The security guard was snoring loudly. Bernice told Dory about the fight, about Bill throwing the keys into the
river, about how he had laughed at her. “It took me two trips up the ramp this morning, by myself, to get my
bags over to the gate where the cab was supposed to pick me up. I don't know what I would have done if
someone had seen me. Do people know? Has Bill talked with anyone?”
Dory's lighter scratched over the line. “I haven't told a soul, sweetie, though I think people heard me on the
phone with you earlier and know something's up, so yeah, pretty much everybody knows. And pretty much
everybody knows that Bill doesn't know they know about it but nobody's saying anything.” The lighter flicked
again. “To Bill, I mean.”
Bernice told her about the insulin, wondering out loud if Bill would remember to take it, wondering if she
should call home.
“Listen girl. If you're going to do this, and let him know you're serious, then you need to really do it, you
know? If you don't mean what you say, then who will? You know what I mean? You want me to have Mike
stop in and check on him?”
“No, you're right Dory. He needs to know that this isn't some vacation.”
* * *
Elizabeth and her husband left for the beach. At night, alone in the unfamiliar apartment, Bernice left the TV
on and tried to sleep on the couch. At night was when Bill seemed to need her the most. During the day, he
usually had the energy to put a good face on things. Bernice stayed awake imagining Bill sleeping on the boat
without her.
She was the one who gave him his insulin shot late at night, after he had fallen asleep. Bill hated needles. He
usually slept right through it. Recently, it was getting harder to catch him in deep sleep since he was getting
up to pee more in the night. She lay there waiting, watching his chest rise and fall, his body twitching.
Sometimes he would pretend to be sleeping and when she reached for the needle, he would start whimpering
or humming a mournful song.
The common bathroom in the upper marina was fifty yards down the dock. He had gotten to where he
couldn't make it that far, and he was tired of walking up and down the dock all night. He relieved himself in
the kitchen sink now, in the galley, rinsing it out afterward with hand soap. In the morning, Bernice wiped the
dry spots of urine from the floorboards and the counter top. It bothered her at first, but not anymore. She
didn't say anything about the spots, or the smell in the sink. It was hard enough for him. He usually had a
tough time going back to sleep after getting up to pee. If Bernice rubbed his back he would drift off more
quickly. Sometimes they would make love in the dark, but more often, they would lie there and talk,
sometimes until the sun came up.
* * *
Bernice kept close to the phone on the last day of Bill's insulin supply, in case he called. She turned the black
leather couch to face the TV and watched Perry Mason, then Murder She Wrote, then Oprah, hoping to hear
the phone ring each time the credits rolled.
Late in the afternoon, the clouds hung heavily in the sky outside the tall windows, almost black along their
bottom edges. According to the weatherman, the wind would carry the storm clouds east before they could
drop their rain.
When the drums started pounding somewhere in the streets outside, Bernice removed her glasses and pulled
the binoculars from a peg where they hung on the wall by the window. Her sister had called again that
morning from the coast to warn her about the peace protest, but she had already heard about it on TV.
What do you call it anyway, she wondered. A march? A protest? A peace walk? A rebellion? Democracy?
What did you call it? Everything depends on what you call it.
Several city blocks were visible through the tops of the trees, and between the buildings, the river hung like a
dark ribbon weaving through the city blocks and wrinkling faintly in the light breeze. From the apartment,
every time she looked, the color on the surface of the river always seemed to multiply the effects of the sky
above. The river carried a deeper blue, a duller gray. Some mornings, the surface shattered its reflection into
a hundred dancing suns. People paid good money for a view like this; for a view of something they wouldn't
want to get close to if they knew how foul and green the water really was.
Looking out the window, the dizziness came over her with renewed strength. Bernice found that if she got
too close to the window, even sitting on the black leather couch to look out, the floor tilted down toward the
river, and she had to close her eyes to make it stop. But she did OK while looking through the binoculars. If
she wanted to see the streets below, she had to walk right up to the windows and look down through the
binoculars. During the day, there were people everywhere. The homeless. Businessmen and women. You
could tell a lot about them by what they carried, or how they carried themselves, their posture, the quickness
of their pace, their confident weaving along the crowded sidewalks. You could even guess their names and
probably not be too far off. Some men still yielded to the women, letting them go first off the curb when
crossing the street, but mostly, people kept clear of one another.
The drums were getting louder. The streets were strangely empty.
