Port Judith in Winter: Part One of Four

I pass beneath the November elms. It is early morning, and the moon is visible. Dead leaves crunch like glass under my feet, left brown at my passing. There is no other sound. From the road, I can see to the farmhouse, square and whitewashed with a glaze on the roof. The sun is rising in the windows, darkening the rooms beyond. Faint wind: an oak tree rustles off the broad front porch, a tire swing swaying from a lateral branch.

A rumble is growing behind me. In the middle distance: a train. The engine hurtles forward, and a steam-cloud rises from it, its bottom shearing with the passing wind, top lifting like the trail from a match tip. The steam stands in mounds over the track, diffusing slowly. The train is long, its cars unnumbered, uncountable. By the time the last has passed, engine-sounds fading into the south, the steam has dissipated completely. I look up, and the moon is gone. Full-on morning. The frost has melted from the ground. The pastures are golden. They spread before me like a painting, dry grass absorbing the sunlight, drawing it up.

Suddenly: footsteps on the road behind me.

I turn.

* * *

I wake.

Forty years since I left home, and it is in my dreams again. For weeks I have dreamt of the farmhouse: my father's winter pastures, the breath from a passing train. But tonight, there was someone else. A second presence in the dream. I sigh.

Drawing the quilt to my shoulders, I step onto the carpet. My bones shift and crack, and I pull the blanket close and shiver. It is still dark outside, an hour or two before dawn. From my window, I can see into the tenement across the street. Every floor is exactly the same: unpainted walls, fluorescent lights, exit signs stacked along featureless corridors.

I cross to the other side of my one-room apartment. I have lived here eleven years, alone with the same mattress and kitchenette, the same threadbare carpet. I put on the kettle for coffee and spoon grinds into the percolator. I wait. Through the wall, I can hear the young couple next-door, newlyweds. My kitchen butts up against their bedroom, and their moans find the chinks in the drywall.

The kettle shrieks, a piercing cry. I wonder if they can hear it in the room next door, if they know its source. I imagine them lying together, laughing as they spin their stories: the man next door with his long silences, his odd hours. I take the kettle from the heat and pour my coffee. The newlyweds fall quiet: finished, asleep. I go to the window.

The streets are deserted. Beneath the window, a cat sits in the snow by a dumpster—patient, erect—seemingly oblivious to the cold. In the dumpster, a dark shape is visible. A man sleeping. Across the street, a young man is walking quickly, walking home, leaving tracks in the slush behind him. He is wearing headphones. He can't hear the sirens a block over, the police cars whirring down Main Street. They swing their cones of light among the buildings, driving shadows across the concrete and brick.

Snow is falling. It is a fine snow, clean: white like the sun on the tip of a diamond. I pull up a chair. I wrap the blanket around me. The young man vanishes into a nearby apartment building, and I breathe into my coffee.

It will be a beautiful morning.

* * *

Port Judith. The city is built on a sharp incline, its streets rising steeply from the harbor to the cathedral. On clear days, I can see the spire from my window. It is black stone and gothic, a slim shadow spanning the concrete and brick.

I live in the North End. Downtown, the commercial district slopes to the harbor, marked by skyscrapers and neon signs. Banks. Law firms. Corporate headquarters. The buildings increase in height as you approach the lake, such that they all must appear the same height when seen from the air. The harbor itself sits in a windowed basin, ringed by the offices of the port authority.

I take my walk here. The lake freezes in winter, the ice eight feet in places, but there are black channels hacked into its surface, two trawlers-wide, that allow for shipping. This morning, the harbor is deserted, the docks slick with glare ice. Three steamers sit at anchor offshore, asleep in the first light. The wind buffets their smokestacks, steel cables snapping like live wires. It is cold: twenty below, colder.

Someone strikes a hand-bell. The sound ripples across the black water, and a door swings open on the nearest steamer. Someone steps out on deck, bundled to the eyes. He sees me on the dock and raises a mittened hand. I wave back. He turns from me, crossing the deck to secure the cables.

