Behind a fountain of a lyre-playing cherub, a dilapidated staircase led to the ocean. I skipped down the staircase, taking care to avoid loose rocks. One wrong step could send me careening to an untimely demise. At the bottom of the stairs lay a cobblestone alleyway.
Although the walls on either side of the alleyway rose up precipitously, leaving only a rectangle of sky visible, the passage was suffused with spectral, aqueous light and beckoned any intrepid wanderers toward its end. For there awaited the Adriatic Sea, only a deserted avenue and glass-speckled beach away.
I dashed through the alley, dodging the potted fan palms the residents had scattered along the ground. Overhead, linens strung up on clotheslines flapped wildly like sails caught in a typhoon’s gale. I didn’t stop to crouch beside the cats that lounged on the edges of the alley. Most darted away as I passed. Only one did not flee, but remained where it was, stiff as a statue, regarding me with inscrutable black eyes.
I expended the rest of my endurance running to the end of the alleyway. Here, the view opened up, and I could see the docks, the glass beach, and the vast expanse of the Adriatic: our peninsula’s jewel. Near the shore it roared, boisterous waves and sprays of white foam leaping insistently forward. I paused for a brief reprieve and drew a few gasping breaths. When I opened my mouth the salt mist settled on my tongue.
Please don’t let me be too late.
I couldn’t bear the thought that my mad dash through the town was for nothing. That I wouldn’t see Ramin one last time. Every week he spent longer and longer shut up inside his study, drafting up plans, or wandering through the streets, perusing the marketplace for supplies. He had such an air of conviction around him lately. There was determination in the straightness of his back and the spring in his gait. My heart withered remembering our last encounter.
I was walking home from work when I spotted Ramin outside his house, laboring away at a heaping pile of cardboard boxes on his doorstep. It jarred me, although I knew his time of departure was swiftly approaching. Our activities accelerated as July drew to a close. It was a violet summer evening in early August, the atmosphere being so transmissive that all the little creatures of the night seemed endowed with human sense and sympathy. The cicadas chittered wistfully, and the gulls warbled a dirge.
“Where are you taking all those boxes?” I asked.
“I’m taking them to the boat,” Ramin said, as he stuffed a stack of boxes into the trunk of his buggy. He turned to face me. “Gotta get ready for tomorrow.”
This was confirmation enough. “Want me to help?”
“Sure.”
I knelt down to pick up a large box from the pile on the ground. Its size was deceiving. It was as light as a feather.
Ramin tapped his foot. “I’m not looking forward to the journey. Did you know I get pretty seasick? It doesn’t happen immediately, though. Only after many hours on the boat. After a few days, I can’t even remember what solid ground feels like anymore. The sensation of going up and down continues endlessly in my body.”
I tried to infuse my voice with indifference. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been on a sea trip that lasted longer than an hour.”
“I remember you sailed with us to Ivu’ivu. That took a whole day,” he rejoined.
“That doesn’t count. We were swimming half the time.”
“We did? Hmm . . . yeah, you and Alec did. I was steering. Faye told me about how a family went to a lake with brain-eating amoeba and the son got infected — ”
“You know brain-eating amoeba only live in freshwater right?” I said.
— and I’m not sure if he died or not,” he persisted, “but the amoeba tunneled into his brain and caused it to swell against the inside of his skull. This totally corrupted his nervous system.”
“Thankfully,” I said reprovingly, “There are no brain-eating amoeba in the ocean. So Alec and I were safe.”
“Faye told me she’s worried Alec keeps making you take unnecessary risks.”
“Do you think I’m reckless?”
“Alec is,” Ramin chuckled. “He went cliff diving.”
“I’m not going cliff diving.”
“You sounded like you were interested.”
“He only mentioned it as a joke. Anyway, it’s a comfort to view the ocean as something of beauty instead of a cause for dread. The sea is the element of love, according to the Greeks. Aphrodite emerged from the water.”
Ramin shook his head. “I might pass Athens on my way past the Peloponnese. I’ll look out for goddesses emerging from the water.”
I rolled my eyes. Ramin shot me a smirk and laid a protective hand over the box I placed into the last empty slot in his buggy’s cramped trunk. The mention of his passage drove another spike into my chest. I hoped against all odds that my perfect image of nonchalance was holding steady.
Ramin didn’t seem inclined to continue small talk. I desperately grasped for something else to say.
“I figured out the issue with my aviary. I designed it wrong,” I said, having briefly thought about what I did at work. “The finch compartment shut down unexpectedly due to a flaw in the feeding mechanism. The finches got so hungry they started eating the wood shavings on the floor of the aviary. Because the chickadee and sparrow compartments depend on the finches for lift and drag reduction, the finch shutdown nipped the other compartments’ operations in the bud, and now the entire aviary is down.”
“How did you fix it?” Ramin inquired.
“Well, I haven’t fixed it yet,” I admitted. “It’s going to be an overhaul of the whole system, which I was planning to do when you — when you go. Instead of a direct reliance between the finch, chickadee, and sparrow compartments, I created this intermediary, a broker of sorts, to store the items each compartment spits out. In turn, each compartment queries the broker constantly. That way, as long as the broker is functioning, the finch compartment’s malfunction won’t take down the chickadees and sparrows with it.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand. What do you mean by storing the items?”
“When an item is stored, a bird from the broker takes up a sequence of seeds with its beak, and drops them into certain feed baskets in predefined configurations. Then they assign guards to perch high above and monitor the feed baskets in case they overflow.”
“Do you mean to say all three compartments drop seeds into the same baskets?”
“Uh, yup.”
“Wouldn’t that result in the same problem you’re having right now? You would have different compartments directly relying on one another if everything is consolidated into one basket. Shouldn’t each compartment be strictly confined to its own basket, so that items from different compartments don’t interfere with one another when one compartment shuts down?”
