Short a Lease, End

 

 

July at 42

            A russet sky turned, by inscrutable degrees, a dark, blood red.  And then, just as suddenly, plunged into a deep purple which bled into black.

            He was walking along the beach.  The cold, nipping wind, nearly autumnal in its bite, lapping as his hair, buffeting his beard.  He picked up a long piece of driftwood and trailed it behind him in the moist, level sand, in the littoral zone where the water had receded and the sand remained flat and yielding.

            When Servi reached the figure of the woman he did not have to say a word to her.  From her fixed, steady body, wrapped in a black cape, he knew it was Joy, come to bid farewell to the stars, which had suddenly sprung from the sky with like a multitude of dangling orbs, flitting and bobbing like fireflies.

            Her hand reached out to grasp his.  He took it and she reeled him in, a bobber at the end of the line which curled back over twenty five years to the points when their mutual selves touched.  Joy stood beside Servi.  Her gray hair fell down passed her legs, and she leaned her head to rest on his shoulder.

            And there was a sense of rest.  And the sea continually churned.  And they turned around silently and walked slowly up toward the house.