* * *

The city is broken. Port Judith exists as a shattered image of itself, a fragment trapped by time and season. A broken world, Father Cleary used to call it. He was my childhood priest, a kind man who always seemed out of place in his vestments. I admired him. But there was something he didn't understand. The world is broken not only in strength and rightness but in essence: a linked chain of shell and shard, its silver pieces spun down time's inward spiral.

I've realized this only lately. The city of today is isolated from its past, its mythic history of steel and shipping, as well as from its future: from the leap that lies beyond the long winter, springtime's striving for Eden. It is alone to itself, alienated by time, trapped in each moment as surely as its snowbound inhabitants, every man and woman within its neon reach.

It is not a bad place. Father Cleary didn't think so. Truth be told, I don't either. Only this: light is exaggerated here, and time along with it. Sunrises burn brighter, longer. So do sunsets. The dark grows deeper by comparison, the distinctions clearer, more pronounced. Everything is heightened here, sharpened somehow: the intricacies of color, the pain of solitude. The whispered language of wind and winter.

* * *

Dusk. At five o'clock, the sun retreats from the spinning globe. There is no sunset. In winter, light seeps gradually from the sky, colors draining from east to west. Over the lake, the clouds darken: gray to blue to violet. As I watch, a black wave passes through them, moving vertically, following the sun to the flat horizon.

Night sweeps the receding sky. Downtown, the high-rises lose their reflections, exposing the rooms within: empty offices, exit signs. People are going home for the night. They linger in first floor doorways, trading small talk, pulling on coats. In one office, a dentist flirts with his secretary, the young girl giggling, her teeth perfect, gleaming. In another room, a man stays late, working alone, hunched over his desk in a puddle of lamplight.

I walk along Canal Street, passing shops and bars and strip clubs. One by one, east to west across the city, the streetlights wink to life. Cold and blue, they chase the shadows into the alleys, scouring the pavement bare, exposing every pock and crater. It is morgue light: sickly, too bright. When I hold my hands before me, they appear two-dimensional. I look north to the bridge that spans the harbor. The Harbor Bridge is visible through a gap in the storefronts, its length alight with traffic, silver towers blazing blue.

I glance down at my feet. I do not cast a shadow.

* * *

I step into a small café. The same light inside: iodine and ice. The speakers are blaring the blues, a man's voice rising on a swiftly strummed guitar. He is singing in a foreign language, something I don't understand, but the pain in his voice is palpable. Tuning him out the best I can, I order at the counter. Black coffee, no sugar.

I take a seat in a cushioned booth by the rear exit. I unfold a newspaper, browse the headlines. There are wars raging in distant countries, news of a movie star's suicide. Her face stares back at me from the front page, her eyes blank, sheeted. I turn to the back, the weather section. I find the forecast. A cold front is due to blow in during the night, I read. High winds, no snow. Predicted temperatures: thirty-five, forty below. I finish my coffee.

A young couple sits together in the booth ahead of me. The man sits with his back to me, the woman's face lowered, held in hands. They face each other across the table, talking quietly, their voices tightened, taut. I know how it is. He is angry, but will not raise his voice. She is tired and will not raise her head, will not meet his eyes. Their relationship is ending. I try to ignore them, flip through the paper without reading.

"I'm going to go," the man says.

"Then go."

"We can't leave it like this."

"Like what?"

He shrugs. Gently: "This."

She doesn't reply.

He slides sideways from the booth. Shrugs on his jacket, winds his scarf.

"I'm going," he says.

"Fine," she responds, exhausted.

He turns on his heel.

"Goodbye," she says to his retreating back, her voice barely a whisper. But he doesn't turn around, and I know I am the only one who heard her.

The young man vanishes through the exit. The door swings shut after him, a gust of snow rising on the wind. A few flakes blow into the café, incredibly fine, becoming rain in the overheated air. It happens almost instantaneously. The raindrops fall as soon as they condense, grown too heavy, spattering the floor. The song ends. The speakers crackle and go quiet. I get to my feet.