His perception was striking. “Wow. That’s . . . a good suggestion. I’ll consider it,” I said solemnly.
“Other than that, your solution should work. I’ve dealt with aviaries in school. They’re easy to use but hard to implement.”
My heart skipped a beat at the small praise. “I can’t wait to take it out for a glide once it’s working.”
“Glides are fun.”
“You could come along.”
“Um, that won’t be an option, since I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I know.”
Ramin nodded and closed the trunk. Everything was packed up except his hiking stick, which he used to savagely behead a tall thistle at the road-side. “I’m gonna go now.”
“Yeah.”
“It was nice working with you. I’m sad we didn’t get to work on your aviary together,” Ramin said.
“Yeah. W-we would have been an efficient team,” I conceded. He said he was sad we didn’t get to work together on my aviary! I will cherish that comment forever.
“Yeah. Well, bye.”
“Bye,” I said. The words of farewell festered in my throat. I waved my hand and mustered a smile as he settled into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He didn’t look at me again. I watched the buggy as it chugged off, rounding a corner before disappearing.
I should’ve said “Bon voyage.” Yeah, that would’ve been cool.
A wind-chime breeze caressed my cheek. I gazed at the house he just moved out of. Indigo vines, mottled with brown and gold and red, crept along the shuttered windows and formed a polychrome that was dimmed by the luminous gloom of dusk. I resumed my walk home. In this rippling landscape I walked without aim or purpose. What was to become of me? I, who could neither anticipate nor prevent my own feelings, failed to grasp the fact that I was inescapably, utterly, momentously lost to the fey machinations of fate.
Faye was waiting for me at the street’s end. She craned her neck toward Ramin’s old house. “Did he just leave?”
“No, he’s moving his luggage onto the boat. He’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Right.”
We strolled toward my house in silence. Faye smelled like oranges and honey, probably from her shampoo. My thoughts drifted to her bathroom. I slept over at her apartment one night, and was shocked at the ever-present, fallen strands of long hair, plastered about here and there along the rim of the porcelain tub or the tiled floor, like willowy pencil lines produced by an artist’s turning hand.
“Let’s check out that place sometime,” Faye said as we passed a seafood restaurant.
“Okay.”
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“My coworkers got off work at 4 o’clock today!” Faye exclaimed with her silvery voice.
“Early,” I muttered.
“I lost all motivation to keep working once I was the only person left, so then I went over to the Professor’s office to give him an update. But when I got there the door was locked so I figured he’d gone home early too. Then I went to the square and watched the performances for a bit before coming to meet you.”
I made no response.
Faye wavered a bit, then grabbed my hand and swung it back and forth. “C’mon, tell me more about your day.”
I grimaced. “I went to work, I ate lunch, I left, that’s all.”
A pocket of quiet, heavy with anticipation.
“Actually, I need to tell you something,” I said. “I feel this heaviness in my chest. I liked Ramin and he’s leaving, and I couldn’t tell him because we have to keep it strictly professional. I know he wouldn’t want to stay in contact with me anyway, but I’m going to be so lonely without him.”
“Why would you be lonely?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think he does want to stay in contact with you,” Faye said softly.
“He doesn’t.”
“He was always asking me what you guys were up to.”
“That’s because he wanted to spend time with Alec, not me.”
Faye furrowed her brows. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen the way he laughs when he’s with Alec, you haven’t been around them as often as I have. Alec is funny, daring. He admires him.”
“You’re jealous.”
“What?” I glanced away.
Faye touched my shoulder. “Time really does heal. You will forget enough about him in a few months that it won’t hurt anymore.”
“Who said anything about hurting?” I half-whispered.
“Your family and job are here, not where he’s going, and you know you wouldn’t want to uproot your life to go there.”
“I don’t care about my future. I only think about the present.”
“Still, you get what I mean.”
“Obviously I wouldn’t uproot my life!” I cried. “Whatever your logic is, it’s not helping.”
“Stop nourishing your self-pity. You clearly want to keep in touch with Ramin, so send him a glider.”
“He doesn’t want any mail from me.”
“Who cares what other people want?”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“If you don’t mail him, you will definitely never see him or hear from him again. If you do mail him, the worst thing that could happen is he ignores your glider. He may even respond in kind. What have you got to lose?”
My dignity, I thought, but I mulled over Faye’s suggestion seriously. She’s right. I do want to keep in touch with him. Oh Faye, why are the ones I love as fleeting as my dreams?
“All right, I’ll think about it,” I allowed.
“Okay.”
“They’re all leaving.”
“Sooner or later.”
“I’ll be alone,” I breathed.
“I’m here,” Faye replied.
“Yes, you are.”
I looked at Faye, her imploring expression. Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung upon her eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls. Her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the dying light of dusk, and she was again the dazzlingly clever architect, who called to the forefront of my memory the summer mornings when we learned how to construct an aviary. Stability and altitude were our companions. She made an effort to see me often, and I was willing to oblige her. We met daily in that supernatural interval, the pink dawn, by the beach behind the Professor’s vineyard. We flew together. Below us, sunbeams danced across the surf and sand.
I looked at Faye and saw the plea in her eyes.
“Faye, can I ask you a question?”
“What is it?”
“Why did Ramin leave?”
Faye sighed deeply. “The opportunities were calling, and he had an offer,” she said finally. “Dallying was not an option. There is a future awaiting him there.”
Without you, she didn’t say. The unspoken words dangled shyly between us.
“A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, a purer sapphire melts into the sea,” I quoted.
“What?”
“It’s Tennyson.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s lie down on a blanket and stare at the sky as it’s changing colors,” Faye offered.
I expressed my assent. We continued home.
