Karen closed her eyes and thought about sleeping. Thinking about it makes it hard to bring it on. She could hear her mother in the next room, not settling down yet, opening drawers and presses. The spirit of her one year dead husband might never let her rest.
From the street outside someone bleeped-on a car alarm. Karen heard whoever trudging up a drive and some steps. Porch door opened, hall door, and then both closed, re-ushering silence. She guessed it was Jackie or Bill, some neighbour working late.
This summer night she had decided to go to bed early. It was a way of taking stock of her life and of feeling like a child. Lying on her back with the top window open, she listened to laughter and traffic, the occasional intermittent sounds of the American night. Oak Park in Chicago Illinois in the house she was born.
Bill or Jackie came back out, and called to someone, and she knew it was Bill. She picked up strains of conversation about the Bears and how they sucked. Beer cans were popped in the warmth of the soft July evening, the men standing on the pavement, probably longing to raise the hood of the car and check the sparks and stuff worked. Karen lay in bed and was awoken to memory.
She thought of her father – how quick he’d be out to join them, ignoring the calls of her mother and barrelling down the stairs. He’d mosey on over and say My God and it’s a wonderful evening.
She turned on her side to invite a different subject, leaving her father and the boys by re-positioning herself. Her mother closed a drawer and then opened it again or a different one.
Karen sat up. She crossed her legs yoga-like, cupping her hands and letting the thumbs lightly touch.
Bill’s companion said loudly “I reckon I’d a caught that.” She breathed deeply to the count of ten, the air filling her lungs and expanding the abdomen. It was easier to think less when the rate of the breathing was slowed.
A motorbike roared past, swallowing Bill’s conversation, and leaving a silence after it was gone. Had the two men been startled by its suddenness? Momentarily they resumed again, but it was only to say goodnight, the violent sound having killed the encounter unconsciously. Karen lay back down and this prompted her to sleep.
April 17, 2010
Part 7: Berlin, July 2001 (scene 4)
April 15, 2010
Part 7: Berlin, July 2001 (scene 3)
They got the U-7 at Neukolln, Karl Marx Strasse bustling and full. At Berliner Strasse, they changed for the U-9 to the Ku-damm. The Mexicans were already playing the red restaurant on the right.
The Mexicans were the competition, two guitars and a violin. Their bellies forced the guitars to be played at chest level. The strings on these instruments were older than the street they were serenading, and flapped about tunelessly as the chords were plucked.
Frank lit a cigarette and watched them. They were sweating in the German summer heat. The Berlin sewer smell rose up violently, making diners cough and Dev complain.
They’d wait half an hour before playing here. After one performance it needed time for the clientele to change. They moved across the road and set up at another restaurant, effortlessly stealing The Mexicans next port of call.
The place was half-empty, and Frank tuned up. The Behanser wandered off during the first song, leaving him alone to play guitar. Dev sat in front with his bodhran, and Pd slapped his thigh while he sang.
Frank felt light in his head from the sun’s rays. The chords to these songs could be done without even a thought. So Long Marianne, Lime Tree Arbour, these were the set staples. Adapted to be played at cafes, beer gardens, and bars.
The Mexicans in turn leapfrogged them, and the two groups continued around the Ku-damm in this manner, overtaking one another, pausing, and doing so again. They stopped for beer on several occasions.
Stretching in a restaurant they had just hit, they laughed when The Mexicans huffed up and started playing. Frank smiled at finally catching their act. They performed for the customers impassively, staring ahead like they were dead or waiting for a bus. The Behanser let a belly laugh but it didn’t ruffle them.
As evening descended, they waited for Dev to drain his glass and got the tram to Prenzlauerberg. There was a square surrounded by restaurants, known as Kollwitzplatz. Here they shared sangria with an English busker named Jason, who told stories of Anderlecht, Paris, and Sevilla. He was maybe forty, with a scraggly ponytail and booming voice. He welcomed the company, and gave a sense of being utterly alone.
Then they started. Touring the restaurants, blasting out the same set. It was difficult sometimes to imbue it with any effort. However, it was this or working, singing or the sites, and so they sang, happily. Dev sat on the ground like a beggar or a Buddha.
In a bar at four in the morning they met Martin. An Irishman in an Irish bar in Neukolln. He was thirty-five, from Belfast, and played piano in five star Berlin hotels. The Behanser and Frank invited him back to the flat. He sat at the Bluthner grand, playing Mozart. He launched into Beethoven’s Fifth to make them laugh.