* * *

Port Judith Underground. Stale air moves in columns through the shadowed tunnels: driven or dragged, following the trains into the dark. The noise is deafening. Tremors pass through the concrete platform, blue lights shaking overhead. It is after midnight. I stand near the edge of the platform, the tracks snapping only inches from my feet, loosing sparks. The last train home is clearly audible, rumbling somewhere in the distance. I wait.

It is hot. I sweat in my wool coat, my shirt clinging. The platform is nearly empty. I cast my gaze around me, taking note of the other commuters. An old woman huddles on the nearest bench, bundled to the eyes in a yellow parka. She shivers despite the heat, probably ill. At the far end of the platform, two immigrants sit together, robed in wool and scarlet linen. A man and wife. Refugees from another genocide, another war. Their faces are expressionless. They betray nothing.

A young man stands no more than ten feet from me. He looks to be in his late twenties, dressed in a brown trench coat, the shoulder patched. He leans against an abutment, his gaze flitting from light to buzzing light. The train is drawing near, its attendant rumble swelling, filling the underground.

The young man catches my eye. His face tightens, his lips drawing a smile. Unexpectedly, he approaches me.

"Hi." He offers his hand.

We shake.

"You live in the North End?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Me too."

"Going home?" I inquire.

He nods. "Working late."

"Oh?"

"I had to. I can feel it: I'm on the verge of a breakthrough, something really big..." He trails off, grimacing. "You know," he says. "Sometimes I'm glad I'm not married. Really. I'd be hell to live with."

"You're young," I say. "Give yourself time."

He laughs—a clipped, husky laugh with a hint of bitterness. "It's time I never have enough of."

"I know," I say. "But I'm sixty-three. Time's the only thing I have too much of."

"Ah," he says. "I wish I knew the feeling."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a biologist."

"You work with animals?"

He shakes his head. "Plants, actually. Trees. I'm a plant geneticist."

"I see."

"How about you?"

"These days? Nothing. For years I was a machinist."

Pause.

"I'm Adam," he says. "Adam Whitcomb."

I introduce myself. I have to shout to be heard over the noise, the constant rumble going shrill as the train finally arrives. It pulls up at the platform, nosing to a stop. Its brakes hiss and clank, releasing steam. Tunnel-shadows wick away from its passing, flowing backwards over the ceiling, finding the highest corners.

The train is empty, the windows lit: flat, nearly colorless. After a moment, its doors sweep open automatically, hot air spilling through the gap. The refugees step to the edge of the platform. Whitcomb climbs aboard and I follow him, taking a seat across the aisle.

The old woman doesn't stir from the bench. As the train pulls out, I take one look behind me. She sits alone on the empty platform, a lone figure receding as the train gains speed: faster and faster until she is gone.

* * *

Fifteen minutes to the North End. Whitcomb spends the time talking, sharing stories from work while I nod and listen with half an ear. I sit with my face to the window, watching the white lights blur past. Spaced every fifty feet along the tunnel, they create a broken stream, a halting flow across the windows. My face dissolves into every passing light, resurfacing moments later in dark, fading again through light: over and over.

I turn from the window, shifting in my seat to face Whitcomb. He is still talking about work, halfway through a discussion of genetic fitness and selective breeding. It is late, but he is animated, alert. I do my best to keep up, nodding in the right places. "Yes," I say. "Oh," I say. "Ah."

While he is speaking, I remember my dream of the elms: the sense of being watched, the relief that came with knowing I was not alone. I look at Whitcomb. His eyes are bright, his voice young and eager, but I think he must be lonely.

He falls silent when we reach our stop. We disembark, stepping onto the platform: its blue lights, its buzzing shadows. We take the stairs to street level, parting ways on Cherry Street. In the distance, the Harbor Bridge trembles faintly, a line of light falling like a moonlit wave.

We say goodnight. When he offers his hand, I notice the mark on his ring finger: a band of pale skin, white and hairless like a scar.

"It's been a pleasure talking with you," he says.

I nod. "Come over one night," I say. The words slip out before I can stop them. "For dinner."

He hesitates. "I couldn't—"

"Please," I say. "I'll make you a proper meal."