Just below her building, riot police began to arrive. She had to lean into the window to see them. On TV, the
news said that police were prepared to use tear gas and pellet guns.
The sun started to push through the clouds. It looked like the weatherman would be right for once.
Bernice stood up on her toes to better see the street below. She leaned into the glass and waited.
Dozens of riot police climbed out of several black vans, pouring out one by one like the impossible number of
circus clowns jumping out of impossibly small cars. Clowns. She had never thought of the police in this way.
They looked more like clowns pretending to be soldiers. Or ants. Call them cops. Pigs. The Fuzz. She
sensed her own perceptions shifting slightly under the different names that came to mind. Law enforcement.
Police force. Portland's finest. How strange and laughable they looked through the window high above the
street in their tight formations. Toys. They were like toys, or pawns. They fanned out in groups of five or six,
lining the intersections along the parade route.
Light began to spill into the streets. The tone of the gray river shifted and deepened into blue. Cloud-
shadows climbed from the streets, over the trees and buildings, and then fell back flat onto the pavement
again. The pounding of drums came louder through the closed windows and echoed off the surrounding
buildings.
Bernice held her breath. Half a dozen blocks up the street, the first of the marchers rounded a corner. She
lowered the binoculars for a moment. A river of rippling color poured slowly around the corner and over the
gray concrete, swallowing the staggered yellow traffic lanes. Her head began to sway. She lifted the
binoculars back to her eyes and swept them up the street and away from the marchers to where police on
motorcycles passed back and forth across the parade route. Red and blue lights spun dimly under the glare of
the sun. Several banners waved from open windows high above the street. People leaned out into the air.
Heads above and heads below all turned toward the sound of the drums. Bernice watched them.
Then she paused. Something familiar about the man approaching the march from the opposite direction. His
arms hung heavily with a stack of books, shoulders bunched up under the weight of them. At first, she
couldn't place him, a face from another world, another life. Her head lightened and her body began to sway –
the dizziness coming on even with the binoculars. She pressed her palm against the window frame to hold
herself still.
Then it hit her. From the marina. What was his name? That guy always loafing around the fuel dock. Met
with the others for coffee in the morning. Fisherman. Sloppy clothes and hair. What was his name? The guy
looked exactly like him: the untrimmed beard, the thick canvas pants and flannel shirt, cloth wrinkled into a
web of shadows in the bright sunlight. What was his name? The resemblance was amazing. But no. That
guy rarely left the docks except to putter around in a rowboat or to go buy booze.
But it was him, even though it couldn't possibly be. He would have just spent the morning with Bill over
coffee. Only hours ago. They would have been laughing together. Bill might have even confided in him.
Christ, what the hell was his name?
But no. It couldn't be him. It might be his unkempt hair and un-ironed clothes, but he had all those books in
his arms. The only thing he ever read was the paper and the tide tables. Everyone knew that. And everyone
knew his name. It was on the tip of her tongue.
The guy became even less like himself when he stepped down off the curb and into the river of colorful clothes
and banners, his head nodding to the rhythm of the drums, his face smiling. That settled it. There was no
way. But she watched him. There were children there beside him. What were children doing at a protest?
And there were older folks in wheelchairs. The man balanced the books in one arm and handed something to
a child next to him. No, the child was handing something to him. A woman next to the children seemed to
know him.
The soft carpet tilted under Bernice's bare feet and her head rocked violently. The window seemed to fall
forward in front of her. She leaned into the glass and a force like a windless wind pushed and pulled her
down toward the crowded pavement. She shut her eyes and listened to the drums until the ground felt firm
again and then she lifted the binoculars back to her eyes.
The first marchers had moved out of sight. Only the top of the liveaboard’s head would be visible now. Where
was he? Where were the children? What was his name? Her gaze swept back and forth over the crowd of
college students and monstrous puppets, the gyrating dancers and drummers, but she couldn’t find him.
Bernice turned away from the window and collapsed into the black, leather couch near the window and rubbed
both hands over her eyelids. Had he followed her here? Was it really him? Or was the real guy just back at
the fuel dock, where he always was, fishing?
The drums stopped. The second hand on the clock above the kitchen counter rolled around the face in a
smooth arc. The crowd below roared loudly. Sirens blared. Bernice looked up at the spinning ceiling.
She made her way over to the counter, eyes closed, and reached for the phone. The room tipped again and
she grabbed the edge of the countertop. She reached for the phone a second time.
