THE HUNDRED

“100 orgasms left and then you’re done,” said my doctor. He sat beneath a dumbed down version of an M.C. Escher painting. The stairs all led somewhere that made sense, and I thought to myself, the world doesn't work that way. That is, of course, contrary to the statistics.

“A hundred women?” I asked with dismay. 

“No. I didn’t say that," said Dr. Kozen. "I said a hundred orgasms. However you spread them out, is up to you,” he said. 

“A hundred per would be ideal. From a procreative standpoint,” I stated, arms crossed. Petulant.

“That’s your prerogative, and it's very ambitious, albeit unrealistic. If I were you, I would spend every last one fostering and strengthening a substantial relationship. It can happen sooner, or it could happen later. But, at some point, you’re going to need it. I'm really sorry to have to tell you this.” 

This was bad news. One hundred climaxes before idiopathic fibrosis would make its way down my corpora cavernosa, making erections and ejaculations impossible. A hundred rounds. “What about nocturnal penile tumescence? Or, nocturnal emissions?” I asked. 

“We have medications to stifle those mechanisms. Dulling desire.” 

"An anti-viagra," I snarked.

"Not quite, but that would be the ancillary benefit if it," he said. His hands were clasped on his lap. "There may be side-effects."

“Like what?" I asked. 

“Well, an incredible sense of," he paused for a moment.  "Density.”

* * *

I'd like to tell you, that at my baseline, my social life for a man in his thirties, was quite ordinary. I have a few friends whom I've kept close since college. I exercised regularly. I rarely drank. Was a non smoker. I had a close and loving family back in St Louis. Have had a number of long term relationships, and although they ended, they ended amicably, and for different reasons. On weekends, I did mentorship workshops for upstart entrepreneurs, advising them on their business plans, and teaching them methods for assessing demand for their endeavors. 

That week, after I left Dr. Kozen's office, everything changed. I left horrified, and walked carefully as if every step sent a crystalizing burst of blood into my pelvic region. When I got home I popped the pill with a beer — a nice IPA — and did, as promised, feel pretty dense.

Over time, I withdrew from all circles of life. Within next few weeks I concocted a few ill-conceived homespun remedies. I created and sprayed on a biological odor that kept me in a perpetual state of disgust. I kept my eyes to the sidewalk and wore dimming glasses to prevent me from seeing the alluring details of people. I later had them modified to warp the shapes of them as well. I ate poorly. Became sedentary. Went to work in a fog and returned home in a haze. People avoided me, which was all the better.

I hid in my office where I worked as a data analyst at a research company, and spent much of my day at my desk mired in the intricacies of automotive fuel inefficiencies for a small company developing a new kind of conduit for electronic vehicles. I was analyzing the competition, pitting them against each other scenario after scenario. In the end, these endless spreadsheets will be mulled over by bored marketing executives as irrelevant peripherals.

In the coming weeks I would also be knee deep in statistics involving the production grid of a new kind of genetically modified meat substitute while tracking weather systems in the North West. Donut charts abound. And in the end this data will be mulled over by bored executives who were only expecting a line chart that started low on the left and climbed it's way to the top right corner of wall-mounted flat screen monitor.  

So you see, in light of my recent development, information from two different planes began colliding into each other, and tabulations weren't presented correctly. My report for Le Beef concluded that rainfall in 2014 hinged on whether or not an ignition lock cylinder was properly coated. My colleagues and I shared a laugh at that one. The saying goes, I laugh so that I will not cry.

Then one day I met a woman. I was having an off day at awfulness, having lunch alone. She was sweet. Saw something sad. But sweet as well. Very beautiful. Had ten bracelets on one wrist and none on the other. A tiny birthmark kissed her cheek. Huge chunky jewelry was doing its best to keep her weighed down among the corporeal. She said she was a grant writer and had secured a big one for an upstart animal welfare group. We talked for a bit and I finally asked her out. She laughed a lot. Gave me her number and I wrote it down wistfully on my soft taco tortilla.

That very night, I called her.

"Hullo!" I said.

"Hey!" she sounded surprised. "Well, I'm glad that tortilla didn't fall apart," she laughed.

"You knew it was me?"

"Well, I recognized your voice. It's only been a few hours."

She was right. I should have waited a few days. I should have remembered that a three day wait period increases receptivity by 20 percent as presented by a recent social model used by the new APEX software. And also, a greeting such as "There she is" was met with more openness on social media sites as opposed to something like "Hullo!" Luckily, I was still within the margins. Having called too early made things unpredictable again, and leveled the playing field. So we made some small talk. I told her that fifty-three percent of automobile owners under the age of 30 would be making modifications to their cars in the next two years.

Then I asked her out.  

"So, how's the weekend shaping up?" I asked. "Any plans? Wanna do something?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I have family coming in over the weekend. I'll be running around a lot. I really want to though. How about… Ummm."

"Well, how about next Wednesday?" I interjected. 

"Ouch. I have a work project due on Thursday morning. I'll be really behind from my family being here. So I feel I may be playing catch up, and workin' late."

"I understand," I said, taking in a deep breath. "Well… How's about that following Friday?"

"Ooooh my gosh, I'm sorry. I leave on a short trip. Damn it! Please don't get the wrong idea. I'm not just making up excuses."

"Strike three," I said. 

"I know. I'm sorry. Look, how about Tuesday evening?"

"I can't. Darn! I'm working that night." I said. There was a new shipment of peas coming in for one of my clients. Peas were used as a protein source and made for a more fibrous texture when pressed into faux chicken patties for La Beef, and the crop figures would be in with them on this year's yield from Oklahoma. A new resource. I'd use this for another prediction model I was working on in conjunction with a co-worker. Two birds with one stone, and all that. I wasn't about to call in sick for that. "I'm free two weeks from now. Thursday?"

"Can't. Visiting my mother."

"When do you get back?"

"That Friday. But there's a fundraiser I'm helping to organize. Saturday?"

"I have a few appointments. Sunday?"

"I promised a friend I would babysit for her. Monday?"

This went on for a while — the two of us carrying on an act of nonlinear estimation before reverting to  the basest of nonparametrics. Then:

"September 21, Saturday night," she said triumphantly. "I have a good feeling about this date." 

"Works for me. I'm free that night," I answered, relieved. Excited. Although September 21 was ten months away. 

"It's a date," she said. "Can't wait to see you!"

"I can't wait to see you too!"

