Sculpture Garden

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

She had reservations, he could tell in her careful demeanor, in the quiet nervous way in which she constantly attended to the task of pushing her read hair behind her ears. So they talked slowly, like two people circling each other. Some questions found answers, others were deftly parried. They sat for some time like that, talking across some seemingly unbreachable gap, on the long bar, the lights dimmed and the rain picked up.

The conversation languished and with his hand on the small of her back, they exited one bar for another. He was a stranger not only to her, but here so she picked. And as they walked in silence, her smoking, and him staring down the street he assumed led to their intended destination he thought on how similar this particular part of broad street was to so many other places he had once lived.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

The bar she picked was her own. He could tell, he remembered very acutely that wonderful feeling of having a place one felt comfortable. They sat and she order and they played one four twenty four. He feigned dismay as she won nearly every turn, but every dollar he turned over to her he though was well spent, her laughter would tumble out of her.

It was a beautiful flitting thing, a laugh that pirouetted with the joy of little girl. Her eyes were so light they were nearly clear, and the dress she had chosen was dark, over the knee, and the prettiest she owned. He could tell.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

A band was setting up. She asked him a question and choked down her room temperature shot of gin- rule of the house, the consequence of an errant die. He told her about this boy he had seen in birmingham in a strip mall bar. He wasn't much to look at thin with shaggy blonde hair, and he assended the makeshift stage shirtless he couldn't have been much older than eighteen. But the sound that came from the guitar for the next twenty five minutes he would never forget. The boy played with a frantic youthful energy, building a cathedral of sound moment by moment.

She said that the best things in life were like that, surprises in ordinary places.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

This bars band began, and he thought while it was not like that night in alabama, it was still quite something. The sound of the four of them and the way the girl wailed filled all the empty spaces.

Instincts take over in small places full of sound. The crowded swayed in their silence, and when a passerby nudged her without thought he braced her.

He thought then he had forgotten, or almost forgotten, how soft girls were. He maneuvered her on to the stool, her skin so pale had taken on a drunken glow. There nose to nose they lingered.

The sound stop and the room gave up the ghost. Unfettered what was once whole drifted apart and the choir of individual conversations rose and their moment dissipated.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

He walked her to her apartment, a block and a half from the bar. The kiss seemed conceived in e that lingering moment nose to nose even if it was born on her porch. And what followed was mostly the inertia of the alcohol. But there in the yellow haze of the exterior lights, he heard a little lustful gasp. And as only a sound can do he remembered what he had not be able to feel for months.

A timid invitation and his less than graceful decline.

Walking he lost himself again, in a memory. He couldn't remember how many times he done it. Made those sounds on an empty sidewalk. It seemed all great repetition: his footsteps, the blocks, the nights, the particular feeling of walking home alone. The only thing he found that could break that terrible feeling were was clinging to a little truth.

And as all the particular drifted into commonalities he did his best to remember what couldn't be ignored.

Nevada

She thought highway 80 was a dream; sliding through the cool green valley with ease before they ascended. He was comfortable with the quiet, and she paid him little attention in those moments gawking without reservation at the trees, each a defiant spear thrust into the rocks. The engine churned under the weight of his foot, pushing his well traveled pickup truck up the cutbacks. And though at first she started to write in her little notebook of disconnected thoughts, it sat there opened and unmarked for some time. While they had only been in the vehicle for a short time there were things she felt confidence in; that he drove in the lanes closest to the guard rails so that she could enjoy the view, that lack of music was a shared opinion, that his chuckles at her childish excitement at the trains they passed as without judgment.

It was not always complete silence, they would go through spurts where they would talk vigorously, each waiting for the pause that followed the end of a sentence so that the other could begin. And then the conversation would conclude, or collapse, each of them almost having to catch their breath. In the decent down towards Reno, she took some time, discreetly to take him in. Measuring him as he adjusted in his chair, noting the particular way in which he seemed to grip the wheel with disinterest. His hair and beard were a mess, and she suspected that a look that was once of feigned in-deference had tumbled over into actual disinterest.