“You boys are wicked,” said Martin. “You’re brand new.”
His thick Northern accent was screaming for mimicry.
Dev tripped over a flashing lamp stolen from a construction site, reaching in vain for something but no one knew what. He just stretched out from his seat, then stood up leaning forward. He tripped on the lamp as he lunged at a shadow on the wall.
“Sit down you moron,” said Frank.
“There’s a fucking shadow on the wall like the ghost of a girl.”
They all looked, thick smoke obscuring everything, cigarette papers and butts littering the floor. There was no shadow or girl determinable.
A carton of sangria had spilled that night or previously, soaking the threadbare carpet, the smell mixing with the smoke. Dev dropped a roach in a can of Kuppers. Frank spied a pack of painkillers on the table and ate the six that remained in it. They combined with the smoke and the drink and made his body quite numb. He saw The Behanser stand up, but slowly, like underwater. Martin laughed, sounding as though from somewhere else.
“Play fucking piano,” mumbled Pd. “I’ll sing something Irish if somebody plays.”
Martin hit A minor and followed with F. As soon as he moved to G they knew what was coming.
True you ride the finest horse, I’ve ever seen,
Standing sixteen one or two, with eyes wild and green.
The Behanser removed a block of hash from his anorak.
As dawn broke they played charades, miming the titles of films that never existed. Pd took an hour and then gave up
“What the fuck was that?” shouted Dev. “What fuckin’ film were you doing?”
“If you can’t guess it, it’s fitting you’ll never know.”
They sparred back and forth for a while, each claiming the other’s turns were inventions.
The pointless exchange was finally ended with whiskey.
April 14, 2010
Part 7: Berlin, July 2001 (scene 2)
Aria and Laura were at the beach, finished with school for the summer, and with only one year left to go. Suburban girls from San Jose. They stretched in the sunshine, the sand soft and delicate, the sky clear and blue. Five minutes earlier some guys had ineffectively flirted with them.
“When I go to Paris I’ll live there till I die.”
Aria laughed at Laura’s certainty. She curled her toes in the sand and worked out the exam stress, no more need for study before the fall semester began. It was fun to imagine the summer lasting forever.
They applied more sun cream and turned over. The music they were playing was Surfer Girl. Days and weeks could be spent this way, on the sand and by the water, with The Beach Boys on the stereo and the evenings cool and free. Aria noticed some older guy observing them.
He drifted off when she sat up, but when Laura went swimming he approached again. He was quite handsome, unusually tall. He said she’d make a great model. That he was a talent scout on this beach and he might have found the one. You could always come along and see if you like it. She wasn’t an idiot she scoffed, and he produced his ID and card. Straight up modelling he promised, departing.
By evening Aria had still kept the secret. Hadn’t mentioned the guy at all on the bus ride home. In her room she looked at the card again, saying his number aloud and laughing at the idea. The guy was just a dick, but maybe he wasn’t.
She stared straight ahead, imagining the life of a model. The guy had said she was the prettiest, sexiest thing. No one had spoken like this before, not the boys she had kissed or her mother. To be sexy was a new thing to be.
April 13, 2010
Part 7: Berlin, July 2001 (scene 1)
The band shakily took to the stage. Its four members tuned their guitars and vocal chords, and launched into a bloodcurdling rendition of an Irish folk song. The assembled Germans were aghast.
Frank, Dev, The Behanser, and Pd sweated for the nation. They could see the bar manager regretting giving them a call. Nevertheless, they hit a rousing chorus, The Behanser falling over in the heat and his drugged-up state. His sense of timing wasn’t missed.
Dev bashed the bodhran and Frank strummed unperturbed. Pd hit a high note. The swirl of music, and a crowd, and a head full of E and grass, took Frank outside himself, a guitar strumming, worriless thing. The Behanser got back up and started playing.
When the song finished they slumped and drank. Four more pints would arrive when these were gone. Some places happily doled out drink to them, others needed prodding and suggestion. Frank saw a woman uncross her legs.
The crowd were getting into it now. Pd sang a version of “Danny Boy” a cappella, roaming about the pub trailing the mic. He disappeared midway through the climax.