The drums sounded again, but sporadically, and then stopped altogether. Or it might have been gunshots.
Bernice dialed. Even with her eyes shut tight, the darkness rocked back and forth. When Dory picked up,
Bernice tried to speak slowly, tried to calm her trembling voice.
“Dory?”
“Yeah sweetie? You OK?”
“Dory. How can I get back? I can't get back to him. I can't go back on what I said. What are we going to
do? Bill and I can't just laugh our way out of everything all the time. If you are really paying attention, you
can't just smile at everything.”
Bernice held the mouthpiece away from her face, breathing deeply. The noise of the crowd began to fade
outside.
Dory flicked the lighter on. “Listen, Bernie. How long are you gonna drag this thing out?”
“What do you mean, me dragging it out? Dragging what out?”
“You know what I mean, Bernie. You're pretending you've really left him, and making it all sound so
complicated. You guys are crazy about each other and you know it. I haven't seen Bill crack a smile since you
left. Do you know that Bill took your boat out this morning? When was the last time you guys did that? He
did a little trip around the island. One minute, he was heading south and then a few hours later, there he was
coming up the channel from the north, and he stopped by the fuel dock to fill the tanks. He bought a couple of
hot dogs.”
“But I'm not making it complicated. It is complicated. Love and romance isn't enough.”
“You might think about calling him, honey.”
“Wait. You've been talking to him, haven't you? I can't believe you!”
“Bernie, wait a minute.”
“My name is Bernice, you got that?” She paused, shaking. “You and everyone else down there disgust me, but
especially you, Doris! You and your goddamn hot dogs!”
Bernice hung up the phone and grabbed her purse, letting the door slam behind her on her way out. While
she was waiting for the elevator, she remembered the man's name. Larry. That was it. That was his name.
But what did that matter now? What the hell did she know about the guy?
In the lobby, Bernice felt the security officer's eyes on her as she stumbled out the large glass doors and into
the crowded streets where the march had become a jumbled mass of people moving in different directions.
She clipped the sunshades onto her glasses kept moving and let the tears fall and no one stopped to ask her
if she was OK or even took notice.
* * *
Bill called later that evening. Bernice was waiting by the phone. He asked how the time away was going.
“It's the worst vacation I've ever had,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “we're giving vacations a bad name.”
After a long silence, he told her he missed her. He asked her if she would like to go out for breakfast in the
morning. He wanted to let her know that he was going to drop the boat delivery job if that was what she
wanted. They could even consider moving back on land like they had originally agreed, or at least go out more
in the evenings to places on land. He said he was planning to bring the boat down to the downtown
waterfront tonight and walk up the street to see her in the morning if she would have him.
Bernice told him to come on up as soon as he arrived, no matter how late. She would be up.
They were both silent for a moment, and then Bill spoke again.
“You're probably getting more sleep, at least, now that you don't have me keeping you up at nights.”
“No, Bill. I'm not sleeping well at all. I've been so land sick.”
* * *
Late in the night, out on the couch in the dark living room, Bernie realized that she hadn't asked Bill about the
insulin. She made her way out of the guest room and into the living room and dialed home. The phone
hummed its calm tone through the receiver. No answer. She hung up and tried again. Nothing. Not even the
answering machine. So he really had left, pulled the phone cord out of the jack next to the shore-power outlet
on the dock. She dialed again and let it ring over and over, holding the phone in one hand and pulling the
binoculars off the peg with the other. The phone rang and she looked out over the dark patch of the river by
the waterfront until her eyes hurt from the pressure of the binoculars. She hung them back on the peg where
they swung, bumped the wall twice, and then grew still. Bernie went over to the couch and listened to the
ringing in the receiver, switching ears when one of them began to ache, gazing out the window toward the
broken line of the river below. She imagined the miles of phone lines and cords that began at the phone by
her ear ended finally at the jack by their empty boat slip, the home for their home, where her potted flowers
were still resting along the edge of the floorboards in the dark night air above the water.
After a while, Bernice hung up the phone, put on one of her sister's heavy coats, took the elevator down to
the street, and headed down the hill toward the river. Maybe it was the darkness of early morning, or the
black roof of the sky studded with stars, or the quiet streets, or maybe the thought that she would be back
aboard the boat soon, but when she looked down the slope of the hill toward the river, her eyes were
steady. She waited for the dizziness to spin the buildings and the streetlights around her, but it never came.
river, about how he had laughed at her. “It took me two trips up the ramp this morning, by myself, to get my
bags over to the gate where the cab was supposed to pick me up. I don't know what I would have done if
someone had seen me. Do people know? Has Bill talked with anyone?”