He was strange to her and at times all too familiar, as if by some particular angle of the fall sun's light some how the boy she had known all those years ago would be illuminated, only to vanish as they slid behind a mountain. She was no novice with boys though, she had known them almost all her life.

'You're pretty you know,' she began while staring out the window, 'but you would be a hard boy to love.'' In the window she saw him raise and eyebrow, throw her a sideways glance, a look that seemed well practiced. Which was fine she thought, girls honed an arsenal of looks by middle school, it seemed only egalitarian that boys should put some effort into such things. Boys, she was sure, were mostly lazy.

'Am I now?'

'Well, under that beard. And maybe with some even halfhearted maintenance to that hair and yes I feel very confident. Pretty.' His laugh that followed made her smile, it was low and rumbling, as if it began somewhere deep within him, and that it couldnt be contained.

'That's not the part I was inquiring about.'

'You weren't specific.'

'Ah.' he shook his head, then quietly laughed to himself, 'I'm out of practice at banter'.

'You'll pick it back up,' She shrugged nonchalantly, one of her practiced looks.

'So?'

Suddenly, she didn't want to tell him. She wasn't sure if it was because she was sure he knew and so there was no point in telling him, or because he didn't know and she was afraid to hurt him. He waited though, without asking again for a few minutes. She considered the flat parade of browns that approached them, sun hammered sand as far as her eyes could see.

'You have this look about you as if you always want to be somewhere else. And I don't know how many women could spend their lives with you always having that look.' He didn't flinch but he didn't respond, at least not at first.

'It's not just a look.'

'I know.' Quietly, and then more quiet. A moment, a pause, the bizarre blur that is speeding through downtown Reno. 'Why do you think that is?'

'Deep down,' he began, then paused, and with a smirk resumed, 'I think I'm a pirate.'

She couldn't contain her smile, but she turned half away to conceal it. “A pirate? Where's your treasure?'

He seemed reflective for but a moment, then admitted, 'No treasure.'

'A pirate with no treasure, seems a curious thing. What do you have?'

He responded without consideration, ' A few scars and a few stories.'

'No treasure. Just scars and stories. Sounds like a pirate's life to me' and without missing a beat he said 'Yo Ho'. She giggled incessantly.

They cut south nevada as the day drew to a close. In those last minutes she watched, not wistfully, at the sunset, concealed behind the mountains they had earlier made their way through. She had hoped for an explosion of orange and pink but was surprised by the indescribable purple she found. It was indescribable, she made many efforts in her notebook from the rock she sat upon. He had stopped, without asking, to let her watch it. He was skipping rocks, poorly, in the salt lake they had found while she watched her failed sunset.

Hours later she stood in a convenience store bathroom, running hot water over her hands. She hadn't thought to bring gloves. In the mirror she saw someone she knew completely, but often didn't recognize. She never felt old. Never. But sometimes in the mirror she would see this person that looked old. Not too old, she wasn't yet even 40. Just older than she remembered being. Boys would marvel at her. The energy of her laugh and the light in her eyes. She had good skin from the old country and good taste from her mother. But sometimes, just sometimes she thought she looked old.

She wondered if anyone every could truly see themselves. He couldn't see him self. He could know himself but she knew he couldn't see himself. Perhaps she too suffered the same plight, perhaps all people did. She thought she might ask him about herself, then decided not to do so. That was silly and perhaps even desperate. She was willing to admit that she could be prone to silliness but she was resolved never to be desperate.

He hadn't even started the car yet when he asked her, turning to face her, what was wrong.

'Sometimes I hate myself.' She said more honestly than she wanted.

He looked at her, then out at something through the buzz of the overheard halogen lights. Shrugged. 'Anyone who doesn't hate themselves a little, doesn't know themselves that well.'

