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.""But there's not room for a shoe in my pocket.""It was in there," he said irrefutably.She reached into both pockets at once, pulled out an emptypickle jar, a film canister, a plastic glass with Ronald McDonald on it, the lid of a Ninja Turtle lunchbox.She got to her knees, still pulling things out, her eyes wide, incredulous.Adam watched silently.She dropped a piece of a child's chalk board, a length of picture wire, a diving mask, a bicycle chain,and a fan belt before she stood up.Adam didn't move, except his head, lifting a little to see her face."What is this?" she breathed."What is all this?" Still things came out: a jump-rope handle, ahairbrush without any bristles, the plastic nozzle of a vacuum cleaner."This is not what I was lookingfor.""It's what you found."She stared at him.Expression had finally surfaced in his eyes: a sorrow as deep and complete asif, she Òthought, he were watching the world die.And then she realized he was.A wave fanned across the sand, spilled around him, began to tug the bottle caps, the Styrofoamback into the sea.It tugged at Adam, who lay in water as easily as on sand, indifferent as a seal to theturning of the tide.She began to tremble, feeling the weight in her pockets and knowing that there was not timeenough in the world to empty them.She whispered, "What are you?"Jonah drifted back home at twilight.He moved, he felt, through the evening tide.It sang in theback of his mind, insistent, pervasive, the way the sound of the sea seemed ingrained in thefloorboards of the apartment.No window could shut it out, no dream.He found Megan sitting idlyon a kitchen stool, gazing at nothing, a peculiar, distant look in her eyes.He went to the refrigerator,got a beer, and glanced at her again."Did you draw?"She shook her head."No.I just walked.""Oh.""You?"He nodded."Same." He added, making an effort, "I found a couple of things.""Oh." She drew a breath, subsided.He glanced out the window over the sink.Twilight drew a thinline of sapphire above the sea.He watched it darken, forgetting the beer in his hand, following thepale, elusive frills of foam as the black waves broke.A star moved over the water toward the harbor:a trawler coming home.He drank finally, and remembered Megan, so silent he had forgotten shewas there.She got that way sometimes, chewing over her work.He moved, touched the cold stove."I'll cook." She murmured something."What?""Okay." She added, after a moment, "I'm not very hungry.""I'll cook that frozen tortellini.""Okay."He opened a cupboard, rattled a pot loose from a clutter of lids.He said without looking at her,"That Adam.çThe jewelry maker." She made another noise."Where does he live?""He does he said " He looked up then; she shook her hair over her face, finding words."He saidhe was with some friends.""What friends? Where?""He didn't say."He grunted, kicked the cupboard door closed.He set the pot in the sink, ran water into it."ReasonI ask," he said to the water, "is Jenny thinks we should get a few more pieces from him.""Oh."He set the pot on the stove, turned on heat."Did you buy sauce?""No.""You know how to make it?""Yeah.You get out the butter."He gazed into the water, stirred it aimlessly for a while with a wooden spoon."Then what?" heasked, rousing."After you get out the butter?""That's it.You toss some butter and salt and pepper in the tortellini and it'll be fine."He blinked, pulled earthward by a vague sense of incongruity."Do we have butter?""No," she said after a while.He turEned the water off, looked at her.She was hunched, her face a quarter moon within herhair.He couldn't find an expression, let alone read it.He set the water aside, pulled a frying pan outof the stove drawer."Eggs, then.Scrambled?""Fine.""Did he leave a number with you?""What? ""Adam Fin.A phone number?"She shook her head, straightening a little; he heard her sigh."No.""Well, then how do I get in touch with him?""I guess you'll have to wait until he finds a place to live."He cracked an egg against the pan with more force than necessary."That's it? Just wait until hewanders back in? It could be days!""It could be.So what?"So, he wanted to shout, I have to wait days to find out if the woman singing in the bar he says ishis sister, is the woman who sang to me in a cave, or if I just dreamed their voices wereÏ alike andthat there was the shadow of her long black hair against the rock? His mouth felt dry.He dumpedeggshells, knowing suddenly how an oyster felt, waking up to a grain of sand in its bed, trying to livearound it, only to find it growing larger, luminous, more insistent the harder the oyster worked toignore it."I think," he said finally, "I just think it's odd he left all that with us and not even a number wherewe can reach him.It's expensive stuff.""I guess he trusts us," she said wearily, and added after a moment, "I don't know why.Anyway.You don't even like him."He didn't answer.He stirred eggs, pushed a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster.He foundhimself staring down into it, watching the flush of heat along the element.He looked up to findMegan watching him, her eyes speaking suddenly, but nothing he could decipher.Do you? theyasked.Have you ever? Would you believe?"Jonah ? ""Huh?" he said, and then, "Oh, shit, there's no butter for the toast.""There's some diet margarine.""I hate that stuff.Tastes like salad oil." He got a couple of plates, spilled egg onto them, added drytoast.He handed a plate to Megan.She looked at it bewilderedly, as if wondering what he expectedher to do with yellow lumps and a piece of cardboard.He lifted his own plate, eyed it, and set itdown abruptly."I'm going out."He felt her watching him until he closed the door, but she did not even say his name.His feet led him to the Ancient Mariner, where he bought a beer and hunched over it, listening,beneath the sounds of the jukebox and some weird woman haranguing the bartender, for an echo ofthe voice in his head.He upended the beer, drank half, and fell deeper into the music, chasing aspindrift song through the caves in his head.Fini"!shing the beer in another burst of energy, hefound the woman eyeing him.She looked, he thought, like an oyster.Lumpy, gray, with a ruffled and colorless shell.Thebartender, Sharon, who was married to Marty down the street who ran the arts and crafts gallery,lifted an eyebrow at Jonah."Another? ""He'll have one," the older woman said."I'm buying.""No, I have to ""Name's Doris.You can call me Dory." She brought herself and her glass over, sat down besidehim."If you can hear that much beneath the music.""I can hear," he said, despite Aerosmith going at it from the jukebox.She fixed him with heroyster eye."Sing me what you hear.""I can't sing.""You'll have to, for her.You'll have to wring music from your bones." She shoved his beer at him."Drink it."He could not, he thought, drinking with impolite haste, have heard what she said [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]