On the U-Bahn down to Oranienburger Tor, Frank felt nervous. He snapped out of it when The Behanser gave him a drink. They went into a bombed out department store, a victim of the war and before that the Kristalnacht. Artists and others gathered here. There was a dwarf breathing fire, and a strange dog that was constantly stoned. It chased its swishing tail and drooled saliva.
The Behanser went looking for a dealer. The others could see him crashing about, disappearing behind pillars and reappearing, and then he was back. He sat down and they prepared his captures. Tired after the day. Some girls hovered about to see if they’d share with them.
Frank recognised a dealer he’d seen occasionally, not in this group now loitering, just going past. A little blond German pixie. He held her with his eyes but she ignored him, and then Pd was saying ‘that’ll floor an elephant,’ and handing him a cone. He breathed deeply.
Dev started playing his bodhran like a bongo, patting out a rhythm with his fingertips. Frank lay back using his guitar case for a pillow, every single star up there a galaxy unknown. Every single person and blade of grass. An Australian voice said something unintelligible, hundreds of bodies around, tripping, pissed. On some nights there was trouble and the sting smell of Mace.
“Are we gonna get some food,” said Dev, “some fucking sustenance.” A Hungarian girl sat down beside Frank. She asked his name and then called him Frank Sinatra. I get no kick from champagne, he sang in her ear.
The girl suddenly started screaming, and moved her body away from Frank’s arm and stumbled into the night. Frank turned his attention to the stoner dog.
“Woof,” he said, and the creature ran over unsteadily, a crazed look in its eyes. Pd rubbed at its paw fur. The Behanser came back from the kebab shop, handing out doners and eating a currywurst. Dev started complaining that his had no sauce.
At seven am they crossed the road to a bar called Obst und Gemuse. They sat outside with the sun rising, beers in front of them and guitars alongside. Frank went to the toilet and there was graffiti above the bowl.
To be is to do” – Sartre
To do is to be” – Camus
Do be do be do” – Sinatra
He pissed and shook his head and went back outside.
“Possession is not the key to feeling,” Dev was saying. “You can feel bad with a hundred fucking cars.”
The Behanser eyed him sceptically, smoking. An unkindness of ravens pecked at something hidden across the street. Perhaps they weren’t ravens, just crows. Pd threw a banana skin and they scattered.
They left soon after, paying the bill and heading for the U-Bahn. They clattered back towards Neukolln, in a four-seat booth each.
Dev rolled a joint, absorbed in the act of construction. Frank thought of the sun climbing through the world. Each stop picked up commuters bound for work, business suits and builders, the builders with beer in their hands. The steady chatter made Frank want to sleep.
Back in the apartment on Bohmische Strasse, they collapsed amidst bottles and ashtrays, on couches from the street. An enormous grand piano sat in the corner. Dev picked out a few notes on it, a Bluthner from the 19th century. Pd put his hand down his trousers.
The Behanser stood up and announced he was making soup. They heard the woman who lived above leave with her dogs. The animals scampered down the stairs outside, the owner following with leads tingling in her hands. They were hitting together and making a kind of music.
Frank dozed till the soup was ready, knowing he could sleep for a few hours, and then it was back out to play. On the Ku-damm, in Prenzlauerberg, anywhere. He remembered he needed to buy new strings for his guitar.
Aria and Laura were at the beac
April 12, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 21)
Johnny was cooling on his film fetish, having exhausted the Pariscope of material. The problem was the films never changed. He divided the coke into wraps, and placed these little balls into a drawer. He reached over lazily for the guitar. He certainly had more luck with women than B strings, cause the damn thing had snapped on him again. He strummed a chord and it sounded dead without it.
The other day Michel requested information about women. The how, the why, and the where.
“If you give friendly compliments, you’ll get friends,” Johnny had told him, “and if you praise them like they’re goddesses, you’ll get sex.” Michel had rubbed his chin and thought it over.
Johnny pulled out the drawer and counted how many wraps there were, and then slid it shut. He leaned out the window and spat onto the street, watching the saliva trajectory, and the impact.
He continued doing this for the next five minutes, uncaring of the attention of the old woman across the way. He spat till his mouth was liquid free. It’s an addictive thing – constant spitting prompting more spitting, and then finally you just have to stop. You’d dehydrate and shrivel up and die.
He went back inside to get some water. He opened the drawer and counted the wraps again. There were eleven. Eleven fucking wraps, no more no less, and no need to ever count them again.