She thought that was probably true. But before she could respond he followed. 'But anyone who doesn't love themselves, doesn't know themselves at all.' She thought on that while he turned the engine over. It was strange collection of seemingly necessary sounds, the engine's rattle, the click of his seat belt, and the hiss of his coca-cola bottle.

'Oh I bought you these.' She felt them land in her lap, two little purple mittens, with yellow and brown stripes.

She held them up, 'They're hideous.'

'I know, I picked them out for that reason.'

'I love them.' she admitted gleefully.

'I know.' He turned left out into the darkness and they drove on.

Overlap

The days were growing longer.  I was standing in my yard, or my parents yard, the grass was coming back to life- slowly, slower than I remembered it doing so when I was younger. But back then my father willed the lawn to life, with the weight of his frustrated brows, as if the only thing that could calm his smouldering winter wrath was the Gregorian mechanical churn of the lawnmower. In his absence the winter lingered, and while my brother’s dog's gingerly steps crunched the brown grass, I pretended I could not hear the voice coming from the upstairs porch, clinging copper strands of her hair were still wound around my fingers.
A pictures comes in the mail, the envelope its corners, bruised and bent. In it Madeline is crowned in chaotic curls of wispy blonde hair. I marvel at how grown she is, two maybe three, and the glean of her dark brown eyes, like lacquered disks. They look just like her mother’s. Somewhere over the border I know they’re curled up in their den, laying amongst seemingly endless wave like layers of blankets, taking in the fire, or perhaps reading a book. In place of memories I imagine, their exchanges, the difference in the size of their hands, and their ever growing bond.
Joe’s hands, wide at the knuckled, the lengths narrow. He’s flexing them over and over as if he could wring out whatever was within them. I’ve got my collar popped, and am leaning against the railing of the dock. Without the sun, the wind is almost nonexistent. Cigars, the warm ends glowing. He is staring off at something in the dark, and while I ask questions that skirt every obvious issue, I try to decide what on the horizon holds him, what horizon he could possibly see.
There is no sense that can be made of these things, these times. Every waking moment is the same, completely doused in an unarrangable assortion of  unique specifics. The overlap of people and places doesn’t help, I can not keep an order to it. Sometimes it feels like I am doing the same things over and over again, but as time goes on I can’t tell if that’s just the feel, or the way it is. The line between those things ceases to be clear.
A memory of Isabel at the door, she’s leaning into the door frame.  A disheveled orange skirt clings to her round hips. Her hair, black like summer pitch, is up, and there’s a look on her face, but what it means, out of context of the things that happened before and will happen after it, I cannot tell . I don’t know if she is coming or leaving. The only consolation I have about the confusion is that in the end it doesn't matter, it’s a memory and it’s always fading a little, bit by bit.
In the brown chair across from me my brother packs a bowl. Underneath the months of his beard I can still see his little boy smile, I can see the shadow of the person who used to cross himself every time he passed road kill. He’s has caught me off guard, having shouldered off the hood of his addiction, his guise shimmers and I know him again, know him not as he is, but as he was. I feel guilty in that moment as he makes a joke, an old reference, and his laughter shakes the walls. I slip, and laugh myself too.
Kim’s back arches, and she shudders. She’s grey, cast in the streetlight that cuts through the horizontal blinds of her bedroom, resting on tops of shoulders and breasts and hips. The undersides of her retain her caramel characters, her eyes are dilated, and her hair pours down around her in heavy streams. She asks something but I’m not listening, I don’t ask her to repeat herself and she lets the question go. She falls down beside me, with my eyes closed I can feel her, buzzing, alive and young.
I go to sleep, I awake. I go to sleep. In their repetition they cease to be book ends for events, I am always doing both, sleeping and awake. The places change inbetween I am on the highway, the interstate, the direction I’m driving becomes as irrelevant as the state I am in. The sun comes up and goes down, and in the noise inbetween those things I am dreaming of Alyse. I am waiting for rain.
Gerrard is dead. I touch his hand, his skin is strange but familiar all the same. His fingers are slightly bent. People are leaving little trinkets in his coffin. Each token, reference to a memory I assume. A slender shiny putter, a Dan Marino rookie card, a ring on a chain both of silver. In my pocket I toy with a pewter figure, I turn it over and over. I hesitate, release it and leave without depositing it. Coffins I think are not places for unfulfilled promises.