Dory's lighter scratched over the line. “I haven't told a soul, sweetie, though I think people heard me on the
phone with you earlier and know something's up, so yeah, pretty much everybody knows. And pretty much
everybody knows that Bill doesn't know they know about it but nobody's saying anything.” The lighter flicked
again. “To Bill, I mean.”
Bernice told her about the insulin, wondering out loud if Bill would remember to take it, wondering if she
should call home.
“Listen girl. If you're going to do this, and let him know you're serious, then you need to really do it, you
know? If you don't mean what you say, then who will? You know what I mean? You want me to have Mike
stop in and check on him?”
“No, you're right Dory. He needs to know that this isn't some vacation.”
* * *
Elizabeth and her husband left for the beach. At night, alone in the unfamiliar apartment, Bernice left the TV
on and tried to sleep on the couch. At night was when Bill seemed to need her the most. During the day, he
usually had the energy to put a good face on things. Bernice stayed awake imagining Bill sleeping on the boat
without her.
She was the one who gave him his insulin shot late at night, after he had fallen asleep. Bill hated needles. He
usually slept right through it. Recently, it was getting harder to catch him in deep sleep since he was getting
up to pee more in the night. She lay there waiting, watching his chest rise and fall, his body twitching.
Sometimes he would pretend to be sleeping and when she reached for the needle, he would start whimpering
or humming a mournful song.
The common bathroom in the upper marina was fifty yards down the dock. He had gotten to where he
couldn't make it that far, and he was tired of walking up and down the dock all night. He relieved himself in
the kitchen sink now, in the galley, rinsing it out afterward with hand soap. In the morning, Bernice wiped the
dry spots of urine from the floorboards and the counter top. It bothered her at first, but not anymore. She
didn't say anything about the spots, or the smell in the sink. It was hard enough for him. He usually had a
tough time going back to sleep after getting up to pee. If Bernice rubbed his back he would drift off more
quickly. Sometimes they would make love in the dark, but more often, they would lie there and talk,
sometimes until the sun came up.
* * *
Bernice kept close to the phone on the last day of Bill's insulin supply, in case he called. She turned the black
leather couch to face the TV and watched Perry Mason, then Murder She Wrote, then Oprah, hoping to hear
the phone ring each time the credits rolled.
Late in the afternoon, the clouds hung heavily in the sky outside the tall windows, almost black along their
bottom edges. According to the weatherman, the wind would carry the storm clouds east before they could
drop their rain.
When the drums started pounding somewhere in the streets outside, Bernice removed her glasses and pulled
the binoculars from a peg where they hung on the wall by the window. Her sister had called again that
morning from the coast to warn her about the peace protest, but she had already heard about it on TV.
What do you call it anyway, she wondered. A march? A protest? A peace walk? A rebellion? Democracy?
What did you call it? Everything depends on what you call it.
Several city blocks were visible through the tops of the trees, and between the buildings, the river hung like a
dark ribbon weaving through the city blocks and wrinkling faintly in the light breeze. From the apartment,
every time she looked, the color on the surface of the river always seemed to multiply the effects of the sky
above. The river carried a deeper blue, a duller gray. Some mornings, the surface shattered its reflection into
a hundred dancing suns. People paid good money for a view like this; for a view of something they wouldn't
want to get close to if they knew how foul and green the water really was.
Looking out the window, the dizziness came over her with renewed strength. Bernice found that if she got
too close to the window, even sitting on the black leather couch to look out, the floor tilted down toward the
river, and she had to close her eyes to make it stop. But she did OK while looking through the binoculars. If
she wanted to see the streets below, she had to walk right up to the windows and look down through the
binoculars. During the day, there were people everywhere. The homeless. Businessmen and women. You
could tell a lot about them by what they carried, or how they carried themselves, their posture, the quickness
of their pace, their confident weaving along the crowded sidewalks. You could even guess their names and
probably not be too far off. Some men still yielded to the women, letting them go first off the curb when
crossing the street, but mostly, people kept clear of one another.
The drums were getting louder. The streets were strangely empty.
Just below her building, riot police began to arrive. She had to lean into the window to see them. On TV, the
news said that police were prepared to use tear gas and pellet guns.
