only the hesitation remains

DALTON

Dalton's father was a preacher in their little town on the Carolina coast. He always saw the old man as a sort of moral compass, a bastion of the last traces of goodness in humanity.

As the clouds began to settle low enough to block out any chance of a beach trip, Dalton took a seat by his father's side.

"How do you do it, sir?" he asked.

"Do what?" Richard replied.

"All my life, you have managed to stay on the right course. You give counsel and you stand up straight and you tell the truth. How have you managed to avoid all the mistakes men make?"

"I've had my fair share of mistakes, son."

"I've never seen you sweat."

Richard took a sip from his drink and propped his leg up against the coffee table. There was something slightly menacing in his eye. He did not seem the father, the rock, in that instant. Dalton quickly dropped the subject.

"I finished Titus Andronicus this morning," the young man filled in the silent pause.

"Any good?"

"A little too bloody."

The conversation died again. It may have been the stress of those days. Abigail was not yet his, and Allison was out at sea. It may have bee the heat or the excitement about his application to Rutgers, but if you ask Dalton, this very moment was the last he would live, proudly wearing the Corey surname.

The air tightened in the room, and his father seemed to say, "Dalton. I only wanted one son. You were that mistake."

Their eyes met; the clouds began to part.

DALTON

Dalton sleepily swatted at a mosquito, buzzing encores of another summer night. He made a striking figure in a fetal contortion on the pea green couch his mother had found for his house. As the sun drew and the sounds of crickets burned away in the hiss of South Carolina light, he rubbed his eyes.

"God. No point in trying to get another hour and a half of sleep," he mumbled as he reached for a cigarette.

The matchbook was in his jacket pocket, and he didn't feel like walking into his room for it, so he made the three step journey into what some might call a kitchen. He had often wondered if it were the appliances or the actual food that made a kitchen. If it were the latter, he had not had a kitchen since moving out. He poured a glass of water and switched on the radio. White noise. He sipped.

"Damn it," he grumbled with a little bit of a morning temper. "What's the point of having a radio if there's nothing to hear?"

The phone rang. He could tell by the sound of the ring that it was his brother. There was a certain somber echo to a call from a man of nearly thirty calling for a little extra cash. Dalton didn't mind loaning Allison money when he had a full stomach and a fuller heart, but this morning had already started out on the wrong note.

ALLISON

Allison found himself on the sea. His pulse synchronized with the pulls of the waves on the Atlantic, and as he watched the foam mouthed babbles under the little dinghy, the endless blue often drew all there was of him.

Dalton hopped on board.

"Where are we heading this morning?" he asked.

"Morning passed an hour and a half ago," Allison replied. "We aren't going anywhere. I just didn't feel like being on land."

"Or being alone? How the fuck do you always end up getting me on the water with a full wallet and an empty stomach?"

"Come on. You know you like it. Bonding time."

A wave snapped starboard. Dalton anxiously scooted a little further back and looked up at Allison. He was, of course, laughing. Dalton had always envied that, Alli's connection with the sea.

ALLISON

Allison kicked his leg up onto Dalton's kitchen table and reclined into his "advice giving" stance. He rubbed his hand along the freshly shaved edges of his chin.

Dalton began, waving a letter, "I'm not really sure what to do with this."

"You should probably start by telling me what it says. Why do you always get so far ahead of yourself?" Alli replied.

"They want me to move to China. To write. And I don't want to leave Abigail behind. What do I do?"

"You stay home and ask Abigail to marry you."

"I'm twenty years old. I'm not ready for that."

"Exactly. You're such a dumbass. You know you're going. I know you're going. Abigail knows you're going. You just want someone to say it's ok."

"...And it is, right?"

Allison adjusted himself in his seat, bringing his leg back down. He replied, "Let's go grab something to eat."

Dalton's face dropped. Alli never gave a real answer; it was probably some ambiguity he had acquired from all his years of pretending to be a real fisherman. Dalton suggested they finish off the pork chops left over from the night before.

"I'm not eating that shit. You're going to come with me down to one of the burger joints, and you're going to buy my food and stress over whether you're making the right decision. It's tradition, Dalton."

