell and blew lightly to clear sand from the curled edges.
...
Walter pointed at the sea with a brown finger. The sea sighed and drew back, rolled upon itself and retreated, leaving swept sand glistening. Farther up where the sand was dry and hot, walter sat, waiting. He stretched his hand again and the sea came in, like a tongue. Tiny slivers of silver exploded apart and fanned their fins in shallows, fought the retreating tide. Motioning, the boy ordered the water out; fish glimmered and were gone.
Stretching his legs out, walter brushed tan sand from creases in his bleached jeans, examined the frayed knees. His bare toes scratched each other. The sea held its breath in the distance. Walter nodded and it rushed in. Gills flapped from water-swept rocks. And walter shook tan hair from light brown eyes, putting his head back. His fingers which supported him were dug deep into the sand and were so close to its color that he might have been made of sand, might have been sand-filled glass, sitting stil, head back, sun-worshipping with shoulder-length hair across his bare back and almost touching the ground. His hair was a waterfall of sifting sand.
And the distant miles of waves calle in giant whispers. Walter lifted his head, motioning to the white fingernails of water. They ran forward across sand, held at arm's length, and with Walter's not, ran back again.
A crab with a dry shell ran across one of the boy's fingers, looking for the sea. Time, time, time, time, time. The crab's shell bleached and its flesh dried and its smaller bones fell into reddish sand.
Walter heard a giggle at the water's edge and saw a small girl wading ankle deep, splashing in blue water. He got to his feet and walked down to her, bending closer to her height. Still giggling she looked up and smiled into his eyes.
"Wet," she said. He grinned back, with white teeth like shell insides. Reaching in a jeans pocket he drew out a piece of bottle glass which had been worn into a rounded diamond shape, dotted with bubbles inside.
"Look," he said, and put the piece in her palm. The girl ran a finger over it and said nothing, but looked up again shyly. "Glass," he said, "old bottle glass. For your pocket." They smiled at each other. The little girl danced a few steps down the beach while Walter straighened and pointed to the water. When he looked back she had leapt from stone to stone and out a few yards. Seaweed swayed around the rock her feet were on. She leapt for the next one and landed wquarely, balancing with her small arms.
"Come back, " he called to her and she giggled, jumping again. When he waved the ocean in it lightly covered the rock she was on and she laughed, putting one foot out as if to walk on water.
"No, that's deep. It's deep out there, come back in," he yelled.
"Make the water go out," she said.
"No. You come in."
She squinted back at him from the mossy rock. "Make the water go out. I never seen that before."
The water hesitated, lapping her feet. She shifted her feet and one slipped, and suddenly her light arms waved desperately. Then she was in the water, holding onto the rock and yelling. Walter stood watching. The water did not recede. Clinging to the rock the girl spluttered through mouthfuls of water.
"Help me!"
...
Walter sat in the summer sun, twining the salty shoelace around his wrist. He pulled with long fingernails at the fraying end, knotted it once, untied it. Particles of sand sprinkled onto his faded white jeans. He looked out at the sea with eyes squinted, trying to catch the splash of a gull's dropped shell.
"Alright, now come in." The waves folled up to th ebeach. The gull lifted, circled, and flew away. "Go out." The waves went out, hitting each other in their hurry, dragging a light layer of sand back, back.
"Come in," Walter told it, and it came in. Long, flat, green seaweed, wavy at the edges like palm leaves, turned rhythmically, rubbed its tail on the sand. "Go out." The seaweed was swept back into its green birthplace. Walter got up sighing lightly and brushed sand from folds in his jeans. He looked up, remembering. "OK, come back in!" Sand clung to his bare feet, up to the ankles, up to where he had waded in the water that morning, the sun rising on the right and lighting misty rays through the lifted wave tips, so he could see the tiny grains of fish. Walter bent and rubbed absently at the sand, admiring the pattern of yellow and brown and black pieces, the black being mussels, and white. He turned to the water again, which held itself taughtly stretched up the sand. "Carry on like that," he said, and it sucked back in its breath, retreating. The boy turned and waded up the beach, holding his arms straight. He was tall but walked bent from leaning into the sea and walking in the sand. Blonde hair bleached nearly white, nearly transparent, fell straight to his shoulders. Behind, the sea faltered, and he spoke to it. It continued.
Walter saw the man before the man saw him, because the man was out of place, new, and dark like the earth. He stood with feet spread out, surveying the expanse of yellow sand running east. When he turned and saw walter, he smiled solidly and ran a thumb around the waistline of his brown slacks. He thumb made a soft dent in the flesh, like a finger in a wave.
"Hi there."
Walter raised his fingers a little in greeting, and walked slowly towards him.
"You live around here?" The man squinted at Walter's sand-color face, looking for the eyes. It was hard to see ...
"Yeah. I live over there." He pointed a bony arm across to the west and the man saw a shack in the distance.
"Oh," he said, confused. "Uh, well, is this, this isn't your land is it?"
Walter grinned and brushed hair out of his eyes. "Why, is it yours?"
The man laughed easily and put his large hands into his pockets. "Actually, yes, I bought it a few months ago. Yes." He lifted his chin to gaze over Walter's bent shoulder, his eyelids closed slightly over dark blue eyes.
"Man in thought," Walter said to himself, softly.
The man looked sharply at Walter, who started with surprise and then closed his mouth. Smiling still, but frowning a little the man looked down at the sand by his feet. "Well, I was thinking about the cottage I'm going to have built. Right, about, there," he pointed, considering, over Walter's shoulder.
"A cottage."
"Yes."
"I'd have to move?"
THe man tilted his head to one side. "Uh, not for a while," he said slowly. "It will take a while. Find a builder." He scratched his cheek. I'll have to get a good design, you know. I want a large window facing, facing the land, and one facing the sea, yes," he said, thinking.
" A window facing the sea?" Walter's greyish eyebrows lifted. "Ah. That's right."
The man looked at him for a minute, then nodded. "And I want a sun porch, I think."
Walter shifted his feet, toes sinking into the sand slowly. "Are you taking over, then?"
"Taking over what?"
"Well, the sea. That. Are you going to take care of it now?"
Completely confused, the man squinted at Walter, trying to see him. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
"The sea," Walter said patiently.
Walter looked back and was quiet for a long time. He turned around and looked at the sea. As he looked it poised in between coming in and going out; not freezing but settling still, not coming in or going out. It rocked slightly, waiting. Walter turned back to the man, frowning. He shook hair out of his face. "Go back," he told the man kindly, and the man turned, walked clumsily thruogh the yellow sand, into the distance. Turning, Walter smiled at the sea. "All right, go out now." And the sea rocked slightly forward, then rolled back as if cut loose, small waves slapping each other and blending, green, fading, blue, under the blue sky.
...
"Dead," she said wonderingly. "What must it be like?"
"Not like anything," the boy said softly. "Like nothing. Like not being. Like this, you keep going, the blood and skin become other things, but you stop being. Like this," and he waved at the water.
"Awful," she said.
"Simple, easy, the easiest thing there is."
Nicole ran a finger over the bumpy shell and then dropped it back into the sand. She heard a sound behind her. Turning, she saw herself standing, holding the shell. She looked back at Walter, then at herself. Reaching her hands out she found the conscience and covered herself with it, like a blanket. INside she stretched her fingers out to the tips of the glove-like skin and turned to walter. "There," she said proudly, but he was gone.
The sea came in.
Nicole put the shell in her pocket and walked back up the slope, with water sounds behind her.
posted by Asher Abrams at 8:12 PM
