SEA OF TRANQUILITY

68 American Short Fiction
even with her earplugs. She said it was her hormones; she could feel
them bubbling in her blood. And then she’d laugh because nurses
weren’t supposed to talk that way.
He went to Garden of the Gods because he didn’t mind the
tourists. Th e loop took him past the Twin Sisters rock formation
and the gift shop parking lot and up a narrow trail. Th e rocks were
beside him, and he saw them as blurs of red, but he couldn’t make
out the sandy spots or the ruts left by the horses. Past the fi rst and
second parts and up the railroad ties that terraced the hill for riding.
He knew these steps and how to climb them, and he wasn’t
sure if he was seeing them now or running them from memory.
Past those steps the trail turned south and went across the ridge. He
stopped at the top and leaned against a boulder. He drank from his
water bottle.
Th ere were no trees where he was and no other hills to block
his view. Th e wind had started blowing, and it was hot as a hairdryer
when it came through the junipers. It turned his sweat to
salt. Marci should have been there with him because she liked those
summer breezes. She was a cactus and not a fern, that’s what she
always said. She could never live in one of those mossy states the
way her sisters did. Th e road just below him was getting crowded.
Silhouettes of people pushing their strollers and riding recumbent
bikes. Flashes of color against the rocks. He could see every ripple
in the distance, every shadow and groove and all the pitons and
eyebolts left by climbers before the regulations got too strict. He’d
been coming here since he was a kid, but he’d never noticed these
things before. How the cumulus clouds weren’t just white. Th ey had
purple in them, and silver. A prairie falcon circled the road half a
mile away, riding the thermals above the asphalt. He saw the yellow
of its talons and its russet marble eye. It had hairs around the
holes in its beak, which caught him by surprise. Th ey were fi ne
as a cat’s whiskers. Everything was so clear it almost hurt to look.
Th e garter snakes far down in the grasses and the frogs with their