"Fine, but we're going to Mo's. I don't want to take a chance on seeing Abigail at all today."

Allison's stomach growled, and the two took it as a sign that it was time to leave.

The day was a little cool for July, and one could hear the rings of buoys in the pull of the cool tide. Allison smiled. Being within earshot of the water always put him at ease. Knowing his little brother was paying for his lunch for the third time this week made him even happier. He had a curious way of making fools of everyone who tried to pity him.

Dalton looked over at Allison's goofy grin. Why can't I be so empty-headed? he wondered.

ABIGAIL

She had a bit of a migraine and no time to hear any little yelps of "You're the only girl I've ever really loved" from the boys in town, but his words rang a little clearer in the wide morning air.

"I heard about your mother," he said.

"It's been a while. Doesn't really bother me anymore."

"Then, and I'm sorry if it's too soon, would you mind filling me in on the details?"

"Why would you want to hear something so gruesome?"

"I really just need an excuse to get to know you. I wasn't planning on asking anything too gruesome."

He swept the sweat off of his forehead and looked back up at her with a childish half-grin. There was something cute, albeit insincere about this young man, but the headache had faded through the conversation, and she felt like talking.

"Mallorca?" she asked.

"I love Mallorca. And don't worry about going back in, I'm paying."

Main Street was only two blocks away, and as they walked the streets grew a little livlier than the blistering heat usually afforded. A little blue bird scampered about, pecking at the sidewalk. As the two came closer, the young man started his cheeky little interview.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Blue."

"Are you just saying that because it's the first color you saw?"

"Kind of. That's why I like it. It's the first color anyone ever really sees around here. The waters, open skies, little blue birds."

"Fine. Would you consider yourself a morning person?"

"Would you?"

"...Consider you a morning person? I wouldn't know."

"I'm sorry. I'm being a little disingenuous."

"I think it may be my questions. They're a little dull."

"No," she cut him off. "I like them."

"Did you see it happen, your mother's... you know?"

"I heard it. I wish I had seen her. I'm sure it was nothing like how she looked in my nightmares."

His brow grew a little harder, and he nodded- mechanically, writing something on a little pad. She never asked him what he had written, instead diving into who he was.

"What's your name?"

"Dalton."

ABIGAIL

Where did you softly land, flower petal from the old vase my mother made with me? She was a woman more radically in control of her surroundings than I could ever be. I miss her.

The flowers, and more specifically the vase in question, are to this day the only thing I remember of our house in South Carolina. The vase was a royal blue spotted by my own hands in a ceramic class with my mother. I was five then, on a day so colorful and warm I'm afraid to even begin remembering it.

"Abigail," my mother beamed down at me. "That is by far the most beautiful vauz I have ever seen."

The compliment brought a three mile grin to my face, but I stress the pronunciation vauz because that's what I find most interesting in dissecting her character. She always acted a little more sophisticated than she actually was. A humble young lady from Pueblo Rapids, Texas would never stress that pronunciation, especially not in front of the Southern Aristocracy that was the Charleston, South Carolina of my upbringing. I think even then, I liked that conformity.

As the day drew closer to an end and the vase's yellow speckles seeped in, my mother and I crossed the street to grab a sandwich. It was a very lovely day. She had tuna.

Whirs of purple and red sunk the sky closer to nightfall, and my mother walked me back to the ceramic shop. We picked up our vase, set it in the back of the car, and began the drive home. My mother asked me to sit in the front seat. I thought it was because she was so proud of my work, she wanted me to join the ranks of "big people." In hindsight, it was probably just so I wouldn't knock the vase over.

When we came home, my father was waiting with a bit of a forlorn look on his face. He tried to pull my mother into the other room. I'm not sure what the exact transaction was, but she set the vase up, and told my father that he was not to talk to her until she had found some flowers.

I walked out into the front yard and picked a couple of wilting violets.

"Here," I shouted as I shoved the half-dead, dirt covered plants at her. She gave me the saddest look, the kind of expression that puts out the fire behind a five year old girl's eyes. And she put the flowers up.

