There was a slight fracture just below the waterline, and the salt would seep in and crystallize in beautiful patterns for her

A week later and everything remained still, the trajectory of new things indistinguishable from that of old things. Occasionally he had imagined that throwing himself headlong into a life with her would have changed something in him, perhaps made the machinery of him into a connected whole, capable of seeing faces and understanding gestures in the proper way. But none of that happened. He could barely bring himself to pronounce her name. 'Angela'. He imagined the roiling grease of her name and its constituent syllables leaking out of his mouth and emitting a foul smell as it slid, writhing, to a bare pine floor. When she was asleep and nameless he wrote out their futures together and everything seemed rich and promising, but her eyes and the confusion of her features inevitably interrupted and only he remained.

On Tuesday he woke up early and decided not to go to work. He sat on the edge of the bed with his right hand stretched behind him, testing the tensile strength of the skin along her torso. He pressed too rapidly on one of his forays and she woke up, smiling.

"What are you doing awake? It's six thirty, come back to sleep."

"I'm going out for a walk," he said. He leaned back and kissed her hair into her forehead, a few strands pressed down by the heat and moisture of his breath. And she smiled, too, still half asleep. "I'm skipping work today, it's nice out."

"I can't call in sick today, you shouldn't either."

He ignored her and got up to get dressed. His mind was fixed, he was smiling now, a strange smile.

"I can't go to work today, I need to get out for a bit. I'll call you for lunch, we can have lunch together."

She looked at him, somewhat puzzled, but the moment passed. "Alright, if you have to! Let's meet at 11, I'll take off for lunch early, ok? Call me! I'm going back to sleep!" She spoke rapidly and there was something sad in the light way she'd accepted his leaving, but this feeling, too, passed.

***

His shoes were tight around his ankles, he'd chosen too-large winter socks for the surprising warmth of the early spring day. The sun glinted into his eyes and he walked for blocks with them half closed, imagining where to go and finding no resistance in the early morning streets.