He considers this for a moment. At last he nods. "Thanks," he says. "It's been a long time."

I think: I know. Instead, I say: "Oh?" And then I say goodnight.

* * *

There is ice on the window in my apartment. The air itself is frozen. It clots and clouds and swirls at my nostrils. In the kitchen, I crank the heat and prepare tea, warming my hands over the stovetop. The kettle hisses and pops, and I read the paper to pass the time. Yesterday's news: more financial scandals, more corruption. The deputy mayor's resignation. There are advertisements on every page, notices for restaurants and bars and lingerie. On page four, I read about a recent abduction. The old story: a child taken from her bedroom in the night. Days later they find her body in a ditch near the harbor, hands and feet bound. There are no suspects.

The water boils. I pour a cup of herbal tea and let it steep. My legs ache, exhausted. I lean against the counter, remembering the farmhouse. My father's face: weather-whipped and beaten, humorless. My mother's smile. I have pictures under my bed: black and white images, symbols of remembrance. I want to dig them out, but I'm too tired. So I sip my tea and return to the paper, flipping pages until I find the abduction story again. There is a picture of the dead girl. In the photo, she is twelve years old and smiling, braces on her teeth. She is the image of youth, but her eyes are strangely flat. Lifeless like the eyes in sepia photographs or the windows on a midnight train.

I close the paper. I fold it neatly in two before shoving it down the garbage can. In the bathroom, I shake my pills into my hand and swallow, washing them down with tea. I walk to the window and look out over the frozen city, the same streets swept by the same snow. The same silence. I imagine the frozen lake, its ice shattered to waves beneath the bridge, and I think of the homeless in their shredding overcoats, starving beneath the open sky, wondering what will get them first: hunger or the cold.

I finish my tea. I slip off my clothes. I go to bed.

* * *

The farmhouse. I stand in the kitchen, weak sun slanting through the window. Dust motes glimmer on the pane, a housefly swimming in slow motion across its surface. Sunlight in November. It is an aberration, a rarity: the year's last light before the black winter snows. Through the window, I can see my father's fields. Hardscrabble, stone-choked, open to the sky. Taken together, they form a plain that stretches to the horizon, its flow broken by fog-ringed knobs of pine and fir, by squat houses with slate roofs. I can see the road from here, its winding course marked by the leafless elms, and suddenly I shiver.

I am wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves. To my left, the dish rack is overfull, beads of soap creeping down polished ceramic. I have been doing dishes. When I tug the gloves from my fingers, I almost don't recognize my hands. They are pinched and wrinkled, pale from the washing, but the knuckles are softer, fleshier, the palms unlined. When I look closer, I recognize the vase-like branching below my thumb, the way it has always reminded me of the elms, and I stuff my fists into my pockets as I turn from the sink. Striking a match, I light the gas range and fill the kettle, shaking a handful of black tea into the plaster pot. From the living room, the clock chimes faintly, a fractured sound: three times into silence. The sound is too gentle, too glassy. A birdcall spun through telephone wire.

Leaving the kettle, I pad down the paneled hallway to the living room. Opposite the hall, the grandfather clock stands flush against the wainscoting. It is a family artifact handed down through five generations. The hands are fixed at three o'clock sharp. I step through the doorway, approaching the clock. I lean my ear to its papered face, listening intently. Its spring is winding, the gears clicking together, but the hands remain frozen, static. I hunker down, open its glass front. The chime is cool to the touch, the hammer raised and ready. I flick it with my finger, but the sound is garbled, distorted: a woman's voice swathed in echo. That is when I know I am dreaming.

* * *

Turning from the clock I see her. She is standing in the doorway, her brown hair at her shoulders. She appears young—early twenties, perhaps. Her eyes widen when they meet mine.

"Oh!" she blurts.

I blink. "Oh?"

"I didn't think you could see me."

"Why not? You can see me, can't you?"

"You have to understand," she replies. "My dreams are always like movies. I'm entirely passive. I see everything as it happens, but I can never change a thing."

"Your dreams?"

