Used To Be Fish
by Rod Nibbe
A knot of eager fans in fall dress – baseball hats, fleece-lined shells, hands in pockets – wait at the finish line of the Badger Pass Century – a grueling one hundred mile bicycle race over Portland’s sinewy rural roadways. In minutes they’ll be jutting their heads like chickens to glimpse the leader breech the final hill. More people stream in from an adjacent parking lot as Sabrina approaches. She surveys the crowd for a seam. She's uncomfortable in crowds, but she’ll need to get close for the perspective she wants on Keenan as he breaks through the finish line tape.
She should be happy. She is pretty, a successful freelance photographer, the wife of a loving attorney and competitive endurance cyclist, and never once has her inclination toward superstition eclipsed her common sense. But today, despite the good news of an anomalously high morning body temperature (nearly 98.8), which should have her happier than a sweepstakes winner, she’s in an inexplicable funk.
A tripod cradled under her arm, she gives a reassuring squeeze to the canvas case looped over her shoulder, feeling for her Nikon and the 200mm Zoom lens, then assesses the sky’s portent; an angry claw of stratocumulus is fingering in from the West, threatening rain. She squeezes her camera case again – yes, the strobe flash is inside, too. The aperture will need to be wide open today, she thinks. She has come to photograph Keenan, her husband. He will win the tortuous 100-mile bicycle race, she has little doubt, the Century is his strongest event. Her tripod lowered like a lance, she stabs through.
People part the way like she was nobility. A dust-blonde French braid, like silk jewelry, flows from her scalp. Her almond-shaped face, perfect, as if handmade by God himself, is blushed with autumn colors, her features more velvety than the finish on a ten-year old Cabernet. Her smile is white and sweet like meringue; it could sell picture frames. There is a cuddliness about her as she pardons herself through the thicket of fans – excuse me.
Years prior to Keenan, before photography blossomed into a career, she had enrolled in Oregon State’s nursing program. Her siren smile had marooned dozens of priapic med-schoolers on the shore of her date rejections, but none of them could distract her from her goal to become a registered nurse. Except Frank.
Frank, the seductive algebra tutor, had appeared in a boy-like innocence late one night in the library, where Sabrina had been plopped for hours, cramming, desperately. He snuggled in next to her and revealed the shortcuts to the elusive zeroes of her polynomials. She felt indebted, reluctantly agreed to a date, which led to a surfeit of Margaritas, a hole in her memory, and an abortion that filled her with perdition. She’s never told a soul about it. Especially, Keenan.
Never told anyone of the fleshy hands of the doctor, or the comfort nurse and her dutiful reassurance: think of it as a forced miscarriage, dear. The gown – hers to keep if she wished, they’d said – felt like parchment as she lay spread in the stirrups. Then there was a mechanical nod from the doctor beneath his blue-green mask, as if to say, let’s get on with it. Her cervix was numbed. When the plastic vacuum wand finished inside her, she passed out.
In recovery, there were smelling salts, a drape around her bed, she could hear voices, a man was crying, a woman coughing. A male care technician, a stethoscope around his neck, carrying a clipboard, threw back her drape. A beaming grin flooded his face like he was taking a curtain call. She was all right he’d said, she could leave when she felt strong enough. Nothing serious. It’s not uncommon to faint. She could pick up a prescription for painkillers at reception on her way out.
She didn’t stop at reception. She fled the clinic and drove, undirected, like a zombie for fifty, sixty miles, she didn’t know, she just kept driving, feeling a queer sense of safety inside her car as she sped along rural roads, devoid of buildings, houses, cars – people. It seemed strangely automatic when she purchased the menthol cigarettes at the food mart where she finally stopped, as if she’d been smoking all her life. She sat down on a patch of neglected tall grass and lifted the filter to her lips, drawing the gray gas into virgin lungs. She’d smoked two, maybe three, coughed and lied to herself that the care technician was right, it was nothing serious.
The cumulus clouds are tightening into fists, obscuring the peaks that shoulder Badger Pass. The chill of fall has chased Sabrina inside a reverie of Kona, Hawaii, where she and Keenan will vacation. She is there on the sand, an umbrella, a book, warm; she’s hiking among fumaroles of dormant calderas, then aboard a Catamaran, skipping over aqua waves.
Cheers erupt! A lone cyclist has breached the final hill, a multi-colored dot against black asphalt, leafless trees and the looming gray clouds behind him; it is Keenan, Sabrina is certain of that.