The sun started to push through the clouds. It looked like the weatherman would be right for once.
Bernice stood up on her toes to better see the street below. She leaned into the glass and waited.
Dozens of riot police climbed out of several black vans, pouring out one by one like the impossible number of
circus clowns jumping out of impossibly small cars. Clowns. She had never thought of the police in this way.
They looked more like clowns pretending to be soldiers. Or ants. Call them cops. Pigs. The Fuzz. She
sensed her own perceptions shifting slightly under the different names that came to mind. Law enforcement.
Police force. Portland's finest. How strange and laughable they looked through the window high above the
street in their tight formations. Toys. They were like toys, or pawns. They fanned out in groups of five or six,
lining the intersections along the parade route.
Light began to spill into the streets. The tone of the gray river shifted and deepened into blue. Cloud-
shadows climbed from the streets, over the trees and buildings, and then fell back flat onto the pavement
again. The pounding of drums came louder through the closed windows and echoed off the surrounding
buildings.
Bernice held her breath. Half a dozen blocks up the street, the first of the marchers rounded a corner. She
lowered the binoculars for a moment. A river of rippling color poured slowly around the corner and over the
gray concrete, swallowing the staggered yellow traffic lanes. Her head began to sway. She lifted the
binoculars back to her eyes and swept them up the street and away from the marchers to where police on
motorcycles passed back and forth across the parade route. Red and blue lights spun dimly under the glare of
the sun. Several banners waved from open windows high above the street. People leaned out into the air.
Heads above and heads below all turned toward the sound of the drums. Bernice watched them.
Then she paused. Something familiar about the man approaching the march from the opposite direction. His
arms hung heavily with a stack of books, shoulders bunched up under the weight of them. At first, she
couldn't place him, a face from another world, another life. Her head lightened and her body began to sway –
the dizziness coming on even with the binoculars. She pressed her palm against the window frame to hold
herself still.
Then it hit her. From the marina. What was his name? That guy always loafing around the fuel dock. Met
with the others for coffee in the morning. Fisherman. Sloppy clothes and hair. What was his name? The guy
looked exactly like him: the untrimmed beard, the thick canvas pants and flannel shirt, cloth wrinkled into a
web of shadows in the bright sunlight. What was his name? The resemblance was amazing. But no. That
guy rarely left the docks except to putter around in a rowboat or to go buy booze.
But it was him, even though it couldn't possibly be. He would have just spent the morning with Bill over
coffee. Only hours ago. They would have been laughing together. Bill might have even confided in him.
Christ, what the hell was his name?
But no. It couldn't be him. It might be his unkempt hair and un-ironed clothes, but he had all those books in
his arms. The only thing he ever read was the paper and the tide tables. Everyone knew that. And everyone
knew his name. It was on the tip of her tongue.
The guy became even less like himself when he stepped down off the curb and into the river of colorful clothes
and banners, his head nodding to the rhythm of the drums, his face smiling. That settled it. There was no
way. But she watched him. There were children there beside him. What were children doing at a protest?
And there were older folks in wheelchairs. The man balanced the books in one arm and handed something to
a child next to him. No, the child was handing something to him. A woman next to the children seemed to
know him.
The soft carpet tilted under Bernice's bare feet and her head rocked violently. The window seemed to fall
forward in front of her. She leaned into the glass and a force like a windless wind pushed and pulled her
down toward the crowded pavement. She shut her eyes and listened to the drums until the ground felt firm
again and then she lifted the binoculars back to her eyes.
The first marchers had moved out of sight. Only the top of the liveaboard’s head would be visible now. Where
was he? Where were the children? What was his name? Her gaze swept back and forth over the crowd of
college students and monstrous puppets, the gyrating dancers and drummers, but she couldn’t find him.
Bernice turned away from the window and collapsed into the black, leather couch near the window and rubbed
both hands over her eyelids. Had he followed her here? Was it really him? Or was the real guy just back at
the fuel dock, where he always was, fishing?
The drums stopped. The second hand on the clock above the kitchen counter rolled around the face in a
smooth arc. The crowd below roared loudly. Sirens blared. Bernice looked up at the spinning ceiling.
She made her way over to the counter, eyes closed, and reached for the phone. The room tipped again and
she grabbed the edge of the countertop. She reached for the phone a second time.
The drums sounded again, but sporadically, and then stopped altogether. Or it might have been gunshots.