And we hung up.

* * *

Weeks later, I had began to feel really, really dense and began having strange dreams of collecting data as a lower life form — a crab on the bottom of the ocean, an earthworm in the soil, a snail in the moss, a mollusk on a rock — projecting my human consciousness and contorting it into unfathomable postures and swirling it around in sensory disarray. My mind was an octopus making it's way through a drinking straw. I felt these contortions as a result of the cross fire between my condition and my medication. I was subhuman.

But I continued taking the pills. Dr. Kozen was right about the density being unbearable. It was as if I had my own event horizon. As if crossing the street would warp the street around. Cars would hit me, and fold in around my body. 

So one day I decided to expend a few rounds, deciding right there to be human again. To fire some off. I got up and made sure my arms were still there. My legs. I got dressed and went to a bar and began hitting on women. But speaking proved futile. My mind was too slow. The pills! A woman looked at me with concern. Took my hand and asked me if I was alright.

"What does the data show?" I asked, densely. 

She laughed and walked away. I walked home. Expelled another round.

* * *

Time drifted. Clouds slid over a mountain. Contrails of tiny planes formed like cuts over the sky. The sun rose and set behind a vertical bar graph. 

One morning, I took a shower and felt as if I were about to shed my skin and fall out of it limbless and lidless, coiled up and liquified into a gelatinous mucoid. This had become my morning routine — the shedding of skin, becoming a gelatinous mucoid. It had gotten that bad. I even created a line graph for it. The days after I had consumed carrots were particularly heavy.

Then one day I was cured. An emerald pill shaped like a pyramid came sailing at me cradled in a palm.

"Experimental," said Dr. Kozen. "You can appreciate that, can't you? In your line of work? You'd become a part of valuable study." He smiled weakly.

The M.C. Escher knock-off had been replaced by a framed poster of Vladimir Malevich's supremacist painting, Black Circle. It was merely a black circle sitting slightly off center on a white plane. There was something anonymous about it, yet defiant in it's placement. It was either empty, or full. Universal, or remote. The more I stared at it, the more it refused to be categorized. It upset me. 

I plucked the pyramid-shaped pill from his hand and held it between my thumb and my index finger. “Wouldn’t it be easier to swallow if it were an ovoid capsule?” I asked him. 

“Well that's the pill. Specific delivery mechanism,” he said. 

So I popped the pill and within minutes the fog and darkness lifted right off of my lap like a poodle waking from a nap.

“Wow. What a great feeling, let me tell you,” I said. 

“There’s only one side effect,” he said. 

“Oh no,” I said. “What is it?” 

“You…" he rubbed his left temple with his thumb, "you, may develop an attraction to yakelopes.” 

“What’s a yakelope?” I asked. 

“It's a hybrid between a yak and an antelope.” 

“Where do they exist. If at all?” I asked. The word shimmered with exoticism. "Yak—Uh—Lope."

“Oh, they’re very rare. I know a few breeders. Not that you’d want to…” 

“What are their names?” I asked.

“John, and his wife Martha.” 

“No, the yakelopes,” I said. “What are the yakelopes' names?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Can I have their contact information?"

“No.” He stood up.

“It's a joke,” I said. "I'm kidding. Yakkity yak! Ha ha."

"Come on, let's get you set up," he said as he opened the door. "These pills, you only take once a day."

I walked out of the clinic filled with a new kind of longing. Yaaaakelopes.

* * *

I had achieved a small amount of success in my company. Research had shown that people who needed their medication the most were more likely than others to actually forget to take them. It had been a year-long study, and in its fruition, a new product and service was created. 1) beeping medication vials and 2) automated phone calls and text messages. Another study helped to tailor those messages to sound non-judgmental and caring. I was very pleased. 

This lead to my own personal development. After some of my own research, I signed up at invisiblemate.com, an online, crowd-sourced service that sent you text messages masquerading as messages from your significant other in order to deceive your doting loved ones who worried too much about your overlong tenure at bachelorhood. I had found a new use for it. 

I registered and created an account. On the dashboard, I named my invisible mate, Yakelope, and then I uploaded my own profile image of a yakelope in a field. I selected "kinky", from a list of personality traits and submitted my request. After a few minutes, I got my first greeting text.

HER: "Hi! It's Yakelope. How's my sexy guy?"

ME: "Good. How's your tail?"

HER:"Oh, it's a little cold." 

ME: "Oh is it? How's your coat?"

HER: "I'm not wearing it. And you want to know something else?"

ME: "That's impossible. Stop right there."

HER: "What's up?"

ME: "Look. I know that you are actually a composite of separate freelance writers who get paid for each text but remember I need you to come at me from the perspective of a kinky yakelope. This is a performance I'm requesting. I'm sure as writers you'll appreciate the creative aspect of it." 

HER: "Oh my poor hooves. They need massaging." 

ME: "Yes. Yes."

I expelled two more rounds.

* * *

I spent another round when I met a very beautiful woman named Janet. She had short, blond hair. Six inch heels that made her taller than me. And, to cut to the chase, after a few drinks, we ended up in bed together. I could taste the ginger and hibiscus on her tongue, and even tasted the faint aromatic of cinnamon dancing on her lips, but all I could think was Yakelope. It took some fantasizing and some role playing but it worked.

"That was different," she said the next morning, giggling. "You, Mantelope, you."

* * * 

I have to admit. At times I felt myself slipping away from myself. I would be standing in a fixed position, and another me would take a step forward. I would see the back of my own head. This other me, which is me, or a part of me, would take another step and another until he walked out of the room. Then another me would step outside of myself and soon there would be ten of me all queued up, walking away. I had become like a slow release pill version of myself, dissolving into the ether. 

So I stopped taking the pyramid pills and resumed my life. Time passed again. Rain fell on a sidewalk. The moon slid beneath the skyline as if descending down an escalator. It was all handled very tastefully. Then I remembered my date!

I called her.

"There she is."

"Hello?"

"Myra? Mara? How do you say it?" I asked.

"Oh, it's you! Hi!"

"You remember me?"

"Of course."

"Mira? Was it?"

"Myrah. Like the wine, shiraz. We talked about this the first time. Ten months ago."  

"Ah, very nice. So… Uh… are you still free tonight?

"You know, I've been wondering if you'd call. I mean, would've called sooner. Just because our date was set for today doesn't mean we couldn't have called each other."