A family of one of the racers has allowed her to wedge in front of them to erect her tripod. She has him framed in the Zoom lens; his jersey, sweat lacquered to his skin as if it was a tattoo, shimmers with the advertisements of his sponsors: 7-Eleven, Badger Cyclery, Kyle, Jensen and Ross Law firm. A ray of sun singes through a cloud gap, illuminating him like a puissant Greek hero. She checks her light meter and adjusts the Nikon’s f-stop. Applause travels like a wave through the fans lining the roadway as he descends the final hill. He is so strong, she thinks. His legs are shaved; knots of muscle bulge his quadriceps. His body is thin and resilient in a tuck position, mocking the wind. He is athlete, attorney, her lover. But more. As he pedals closer, the focal length retreats toward her; she imagines him shaking presents, teasing eager faces around a Christmas tree, a child cuddled in his lap, falling asleep to the hum of nursery tales; a boy, perhaps, pitches baseballs to him on the backyard lawn.
The Nikon’s shutter clicks wildly. His chest bursts through the taut tape, arms raised. The crowd is riotous. Sabrina places the lens cover on the Nikon and joins a swell of sports reporters swarming Keenan like paparazzi. He teeters against his bike saddle for support, gulping Gatorade. Microphones wave inches from his face. They scribble notes: “What do you attribute the victory to this year, Keenan?”
“Well, training for sure. But here’s my real secret.” Sabrina steps up beside him. When he removes his helmet, steam rises off his matted hair, perspiration flows from every pore, he drips like a fish pulled from water. She holds him at arms length, as if she were dressing a mannequin, squeezes him like she’s fluffing a pillow. “One more with both of you,” someone yells. More riders are pedaling over the finish. The reporters flock them like moths around lights.
Keenan says to Sabrina, “let’s get out of here, I’m beat.”
They’ve been married two years. They met while Sabrina was photographing the Portland-Seattle double century. Her hobby, photography, had flourished into a career after she dropped out of college, wanting to get as far from Frank as possible. After two years of unwavering abstinence from dating, refusing dozen of come-ons at the various magazines where she freelanced, she had said yes to Keenan’s invitation to dinner. He impressed her from the start.
“I’m up to twelve thousand miles annually in the saddle,” he told her. “My specialty is endurance cycling. If I can place high enough in the Montreal ultra-marathon and the RAAM, I’ll qualify for the PBP.”
“RAAM? PBP?” Sabrina had said.
“The Race Across America, it’s pretty tough, but the granddaddy of endurance cycling is the PBP – Paris to Brest, and back. Very prestigious race. It’s held every four years, in France. Seven hundred sixty miles, round trip. Ninety hours or less, or you don’t qualify as a finisher.”
Sabrina said, “Seven hundred sixty miles, that’s crazy.”
“A lot of guys drop out – if they don’t drop dead. Which nearly happened to a Norwegian in ’82. He was riding for a record, figured he could break it if he dropped some weight. So he did, somewhere high in the Villanes Mountains, everything but a single water bottle. He probably bonked – hit the wall – and when his blood sugar dropped, he just collapsed. He survived the night up there, flagged down a commercial truck the next morning, inches from death.”
“Jeez.” Sabrina had felt like she just witnessed the Shuttle disaster.
Rain has begun peppering the windshield. They are stopped at a train crossing, an endless link of filthy brown train-cars rumbles over the intersection shaking the Lexus like Dolby Sensaround – the caboose nowhere in sight.
Keenan asks, “Honey, why the funk?”
“We can talk about it later, Keenan.” Her eyes are deliberately fixed on the passing train cars. Keenan identifies the mood immediately, it’s stuck in her head like a malignant memory – she wants a baby, it’s all she can talk about. They’d not discussed it before they married, Sabrina had never mentioned it and, he thought, his training and client load at work left little time for being a father. But he loves Sabrina, so when the problem started six months ago, he engaged the challenge like he would a race.
“Honey,” Keenan said as he gave a gentle, supplicant tug at her chin, to turn her head and engage her eyes, “come on, it’s important to me.”
“Is it, Keenan? Is it important to you?” She resisted his tug, but now she ratchets her head left and stares at him, fomentation in her eyes. You told that reporter I was supportive of you. I am Keenan, but what about me? What about us? A family?” Keenan straightens in his seat and places the Lexus in park.