She tucked me in, went back downstairs, I suppose she talked with my father about the news he had, and proceeded to shoot herself on the couch in front of the vase we had made together. My father cannot even remember what he had to tell her, scarred too much by the sheer poetry of it all.

Where did you softly land, flower petal from the old vase my mother made with me?

DALTON

Allison looked on curiously as his little brother moped about in his regular chair at his regular table in front of the regular cafe, The Southside Bistro.

Dalton stirred the remaining ice cubes in his glass with his straw. Almost enthralled by the clanks of frozen water, he kept his gaze squarely on his drink. There seemed to be something mystical about the whole scene to him.

"What's wrong buddy?" Allison inquired. He was wearing floral patterned board shorts and a t-shirt from a family reunion or maybe a summer camp. He never took appearance too seriously, paying more attention to the stack of dirty magazines of his little collection of Buddhist koans.

Dalton looked up abruptly. "Oh. Nothing. I was just a little spaced out. Didn't get to sleep until about three this morning."

"What kept you up that late?"

"Too much thinking. For some reason I decided to trace out the entire history of Scandinavia. I got stuck on the Kalmar Union. Which queen was it that put it together?"

"Um... I'm not really sure. No normal human being keeps up with that kind of stuff. You're such a wound up kid. Do you want to come dock up the fishing boats? They should start getting in soon."

Dalton didn't answer. It was no secret that he was not so fond of Allison's line of work. There was something, he thought, very unnoble in spending your mornings knee-deep in fish bait and your afternoons tugging at ropes and wrangling ships to shore.

Allison knew, but he always asked, because he secretly thought that if he could get Dalton out on the waters, maybe some of that stress would disappear. Of course, he spent more time thinking of how much less work the job would be with an extra pair of hands. He wouldn't tell people about those thoughts though. They weren't particularly brotherly.

After a notable period of silence, Allison said his goodbye and walked off.

"Is this seat taken?" It was another, more distinctly feminine. There was such a charming ring to Abigail's voice. She was rarely downtown, especially not at midday, so the question took Dalton back a little.

"Of course... What are you doing down this way?" he replied

"I was hoping to find you," she was wearing a pair of emerald green earrings and that three mile grin of hers. That was all he saw, just a sparkle of green and the flash of a young girl's teeth.

"This is about the job, isn't it?"

"I just think you may be rushing into things, you know. Taking a job across town is a big decision. Taking a job on another continent seems like something that would take at least a weekend to think over. Don't you think you're rushing into things?"

"Of course it's stressful, but I know for a fact that this is what I'm supposed to do."

"But China? You don't even speak Chinese."

"I wrote about you last night," he grinned.

"Wait... what? Stop changing the subject," she intimidated. After a brief pause she asked, "What'd you write?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

"You're such a jackass," she joked back.

"You love it."

She smiled again. Only one thing could be felt of Dalton in person. He loved a woman's smile, more particularly, one he had brought into fruition. He took a certain pride in rescuing the little bits of happiness stowed away in the tucked under stoicism of the young women of South Carolina.

Dalton saw the strike of one o'clock on side of the little cafe they sat outside of. He asked why she wasn't working, why she wasn't uptown, why she had ordered a drink without ice. She didn't have answers; she just shrugged her shoulders and watched him.

Feeling the weight of someone's eyes on his face, seeing the youthful glow of sincere worry on this young woman, was too much for him. Dalton had been criticized for articles and for his choice in wines and for the black and gray plaid pant pattern he picked out when he was seven, but never had he felt eyes more focused on his soul than this day. He couldn't even carry on a conversation without people mistaking his hesitation for anxiety.

ALLISON

Allison could hardly keep up with the strums of the guitar. The festival, a celebration of some local herring he knew far too well, was a rousing success, bringing out all sorts of odd folks. Crater-dwellers, they were called: a breed of artists who found some satisfaction in living near the crater just outside of town; they liked to exaggerate its size and preach about another type of heaven: one you find within yourself. Whatever their beliefs, this particular man (an elderly Vietnamese man with hair to his shoulders, a permanent squint burned into his tannish yellow face, and blisters on the ends of his fingertips) seemed some sort of God to a young boy with dreams of sailing to the ends of the world.