vast

they rocked, and the bay's breeze blew in, and into that wind, he asked her though he knew how she would answer, as she always answered. she had been quiet almost all the day, and without intent of continuing that theme, of that he was sure, she pointed to the descending sun. the boat wasnt perfect for the open waters, he preferred the bays and intercoastals, but he spun the nose towards the bridge that arched the bay and pushed forward the throttle. it lunged forward as only smaller boats seemed to do. she swung her head to face him, and there he saw her first real smile of the day- that that he was sure was specifically hers- intimate and fragile, young and wonderful. she scooted up the seat towards the foremost part of the bow- her hair screamed out behind her, a long wail of brown.
he had told her more times than he could count that she was beautiful- but no matter how he assailed her- in earnest or in sincerity- those words never made it inside. he picked a line to follow, there were never any boats heading out this time of day, and in that easy path he swallowed all the things the wind would have kept him from saying anyway. that he thought her chin and neckline were perfect, and that the slim nature of her shoulders elegant even in that peruvian print bikini top. and while he assumed as all thinner girls tended to do, that she found herself lacking in so many ways- there was a long slim balance to her that he had always found so appealing. he considered resolving to try and tell her later but let those words slip from his memory, she had made her point in the score of days with her long silences.
he redirected the craft for a moment, to bounce over the diminishing wake of a retreating boat and threw out a casual wave as nautical courtesy, and then was off and under the bridge. bridges were strange things, at a distance so self evident that they hardly required much consideration. but passing underneath one the size of the sunshine skyway demanded one to wonder at how such things were made, and to marvel at the uncontainable will of men.
the churn of the engine became an endless refrain as they headed west, the individuality of every wave lost beneath the haste of their transit, the only sign of any passing time was the crawling of the sun to the horizon.
this is where he belonged, and he thought her too, chasing the sun in a voiceless joyful howl of wind, the long sunned brown of her limbs stretched out and his hands holding him upright at the center console, forever.
and then they were there, that place she always requested, and he pulled back the throttle, and watched the numbers on the depth finder shrink. he wasnt sure, though time would tell, if it was becoming or ceasing to be a key- and in a sad sudden realization he realized it didnt really matter, either way it would one day not be what it was now.
her feet hit the water, and where he would have trudged she seemed to skim out and away from the boat. a few yards away, where the depth came to the middle of her thighs, she stopped and stood. the water surrounded on all sides by transitioning sands almost ceased to move, laying flat and still like a mirror. almost exactly when she put her hands palms down onto the face of the waters the sun had reached that point where it cast its light over the sea, and the water ignited in oranges and pinks. she stood there as she preferred, silent and lovely, inflamed with the water.
it was quiet enough, that after some time he asked without having to raise his voice.
'why do you love this so much?' he knew already all the reasons he did.
she turned back to him, pushed a few uncooperative strands of hair back behind her ears. then she returned her hands to their resting place upon the sea.
with closed eyes she said, 'you know at night, when youre in a dark place, and you can really see the night sky, when you can see thousands and thousands of stars?'
'yeah'
'you know how small you feel? and maybe its scares you or saddens you or confuses you- or whatever, it just makes you feel really small?'
'yeah of course'
'here' she said, turning back to the sun, 'i feel endless, i feel vast.'