“Honey, we’re doing everything possible. I’ve had my sperm assayed. You’ve had the dye trace run through your tubes and Dr. Harmon…”
“Oh, stop it, Keenan... tubes, I’m not a chemistry experiment for God’s sake.” Deliberately she turns away from him, her rigid expression held transfixed on the passing train; she feels the drumbeat of the train cars on steel rails reverberate inside her.
They’d started seeing Dr. Harmon, OBGYN, six months ago when Sabrina started getting edgy. Dr. Harmon was a warm, tender lady, with kinky black hair filigreed with streaks of white and gray. She had a large pudgy face round as a full moon. Her soothing fifty-five year old voice spoke in hushed tones; her bedside manner could make you happy you were dying. She was puzzled over Sabrina.
“My goodness, dear, I don’t know what to tell you.” She pointed at a flickering television monitor that displayed something that looked like an X-ray.
“You can see here,” her index finger traced a narrow gray line that looked like an irrigation ditch on a black and white air photo, “that the dye trace through you fallopian tubes shows a clear passage. And the sperm assay on Keenan,” she turned to him with a look like she was preparing to bless him, “shows his count is adequate. Now, I’ve double checked the blood work we ran, but I saw nothing to cause concern.” She switched off the monitor, slipped her right arm around Sabrina, lifted her left one and motioned for Keenan to come closer. When the three of them were huddled together tight, she whispered like she was calling the last play on fourth and inches.
“Sabrina, I want you to chart your body temperature when you ovulate, dear. When you notice a big jump, you need to let this wonderful man know. Then you young man,” she turned to Keenan and pulled him even closer with a grandmotherly squeeze of encouragement, “need to get in there when she’s hot. Okay?” They both nodded like they’d just been scolded.
But it wasn’t working. Each of the past four months, Sabrina drew a picture of a thermometer on an 11x14 sheet of graph paper – a long, narrow opened-ended tube with a tiny bulb at the base. She recorded her temperature with a red pencil – rising mercury representing her rising body temperature. On her hottest day, she animated the sudden rise with red-penciled mercury and sparks bursting from the top of the thermometer, and left the graph on the kitchen counter where she knew Keenan would find it. She’d go to their bedroom, dress in her lucky lingerie, and wait for him. He’d run up stairs to the bedroom to find Sabrina lying, languid, with pungent incense burning.
But after two weeks her period would start. She’d sulk for days, until the next month when they’d try all over again. Keenan was exasperated.
A man wearing tan coveralls, smoking a cigarette, nods and tips his hat to Keenan from the caboose as it rattles past. The black and white arms rise, warning bells blare, lights flash, and the Lexus moves on down the road. He reaches over and tickles Sabrina’s rib, it works sometimes. She curls and feigns discomfort, “Don’t, Keenan.”
But after a few miles she unfastens her seat belt, curls up her legs on the bucket seat and faces him. She shapes her hand into a make-believe tarantula. It crawls slowly over the Lexus’s console and onto Keenan’s knee, then up, until it reaches the cinch of his Lycra shorts. Her red-nailed finger works its way under the elastic and begins wiggling like an inchworm farther inside. Her voice is coy, the words an invitation.
“It’s my hottest day today, Keenan.”
He’d been able to get an erection when he needed to. The numbness hadn’t interfered, yet. When he knew her hot night was coming, he tried to resist training, a day, maybe two beforehand, so the numbness wouldn’t interfere. Oddly, it started about the same time he and Sabrina began seeing Dr. Harmon, but he never mentioned it to her, or Sabrina.
It was like … well, like his penis had disappeared, like it had fallen off, after a race or a long training ride it was numb, paralyzed, like needles in the foot after the bloods been drained. But this was different, no tingling – nothing.
He made an appointment to see a urologist. He was on the examination table, down to his paisley boxers, when Dr. Kumar returned with a scaled model of a pelvic skeleton, complete with a flexible penis – a floppy rubber core bulging inside a black nylon sheath. No way was the penis to scale, Keenan thought.
Dr. Kumar was a short man, no taller than five feet four inches. He wore brown leather shoes with a floppy tassel and argyle socks. A pair of pleated olive-green pants that belonged with an Armani suit poked out of his white, knee-length lab coat. His Indian-red complexion was blotchy, as if his face had been burned; a thick black mustache cascaded over his lip and his hair appeared sprayed into place. He plopped the pelvis on the examination table and started in on a Gray’s Anatomy pedagogy of penile anatomy: arteries, circulatory patterns, semen flow, erections, and ejaculations. He yanked the penis forward – Keenan jumped like Dr. Kumar had just pricked a voodoo doll – and pointed to a vine-like tubular bulge on its underside.