"I'm dreaming," she says, raising her right hand to her face. "Look." She moves it down across her stomach, sweeping the fingers outward in a perfect arc. The motion leaves behind a residue, the air trembling visibly: a spring released and wriggling.

I look down at my feet. "That's funny," I say.

"The dream tides, you mean?"

"Tides?"

"It's what I call them," she adds hastily. "The shivers. The way the air moves in dreams. Almost like water. Like tides." She shrugs. "It's stupid, I know."

"I don't mean that," I say. "But the fact that you're dreaming. The fact you're aware of it. Because I'm dreaming too."

For a moment she looks confused. Behind me, the grandfather clock ticks, its hands remaining frozen, immobile. She nods. "So we're both dreaming." She pauses, continues. "So. Are you in my dream? Or am I in yours?"

"Well," I say. "I don't know. But this is my house. The house where I grew up."

"The latter, then."

"I think so."

In the other room, the kettle cries, overfull. It manages one clear note before dissolving into burbles. I say: "Would you like tea?"

She follows me into the kitchen. As she walks, the air shifts and spills in eddies around her, the light doubling back like water trapped by an offshore boulder. Her features blur together, fading into focus, moving out. When she pauses in the kitchen, I get my first good look at her face. Amber skin and eyes like sea glass: pale, nearly clear. She is beautiful.

I turn off the gas and remove the kettle. She takes a seat at the table, easing herself into a wooden chair. I pour the water, filling the pot. "What's your name?" I ask.

"Rosemary."

I repeat the name, turning to face her. "Old-fashioned for someone so young," I remark.

She raises an eyebrow: a skeptical gesture, vaguely flirtatious. "Young? I'm at least as old as you. Older, probably."

I laugh. "You're joking."

Cocking her head: "How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?"

I'm taken aback. "Do I look nineteen?" I ask.

"Look at yourself."

So I do. I cross the kitchen to the sink. I stand at the window, peering past my father's fields until I can make out my reflection on the glass. The first thing I notice is my hair, my old hair. It is thick and dark, a mess of molten curls at my brow. My teeth are too white, alabaster in a mouth too red, a slash of blood and ruby. "Nineteen," I say, distantly, remembering. "You hit it right on the head."

I introduce myself.

"A nice name," she says.

"My father's," I say. "His father's too. Tea? It should be ready."

"Yes, please."

I pour from the pot, setting a steaming mug before her. She takes it in hand, breathing deeply. When she sighs, her breath becomes a long quivering. The kitchen light retreats from her face, reforming beyond her nose. Her breath shivers, its edges blurring into autumn sun, everything trembling. Tremors. Tides.

"It's Lapsang," I offer. "Imported. My father used to buy it."

"And you're keeping up the tradition?"

"You could put it that way."

"Like the name?"

"I suppose."

"Good for you. And thank you. It's lovely."

I pour a cup for myself and take a seat across from her. I sip my tea, the smoked taste souring my tongue. From the kitchen, I can hear the grandfather clock: its useless winding, its measured silences.

"So," she says.

"So."

I wait for her to continue. She does not.

"If this is my dream," I say, "What are you doing in it?"

She shrugs. "I wish I knew. Where is this exactly?"

"Out in the country. It's not like this anymore."

"What happened?"

"The old story: development, construction... It's all part of the city now. Parking lots. Strip malls."

"I understand," she says, nodding.

"But it's probably all you know."

"It's all anyone knows anymore."

"True."

We fall quiet for a moment. Four ticks. Three pauses.

Rosemary breaks the silence. "You say it's not like this anymore. I wonder then: why are we here now? In the past. In a memory."

"I don't know," I say.

"Do we know each other?" she asks.

"I don't think so."

She ponders this for a moment, searching her memory. "No," she says. "I don't believe we do." She brightens. "But we can change that. Can't we?"

"Can we?"

"Of course. We have time."

"Until when?"

"Morning." The word carries a weight, a crushing finality.

"Oh."

We are quiet. After a moment, she speaks up. "Listen, I'm just so happy I bumped into you. So happy you saw me. I've been here before, you know."