"Haudure haudure sun-tawn yet conshiun," the old man sang arythmically under the strums of his little guitar. For Allison, it was the language of his grandmother's garden, the song that so bespoke isolation and grief that he could scarcely keep himself from echoing the tune.

The old man grinned a little oafishly back at the boy, no older than eleven. With age comes a certain awareness of others, an aggregate idea of who the world really was. One might hesitate to mention that this man was shipped away when he was caught trying on his daughter's clothes, that there was some bizarre compulsion within him to find that youthful glow he remembered, surrounding his old childhood sweethearts, but neglecting those little facts wouldn't much help anyone to understand the boy in the audience.

Even as the day sobered into its evening glow and the patrons began to file out, Allison remained- transfixed on the strumming and strumming and strumming and the gay yelps of an old man's voice. There was something wholly ungodly about it all, something so beautifully putrid as to defy any notion of premeditation.

And he looked at the table beside the old man. There sat a little book, with a solid blue cover and a binding in some sort of red or brown tape. That, he imagined, was the real Bible, full of sounds and words he could never quite understand, but most especially holding a secret meaning to the words haudure haudure sun-tawn yet conshiun.

The old man set his little guitar down and gestured for the little boy, his only remaining audience, to come have a little chat. Allison was honored. The old man sat him down on the little stool and leaned in.

"You liked the songs?" he asked, maintaining that oafish grin.

The truth was, he loved them; he wanted to devour them, but something told him to shake his head. Allison regretted the gesture immediately. The old man patted him on the shoulder.

"You knew what they were about. I do not like them either; they are about young ladies waiting for young boys like you to come and save them. And about the joys of clothing oneself in fresh silks in the sunrise."

"That sounds lovely," Allison replied. Listening to the old man speak was almost as enjoyable as listening to the songs. His breath echoed underneath each word. The hesitance of it all was a language of its own.

"But it isn't. I've never worn silk, nor have I harrowingly rescued young maidens from evil marriages they wish not to attend. Let me tell you something. The only truths you will ever find are in coffins and on the sea."

Allison jumped, startled. What about the book? This man, he imagined, was testing him. Sunlight dimmed to his, Allison's, left. His mother would be home soon, but this was much too important a matter to simply let go of.

The old man tussled Allison's hair and waved. He began his walk home, a book in his left hand and a guitar across his humped over back.

He's like an old turtle, Allison thought. The man continued walking toward the beach, into the sand, into the water, wetting his hair like some sort of gnarled Moses figurine. The man dropped his book and crept into deeper and deeper water.

The sea foamed over his head and without even the flailing of an arm, the man sunk, backwards, into heaven.

Allison ran out to the shore, ran into the water, hoisted up the soggy book, shouted for the old man. Nothing. The night claimed the waters, and he stood there, dumbfounded. It was the first person he had ever seen die, and the experience shaped him. He walked back home with a heavy heart and an easy spirit. Death always seemed so graphic, terrifying, but that, he decided, was a notion people picked up from outside of the coffin.

Allison had stood in waters with an old Vietnamese man and watched the world from inside of death. He sat the book beside his bedstand, afraid to peek at its pages until he had found the other truth, until he had swallowed up the entire sea.

ABIGAIL

The night was a little more purple than expected, and the stars seemed a little apprehensive at the thought of shining through such a royal color. Dalton looked up into that evening sky, an expanse he had written about so many times, breathed in a deep sigh, and reclined back on to his little workbench.

"What the fuck am I doing all of this for?" he questioned. He may have said it aloud. There's really no means to find out.

Dalton was a man of conviction, before all things. Having had a little experience through boot camp and a lot more through the beatings older kids handed him in his younger years, Dalton knew that every last detail need not be thought out if you have an objective, that if you keep running, you will eventually get somewhere. But leaving his family for some country which hadn't allowed foreign press in for thirty years seemed like an exception to the rule, something that really needed some thought.