Creatures of the wind

she awoke before he did, stretched her best feline impression and eyed him over. she always was a bit envious of how men seemed to sleep so well in beds that weren't their own. his face was half buried into the crisp white pillow he had claimed, the rest of him lay about uncovered.
she hadn't meant to wake him, with the tracing finger she had run across his shoulders, but she saw him come to life, shudder slightly like the rumble of an old engine. he clawed a hand through his hair and through the hazy morning light of her bedroom she saw him look her over, and greet her good morning. god what must my hair look like, i haven't thought of it at all she thought but she smiled back at him, almost instinctively, there was just something about the rusty voice of a man in the morning she loved.
he rolled back on to his spine, stretched his toes, and didn't think to cover himself until she popped from bed and reached for an explosively colourful silk robe.  she sorted her hair, as only women seem to know how to do, without looking at it and a few brisk movements of her hands. the blonde in it was starting to go, and he thought she looked quite a picture of contrast- a hair coloured as a feign and those eyes so intense authentic and dark.
she fixed her hair and intentionally left her robe open, she fought back a smirk at his gaze and turned to walk to a nearby mirror. god i am sore but that smirk broadened to a full smile, she was sore in all of her favourite places. facing the mirror she made a show of looking  at her face but she was really evaluating her body. does no harm to make sure everything is looking good if you're going to prance around half naked she thought. breasts and stomach looked good, and so did her hips, ive always had nice hips, but she frowned at her thighs. she had always found them too large, but strangely enough boys seemed to always be so fond of them. she would always probably find them too large.
'certainly, not baroque though.' she said out loud without thinking.
in the mirrors reflection she saw a single eye creek open and look at her. she felt in that moment very exposed, with her hands at her face her  thighs and bottom were completely visible. his eye closed. 'no, not baroque. more  an impressionist era. degas perhaps'
he could not see her beam. she turned and looked him over, now covering the important areas.
'mantegna for you i think'. she decided. his eye brows raised though his eyes remained shut.
'without the holes i hope' he answered.
'of course' she responded silly boy.
'well i've better looking company that's for sure'. he finished.
god i should hope so. that didn't say much, the two ladies in that painting were ugly enough to almost ruin it. but it had been meant as a compliment and while there would have been plenty of days when she wouldn't have been able to take it as such, today she did.
it had been an off the cuff remark, not nearly as sweet as it should have been he thought. he propped himself up on his elbows and prepared himself to follow it, if necessary. mornings were delicate periods with women, too much light, too much reality floating around like the dusty particles that are exposed in the intruding morning rays of light. but she walked, danced, skipped in her own particularly joyous way to the kitchen and he concluded that it had been well enough received.
'breakfast?' she asked. with her back to him in the kitchen area- it was a large but single roomed studio flat.
'maybe, what are you in the mood for?'
she turned to him and flashed her most devilish smile 'momo's'
he chuckled and shook his head. he was too worn out from the night before to start again. in sheer volume he was her better but in tenacity she knew few equals.
he thought that she was probably often misunderstood. at first glance she did seem to be completely erratic and random in her movements and in her nature. she pulled out two champagne flutes, then walked to her collection of vinyls, thumbed through about ten and then picked one out but didn't place on the record player,  she crossed the room and across the extravagant thick persain rug of her floor to open the curtains, too wide at first, readjusted them, collected a book off the small chair side table, deposited it on the kitchen counter, paused for a moment to consider herself, and then returned to the glasses. she was a leaf on the breeze, not as some frantic victim of propulsion but as some part of the divine synchronicity of the universe. it was all as rhythmic in its own way as all the heavenly movements just not as easy to discern.
she saw him pull on on his jeans as he said, 'i wish i could, but i cant' and while in some way she had known that he wouldn't leave, the words still made her sad.  socks and shoes, shirt and jacket. the radiators hummed in her apartment but it would be cold outside. she thought for a moment to protest and then did not. it was just what it was.
at the door frame he said 'again some time?'
'of course'
outside the door he had stopped, just to catch the last few sounds of her. he could hear her moving about the small apartment and he though then that she was an elemental temporarily trapped, but he knew too that all too soon she would be released, again a zephyr.
down the stairs and out the two doors. he turned right to walk through the grey towards ibrox station but the wind was blowing fully, and hard, into his face. with the kelvin running through town, it was almost impossible to know which way it would gust. he turned about and headed towards hillhead, popped his collar to cover his neck, and as the wind led him down the cobbled street for the first time all morning he smiled.
when the door had closed she had lingered a moment, then returned to the record she had chosen 'honkey chateau'. she considered for a moment changing the record she'd picked. its going to be a beautiful momrning, with or without the company, no reason to pout. she started the turntable, danced her way back into her kitchen and opened the refrigerator, reached in and pulled out a cheap bottle of champagne.
happily and aloud to herself she said 'ah, breakfast!'