"I suppose I was just following what I thought was protocol. Also, things have just been crazy for me."

"Do you still live in town?"

"Yes!"

"Well, I had to move to another building but it's a long story. A long, strange story, actually. You'll find humor in it!"

"I have strange story as well," I said. "But you can go first."

"Well, are you hungry?"

* * * 

You see, we had both lost someone. Someone very close. And we both remarked during that conversation, that all your life, you have tethers anchored out all around you. They can be right next to you in bed. They can be in the next room. They can be across the globe. You may have spoken a day ago, or it could have been years. None the less, in the back of your mind this tether exists. And over time, as you lose some, you feel adrift, you snap loose a little, but you live on. But then one day you lose a big one, and you feel like you've died along with them, and only your sensory perceptions remain. You see, you smell, taste, hear, touch — your body works, but you yourself have died. We said this to each other, rain on our noses, wind in our ears. Your body is your ghost. It's been abandoned. A damp hand to the chest. A melted ice cream cone. Images. Nothing more. Your mind works, but only in the way a computer works. It's doing its job. Reacting, perceiving images, sounds, interacting dutifully with the living, but you are no longer among them. You're not really there, we said this to each other. A wave crashes. We had walked all the way to the beach. Salt in the air. Somewhre along the way we procure two coffees for 2 dollars. 99 percent of you is gone, we continue the diatribe. But then time does it's job. And you limp along, all 1 percent of you, until it feels like this 1 percent of you is 100 again. You know its not. This remaining 1 percent of you just carries a heavier burden. It feels more. It aches more. It loves more. It needs more.We're on a jetty. City lights behind us. Teflon horizon before us. She takes a sip of her coffee. Plain. Black. No Cream no sugar. Who has the time? she asks, hair whipping wildly in the dark. I take a sip of mine, black, no nothing. Who has time, I agree. Life will always deal another blow.

I am not the first and will not be the last to suffer this affliction. And for many who lose something, life's strange, cosmic immune system floods in to heal and cover and alter things. Scarrification, prosthetics, phantom limbs, synaptic rewiring, adaptation, and then life again.  Sharp left turn, after sharp right turn. Curve ball, after fast ball. Emotional baggage being thrown out the window only to come crashing back in through the ceiling. That night, I watched a three-legged dog run by joyfully untethered along the shore before disappearing into shadow. They say there is no real soul, unless you include your body.

What's left to express? That hundredth was the best one.

Cocqui

The coqui were descending. At night, among the rattlesnake shake and hiss of the leaves, and the billowing ribbons of wind coming off the mountains into the valley, were the shrill chirps of the cocqui frogs. Scott clenched his pillows against his ears like giant earmuffs and counted leaping frogs sailing over his bed.

 “Ho-weeep!” they cried.

The morning came slowly, in increments, the light pooling into the valley and filtering into his bedroom slowly yet perceptibly. He had not slept. He was ill prepared for his meetings at work and decided to call in sick. He took short, tender steps to his bathroom and found that his bathtub was filled to the edges with cocqui frogs. They were packed together like refugees in a church, like victims of a cataclysm huddled together in a cafeteria.

Scott called the Oahu Invasive Species Committee and two men came over to his house. One of them started laughing when they saw his bathtub, then regained his composure when the other man sternly asked Scott if he was breeding them.

“No way,” said Scott. He made a gesture with his hands the way an umpire would signal “safe!” in a baseball game. “Hell no. They’ve been keeping me up all night. They might have been coming in through some crack in the walls or in the ceiling.”

"Well they're not like ants. They wouldn't just follow each other in."

"I don't know that," said Scott. "I don't know anything about this. I just woke up and here they were."

Both men narrowed their eyes at him, and then they looked at each other and shrugged.

"Do what you need to do. I'll be glad when this is over," Scott said and stepped back.

The two men exterminated the frogs with citric acid. They writhed and kicked under the mist and Scott felt a little sorry for them. The two men went out into the yard and sprayed citric acid over all the surrounding foliage, on the Hibiscus and the nearby bushes.

“Done. Sleep tight tonight,” they said, got into their van and left.

The next night, Scott could hear the frogs descending onto his home again. At first they seemed to be on the roof of his house. Then they were next to his windows. Eventually, the sounds came from under his bed. They could have been the ghosts of the murdered frogs.

“Ho-weep!” 

Scott through his pillow against the dresser and his bedside lamp fell and shattered on the floor.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “Shut up! He screamed. “Please shut up!”

“You shuddup!” a neighbor called out from the outer edges of the world. It was midnight. He turned on the bedroom lights and searched behind his cabinets, dressers and in the closet and found nothing.

Scott went out to the yard with his flashlight and searched the premises. There was a light drizzle falling, and grass, dirt and twigs clung to his wet ankles. “Where are you guys!” he called out to the darkness.

“Ho-weep!” chirped the frogs.

“Shaddup!” cried the neighbor.

* * *

When Scott woke up in the morning, he gingerly walked to the bathroom. His bathtub was filled again with cocqui. They were silent and huddled together. Their green bodies were moist and glistening. They were all wiping their eyeballs in unison with their four-fingered hands.

Scott stumbled back and began searching for his bug spray. He opened the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink and a swarm of fruitflies erupted like a cloud of bats from a cave. The room was filled with the manic hovering of fruitflies. They landed on the walls and on his face and took off again as he began spraying in every direction.

The coqui began feeding. They leapt in the air and started snatching the flies out of the air with their tongues.

“That’s it!” Scott screamed.

* * *

The next week, the entire house was covered with a yellow and blue striped fumigation tent. He had called Aloha Pest & Termite Control team and they had gone through the entire house and decided that tent fumigation would be the most thorough way to make sure  no pests would return. In the home, in addition to the cocqui frogs and the fruitflies, the team had found evidence of ants. There were ghost ants, pharoah ants, whitefooted ants and carpenter ants. They also found oriental termites, cockroaches, rats, mice, mongoose, and a brown tree snake in the attic. They also noted that while they specialized in pests, they noticed some plants in his back yard that were considered among the high-profile invasive species. There was miconia along the edges climbing up the cinderblock wall. There were clusters of fountain grass, growing near the walls and they urged him to poison these plants immediately before the seeds on the tips of those wirey stems let loose and floated off into the neighboring yards. So Scott rushed off, bought some round-up and sprayed his back yard.