The choke of a little red car's engine echoed from the carport. It was Abigail, returning from some little escapade after work, looking for a place to sleep and clear her head. It seemed Dalton's little townhouse was some great vacuum, capable of sucking everything but the soul out of a person.

"What are you up to, Dalton?" she asked as his little thinking gesticulations (a wave of the hand and a quick-tapping foot) gave him away.

"You understand why I'm leaving, right."

"Goddamn it. Everyone understands why you're leaving. You can't give up on an opportunity like that, and all of your moping around isn't going to change that no matter how much you want it to. Christ. Get over yourself and enjoy our company while you still have it, you prick."

"Are you drunk?"

"A little. But I'm serious."

"I know. You're always more honest under the influence. Remember that time in high school when I felt you up in Tommy's wine cellar?"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Damn right. You don't um... You don't say very much sometimes."

"Go to bed."

"That's what I was saying. You know, for a cute little guy, you sure are cute."

The curious thing about an inebriated Abigail was that she always managed to tell you something a little too honest about yourself before she forgot she spoke English. It, nonetheless, seemed to keep Dalton in line when things got a little rocky for him, so he was much more tolerant.

He looked back up. The stars had crept forward and snuck into their respective positions. There was a lot more thinking to be done, whether it needed to be or not, but for the moment, even without the familiar crashing sounds of tides or the low-bellowed hums of a barbershop quartet (he thought they were angels), things seemed to be at peace. For the moment, Dalton could simply look up and lose himself in eye contact with God, a heavy glance up at the stars.

DALTON

His fingers felt a little softer than usual, gliding over each other, and Dalton focused on them a little too intently.

"I get to sell this place as soon as you leave, right?" Allison bumped Dalton's shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah." he replied. "If someone else is sleeping in my bed when I get back, you better still be in town so I can kick your ass."

"Tough talk, little brother. Let's see you back it up," Allison circled his brother, taking little jabs at him with his scabbed over fists, aching from another morning on the sea.

The little back and forth continued as neither wanted to fully admit how much they'd miss the other. This game had been played enough times for the words underneath it to be clear

"You're gonna come see me leave, right?" Dalton finally conceded his anxiety.

"Hell no! I'm coming to see what kind of rig they're running. It's not very often you get to see a real steamer around these parts."

Dalton chuckled, relieved. He began to fasten the buttons on his collar, threading the tie perfectly around his neck. The two walked out the door.

"We still have to time to grab something to eat," Allison dropped as the door closed behind them.

"Sorry. I have a young lady to attend to."

Dalton paced his way over to a little bistro. Abigail was awkwardly reclined in a chair outside, focused on her watchface.

"I hate you," she said as Dalton plucked a couple of flowers from the table's centerpiece.

"I know. But who else is there," he replied with a little smirk. He gave her a kiss and sat down across the table.

There was an undefinable tension between the two of them, a history not worth sorting through, new days on the horizon they'd already promised not to share. But neither of them were ready, hesitating to say much more than some reflection on the day they first met or the first time their skin touched more intimately.

"Will you think of me?" she finally asked.

"Probably not," he lied, trying to move a little further ahead of the situation than was appropriate.

"Be safe," was all she could muster as Dalton relieved himself of the entire issue.

He walked away and onto the little steamboat and off of the little steamboat and into the uncharted lands of noble emperors and falling dynasties. He left the life he'd tried so hard to love, the community he's become a man in; he was a traitor in their eyes, but the most goddamn wonderful one they had.

DARLING

The dawn dripped, bleeding down the sky painted across my window, frothing over a cup of earth set up to collect it. That cup was a crater, supposedly created by some glimpse we had of the heavens, some celestial visitor: an asteroid. My family took up residence beside it. They thought eccentricity was another word for genius and that the more stories you could tell, the more accomplished your life was. I'm not sure I agree.

Through my entire youth, I was treated to story after story of a young Jewish couple hiking across the Himalayas or their exploits on the Bronx streets or nights under the pyramids (connecting stars to shape the faces of old rulers of the land). And interesting though those stories may have been, I never quite found myself respecting the accomplishment. I felt there was certain disingenuous to the accomplishments, that perhaps my parents had only done these things for the stories. I found it a little disheartening to think that there were ulterior motives for otherwise incredible accomplishments. I find more joy in hearing the mundane, listening to the tales of scum, mostly because they are shaded by the individual not the circumstance. If you ask a dozen beggars to recount their lives, rarely will they tell you anything particularly remarkable.