memories of grey rooms

He had seen him come in, recognized him only barely, it had been years and he hoped that he would pass on by. It had been a long time. But like clouds off the coast purple with a promise, a half hour or so later john walked over, a drunken rhythm to his saunter. he thought then that time tended to heal most things, but perhaps not wounded prides.

He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do it here, with these casual acquaintances, ringing him in this position, and publically it was hard to control judgement. But he didn’t want to do it in general. ‘john, do really want to do this now?’ he said before he could start, ‘its been a long time’. After he said it he thought on it, it had been five, maybe six years, ‘half a decade’

‘yes I want to do this now, I don’t care how long its been, you’

He cut him off, ‘why’

The question halted him but a moment, ‘because you fucked my wife.’

He could have sworn the volume of the whole room reduced, probably imagined. But every head in hearing distance turn, involuntary reaction. He could hear the people behind him, his company, their spines straighten. He hadn’t noticed scott, another name and face from a youth that seemed all too far away, behind john, but he could have sworn he heard his teeth set, molars over molars.

He set his drink down and squared his shoulders to him, they weren’t the same height but they were close. ‘if memory serves me, you’d moved out of your house- left your wife and infant daughter- and moved in with some intern from work’. He blocked out the people, he didn’t want this spectacle, but he wasn’t about to go down as the only guilty party, even if he was guilty.

John’s eyes narrowed, that brief moment where to an onlooker it is almost impossible to tell the difference between whether he would scream or cry. The voice that came out was neither, ‘we grew up together, played football together, why would you do it, you knew we were married still’

He couldn’t imagine a universe where any of that shit mattered, or living a life where the temporary comraderie of a playing field lays the chains of some eternal obligation. Then again he couldn’t have imagined this moment, before it happened, and under the haze of some bars buzzing light something that should have receded quietly into nothingness was dredged back.

‘I saw her by chance you know, I wasn’t in atlanta long, a few months, and I saw her in a bar. And we talked for a bit, she was a shell of herself. A ghost man. As any girl would be when left from someone ten years younger. The post partum depression didn’t help, but you being across town in some other girls bed. She was a mess. So I took her out, tried to remind her who she was, still fun. Still sexy. Still a wonder.’

It had started like that, talks and casual drinks and the occasional stories about high school, and sharing songs, or bands or making idle conversation, and then outside that highlands bar through a taxi window it was a kiss, and maybe it had been all the bourbon, or maybe it was the residue of the romance of their youth, or maybe it was just her vicious need to be again, and nights that turned into weeks without thinking it was making out at every red light, and concerts with his fingers strumming against her thighs, and her car, and that alley, and enough dark to keep all the realities at bay and for just a while be, to be again.

‘fuck you man, you don’t know anything about her’.

That wasn’t true. He shrugged. After he suspected it wasn’t about that. John was reasonable enough to understand his complicitness in that moment, drunk and fool, but reasonable, at least he remember him as such. No, he realized this was about something different, this was about January some time later, when the girls in the bar he worked at told him that there was some girl here, and it was about that the near sheer slip under the black crocheted dress, and the fingers that lingered at the stem of the martini glass she had propped herself up on, and the freckles and the curls of her hair, she had worn when she was young. And it was about the silence afterwards, when he never heard from her again.

