Them.

HER.

When they had arrived at the beach, the sun was alone in the sky, save for an occasional kite or passing seagull, and of course the other stars that you couldn’t see in daylight. By lunch, the sky was overcast and marbled with streaks and shades of gray, not painted but sculpted above the world like a vaulted cavern ceiling. From the sandy picnic table Christine sought the sun through the clouds, looking at where she had seen it last, then trying to guess where it had moved to in the hours that had passed.

“We should go to my aunt’s place,” he said, typically unsure. She knew the tone and ignored it. “You know—up in New Hampshire on the lake—it’ll be great—just the two of us—away from civilization—candles—wine…” She heard his voice trail off into his chest where it trembled quietly in a way she had found surprisingly sexy on their first date—lake, what lake, it was a fucking pond and the bugs were horrendous anyway—the day she’d always remember as Saturday February 23, even though she knew it might have been a Friday, and as first dates go it was pretty good and left both of them wishing the other wouldn’t judge so they could just get the first fuck over with and bask in the uncertain newness, a fresh relationship waiting to fail because what goes up must come down, all good things come to an end, we all die eventually, and Viagra can only compensate for physical limpness anyway.

“When?” she asked unwillingly. She looked away from the clouds and around his face, avoiding the trap of his warm eyes. They were brown like the Earth and felt just as heavy on her.

“The end of next month.” He fidgeted and seemed timid like always. “The last weekend—it’ll be great.”

She looked down at her half eaten salad. “Can’t.” No carbs, just sparse meals. She lifted half a forkful to her mouth and ate quietly.

“Why not?” he shot back.

She swallowed quietly. “Because I’ve got that thing,” she said. Beneath the surface of the table her leg bounced uncontrollably. Up-down-up-down-up-down.

“What—thing? What thing? What are you talking about? Damn it—I wish we could just have one time, one time—”

“In Lowell.” Up-down-up-down-up: “The conference?” Her eyes widened and pleaded with her salad, not looking at him. “Remember? The one I told you about yesterday.”

For a second, or maybe a few seconds, perhaps a minute, he didn’t speak. She could feel his gaze, and it was stifling. “Oh,” he said finally, in a tone that she knew meant he didn’t believe her. “That’s right—sorry.” How the hell could he forget? That was yesterday, spooning in bed, the first time they’d had the opportunity for him to fuck her in a month.

“Don’t worry.” Up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down. “It’s fine.”

“Well—we’ll have to pick out a good date—then we’ll have a date.” He gave a self-satisfied laugh. He loved stupid word-play.

She forced a smile as she struggled to swallow another bite of her salad. Up-down-up-down-up-down. She looked away from him, looking but not really seeing anything in particular, turned her head back and then looked the other way. Up-down-up-

“Something’s wrong—”

Christine suppressed a tired laugh and remained perfectly still. She knew the world wasn’t silent, that the surf was rushing and crashing and the wind was picking up, that whining families were hastily repacking their equipment and hiking back to their cars, that the vendors were consolidating their supplies into carts with slams and bangs and whumps of dropped boxes, that seagulls screamed fiercely and jockeyed for rights to discarded buns, candy bars, and mussels children had ripped from jetty rocks. She knew the world wasn’t silent, yet felt the quiet that existed between the sounds drowning out everything else.

She noticed one of the vendors was an Arab man, with the typical darkened skin, that thick and coarse black hair, the eyes of a fanatic. With suspicion she regarded the boxes he lifted, and the way his arms strained told her the boxes were too heavy to be frozen hotdogs. He wore a cell phone on one hip and a walkie-talkie on the other, one for quick calls and furtive text messages and the other for the men in awhite van parked down the street just out of sight. His shirt was blood red, his khaki shorts were dark and filthy, and his barefoot feet carressed the parking lot sand as if homesick for a far desert country, filled with Mohammeds, Husseins, and dreams of her death. She eyed him as he walked past the convertible she had bought last month.

Suddenly she found brown eyes accusing her. In shame she looked down at her salad. She was homesick—when did those eyes stop being home? She found the strength to look again and found herself enraptured and embarrassed, wishing she could take back the lie about the conference, knowing she would probably never feel the bug bites on that pond again, that the glimmering starlight would be shared with someone else, and realizing clearest of all that she’d never fall asleep in his arms again while listening to the beautiful loon calls that she loved, she loved.