“This is the main artery,” he had said. “It only takes about eleven percent of your body weight to flatten it.” He was still holding the penis straight up, waiving it at Keenan, scolding him like an angry school marm. “I’m sure you can imagine the cumulative damage after years on a bike seat.” He let the penis fall to the table with a flaccid thud.
“That,” he said. Keenan leapt to the floor, terrified, like the thing had just come to life and was crawling toward him.
“If I were you, I’d knock my miles back, Keenan. Way back.” Then it was something about, “irreversible damage” and “impotence” as he dressed and fled the office of Dr. Kumar.
“Today? Are you sure?” Keenan asks.
“Uh huh. Almost 98.8 this morning.” Sabrina raises a seductive eyebrow and glides her tongue over a strawberry lip. Keenan issues a silent prayer to the god of tumescence.
Perhaps it was Sabrina’s red-nailed finger that did it, maybe Dr. Kumar had been wrong about things getting worse, or maybe it was just the synergy of victory and Sabrina’s body heat fusing into destiny. It doesn’t matter, as they pull into the driveway, Keenan can feel his penis.
He devours two plates of angel hair pasta covered in red sauce; Sabrina has sprinkled on some island spices: “They’re aphrodisiacs from Hawaii,” she says. She’s demonstrating incredible restraint this evening, Keenan thinks, perhaps she feels the synergy, too, knows there’s no hurry. But now Keenan is the one who can’t wait. Sabrina flashes him an alluring wink and darts off to the bedroom. He showers, brushes his teeth and finds her lying in bed, an irresistible passion, wearing nothing but the cycling jersey he wore two years ago when he won the Portland-Seattle double century, where they first met. She has lit three candles: two large, and a smaller one, and placed them on a night table next to this month’s thermometer picture. She’s placed a copy of Fodor’s: Hawaii there too. Couldn’t hurt, she thought.
“You want to go for a ride?” Sabrina tempts.
Keenan grins, “You want ride on my handle bar?” Their sex is directed, but is doesn’t stop them from enjoying it.
After, they separate on the bed and page through Fodor’s: Hawaii. As Keenan drifts off to sleep, Sabrina spoons in behind him. She watches candle wax drip and commingle, then harden on the night table. She blows them out. And then she falls asleep, too.
Two weeks pass. A cold front is moving east over Oregon, pushing in from the coast. Home from a hectic day in court, Keenan pulls into the garage, steps out of the Lexus and puzzles over a faint odor of cigarette smoke. Inside the house he senses it instantly, Sabrina’s menstruating again. She’s dressed in flannel pajamas, monotonously stirring a pot of corkscrew pasta noodles, humming a dirge. A sheet of 11x14 graph paper lies rumpled on the floor near the trash. From behind he hugs her, and whispers, “Oh, honey.” She stops stirring, he feels her tremble.
“Not now, Keenan. Just go … just go and leave me.” He retreats against the island counter.
“Honey, it’s only been six months. Let’s stay the course. We’ll try again. Maybe Dr. Harmon can prescribe some medication to …”
“No! I’d just as soon call a psychic as go see her again. We’ve spent over three thousand dollars with nothing to show for it, Keenan. There must be something wrong with my damn tubes.” The neglected pot of pasta begins boiling, jumping and sputtering over the burner on its warped copper bottom. Sabrina flips off the burner and pushes the pot to the back of the stove.
“We don’t know that, Honey,” Keenan says.
“It could be you, Keenan,” she says, spinning to stare him down like he’s prey.
“What? Oh, come on, Sabrina, now you’re reaching.”
“Why? Maybe you’re right. Maybe my tubes are fine. Maybe it’s you. Dr. Harmon said your sperm count seems adequate, remember? What if she’s wrong?” Keenan’s had enough cross-examination for the day.
“Look, Sabrina I’m healthy…”
“I’m healthy! Meaning I’m not, Keenan? You think it’s me, don’t you?” She moves closer, threatening. “Answer me, don’t you?”
“I don’t need this shit, Sabrina. You’re getting irrational.” He retraces his steps out the kitchen and back to the garage entry door.