‘fuck you man,’ john repeated, ‘you had no right’

‘John, you think I didn’t know she was going to go back to you? That you wouldn’t get back together? You’re her husband. You’re a family. She was never going to be with me. I knew that.  Let it go.’

‘Then why’d you do it?’

Without thinking he responded, ‘you might have loved her best, but I loved her first’.

John swung and he batted it away, john was drunker than even his gait had let on, he had him by the front of the shirt, and with a push put him against the wall.

He wasn’t angry, in that moment he felt again the acuteness of that silence. You can’t fill someone up without emptying youself, and that there was going to be a part of him, always in that grey space with her, on top of the sheets, entwined in her quiet breathing and the smooth brown lengths of her skin, caught up in the fragile moment, twittering at the most fragile part, the end, moments before the collapse. He was suddenly tired. And he let john’s shirt go.

‘Go home to your wife john. She loves you, which is more than you deserve, so it needs to be enough.’ For the briefest moments he could taste her again in his mouth ‘it has to be enough.’

mostly defeated

she was sitting under the pergola, knees pulled up and under a long spring bud dress. unadorned, hair falling in long straight sheets of brown. her arms- thin- wrapped around her legs, bared toes poked out from underneath.
he knew he would find her here, adrift the potted plants and the aching afternoon flowers. the grey drone of clouds, and the wind that dashed off the shore now slowed to a comfortable amble by the time it reached his yard- made being outside possible, even pleasant.
he called out her name as he approached, but she didn't turn to see him till he had come closer. her brown eyes were unhemmed and her lips tinged with red, her sleepy slow smile confirmed the bottle that companioned her on the bench, mostly defeated.
he pulled off his silk tie, tossed it casually on the glass end table- christened with yellow pollen- and undid a few of the buttons of his shirt. he then unplugged the glass decanter and poured warm, strong smelling bourbon into a previously abandoned glass. sat down, pulled off his shoes and socks, flexed his toes.
when he inquired how she was, she replied with a shrug of her slight shoulders and so they sat there for some time, saying nothing at all. after awhile though, she stood and walked out into the grass, dragging the wine bottle behind her.
'what did you do today?' he asked.
she was staring into, or through, the blooming hibiscus- their shivering red petals.
'people drive too fast in this neighborhood.' she answered, he threw an arm over the back of the bench and didn't respond. she turned to him, caught him looking at her and carried on, 'did you know sandhill cranes mate for life?'
'no, i didn't know that.'
'i went for a walk this morning...' she trailed off.
'did you take the wine with you?' he knew she had, but the smile she gave him surprised him- implish and young, it belonged to a girl who had not been spending her days in his yard.
he watched it evaporated before his eyes as she continued, ' somebody hit a sandhill crane. i saw it.'
'did they stop?'
'no, i saw it afterwards laying on the asphalt.'
'oh' he winced.
'but that wasn't the worst part.' she paused, and a pop of wind sent all the leaves into a brief crescendo. he didn't ask, just waited for the wind, or whatever had given her pause to subside. 'what was worse  was that i saw its mate standing there beside it. it was just looking down at it. it was just so awful.'
'are you okay?'
she walked around in a small circle, the green blades of the saint augustine grass shooting up through her toes. the wind pulled at her dress, her lithe form revealed- and he remembered all at once how young she was.
'i just sorta stood there and wondered...' trailing off again.
'wondering what?' she turned and faced away from him.
'what it was feeling.'
he drank from his glass and then offered up 'despair i would imagine.'
'no i don't think so.' he only half heard her-he was looking at how the whole yard was in movement- even if only recognizable in the smallest of ways, everything seemed to sway to the beat of some invisible force except for her- amidst it all she seemed so becalmed. 'no i think it was feeling something worse than despair.'
'worse than despair?' he then asked, 'what could be worse than despair?'
she turned back to him and with wine stained lips she answered.
'confusion.'