The day was threatening activity, a foreboding unknowable something promising drama of some kind. He felt it unquestionably in his bones. He stretched his arms and yawned. Sleeping was a thing of stops and starts now.
That night he went out and picked up Claire. Some English girl who spoke good French. Worked in an office and wanted out. Of the job and of the city. He listened to her hard luck story and she brought him back.
She had an elusive quality he’d seen plenty of, a passive kind of taking it. It was empowering and the opposite at once. For him and for her and for them. He wanted to be gone when he was sated, but she held him coldly, with strength. They lay there and their breath intermingled.
His nerve began failing him. She was staring into his eyes. He clicked his tongue but she was unfazed, and it seemed like an excavation she was conducting for his soul. Not born of warmth but of stoicism. He looked back angrily, undressed and with many tables turned. This girl was a mistake and a killer.
Eventually she slept and he didn’t. He wanted to leave but could not. She wasn’t holding him, he was physically free, but he kept looking at this fucking woman, who had him because he had her. She was right without saying a word. He got up with much effort, staring at her as he dressed, and was back on the street.
April 11, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 20)
Aria packed her bag economically. It was only two weeks, she had clothes and cds at home, so she removed a few items and put the bag on her back to test weight. It was light enough to carry on the metro.
She was nervous about leaving Laura, after what had happened last weekend. They had arranged that Marie would take Aria’s bed, Marie’s old one, during the time Aria was away. Still, maybe the guy would come looking for her.
Aria didn’t know if she should ask Frank to check in on them. If Frank would like it, or Laura would. He could just call once in a while or text Laura’s cell phone, but she hadn’t asked him yet, and might not bother. She threw her bag in the corner and stood up.
It was going to be great to see her family. Ten months was like forever, and she couldn’t wait to see her sister in the doorway. Her mother was sure to make a fuss. She hadn’t made it home for Thanksgiving, so this would be a double event – turkey, cranberry, the lot. She had presents for everyone from Paris.
She put on some music from Lhasa de Sela. She sensed into her body as she swayed. The voice and the rhythm were intoxicating, spellbinding and heavy with thought, and Aria felt the floor, through her feet and her legs and her chest. To be holding herself as the world turned.
There was definitely a Christmas feeling in the air. It was more than just lights and consumption. When she walked in the streets there was a magic of some sort, a tingling anticipation of warmth or relief. The promise of nursery shelter.
She checked the flight time just to be sure. Re-calculated the right time to leave for it. It was fine, she would make it OK. She remembered that guy who used to curse them from outside, and for some reason he didn’t come round now. Here’s hoping he would never come back.
The clock on the wall had long ago stopped working. Aria never tried to fix it, because the ticking she could do without. It interfered with the rhythm of music. She went over to it now, the hands inert and functionless, and took it down and shelved it away. If Laura liked it there she could replace it. Then Laura returned and Aria said this to her, and Marie appeared through the door. She held a bag and a sheepish expression.
They ate dinner together, Marie shy, but the girls chatting to ease her. She was painfully conscious of her face. She had developed a way of letting her hair hang over it, but this required her neck to bend forward, and made her awkwardness even more apparent. She was gentle like a kitten or a child.
Aria watched her discreetly, feeling tears in her eyes as she noticed the tightness and fidgeting. It was searing to see such symptoms in another. Marie extended and re-clenched her fingers, her eyes looking up and down, seeking invisibility. Aria took her hand and held it tight.
Marie stared at her, startled and unsure. They’d never met before in their lives. Aria squeezed her fingers. For an instant the light flickered, then came back on stronger than before. Marie started crying. Laura looked shocked, but Aria was not, smiling imperceptibly to see the shaking in the limbs. Her hand grew warmer around Marie’s.
Marie cried for a long time. Twenty or twenty five minutes. She sat there in her chair with the dishes on the table, shaking and sobbing and biting at her lip. Aria just wanted to hug her.
April 10, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 19)
Djinn squashed the fly in prickly annoyance. It buzzed for a further five seconds, and died. He picked it up and studied it on his fingertip, two legs still twitching, but the soul already in the air.
He scraped it off and flicked it out the window. The groundward rush separated it into parts. Some school children scampered by excitedly, multicoloured bags rattling lunch boxes as they bumped. For a second he thought he was still in the heat of the Lebanon.
But no, to think in such a way was a mistake. He would never be returning, would spend his last earthly days right here. Take as many as possible to a punishment deserved.