"You have? When?"

"In a dream, I mean. Recently."

"Here in the house?"

"No. Out on the road. Where those trees are."

"I felt you," I say. "I could sense you behind me. I heard your footsteps."

"I didn't think you saw me. You had your back to me and then you were gone. But this time you turned around."

I nod. "I did."

She smiles. She sips at the Lapsang, her eyes flashing through the steam. Backlit, they are suddenly bright and hard. Color wells from her pupils, filling each iris, turning her green eyes to emeralds. "You certainly did."

* * *

The dream dissolves. I wake gradually, surfacing through shivers. It is cold in my apartment, too cold. Lying in bed, I listen for the radiator, its familiar rumble. I listen hard, but I can't make out a thing: only the murmur of morning traffic, the season's silence. The heat is out again. I shawl myself in my blanket and ease myself from the bed, my legs creaking, cracking.

It is just after dawn. Six o'clock. A faint light is visible through the window, a gray fog beyond the high-rises, their windows beginning to ripple and blur. The sky is cloudy, colorless: no snow. There is ice on the window, a thin sheath of condensation. I pour my coffee in the cold, slowly filling the mug. My hands shake. Arthritic spasms flare in my knuckles, intensifying, fanning down my wrists to my elbows. The end of my nose is numb.

* * *

Downstairs. The building manager's apartment. I knock on the door—quietly at first, timidly. One knock, two. I wait a moment. The hall is dim, dingy, no windows: lit only by a blue bulb at the end of a cord. It swings lazily over my head, a sickle shape. My shadow quivers on the floor, veering out to the wall, obscuring the dust and grime. I listen. No reply. I knock again, louder this time. I knock hard enough that my hand stings, curled in a half-fist.

At last I hear motion behind the door. A man's hoarse grumbling. The shuffle of feet, someone stepping into their shoes. The door swings inward, open. The manager faces me, his eyes bloodshot, hair tangled by sleep. He is an old man like me, a native of the city. He dresses habitually in the same pair of blue jeans, the same flannel shirt: red with black thatching.

"What?" he grunts. In place of his usual flannel shirt, he is wearing an ill-fitting nightgown. Its cuffs end at his elbows. "Do you know what time it is?"

I nod. It is just before seven.

"Well," he says, loosing a sigh. "What is it?"

"The heat is out again," I say. "It happened during the night."

He nods. "Must be the boiler," he says. "Damn. Give me a moment to get dressed. I'll go down and take a look."

"Thanks."

He moves to close the door, but pauses. "You look terrible," he tells me. "Why don't you go back to your room? I'll have it up and running within the hour."

"No thanks," I say. "I think I'll go for a walk."

He seems surprised. "It's freezing out there."

"I know."

He shrugs. "Suit yourself."

* * *

Seven AM. The city sparkles. Cafes are opening along Canal Street, proprietors turning around paper signs. Cars drone past. I spot a mail truck, a milk delivery. Near Cherry Street, a sedan switches off its headlights as it glides through the blinking stoplights. The air is heavy: charged, brittle. Morning is cracking open the east. From every road and corner, the city rises: stark and clear and crystalline, frosted at the edges like polished glass. I am cold and tired. My ankles ache, my legs growing stiff beneath the knees. The air burns in my chest, nostrils pinching together with every breath.

I pass a paper box at the intersection of Main and Canal. A capped figure—mittened, mufflered—is stocking the day's paper. On the front page, there is an oversized grayscale image. In the picture, a man weeps into his folded hands, a wristwatch gleaming at the end of his cuffs. The banner reads: STARLET'S SUICIDE LEAVES SHATTERED FAMILY, LINGERING QUESTIONS. Beneath the photo, a smaller inset reads: INTENSIVE FIGHTING LEAVES HUNDREDS DEAD IN FOREIGN CAPITAL. Beneath that, another headline, still smaller: TEENAGED GIRL MISSING.

I stop. I rummage in my pockets for change, pressing the coins to the slot. Hearing the click, I pull open the door, slipping a paper from the top of the stack.