Bernice dialed. Even with her eyes shut tight, the darkness rocked back and forth. When Dory picked up,
Bernice tried to speak slowly, tried to calm her trembling voice.
“Dory?”
“Yeah sweetie? You OK?”
“Dory. How can I get back? I can't get back to him. I can't go back on what I said. What are we going to
do? Bill and I can't just laugh our way out of everything all the time. If you are really paying attention, you
can't just smile at everything.”
Bernice held the mouthpiece away from her face, breathing deeply. The noise of the crowd began to fade
outside.
Dory flicked the lighter on. “Listen, Bernie. How long are you gonna drag this thing out?”
“What do you mean, me dragging it out? Dragging what out?”
“You know what I mean, Bernie. You're pretending you've really left him, and making it all sound so
complicated. You guys are crazy about each other and you know it. I haven't seen Bill crack a smile since you
left. Do you know that Bill took your boat out this morning? When was the last time you guys did that? He
did a little trip around the island. One minute, he was heading south and then a few hours later, there he was
coming up the channel from the north, and he stopped by the fuel dock to fill the tanks. He bought a couple of
hot dogs.”
“But I'm not making it complicated. It is complicated. Love and romance isn't enough.”
“You might think about calling him, honey.”
“Wait. You've been talking to him, haven't you? I can't believe you!”
“Bernie, wait a minute.”
“My name is Bernice, you got that?” She paused, shaking. “You and everyone else down there disgust me, but
especially you, Doris! You and your goddamn hot dogs!”
Bernice hung up the phone and grabbed her purse, letting the door slam behind her on her way out. While
she was waiting for the elevator, she remembered the man's name. Larry. That was it. That was his name.
But what did that matter now? What the hell did she know about the guy?
In the lobby, Bernice felt the security officer's eyes on her as she stumbled out the large glass doors and into
the crowded streets where the march had become a jumbled mass of people moving in different directions.
She clipped the sunshades onto her glasses kept moving and let the tears fall and no one stopped to ask her
if she was OK or even took notice.
* * *
Bill called later that evening. Bernice was waiting by the phone. He asked how the time away was going.
“It's the worst vacation I've ever had,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “we're giving vacations a bad name.”
After a long silence, he told her he missed her. He asked her if she would like to go out for breakfast in the
morning. He wanted to let her know that he was going to drop the boat delivery job if that was what she
wanted. They could even consider moving back on land like they had originally agreed, or at least go out more
in the evenings to places on land. He said he was planning to bring the boat down to the downtown
waterfront tonight and walk up the street to see her in the morning if she would have him.
Bernice told him to come on up as soon as he arrived, no matter how late. She would be up.
They were both silent for a moment, and then Bill spoke again.
“You're probably getting more sleep, at least, now that you don't have me keeping you up at nights.”
“No, Bill. I'm not sleeping well at all. I've been so land sick.”
* * *
Late in the night, out on the couch in the dark living room, Bernie realized that she hadn't asked Bill about the
insulin. She made her way out of the guest room and into the living room and dialed home. The phone
hummed its calm tone through the receiver. No answer. She hung up and tried again. Nothing. Not even the
answering machine. So he really had left, pulled the phone cord out of the jack next to the shore-power outlet
on the dock. She dialed again and let it ring over and over, holding the phone in one hand and pulling the
binoculars off the peg with the other. The phone rang and she looked out over the dark patch of the river by
the waterfront until her eyes hurt from the pressure of the binoculars. She hung them back on the peg where
they swung, bumped the wall twice, and then grew still. Bernie went over to the couch and listened to the
ringing in the receiver, switching ears when one of them began to ache, gazing out the window toward the
broken line of the river below. She imagined the miles of phone lines and cords that began at the phone by
her ear ended finally at the jack by their empty boat slip, the home for their home, where her potted flowers
were still resting along the edge of the floorboards in the dark night air above the water.
After a while, Bernice hung up the phone, put on one of her sister's heavy coats, took the elevator down to
the street, and headed down the hill toward the river. Maybe it was the darkness of early morning, or the
black roof of the sky studded with stars, or the quiet streets, or maybe the thought that she would be back
aboard the boat soon, but when she looked down the slope of the hill toward the river, her eyes were
steady. She waited for the dizziness to spin the buildings and the streetlights around her, but it never came.
r.kv.r.y. quarterly winter 2007 fiction
Land Sick page two by Brian Friesen
Land Sick page two by Brian Friesen