It was hard to kill time when he wasn’t working. Walking the streets was an option but it brought no relief. He stretched his aching back muscles gingerly, the bed before him a miserable resting place. The sooner this day would arrive the better for all.
The light was getting caught in the open window pane, making colours like a rainbow. He watched a purple and blue blob dance. The pain had moved from his upper back to his lower, snaking down and twisting inside, and he did more stretches until something clicked.
Just at the time of the click, the bell rang. He stood still for a moment and went to the door. A small man of about fifty waited in the hallway, eagerly introducing himself as from the electricity company . They were doing door-to-door checks, some safety procedure.
Djinn let him in reluctantly, and waited impatiently for his departure. He was gone in less than two minutes. The silence returned to the room, the man’s energy banished by the draft. Djinn closed the window and killed the refraction.
Then he himself left, feeling there was nothing to do but walk. The neighbourhood was now disturbingly familiar. Without realising, he had mapped out walks here also, and unconsciously took different routes that he varied day by day. There were even some sights he looked forward to.
This morning he crossed over to Paris, hovering on the bridge for a time to observe the Boulevard Peripherique. The sign said the traffic today was Fluid.
He went up rue Didot and crossed over rue d’Alesia. There was a little playground with some children. They were very small – too small for school on a Monday, and one of them hugged another and resumed play. He almost smiled but remembered these people were killers. Their mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers were animals.
So he came once again to the tower, drawing him like a magnet or a tide. He looked up and thought through the plan. Yes it was going to happen, no sentiment would intrude. Burning flame would carry him to Allah. A dog ran across the road causing motoring consternation, and perhaps this was a small presentiment of the chaos he’d induce. The world would be turned upside down and would not spin right again.
April 9, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 18)
Laura closed the door, leaving Aria and Frank by themselves. She had no destination in mind. She strolled to Belleville and bought a sandwich in a bakery, watching the woman make it with a delicacy of touch. Yeah, alright, he seemed nice – unpsycholike.
This was the first person she’d met from Ireland. He was gentle but not without energy, capable of anger perhaps. That’s the way it seemed to her anyhow. She put the sandwich in her bag to save for later.
Her old flat-mate Marie called when she was back on Boulevard de la Villette, a bad line making Laura strain to hear. Marie wanted her to come down, spend some time if she could. This sounded like a nice idea.
On the metro to Alesia, Laura watched a small boy scream blue murder at his mother. He was holding on to a bottle intended for his younger brother, his face red and bloated, his eyes upset and fierce. He was far too old for bottles and he knew it.
His mother wrestled it from him, embarrassed determined and drained, and the baby snatched it. She was raising two tiny specimens of will and greed. It can be hard not to look at such events and feel misanthropy, but they’re only children, and they don’t know. It’s kids in their twenties and thirties that make you puke.
Laura flicked out of her pondering, sneezing. Lukas was a kid and he was gone. The stops rolled by, Vavin and Raspail, and she got there. It was a two minute walk and two flights of stairs.
Marie let her in with her eye discoloured, a red and sinister mark upon her face. Laura did a double take and Marie stared at her. She was about to cry or shout or just fall down. They went to the couch and Marie began weeping, Laura hesitating, and then putting her arms around her, confused. She’d only thought they were going to rent a dvd.
Marie sobbed on her shoulder, desperately. A broken sound that made Laura feel the same. It took fifteen minutes to make her stop, and another ten to coax the explanation. It was Martin, but he was sorry.
Martin was an English guy who worked in Brit pubs. A sleazy chain for expats with bitter and darts. He was some kind of coordinator or boss, 27 years old, the last six in France. Laura remembered him from when she’d lived with Marie.
There was a knock on the door and Marie froze. Laura didn’t know what she was into here. She’d been pushed into this world, initiated without her knowledge, and now she was cowering on a sofa with a beaten and frightened girl.
“Marie!” came an English voice. “Ouvre la porte!”
The girls stayed perfectly still. A minute, an hour? It grew dark, and after they heard him leaving they refused to whisper or move. “He doesn’t have a key,” said Marie eventually. “He left it by mistake before he went.”
In the tension and adrenalin of the moment, Laura remembered thinking it was strange to hear Marie use English. Then she thought it was strange to even notice this fact. Her mind wasn’t processing properly, she was aware of that, so she didn’t question anything she felt. This was some kind of instinctive behaviour or automatic act.