"It's a tragedy," a man says from behind me.

I turn. "Excuse me?"

"Her death," he adds earnestly, indicating the paper under my arm. He is talking about the actress, I realize. "A real loss."

"Yes," I say. "A tragedy."

* * *

Daily Mass. As always, I am one of only a handful in the cavernous cathedral. We are scattered, seed-like, among the stone pews: polished, purchase-less. We sit alone at the center of silence and shadow. There is only reflection here, only the striving for solace from the depths of solitude. In this way we gather together but remain alone.

The priest is an old man, older than myself. He is hobbled and hunchbacked, his collar stained by three red dots. Wine, I think. Or blood. His voice is but a whisper, barely distinguishable from the echoes it trails, its winter wreathes of wind and snow.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly," the priest croaks, leaning over the lectern to gaze at us intently. The reading is from Corinthians: the psalm of love, the promise of salvation. "But then face to face." At the back of the church, an old woman coughs. "Now I know in part," he continues, stressing each word equally. "But then shall I know, just I am also known."

I don't take the Host. When the priest raises the cup over his head, I breathe a prayer of hope and hopelessness and make my way to the door.

* * *

The sun emerges. Over the course of the afternoon, the sky strips away in layers, one-by-one to reveal a patch of pale blue-gray. Walking downhill, I gaze out beyond the harbor. The Harbor Bridge gleams, its steel girders caked in rime-ice: opaque, nearly opalescent.

The wind is harsh and bitter. I can hear it roaring on the lake, its distant flap of flutter and fall. A ship is coming into port. It heralds its arrival with a droning call, a bellow of black steam. In response, a bell sounds three times across the harbor, a sequence of high chimes, and I remember the grandfather clock from my dream.

I bury my chin in my chest. Ice is beginning to form on my collar. I shiver.

* * *

Rosewood Park. Despite the cold, there are children on the playground. Four boys huddle together beneath the monkey bars, talking secretively. Their breath mingles, hovering in clouds above them. Three girls skip rope on the tennis court, confined to a patch of green concrete bared by the wind. They glance over nervously when they see me, expecting chastisement. When I don't say a thing, they return to their game. The rope swishes along the court, their voices shrill with exertion: bluebells, cockleshells, easy-ivy-over!

I'm surprised to see Whitcomb sitting on a park bench beyond the playground. He is wearing the same trench coat, a flannel cap pulled down to his ears. He is having a late lunch: a sandwich resides half-eaten in his lap, a steaming thermos beside him on the bench. He waves a gloved hand and motions for me to come over.

We exchange greetings.

"So you've found my hiding place," he says.

"I didn't know it was."

"I come here to reflect sometimes," he says. "If I'm not at the lab, chances are I'm here. I come here when I can't sleep—which is all too often lately. It's a good place to think, a good place to clear your head. Only in winter, of course."

"Of course," I respond, remembering the summer crowds: the students, the lovers, the volleyball players. "You live nearby?"

He gestures vaguely. "Just off Cherry."

He offers me a sip from his thermos. The coffee is black and strong, spiced with chicory.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

Politely, I inquire about the lab.

"Work is good," he says quickly, dismissively—a canned answer. "I'm making real progress."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"One of these days I'll have a breakthrough to announce. Until then... Well, I wait. I watch."

"Watch?"

"The city," he adds. "The seasons. I watch them turn. I watch things change, people change. Children grow up. If you come to these places long enough, you see it all. Lovers laugh together one day then destroy each other the next."

He searches my face for a reaction.

I don't reply. When one of the girls shrieks and giggles, I follow his gaze to the playground, grateful for a chance to change the subject. I ask for a second sip of coffee.

"It's good, isn't it?"

"Very."

"And you look like you need it."

Sarcastically: "You try looking good at sixty-three."

He chuckles and takes a bite from his sandwich. "But seriously," he says. "You look awful. What's wrong? Couldn't sleep?"

"I slept alright," I say. I pause. "But I dreamt."

"Nightmares?"