He then gathered a few of his things and slept in his car. His neighbors recommended a few cheap hotel rooms but he refused and he slept in the passenger seat of his car with a bottle of rum.

He was drunk by 9 in the evening and he was listening to an old Beach Boys song on the oldies channel, and it filtered in like and echo through a time portal where an alternate version of himself was playing an old vinyl record, holding hands with a girl he loved. He began to sing along.

If you should ever leave me

Though life would still go on believe me

The world could show nothing to me

So what good would living do me

God only knows what I'd be without you

His neighbor poked his bald head out of the front window, and then came out to the car and asked him if he would rather sleep at a motel, or at least park somewhere else for the night. Scott declined. The neighbor then asked him to keep it down. Scott noted that the volume on the radio was already very low. The neighbor recoiled at his breath and asked him again to make an effort to be quieter later in the evening. He had to wake up for work at a very early hour and Scott’s screaming and shouting late at night disturbed him and his wife. He added that if the noise continued, he would be forced to call the police.

Scott apologized about the coqui frogs and assured him that after the tent fumigation was completed, things would be much quieter and everything would be back to normal. He also explained that he had been very quiet throughout the entire evening, being alone in his car with the radio turned on very low.

The neighbor shook his head and stormed off shaking his head the entire way to his front door. To Scott, his neighbor’s head looked like a boiled peanut.

Scott became filled with self loathing. He was humiliated. He was embarrassed for his house and for himself. It wasn’t that he was apathetic to his home keeping, it was his ignorance. He mowed his lawn every two weeks and he tended to the flowers and washed his windows and cleaned the brown gunk out his gutters like everyone else on the block. There was something else that he was missing, and somehow his home had become a nest of unwanted pests because of it.

Scott got out of the car and paced about on the sidewalk for a few minutes. He took another swig from his bottle and petulantly wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Then he began to yell.

"Judge me? Is that what you do? Are you a judge?"

His neighbor's silhouette appeared in the window.

“I’m actually a hard worker!” he called to his neighbor’s house. “You think I’m lazy? Complacent to lie in my own filth? Huh? Is that what that was?!” His shouting broke the silence. The porch light went on and his neighbor came back out the front door.

“Keep it down out there I’m warning you.”

"I'm not even talking that loud!" hissed Scott, his arms outstretched. He pounded his chest with his fist. “I work! I work my ass off! I take care of this house! I take care of myself! I work all day! I come home and cook my own dinners and after that I wash the dishes and put them away! I don’t own a television! Not like you! I read! I read books! Poetry! And not the insipid type by celebrities and rock stars! The real stuff! No cheap magazines! No ipads or websites. Books!  Then I go to bed and I wake up and I go to work like you! So don’t judge me like I’m some deadbeat!”

“Brother,” the neighbor said, his hand was out. “Calm down. Now, I never said any of those things. I’m just asking for a little consideration here. Sleep it off.”

The neighbor’s wife came to the door. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” his neighbor said. “He’s gonna sleep it off. Or we’re calling the police.”

Scott growled and skulked back into his car and turned the volume on his radio down.

* * *

The second evening, after having showered at the beach, Scott went to the liquor store and bought two ham sandwiches, a bag of chips and a bottle of Jim Beam. He drove back to his home and parked in thedriveway, and watched his tented home become a breathing silhouette at sunset. 

It had only been a day, but he missed the comforts of his living room, his easy chair, his books and his record player, an antique croseley recordplayer that his old girlfriend, Cathy had given him on his birthday.

It had been a happy home. And when she left him, she had told him "I hope you find happiness. I hope you find people you like and spend some time outside of yourself. Find your way back into the world again. Because it's just too much of a burden for one person to be the entire world for another."

He leaned back in his chair and opened his bottle.

By 9, he was drunk again. And singing. 

He sang quietly along to a song by The Everly Brothers. 

Don't want your love any moooooore!

Don't want your kisses, that's for suuuuuure!

I die each time I hear this soooound!

Here he comes, that's Cathy's cloooown!

Eventually, Scott's quiet crooning became louder and he belted out the chorus to The Platters.

They said someday you'll find

All who love are blind

Ooooooooooooooh! when your heart's on fire

You must realiiiiize

Smoke gets in your eeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeees!

By the time Lorraine Ellison came on, he was singing along at full volume and was so overcome with emotion that he was on the verge of tears. 

Where did you gooooo, when things went wrong baby? 

Who did you run to

And find a shoulder to lay your head upon? 

Baby wasn't I there? 

Didn't I take good care of you? 

No no! I can't believe! You're leaving meeeeee!

Staaaaaay with me baby

Pleeeeease, staaaaay with me baby

Yeeaugh, staaaaay with me baby!

An arm reached through the passenger side window and turned the volume down. His neighbors head filled the window frame. "Look. I'm getting real tired of you and your noise. Now, I don't presume to know anyone's business, but you need to calm down, put the bottle away, get your bearings and chill the hell out. Now. I have a shower you can use. I have some food you can eat to calm you down. But you need to find a place to stay and a way to be that's not your driveway and not the way you've been these two nights.

Scott was at a loss for words. "What?" He pointed his thumb to his chest. "That's my house over there. It's like 9:30... I live here. Who are you? On my driveway."

"It's 10," corrected the neighbor, "and you're being loud."

His neighbor explained once again that his wife and he needed to sleep, that they had work in the morning. Scott politely pointed out the fact that he was being very considerate about the noise, and that he too needed to be up in the morning. 

"But your singing," said the neighbor.

"I'm quietly singing to myself," countered Scott.

"You're rattling my windows. Now, I don't want to be forced to call on the police. Just sleep."

"Do you think it would be possible to sleep off being an asshole?" said Scott.

"We'll find out, won't we," replied the neighbor.

"Care to step outside?" asked Scott.

"I'm right here," said the neighbor. "You wanna be drunk and stupid?"

"Let's do it," said Scott. 

When he opened his driver side door, Scott tripped as he stepped out of his car. When he got back up, he heard something rustling from under his backseat. Thinking his neighbor had somehow gotten in there, he whirled around. An eruption of 30 mongooses leapt from his car. They flew out and knocked him back in an explosion of fur, scampering over his body. 

The neighbor screamed and began hopping about to avoid them as they scrambled from the driveway into his yard and into the shadows. 

"What the! What the hell was that!" Scott screamed. 

"What indeed," said the neighbor. "Look, I don't know what you're up to. So I'm just going to have to call this in."