She brushed Marie’s hair hypnotically, the girl prone and alert and her small fists clenched. Marie asked her to stay and what could she say.
April 8, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 17)
“The more you understand, the more you can accept, and the more you can accept, the calmer you’ll be. And the calmer you are, the better you are for yourself, and for the world.”
Frank watched her eyes move toward the floor.
She sat still looking down, and he touched her knee.
“I agree with you,” he whispered.
She smiled and met his eyes, and leaned over to kiss his cheek. He rubbed her warm right knee through her jeans.
They were up in Aria’s place, and Frank had earlier met Laura. An hour later she’d left, and they were alone. His apprehension was unfounded – Laura was watchful, but discreetly so. There was no Inquisition Spanish or otherwise. Aria breathed deeply and Frank kissed her, holding her lip between his lips and stroking her neck. A bin was slammed outside and made them jump.
Aria stood up and boiled the kettle. Frank watched her lean to find a spoon. She was leaving in a week, to spend Christmas with her family, and he was in love with her, and wondering what he’d do. Her return three weeks to the day was distant eternity.
They drank tea on a darkening Saturday, happy to do nothing and then take the train to the cinema. It was a few hours yet before they should go.
“So what is this book going to be about?” asked Aria. “You’ll have to let me read it.”
“I’m not sure yet, I’m kinda still making notes. I think I just want to start and see what happens, discover if I can do this, and if it feels like something right. I’d love to get down stuff on Sevilla and Berlin.”
“I want to see those places. I really want to see what they mean to you. I’ve been to LA and San Francisco, and once we went up to Canada, but Berlin. I read about it on my flight over here.”
He was surprised.
“You did? What did it say?”
“Oh you know. It sounded incredible. Full of artists and incredible things.”
He smiled and said yeah that’s what it was.
They finished their tea and she made more. He helped her turn on lights and pull down blinds. He resisted the urge to just ask her to move in with him, because this impatience and haste had not been his friend before. It was a happy rush that blinded him to reality.
She went to put on lipstick and other feminine mysteries, and he looked out the window at the moon. What bastards had taken pictures of this angel? Fury rose and then subsided. It didn’t matter, it was gone. He stood in the apartment amidst her kettle and her cups, the softness of her environment.
When she was ready they left. He took her hand in the darkness, and they walked easily to Goncourt. Youths loitered outside Kebab shops, knives swished within, and Frank bought Metro tickets, a tingling behind his nose.
The train juddered momentarily, and Aria fell against his chest. He was delighted and relieved when he caught her.
April 7, 2010
Part 6: Things As They Are (scene 16)
Karen wanted to call him. That old clichéd something stopped her each time. Perhaps it was his failure to call her.
The first week of December was drawing to a close, dragging the year along with it. Cold and rain had assumed its ownership. The streets were slick treacheries, her skin frozen and wet. It was like they’d made a pact to further her misery.
It was difficult not to dwell on things with conditions so inclement. Hard to not submit to mental strife. All she could do was juggle theories on his silence, and why she shouldn’t make the call instead. All she could do in effect was wait.
She spoke to Claire on her lunchbreak, looking for reassurance or guidance or a lie. They discussed it and their coffee grew cooler. Karen drew little rings on the table with her finger, making them bigger, smaller, on each lap. She bumped a little chip in the smoothened surface.
Claire was teasing out ways of possibly prompting him, but Karen wasn’t interested in that. It was going to have to take the course it took. They ordered more coffee with the time still on their side, and changed the subject.
“I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay here. This job, this city.”
Karen was surprised to hear such a thing.
Claire had seemed quite settled, longterm, but maybe something had happened, or she’d simply had enough. Of offices, or France. Karen asked why, what is it, but Claire fell suddenly silent, the energy changing. The topic had retreated as it had come.
It was quiet too as they returned to work, Karen unsure of Claire’s mood, or how to engage with it. She heard familiar sounds of kids and motorbikes. They took the same turn where before there had been a protest, but today continued onward, unobstructed. A breeze announced itself and brushed their hair.
Back in the office Karen felt Claire slip away, not really saying anything, just departing. Karen walked to her own desk, and sat down. She knew Claire was across the room, settling back again also, taking off her coat and preparing to work the phone. There was chatter and the buzzing of machines.
Fishing in Beirut 