“Great. Pedal away! Enjoy your solitary experience. If I happen to get pregnant, I’ll let you know.” His face is blanched when he turns to look at her. He sees something he cannot identify, sees this desultory bickering as a symptom of something he dare not confront.
He says, “Sabrina, I think we need a cooling off period.”
In a cluttered garage, Keenan trues the rear wheel of his bicycle, oils his drive train with Teflon and rubs a clean shop rag over the titanium tubes of his race bike, admiring its simplicity, its predictability. He changes clothes and rolls down the driveway. Traffic is light. He pedals the shoulder of a county road into a numbing westerly wind, oblivious to the chill, hypnotized by his cadence, wind swirling in his ears, tires whirring on asphalt. He rides west till dusk, then surrenders to fatigue. A cold tail-wind blows him home.
The weekend arrives; Keenan is off to a race in Eugene. Sabrina retreats to the privacy of her basement dark room. Tiny waves flicker in the trays of blue and yellow chemicals beneath a red light. She removes 8x10 black and white photographs from the final rinse tray with a tweezers – Alaskan rivers teaming with salmon, desiccated fillets hanging from clotheslines in native villages – photographs she had published in Outdoor Alaska magazine, “… exemplary examples of vivifying the verve behind the picture,” a reviewer had commended. She intended to submit them with her bid proposal to shoot the Running of the Bulls festival in Spain. Even with an advance, her out of pocket costs would be high, and after talking with her friend and confidant, Brenda, she has decided to tell Keenan of her plan. She will not submit a proposal and she will not travel to Spain – something both she and Keenan agreed could propel her from freelance to international syndication.
Monday, Sabrina and Keenan are seated at a corner table for two at Gregorios, an Italian restaurant located on Broadway near Keenan’s firm. They rendezvous here most Mondays for lunch. Keenan is dressed in a starched white shirt, a thin silk necktie and polished cuff links. A narrow leather belt suspends his cuffed wool slacks. His hair is parted; he appears comfortable. They each order a glass of the house Merlot and unfold a linen napkin in their lap.
Sabrina unconsciously measures the proximity of people seated at neighboring booths and tables, estimating her privacy. She’s rehearsed it all morning, after talking with Brenda, a crackerjack proof developer and confidant at the Portland Voice where Sabrina freelances. She had ceded to Keenan’s suggestion for a cooling off period, but she can’t hold it back. She says, “We used to be fish, you know.”
Keenan’s tilted in his chair watching “Sports: Week In Review,” a program showing on a television mounted in the bar area.
“I’m sorry, Honey, what?”
“Brenda told me.”
“That you and me used to be fish?” An incredulous expression creeps onto his face. She suspends an urge to appear hurt, begins fidgeting with her silverware.
“Not just you and me, all human beings. Did you know it takes only eight weeks from the time an egg attaches to the uterus to form a human being? And at about two weeks, fish-like gills form, but then they quickly disappear? The gills are a remnant of evolution. It’s because we used to be fish.”
“I thought we agreed to give this a rest for a while, Sabrina?” She expected this reaction, but it deflates her anyway.
“I know we agreed not to talk about it, Keenan. But I’ve been looking into another procedure that Brenda described to me. Hamsters, Keenan.” She slides her silverware and ice water out of the way, leans forward, eager to persuade.
“We take a sample of your sperm, put it on dry ice, and send it to an obstetrics lab in Seattle.” It was flowing now, just like she rehearsed.
“They mix them with hamster eggs in a shallow dish. Brenda says if your sperm can fertilize a hamster egg, then we’ll know they aren’t the problem. She says they’re just like human eggs. It’s expensive, Keenan, but it may...”
“How expensive?”
“Don’t you want to know more about the procedure? I thought you’d want to talk about that.” He moves to the end of his chair and leans forward, accusatorily, both elbows on the table.
“What are you talking about, Sabrina? I’m defective? I can’t get you pregnant. But maybe I can do it with a hamster? Is that it?”
The waitress interrupts with two glasses of Merlot: “I’ll be right back to take your order.” Sabrina produces some papers that require his signature and slides them over the red tablecloth to Keenan.
