SEA OF TRANQUILITY

78 American Short Fiction
laid out in a grid and not just a few scattered buildings. Th e cafeteria
where he and Marci used to sit fi fteen years before was probably
gone. Anthropology and statistics and introductory accounting; he
raced up the hill three nights a week and what did he remember?
Early man used Oldowan tools to get the marrow out of bones. Th e
australopithecines could break rocks with their jaws. He still had
his lecture notes in a plastic box next to the water heater.
“Sir.” A girl touched his shoulder. She knelt down beside him
and spoke loudly in his ear, as if he were deaf and not just blind.
“Sir, are you all right? Are you waiting for a ride?”
“I’m bird watching,” he told her. “I’m looking for Bighorns up
in the hills.” Th e girl stepped back then, and the people with her
laughed. After that they left him alone.
He dozed a little in the sun. He drank some of his cocoa. A
football game was playing on somebody’s TV. Somebody else was
listening to a Spanish-language tape in one of the buildings behind
the lot. Soy Antonio García Morales, a man said. Yo soy chileno. De
dónde eres tú, but the window closed before anyone could answer.
Snatches of laughter and conversation and the voices all sounded so
young. Marci was right; he knew this. He needed to see an occupational
therapist so he could get his bearings. He needed to send in
his Social Security papers and make an appointment at Johns Hopkins.
But not today and not tomorrow either. All these things could
wait. Th e sky would be clear tonight, and he’d see all his familiar
places.
Two hours later, give or take, the car came into focus. He saw
it before she called. It was working its way up the red dirt road that
wound across the mountain. She’d scraped the fender sometime
in the last few months, and the green paint had started to blister.
It looked almost matte in the sun, like the Humvees the soldiers
drove between Fort Carson and the city. She parked right below the
quarry gate and stepped out from the car. She wore a knit hat he
hadn’t seen before. She frowned right at him as if she could see him
sitting in his chair.