"No! said scott. "No! No! No! You don't do that! That's not your call! Those weren't mine! No way! No!"

"Screw this. There's something wrong here." said the neighbor, and he began walking toward his home.

"No!" screamed Scott. "No! No! Wait, will you? You have no idea!" Scott ran after the neighbor and put his hand on his shoulder.

The neighbor, having his shoulder yanked violently back, turned around and punched Scott in the face.

* * *

When he awoke, he knew he was dreaming. He was a large Africanized bee, and he was stinging his neighbors repeatedly. His hive was covered by a large yellow and blue fumigation tent and the rest of his hive was trapped inside. He was angry and he buzzed about stinging people thousands of times. He chased his neighbor about the yard and stung him six times on his bald, oily head and he chased his neighbor’s wife into the house where he flew a hundred miles worth in circles, around the television, bouncing off the large window pane, along the walls and along the floors. His neighbor began swatting him with a pink flyswatter, and Scott realized that his eyes were compound eyes, like those of all bees and he saw thousands of flyswatters swinging away in unison. He didn’t know which one was the right one to evade and so he flew in a panic as thousands upon thousands of pink flyswatters swung at him. There were one thousand wives and one thousand angry husbands and they swung at him until finally they opened the back door and he shot out into the vast world. 

Although he knew he was dreaming, he felt high off of a newfound madness. The wind bent to the polished, aerodynamic curvature of his new body. He flew high and then swooped down low to the ground, zipping through the legs of lawn chairs and between the legs of pedestrians walking with their dogs and strollers, and then he flew high again. He thought about the others — those like him, who through their own unique circumstances had found themselves here, against their will, outlawed, tracked, exterminated. Those who were labeled invasive, but were brought here in their sleep. 

I'm dreaming, he thought to himself. Dreaming.

He flew along the forest floor, along a tiny stream, over wet rocks and soared high again through the branches of the trees. The world was alive with colors he had never seen before.

He landed on the stem connecting a leaf to a branch and waited, scanning his surroundings for other crazed, killer bees. He rested his wings and waited. Dreaming and waiting, he thought to himself. What a unique combination.

The forest went silent, and suddenly he was filled with loneliness. There were no others, he realized. He found a small hole in the highest branch of the tree he was resting on and climbed in. The burrow ran deeper than expected, and so he crawled in further until all light was eclipsed. It was the only way, he realized, that he could close his eyes.

That is, until he opened them.

TURTLES

The road was a straight line, with rows of coffee growing on both sides, and dirt, dry and red, flickering behind the slats of the railing, as if inside of a spinning zoetrope. Gavin twisted the plastic bottle cap off of his water with his thumb and forefinger while steering with is other hand. He looked over at Marla and saw that she was dozing off. Her fine brown hair hung lightly against her cheek. Her head was turned away but he could see that her lashes were turned downward. As he took a sip from his bottle, a large roar tore the space above them. He wasn’t sure how far or close or how truly loud it really was. It  simply engulfed the entire road and rumbled along it, sudden, as if the sky was torn open and then resealed. It was as if the clouds had parted and a portal had opened and something fell out, exploding into existence, creating a hot crater into the metal and shattering the windshield. An explosion of white smoke and steam spew against the glass, little plumes of it shooting into the cabin. He hit the breaks and the car skidded and jerked, smoldering, onto the shoulder of the road.

A turtle had fallen from the sky, crushing the hood of his toyota, and was now bleeding into the tesselations of broken glass.

Ironically, they had been talking about the different things that had fallen from the sky in history. Jellyfish in New Jersey, 1833. Fish in Maryland 1828. Pastilles in California, 1857. Flesh in Kentucky 1876.

Recently, the sky had rained tadpoles in Japan. And now, the road leaving Haleiwa, 2009 after a short 3 day sleepover, a turtle. It’s legs shivered and drew inward toward it’s bloody chassis. It’s shell was halved. It’s head trembled. A tiny geyser of blood, as if shot from a water pistol, erupted once from it’s wrinkled neck and then the majestic, ruined creature expired.

Far off there was an empty parachute flitting downward and a plume of smoke bleeding darkness into the sky a few miles beyond. If a plane had crashed, it would explain everything, yet nothing.

They fell out of the car. Gavin, ran to the passenger side door, and helped Marla out. She had not screamed. She hadn’t made a sound.

••••

Gavin and Marla got married in the Summer of 2009. They decided to hold off on an the official honeymoon, but decided to take a week long staycation on the north shore of the island. It had been the norm on the weekends, to drive out along the coast to sample Kahuku sweet corn, or farmed shrimp from Giovanni’s. Sometimes, during the winter they drove out to Sunset beach to watch the big wave surfers ride waves as tall as three story houses - waves collapsing like the giant ice sheets in the Antarctic. In the spring they ventured out to the local markets and  learned about macrobiotic cuisine.

As the wedding approached, they had become too busy to enjoy their usual outings. Weekends were filled with planning as well as an overload of work, which they had taken as a blessing, given the economic downturn that had left many unemployed. He worked from home as project manager for translations for a small company in Honolulu, working on projects that ranged in medium from legal, to commercial to medical, he himself being fluent in Japanese, Spanish and Hawaiian. Occasionally, he translated entire books, magazine articles and essays into Japanese. He had met Marla on the job over a year ago, and worked with her on creating a series of multilingual eco-tourism brochures for the Nature Conservancy. Once, when she asked him why it was that he translated with a pen and note pad, instead of on a computer where the information would be stored anyway, he answered “because I like feeling as if my body is a conduit. I write because it’s a tactile and more expressive way to work. I can feel the words, each letter, line and shape, coming out of me through my hand. One language goes in, is transformed, and comes out right here through my fingertips.” They had dated for a year and a half, and he proposed on the evening of an annual Earth Day festival, where he presented her with a platinum white sapphire and watched it glint in the moonlight along with her eyes.

The wedding itself was entirely eco-friendly, and Marla kept a close eye on all of the details to ensure that the event’s carbon footprint remained the size of a small seagull’s. From the invitations which were made up of recycled paper and sustainable fibers; to the all natural center pieces; to the vegan, organic menu; to the dress itself, which was made of organic cotton, hemp and silk. All of the items on the registry consisted of green products from smaller local boutiques, and they received gifts ranging from sheets, towels and tablecloths woven with sustainable fibers, to organic herb sets, to organic wines and bath and spa products, all manufactured locally. The ceremony was held on the lawn of a friend’s home fronting the Maunalua Bay and the reception was held in the front yard under candlelight and tiki torches.