Those folks, my family would contend, will never be Gods. Pardon the blasphemy. But the words of the storyteller are very particularly chosen. The deliverer of word feels a certain tie to the world, to the great stories we know as history, and they feel a certain responsibility to uphold their own lives in the same vain. In other words,, most writers secretly feel they possess certain divine qualities, because they can create worlds the rest of us cannot.

I should probably get on to what I was trying to say. I'm so longwinded. On this particular morning in my particular house I opened my particular eyes to the usual poetic rise of sun, but something felt out of place. I glanced around the room and found nothing unordinary. There were a couple of half-read books on the night stand, marked so depressingly by stray bits of paper with "finish it this time" written across their fronts. I had only finished one book in my entire life (Good Night Moon). A blue button-down shirt sat on my desk chair. My bed-dressing was strewn across the floor. But something still irked me.

I walked to the doorway and deftly snuck a peak around it; the hallway was empty, save the usual portraits of family members in foreign locales.

I found the answer in the kitchen. There, in my chair, sat a scruffy-haired black man with a silver saxophone strapped across his front and a bowl of oatmeal on the table in front of him.

"Who are you, little boy" he asked. I was sixteen then.

"Darling-" I mumbled, trying to figure out what this man was doing in my house.

"What kind of weird-ass name is that? Mine' s Daniel, " he seemed so acutely aware of himself. It was a little frightening to meet someone who seemed so accomplished without saying much more than his name.

I think- looking back, that may have been the moment I gave up on stories and Gods and all the things my parents had lodged in my brain. This man, this Daniel, had something in the ring of his voice that told me where had been...and also told me how little it mattered.

"What brings you to my house?" I asked, feeling a little more at ease despite his poking fun of my name. Perhaps because of it. A lot of people made fun of my name, but most notable were the people I felt comfortable around.

He didn' t answer, looked back at his oatmeal with the fondness men usually reserved for women, and began to eat it. He heard me. He simply didn' t have an answer. But after a few bites, he surprised me.

"What are you here for?" Daniel asked.

The question was sonorous, as if it were composed by some symphony of musical minds he had met on his sax-strapped travels. I had no answer. I mean- I was undoubtedly physically there simply because it was my house, but that' s not what he was asking. He wanted to know who I was, something I, at that very moment had no answer for. He interrupted my train of thought.

"You, my short-mouthed friend, have a funny name and the ears of a god, and yet you still have no notion of identity. Don' t tell your parents I was here," and with that, he dropped the spoon and walked around the corner to the front door.

DARLING

I was a quiet kid. It was mostly an apprehension I had developed at a very early age, a product of parents who were a little too out there and a funny name. But I'm not sure quiet is necessarily a bad thing; it's honest, humble. That's how I believed it came off, and I took a lot of pride in it. As you may know, the kids who don't say much think a little too much.

I had my fair share of odd moments in life, the most strange of which involved an old black jazz musician eating oatmeal at our kitchen table a year or so ago. I won't go into it much, but there was something very enlightened about him. He asked questions with such an inflection that I nearly collapsed in on my own soul searching for answers. He was no doubt a drunken friend of my father's, but it doesn't make that morning any less miraculous.

Damn it. I always ramble on in these things. As a more reserved kid in a more liberal university, I was often put in fairly awkward positions, people asking me personal questions in hopes of getting me to open up. This was particularly the case in my Greek Studies course. A young girl, Abigail, talked endlessly about how distraught she was over knowing some guy in China. I liked her, though. There was a certain clamor to her voice that let everyone know she was genuine.

"Do you know anyone abroad?" she would ask me.

I couldn't respond. I typically just gestured to answer her questions, like a mute or a monk who had taken a vow. There were answers. I desperately wanted to tell her about my aunt in Korea or the adventures of my parents in an ice fishing camp up near the edge of Canada, where the day sinks away for months at a time, but courage is an attribute achieved by only a certain few.