I smile: a secret smile, meant only for myself. "I wouldn't say that."

"Good. Waking up is nightmare enough these days."

"Have you seen today's paper?"

"No. I try not to read the news."

"I don't blame you. Another disappearance, they say."

"Another girl?"

I nod.

"Christ." He sighs. "What's worse is I'm not even surprised."

"Me neither."

"When I was young, I think I took good things for granted. More than that, I expected them. That's what made adolescence so hard. Underlying all of that angst was the vague sense that I had been somehow cheated—robbed of the happiness I deserved. It's sad, but after a while, you stop expecting good things to happen."

He falls silent. Without warning, the boys rush at the girls, dashing across the tennis court with their fingers extended, thumbs cocked to triggers. The girls turn and run, abandoning the jump rope and scampering away, the boys following in hot pursuit. One of the girls screeches, a scream of terror that can't quite contain her glee, her delight at being noticed.

Whitcomb glances down at his hands, his fingers. "And you know what hurts the most?" he says. "You don't give up believing in miracles. You just stop expecting them."

* * *

I renew my offer of dinner. He accepts. He is going to be busy for the next few days, but we agree on a date next week. We say goodbye. I walk home in the dusky light, casting a glance behind me. Whitcomb sits on the same bench alone: a silhouette, an outline. He fades with the wail of traffic: with the wind, the western sky. I walk away, leaving the park empty but for him, silent and cold. The kids are gone. So is the light.

* * *

It is hot in my apartment. The building manager was true to his word. I stand in the doorway and kick off my shoes. Across from me the radiator roars, its metal bones clicking, clattering. The condensation has melted from the window, creating a puddle beneath the frame. Crossing the apartment, I spread a towel beneath the sill, the fabric darkening, soaking through. I slip off my mittens to turn down the heat. The metal dial is superheated. It singes my fingertips. I swear, thrusting my fingers in my mouth. Picking the towel from the floor, I wrap it over the dial and reduce the heat. When I replace the towel under the window, I notice the brown ring seared into its white weave. Another thing ruined, I think, and go into the kitchen.

I leave the paper on the counter, folding it in half so only the headline shows. I switch on the light. The kitchen is a mess. There are cups stacked in the sink, plates glazed in grease and acquiring dust. A bowl of chicken soup clots and thickens on the counter. Suddenly I am tired. More tired than I can remember being in a long time. Moving mechanically to the bathroom, I shake my pills into my hand and wash them down with tap water. I don't recognize myself in the mirror. My lips are thin and cracking, chapped and wrinkled. My eyes are flat: the eyes of a photograph, a dead teenager.

In the kitchen, I remove the dishes from the sink, placing them gently on the counter. I insert the plug and turn on the faucet. Even open all the way, it produces only a weak flow, a trickle. While I wait, I open the cupboard under the sink and wrench on a pair of yellow gloves. They are waterproof, rubber and airtight. I spray a jet of soap into the water and watch the bubbles bloom beneath the spout. The light buzzes overhead. I switch off the faucet and take the first dish in hand. From the harbor: three chimes.

* * *

A place of constant falling. In winter, the sky dumps its load of ice and snow between the buildings, glazing their brown bricks, dusting the mortar. Snowplows arrive, their orange beacons crisscrossing the road grid, driving the snow in a fog before them, piling it in parking lots, burying the sidewalks. All over the city, condensation dribbles through radiators. If you listen hard, you can hear it, each drop hissing to steam before reforming. It is a constant rhythm, a kind of breathing.

In my apartment, a lone bead clings to the kitchen faucet. I watch it fatten on the lip, expanding before being tugged downward: slowly, inexorably. It plops in the sink, disappearing in the dishwater, and I think of the way each day shrinks and fades.

Morning falls away in pieces, followed by midday, midnight: fragment, fragments. Like a water droplet, every moment drops in its sure passing, slipping into memory on its course to nowhere. There are no repetitions. Each moment is new, unique, but lingers only as long as we let it, and then it is gone. We are left with memories, but age takes what time does not. In the end, we are left with nothing.