The home they rented out was fitted with solar panels and they replaced all of their bulbs with LED bulbs. And they continuously set aside portions of their paychecks for their next planned improvement, such as a set of solar attic fans, to keep their home cool during the oppressive summer doldrums, or a series of compost boxes for their food scraps.

What Gavin feared, was that he would be discovered. That despite all of his minute gestures toward the environment, being as eco-friendly as was possible without having to move into a commune as a philanthropist to the world, he questioned his altruism. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t care, really, and his newfound environmentalism was for Marla's benefit. At times, this made him feel hollow. And although he loved her dearly, for her kind hearted patience toward the world, her optimistic, intimate manner of working with people she coordinated and collaborated with in her own quietly heroic way, making their immediate world a better place for all, himself included, he was not sure he that could become the kind of person that she was. When no one was watching, he would find himself guilty of an absentmindedly crass gesture. He would toss scraps of paper out of his car window, or he would heave a  full trash bag full of recyclables down the trash chute. He enjoyed red meat, despite Marla’s insistence on a more humane diet, he found ways of supplementing her White bean and Kale soup with a midnight burger. He logged onto the Hummer website and drooled into the keyboard, wishing that one day they would own one of their own. Wishing thinking, of course. He was all for puncturing holes into Alaska and opening up previously restricted areas of the world for speculative oil drilling. In keeping up with world events he had the secret conviction that all threats to global stability and peace should simply be nuked and rid of. The entire country, if necessary, like one swollen, gone-to-seed, gangrenous limb. He was selfish. He knew it. He was petulant. At heart, he was crude. And he feared that given a chance to exact an act of politically incorrect crudeness, that he would obliviously take it up with aplomb. Maybe he would take up a secret hunting trip with some buddies. He would shoot game, skin and gut-roast it over an open flame. He was an animal. But did that make him as bad as that football player for Atlanta, who was arrested for ramping up a dog fighting ring? What if he found himself face to face with the last Iberian lynx, just him and the spotted cat on an open plain, no one else around, just the two of them, a bottle of whiskey and a trusty rifle? What would he do? Bang! He would need a taxidermist! He would stuff and mount the creature. Or he would wear it on his feet at night. Maybe he would sell it in an underground market and make hundreds of thousands! Or maybe he would bury it out of guilt. Yes. No! Was he that bad? Was he suppressing his own secret imperialistic view toward nature? He would imagine the heartbreak on Marla’s face, love draining from her eyes upon discovery, and feel smaller than ever. So Marla was his only saving grace, then. The only one who could change him. It made him feel false and weak, for not having the true wherewithal within to be able to take these self redefining measures; at having to observe another person’s goodness in order to create a template for his own.

Yet, at times, he felt himself growing cooler and cooler to her virtues. He would watch her in the morning, inserting little clips into her hair. “She can practically can that imagined halo over her head like a CFL bulb,” he would think to himself, and then regret it almost immediately. “What kind of person thinks that way?” he would ask himself reproachfully. Then he would ask “how can someone be this good? It’s not fair!” But how could he possible have any complaints in that arena? And so he reproached himself again and soldiered on. At the market he let Marla lead the cart, pulling only all natural and organic products. She avoided any foods that were owned by the monolithic Monsatto corporation for their unethical and immoral methods in the global marketplace. No junk food. No Processed food. Mostly local. And he nodded and went along while giving longing glances at the facade of glowing teri-style frozen hamburger patties enclosed in a penumbra of frost behind the freezer doors. “Do you know how they process these foods? The inhumane living conditions these animals are forced to live in?” She once told him when he suggested they try Bubbas Big Boy Burgers and realized that inserting his own items onto the grocery list was writing a list to Santa. And when he was given the opportunity to scout out a new product for himself, he felt like a confused puppy that had just fetched the wrong stick. She would always be more informed than he was, and there would always be some flaw with the goods he plucked off the shelves. Once, he returned to the cart carrying a 4 pack of vegetarian burgers. There couldn’t be anything wrong with these, he thought. Of course there was! She scrutinized the package, flipped it over, her lower jaw extended, molars grinding each other and said “This is chock full of GMO’s. We can’t eat this. I know it’s a non meat product and all, but it’s filled with genetically modified soy and altered corn. It still has ingredients derived from dairy and eggs that have been taken from poor animals bred in the most awful living conditions. I mean. Can’t we just go with the brand we normally go with?”

As the months passed on, they realized that both of their jobs offered up a slow period during the month of June. Although they had been planning a trip to Australia, they decided on leaving their little savings in tact, opting instead to use a certificate a three night stay at the Turtle Bay Hotel on the North Shore, an extravagant luxury that they would have never thought of had it not been given to them on the occasion of their wedding. It was the only gift not listed in the registry.

It was on that short stay in that lap of luxury that Marla had begun to grow detached from their surroundings. They were enjoying breakfast, sipping virgin bloody marys at the Palm Terrace, when Marla grew perturbed.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’ve completely forgotten about the donor list.”

“Donor list?” Asked Gavin.

“Cynthia must be going nuts. She must be pulling her hair out.”

“No big deal. They’ll sort it out.”

“No, you don’t understand. For me to have done it would have been a simple formatting measure. She'd have to start from scratch.”

“She’ll figure it out.”

“No, it’ll be a nightmare. Things are so fragmented and disorganized. It’ll look as if I’m not doing anything. As if, I’m a sloppy worker.”

"She'll live."

“She’ll be livid!”

“It’s not like they’ll fire you or anything. Relax. Look, if things were that bad, they would have called.”

“My phone is in the room...”

“Leave it. I’m sure they have things under control.”

“God. I can’t believe I just let that slip.”

“Mar, it’s okay.”

“Would you mind excusing me? I’ll be right back. I just need to go check my phone messages.”

Gavin drew back in his seat. He felt sullen. Angry. Marla’s plate of pineapples and strawberries remained untouched. She had made a fuss over their origins and the waitress assured her that they were grown locally and without any pesticides. Although they could not attest to the fruits being certified organic, they merely stated that the farm that they had come from had forgone the cost of such an evaluation, but they were indeed, all natural. This seemed to quell her anxiety, but she had not touched any of her food.