She was beautiful, Abigail, and her beloved Dalton must have been equally dashing. I would try to picture him otherwise while the professor lectured over roots I already knew from some little activity my mother tried to get me involved in, mostly to take my mind off a rough night. My father could get a little belligerent, but that's something I can't quite discuss right now. The point I was trying to make is that I could never quite imagine Abigail with some unhandsome rascal, even when I tried, because I knew she'd never really love someone that way who was altogether like...me.

It was on the third of January that I said my only words to her. I walked into the classroom, determined as I always was, to let my voice be heard, to open up my head to the others, to really exist.

I took my seat; it was beside hers. And she turned to me.

"Do you have a pencil I could use?" she asked me with an innocent turn of her voice under some disgust at her forgetfulness.

I handed one to her. Fuck. I could have at least said something there. It shook me a little more than usual. I really wanted to speak to her.

The professor called someone up to the board to jot the answers to a couple of assigned questions down. He knew to never call on me. I was one of those people you sensed as soon as you silently shook their hand, as soon as you read the meekness of my writing- the trepidation, that asking them to do anything for public scrutiny might cause sudden death.

I fingered a scar on the back of my wrist. It was a perfect black circle left by one of my father's cigarettes from a few nights before. He had a little too much to drink, and I happened not to ask him about some story he wanted to tell me. It happens, no big deal. Back to what I was saying.

The class went on as usual. The guy behind me (I believe his name was Will) asked me if I understood what was going on.

"This stuff is so goddamn hard," he continued.

I just stared straight ahead. Hard?

The work wasn't that difficult. I had breezed through the class thinking about Abigail for a good two months and was quite stress-free. Aside from the anxiety I felt when she asked me a question, but that was a different matter entirely.

I glanced back over at Abigail. She smiled. I'm not sure if it was for me necessarily, but I took it that way. It was, without a doubt, the highlight of my day.

"Does anyone have any experience with Greek Mythology, outside of the old Zeus and Aphrodite and Hermes and Icarus bit?" the professor urged us, seemingly sensing the collective apprehension of the class.

He went on a rant about how weather was believed to be dictated by the gods, how exciting it was to think of a living being holding the pieces of the heavens together. It was a lovely speech. So lovely, in fact, that I propped my hand up against my chin to fully absorb it without having to worry about the pesky forces of gravity and sleep keeping me from it.

Then it happened. Abigail whispered to me.

A little concerned, she asked, "How did you get that mark on your hand, Darling?"

"I touched the Sun last Thursday."

ALLISON

Allison fiddled with her little flute, trying to produce the flighty sounds she drew from it. But his breath was too hard, drawn from the old charms of a Southern gentleman.

"What are you doing?" Meredith giggled, watching the young man fumble with an instrument too delicate for his seaman's hands. "You're more suited for a trombone. Your lips are always flapping and you're nothing but hot air."

Allison put the little machine down as delicately as he could, seemingly startled by the assertion that he was genetically predisposed to failure at creating one of the more beautiful sounds he had heard. Meredith saw his eyes dim over a little. Art, she thought, was one of those things you had to be sensitive about around Allison. That was what drew her to him. On the sea he felt the brushstrokes of God. In the concert hall he felt the smallness of all the Earth's silence. He was aware.

"Would you like to go to Mallorca tonight?" he asked, interrupting her little reflection on him.

"I'm not really in a Spanish mood."

"Mediterranean? I'm really in the mood for something with tomatoes for some reason."

"Should we call Dell? I think he gets a discount downtown."

"Who doesn't? And Dell is a buzzkill. I'd rather hang around after for drinks, and he wouldn't let me get sufficiently drunk."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It is when you don't see anything new on the water."

She didn't respond, but something tugged at her about the statement. She never really considered that Allison was actually looking for something out on the water, that there were some times when something completely new happened. She simply imagined he used the mechanical monotonous crash of water as some sort of stress reliever.