“Keenan, look at me. Six thousand dollars for everything. Dr. Harmon’s time, shipping the sample, the analysis and all the lab work at both ends. And…” the words catch in her throat, the confidence she held a minute earlier has vanished, “I’ve decided… look, I’m not going to submit the proposal. I’m not going to Spain. I’ll need to be here if your sperm penetrate the hamster eggs.” She shoots an admonitory glare at two eavesdroppers at a neighboring table like a pitcher checking a base stealer, then looks back to Keenan, her voice filled with entreaty. “If they do, we can do an in-vitro after our vacation, or whatever Dr. Harmon recommends next. It’ll be expensive Keenan, we may have to have more tests run – and I can always submit my proposal next year if…”
“No” Keenan interrupts curtly. The waitress returns: “Have you decided?”
“Nothing for me,” Keenan says first. The corner of his menu catches the stem of his wineglass as he hands it to the waitress. Spilled Merlot bleeds into the papers like water on desert rock. “Oh my God,” the waitress gasps, “I hope this wasn’t important … oh – I’ll get this wiped up right away. Busboy!” Keenan wants a baby, sure, but another six thousand dollars, and still no guarantee. All he’d get out of it is knowing he could get a hamster pregnant. A freckle-faced boy slides the red mush into his bin filled with empty glasses, dirty silverware, and cold strands of linguini.
Tuesday. Keenan has returned home from an exhausting team-training ride. As he dries from a shower, he hears Sabrina enter the house through the garage door. She has been shopping for the Hawaii vacation – a new one-piece, some sunscreen, and two webbed beach chairs. He is anxious to tell her that he has reconsidered, he wants to do the hamster thing. It is good news that will keep her in high spirits through the two-week vacation, he thinks. He waits three hours for the surcease of tingling in his penis, then springs the news on her. They make love for fun – Keenan produces enough semen to satisfy every female hamster in Oregon. Sabrina saves some for Dr. Harmon.
A desperate landscape of searing volcanic rock is all they see when they step onto the tarmac at the Kailua, Kona airport. It burns like hell beneath their sandals. Their condominium is on a low bluff adjacent to the Captain Cook Memorial. Mornings, Keenan pedals the island’s south shore, training; Sabrina remains at the condominium absorbing the magic of the equatorial sun.
On their fourth day, she spots a sport rental shop along Alihi Drive on their way to breakfast. She rents a tandem bicycle. She has never ridden with Keenan and thinks he may enjoy it too.
They awake the following morning and drive to breakfast.
“That’s a great idea, honey. The whole day?”
“Yes.”
They ride along serpentine stretches of winding coast road to Volcanoes National Monument. They stop for ocean views, lattes, and lunch where they share a piece of Key Lime pie. She rides rear tandem and marvels at the strength in his legs; she hardly needs to pedal at all, he is so strong. Their timing is perfect when they arrive back at the condominium, the wind has picked up and it begins to sprinkle. They both run inside, laughing.
The message light is blinking on the phone. It’s from Dr. Harmon’s office. “This message is for Sabrina: Call when you get a chance.”
Dr. Harmon is sweet and brief. “Oh, Sabrina. I received the test results back from Seattle. You asked that I call no matter what, dear. I would have waited but you said no matter what.”
“Yes, yes I did, so what did you find out?” The wind is picking up and whistling through the porch screen door, Sabrina slides it closed. She is perspiring and her clothes are lightly damp from the rain.
“Keenan’s sperm didn’t fertilize any of the hamster eggs, Sabrina. And… I’m afraid in-vitro isn’t an option. His initial count I thought looked adequate, but this time it was low. And the test results show they’re too weak.” Sabrina stares out at the high surf. When it slams against the rock breakwater it shakes the condominium floor like thunder.
“Sabrina?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Sabrina, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I wanted to wait until you returned but you asked me to call as soon as I heard.”
“Yes, I know. Look, I’m going to let you go, okay?”
“Are you having a good time, dear? Is the weather fair? Are you okay?”
“Look, Dr. Harmon, I’m going to let you go. Okay? Everything’s fine. Okay? Bye.”
Keenan is still in the shower when Sabrina picks up her purse and walks out to the edge of the bluff. The rain has diminished to a mist. She sits down in the lotus position in a stand of tall, moist grass. She lifts a menthol cigarette from a slender metal case buried at the bottom of her purse and struggles to light it in the wind that has become more of a gale.
The surf’s bellow echoes drearily through the hollow inside her. She drags the cigarette hard. The Pacific trade winds whip her dust-blonde hair like a windsock. The waves continue to thrash the rocks below, louder now.
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