A soft breeze blew through the palms, lazy and rested and playful – free range wind, unfettered by the Byzantine structures of their world. The ocean was a teal color and the sky matched it wavelength for wavelength.

When Marla returned, she sat slowly and quietly. Remembering her food, she ate a chunk of pineapple. “There’s a protest in Iran over a rigged election,” she said, looking out at the vast blue cloud-smeared horizon. “There are people rioting in the streets. I saw it on my iphone.”

Gavin sighed. “Maybe we should go home.”

Marla stirred a small droplet of pineapple juice with the tine of her fork. She looked at him. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Everything okay at work?” Gavin asked. He rested his elbows on the table and tapped his fingers against his forearm.

“It’s fine. I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

The waitress came along and refilled their glasses with water. She was tall and thin with a small birthmark just under her left eye. “Is everything okay here? Can I get you two anything else?”

“No, we’re fine. Thank you,” said Marla.

They finished their meal and walked down to the beach. Gavin rubbed sunblock over Marla’s back and shoulders. There was a scar on her left deltoid that she had gotten when she was 30, learning how to surf with a friend who had left her alone. She drifted imperceptibly toward the reef and her board suddenly lodged itself over the rocks. Wave after wave, washed over her, pushing her over the rocks, into urchins, buried n pockets along the reefs tough, porous volcanic surface. She had never tried surfing since.

“Tell me,” Gavin said. “What’s bothering you?”

Marla leaned back on her elbows. She dug her feet into the sand and let her toes emerge. There was a group of kids building a fort out of a red pale, digging up bucketfuls and turning them over in a circle. Other couples lounged about, stumbling in and out of the water with goggles and snorkels wrapped tightly around their foreheads.

“You know. The earth is 70 percent water. All of us, just really occupying such a small space on a large planet. An unknowable ocean on all sides of us, really. With animals we may have yet to encounter. Vast. With depths difficult to fathom. There are little lakes that form on the bottom, like separate lakes because the water is so dense. I had always thought of it as a humbling entity. Violent, with storms and oceanic uprisings. It was there long before we came and will be there long after we’re gone, and it’s waves will wash over us, flood our coastal lands, take what it wants and erase our existence as time goes on. And, yet, there’s a garbage patch floating in the North Pacific. Miles and miles of it, larger than Hawaii. Maybe larger than all of California. A collection of debris, trapped and clustered together in the center of a circular current. A dump.”

Gavin nodded. “I read about that, too.” He surveyed he beach and saw a another child throw sand at his parents with a small yellow plastic shovel. Another shovel washed in gently with a wave and as sucked out again when the water receded. He could see it floating, obscured momentarily by the chum of loose sand when a little wave lifted itself as if to curtsey and then collapsed again.

“Someone had better claim that shovel before it becomes a part of that waterworld.”

Marla stood up immediately and walked to the water’s edge. She caught the shovel before it withdrew back into the break and walked over the child. “Is this your shovel?” she asked. “Better make sure to keep it safe. You don’t want to lose it do you?”

The boy took the shovel and threw it into his pale and ran off.

When she returned Gavin said “I didn’t mean you.”

She returned to her spot in the sand and continued. “Some animals are so charismatic they eclipse the extinction of other species. No one cares that certain unsightly species of slugs are disappearing from the earth. Nor frogs nor snails or any anthropoid deep in the boreal forest. Those lamentations are saved for the Pandas. The whales. The bees. Tigers. A lot of them are over hunted.”

“Every loss is felt, Mar, yet some cultures rely on these endangered animals for their livelihood. It would be easy for an outsider to frown upon the human impact on certain species, but when it’s a part of your culture and a part of your living, well, that’s another aspect of things...” Gavin realized that Marla’s condition may have always been one of quiet sadness. Of looking off, her focus dissolving into some distant tragedy. He tried to perk up. “The sun is out. We’re on a beautiful beach. We’ll snorkel and have a nice lunch. We’ll check out the market and take home everything we can carry and have a nice meal tomorrow night. And we’ll get back to doing our very best. No matter what happens.”

“Whales” Marla interrupted. “One might never even see a whale once in their entire lifetime. Yet they have these awe inspiring memories of them. They stare into a monitor and can picture touching the sides of this giant. One day people will be watching these whales on television, not realizing that they are gone from the world.”

“What’s really bothering you?” asked Gavin. “First it’s the food. Then the ocean, then the bees and now whales. We’ve been living in this same world for a while. We drove out here for crying out loud. Polluting the environment. Everything we do leaves a tangible trail. But what can anyone do? We do our best. Are you feeling a little guilty about all this? The sun-kissed, philanthropist in you? The environmentalist. The happy, honeymooner about to go snorkeling in the increasingly depleted sea?”

She fell silent.

“What are you so worried about? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I suppose, I just have these spells sometimes. That’s all,” she said and turned away.

The ocean continued its peaceful rhythm of breathing in and out, inhaling then exhaling itself onto the sand.

****

Eventually they went snorkeling. Once, the waters were bejeweled with fish of every color. There were parrot fish and angel fish — undersea butterflies. Colors were everywhere. Now, if clouds could descend and rain within the ocean, it would have looked like this, an underwater sahara. They were giant beings surveying a grave.

They swam, side by side, letting the ebb and flow of the water push their bodies closer then away from each other. The sandy bottom always appeared closer than it actually appeared, and when Marla reached for it, to caress it’s loose untouched grains with her fingers, the bottom proved farther than she could have imagined.

In the grey gloom, a few manini darted by. Nothing impressive. A stick fish swam under them and dissolved in the distance. Young puffer fish hovered like tiny zeppelin’s below them. And then a new shape appeared in the distance. It was a blur that wavered and then darkened. A few details filled in. One shape, then two.

Turtles.