He noted the silence, thinking little of it, assuming she understood his need for drink and for lonelier company with her. She was the first woman to really understand him, to hum along with Vietnamese folk songs.

They ate in silence.

ALLISON

His uneven yellowed nails gripped hard into the line as the sea tugged underfoot. Allison had some experience with storms much stronger than this, and his entire body tensed into the readiness it had been called upon to deliver.

His hair, sopped and hastily brushed aside, slapped against his red cheeks, and he shouted. God, he thought, must've been laughing his head off at the thought of this little wreck keeping him from dinner. He tugged a little harder and the sail broke form and directed him a little further west.

The heavy rain hit his face and, grey like Allison's overstressed eyes, blended the vision of horizon and wavelength together. It was a wonderful evening.

"I wonder if my leather-bound Dostoevsky is in the book shop today," he pondered. Lightning cracked the side of the boat.

It was a lovely evening.

DARLING

The rain fell like a leaky faucet, erratically spattering Darling's neatly combed hair. He quickened his pace, mumbling some little rant, likely putting himself down for some opportunity he had not taken with her. This her, or she really, was a young Greek language major from university, and Darling was enamored of her.

He fingered a little pocket watch, bulging from the right-front of an ill-fitting olive green vest. He never much cared to look at the time, simply to marvel at the fact that it was his. This particular watch belonged to a patriarch of his family, a military man of the Bismark tradition. A faint call came from his back.

"Darling. Wait up!" a distinctly feminine voice rang out. It startled him a little. Not many people talked to Darling, much less girls. His palms clammed up a little, and he turned around to see Abigail chasing after him in a flowery green summer dress. The clods of her little heels rang out and stiffened Darling's heartbeats.

He was mechanical.

"I wanted to ask you if you might want to go to Barbary tomorrow. It's kind of a formal thing, and I don't really know any guys who aren't pigs," she said.

He stammered, reached for his pocket watch, and nodded.

Her face lit up, less burdened than a few moments earlier, and she thanked him, adding, "Dalton left a suit at my place, if you don't have anything you feel comfortable in."

"I have a coat that matches the vest."

She beamed, barely able to keep herself composed. It wasn't often that anyone heard Darling's voice; it was mature, but a little unsure of itself.

Darling began to feel a little nauseous as the two continued the walk. He should've turned a street back, but he was too embarrassed to admit it. He decided, in a fit of brilliance, he would make himself out to be a real mystery, an alluring figure, walking near aimlessly along the sea, where an old Korean cross-dresser his parents knew had been swallowed. He could tell her the story. Or rather, he could tell himself and watch her nervously.

"Are you heading anywhere in particular?"

He shook his head. Fuck. There went the mystery.

"I should get back to the town house. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Darling waved her away and began mulling again over how much of an idiot he thought he was. She had specifically mentioned Dalton. That could not be a good sign for him. But then he remembered her voice and began to wonder what his chances were of kissing her the following night. It sent him into a little dizzy spell.

"You're a fucking creep," he mumbled to himself.

He didn't sleep that night, changing into his too small suit, fixing himself in the mirror for hours until the break of day.

The sun hung too long in the sky, and Darling could not bear it. He reached up and pulled down that ball of fire, devouring it in a simple bite. He was too full to enjoy his meal, and Abigail grew a little concerned.

"Do you not like Mediterranean food?" she asked.

"I had to eat up most of the day waiting for this."

Their lips touched, and her eyes shown brighter than any meal he'd ever had.

DALTON

He began to read:

Dearest Dalton,

I mean not to disrupt your travels and the great work you are doing for the American Press Corps, but there is dire news I felt you may need to be aware of. Your brother, of whom I understand you had a rather close relationship, drowned some two or three days ago, and he simply left in his will the stipulation that if he were to die before you returned, you be given the message as follows:

I swallowed the sea, Dalton. I'm ready to go off on my own travels now.

Sincerely,
Commissioner Mel Turner

Dalton pressed the letter in fourths, gave a little half-hearted grin, and held close a little fair-skinned girl (wrapped in a silk covering sheet).

"Your uncle finally got up the nerve to leave. I bet that bastard sold my place too," he mumbled.