••••

Gavin once told her a story about turtles. It was a fable he had been told as a child. It was the story of a tortoise and an eagle. He had been told many as a child. “These are the stories I would tell our kids, when we decide to have them, of course. No pressure!” he laughed. “But when we do, I have these memories of my dad telling me these stories. And they were good. Kind of sad. I always questioned them and he would have to explain to me why he told me those stories. Anyway. So, the story with the tortoise and the eagle starts off with them living peacefully in their own habitats. One in the lush vegetation of the land and the other high up in the clouds and treetops. Word had gotten around about what a kind and generous fellow this tortoise was, and the eagle had gotten tired of having to hunt and swoop down on prey, sometimes not getting anything at all. I mean, how embarrassing, right? So he paid a visit to the tortoise and befriended him. Being as kind and generous as always, the tortoise offered the eagle food and the eagle ate his fill and said goodbye. He would return time and time again, being fed and entertained... now I don’t know how a tortoise would entertain an eagle, maybe he would bob his head or something. Or tell really long jokes and took forever to reach the punchline. Who knows? But that became the pattern of their visits. Each time the eagle would return home laughing. He would soar high above the treetops and laugh about how the tortoise would never be able to visit him, being stuck on land. He would never have to host or feed the tortoise. Would never have to reciprocate anything. And so after each visit, the eagle would say goodbye and scream cha-hoo! as he flew home, having eaten all of the tortoise’s food and having never offered anything in return. Word of this got around with the other animals. It was a gossipy ecosystem, you see. There was this meddling frog. And he told the tortoise that he heard the eagle laughing as he flew away about how he was taking advantage of his generosity. He’s using you! said the frog. So unfair! This is what you do, said the frog, and offered the tortoise a plan. The next time the eagle visited, the tortoise fed him and asked that the eagle bring a gourd with him on his next visit. That way, the tortoise could provide him with some extras to take home to his nest. So the next time the eagle visited, he brought the gourd. I don’t have anything for you today, said the tortoise. Actually, I have to go foraging for more food. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll leave the gourd here with whatever I find. If I’m not here, I’m probably out looking for more things to eat. But there’ll be some food in the gourd. I promise, I’ll fill that first. So don’t wait for me, I move very slowly and you’ll be waiting forever. The eagle went home, and the next day, the gourd was there waiting for him. The eagle picked up the gourd and flew high into the treetops to his nest. When he set the gourd down, the tortoise crawled out. Surprise! he said. Whats up, bird! I wanted to surprise you with a visit, being a land dweller I knew there would be no way for me to visit you where you live. The eagle got very angry. Trick me, will you?! he yelled and began pecking at the tortoise but his beak couldn’t penetrate the hard shell. I’ll throw you over the edge. I’ll pick you up and fly high into the clouds and drop you. The tortoise bit down on the eagle’s skinny leg, and the eagle shook and shook but he couldn’t shake the tortoise’s grip. He then flew out of the nest and flew high about treetops but the tortoise hung on. Eventually the eagle grew tired of flying and set the tortoise down on the ground. You’re no longer welcome to my home, said the tortoise and the eagle never returned. Isn’t that such a sad story? Eagle didn’t even apologize!” Gavin said. “It’s a good story about friendship. Not sure why it stuck with me so much. And I think there’s another one like it about a turtle.”

In the water, Marla let Gavin swim away from her toward the turtles. They swam to avoid him and parted ways toward the deep. She had never seen two together before.

“The other story,” he had continued, “was about a turtle who wanted to fly. He was always complaining about having to be stuck on the earth. He wanted to know what it was like to soar above the land at a speed that was physically impossible for his body to achieve. So he enlisted the help of an eagle. Yes, another eagle. I’m not sure why they’re always being paired in these stories. The turtle asks the eagle to fly him up into the clouds and send him off into the wind. In return, he would give the eagle all the riches in the sea. “Hey! Eagle! I’ll give you everything int he ocean if you can make me fly!” "Got any wings?" asked the eagle. "No," answered the turtle. "Any feathers?" asked the eagle. "No," said the turtle. "So why would you want to do this? How are you going to fly?" The turtle answered, "I'm tired of being stuck on the ground. I can't see anything. I can't move fast enough to keep up with my curiosity. I just want to see the world!" So the eagle deliberates and agrees. "Okay. I'll do my very best. But you must remain very still." The eagle picked up the turtle, and lifts him high into the sky. “That’s it , Eagle! Now this is what I’m talkin’ about! Now, Eagle,’ said the tutle, ‘race along the clouds. Pick up some speed. So the eagle picks up speed, but because he is so focused on flapping his wings, he loses his grip. The turtle realizes that things aren’t going to work out for him after all. What business does he have in the sky anyhow? Such short sighted thinking! Before hitting the ground, the turtle thinks to himself, yes, this is an appropriate fate. Our ruin often comes from us attaining everything we want without thinking beyond that. And then he hits the ground. Now that, to me was a dark story. I didn’t get the point of it as a kid, but I think it’s an important fable. There are lot’s of turtle stories, aren’t there?”

In the water, Marla watched as these two turtles swam away. She floated face down, motionlessly and put her hands on her stomach. You may have to tell those bedtime stories sooner than you think, she thought to herself and smiled for the first time all day.

*****

Gavin’s  silhouette towered above the road. The blue lights of the police cars twirled and swathed his sides. The police men were gawking at the shattered animal on the hood of the car. Gavin held his hands up to shade his eyes, as if peering through a pair of invisible binoculars. The sun was setting and the sky above was streaked with stratus clouds, looking like the ocean’s waves from beneath the surface of the water, as if the entire world was now submerged, and he was standing there, suddenly able to breathe water into his lungs, looking at the surface.

He searched the skies for any clues or signs. He looked back at his car and at the carcass on the hood. He was crying. He looked back up. “How did this happen?”

An ambulance pulled up. This shook Gavin out of his stupor and he immediately ran over to Marla, who was sitting on a small rock. He knelt to her.  “Are you alright, let’s get you to the ambulance so we can get you checked out,” he said, sniffling.

“I’m okay, she said. No harm physically. Just rattled.”

Gavin stood again and looked up at the clouds. He surveyed the horizon. There was a plume of dark smoke at the base of a mountain. The policeman was on the radio.

“What the hell just happened?” Then Gavin screamed. “A god dammed turtle drops from the sky!” He was breathing hard. He dragged his fist across his eyes. "What kind of world are we living in here?"

Marla stood up and went to him. She held him. She wiped away his tears and felt surprisingly calm. Perhaps the shock had not worn off. “Hey, “she said and put her hands on his cheeks and held him there. “We’re okay,” she said. “We’re safe.” She took his hand gently and placed it flatly on her stomach. “That’s the important thing. You and I are safe.” Gavin looked at her and then at his hand on the soft pouch of her stomach and understood immediately. Her strange mood. Her uncertainty. His confused anger subsided. His features softened again. “All we can do,” Marla said repeating his sentiment from earlier, “is to try our best, no matter what happens. Right?”