The Girl in the Water. A Grayson J

has been left on our kitchen’s Formica countertop. It’s his latest effort, fitted nicely into the current trends of our health-conscious West-Coast culture. Its shade is something close to the purple of a badly overripe plum, and he’s probably got plum in there, the ass, along with banana, and berries, and spinach and Christ in heaven knows what else. ‘The flavours mix together so well, you don’t even know what you’re drinking.’ The fact that this is a lie has never stopped him from saying it. The drinks taste exactly like what they are. Reality can’t be masked, not that well. What’s in the mix always makes itself known.

      I take a single sip. It’s enough. I know David wants me to take at least two, to give it the honest college try, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Won’t. It’s simply beyond my strength to stomach the stuff, so the rest of the smoothie is down the drain in a colourful swirl, and I’m comforted by the fact that blended breakfasts flow out of existence so cleanly. If David were to cook me, say, eggs (something I loathe with an almost equal fervour to smoothies), the uneaten remains would be harder to conceal. We don’t have a disposal in the sink – the landlord suggests installing one would raise our rent $75 per month, which is simply shit – and the trash can would be obvious. Maybe I’d have to dig a hole out in the garden in which to conceal the evidence, but it seems like 365 days of uneaten eggs would get noticed some time before day 366.

      I rinse out the glass and set it in the rack. There’s a note on the counter, next to a ring of condensation. ‘Morning, hon. Enjoy, and have a good one. Love you, -D.’ The blue ink of the ballpoint pen has met the moisture where the glass had stood, the lower curve of the ‘D’ blurring like a watercolour.

      The note warms me. I’ve never particularly cared for ‘hon’ as a term of endearment, but from David’s lips, or his pen, the word is a little embrace. I’m smiling without really noticing the change in my face that produces it, and I’m thankful, too, because I have someone who can have this effect on me – who can make my cheeks bend and turn as if he were physically connected to the muscles beneath my skin, provoking my body to move in its most intimate of gestures.

      Even if he does make smoothies.

      There’s coffee left in the carafe – David makes a fresh pot every morning and always leaves me some – and I pour out half a cup to gulp down before I head for the door. Not tea, but it’ll do. Sadie’s already been walked and fed and is lolling with typical canine disinterest in the corner near the fridge.

      ‘Bye, Sades,’ I say, my first vocalised words of the morning. I’m nibbling a nail as I say them and the words come out misformed, but my girl knows her name. No children in our little family, though we’ve been casually trying for the past year at least, and Sadie does her best to fill that void. We’re no longer spring chickens, David and I – though I won’t hit forty for another two years, so I refuse yet to be labelled middle aged – but it’s starting to feel like our efforts in this area just aren’t going to lead anywhere. I suspect, sometimes, that Sadie may be as close to a child as I’m ever going to get, though in dog years she could easily be my mother.

      She acknowledges my presence with a slightly lifted head and a huff, then lets her nose flop back to the ground. Her pink tongue is askew in her teeth. Her morning walk with David is enough to last her until I get home, and I’m certain she plans to nap for the bulk of the interim. The laziest dog in creation, and I love her.

      A few moments later, I’m outside. The front door to our apartment building closes with a click, and I take in a deep breath of the morning air. The sun is already well over the hills, and the flowers that line the sidewalk are glowing. Gardenias fill my nostrils – a heavy, tactile scent, perfume and honey colliding at the back of my throat. A water feature chortles gently in the corner of the lot.

      The day is beautiful. The sort of day we sometimes wonder if we’ll ever see, and usually don’t appreciate when we do. I try to soak it all in. Absorb it.

      It’s almost enough to make me forget the throbbing that pulses at the side of my face, and the fire that threatens to burn away the edges of my vision.

       2

       Amber

      I’m at the bookshop by 8.25 a.m., a full five minutes ahead of schedule. There was little traffic between Windsor, the quirkily British-sounding, northern California suburb town where David and I have set down our roots, and Santa Rosa, and I’ve got a heavy foot when there’s not a mass of stop-and-go cars before me. It’s an all too frequent occurrence on this tenmile stretch of Highway 101. My little ‘put-put’, as David calls it, might only have 104 horsepower beneath its hood, but I like to put every last one of them to work. Nothing says Modern Woman of Determination like a floored car maxing out its power at 77 miles per hour and getting passed by delivery vans and teens on mopeds.

      The shop is already starting to bustle with the customary movements of the morning. A few customers are perusing the racks of new arrivals. The espresso counter has a line of eager attendees. The morning delivery of periodicals and papers has just been brought inside, the boxes waiting to be opened and sorted onto their shelves.

      I love the place. I know that book sales are declining and paper going the way of the digital dodo, that Kindle reigns supreme and that there is a whole generation of people who’ve never held a physical book in their hands, but there is a romanticism to the bookshop that I can’t believe will ever truly disappear. The scent of the fresh pages mingled with the thick aroma of coffee, the beautiful hush punctuated by the subtle tones of friendly chatter. It’s a paradise. A little refuge from the noise of the world outside, with a thousand stories to tell and mental universes to expand.

      Of course, it’s traditionally more of a young person’s milieu, or at least it was until young meant digital and books meant old-fashioned. There are more grey-haired heads in here these days than brown or blonde, though I haven’t yet spotted the first white streak on my own. Can’t be long until I do, though. I don’t feel a day over thirty – hell, I don’t really feel different to how I did when I was in my twenties – but there are going to be forty candles on my cake soon enough, and I can’t play the child forever. Forty. One of those round numbers nobody appreciates: no longer young, not yet venerable. And you have to live with it for a few years, since ‘the forties’ are much the same as forty itself, until you hit the edge of fifty and suddenly you’re catapulted from ‘in her prime’ to ‘middle aged’. Damn, if the categories aren’t a bitch.

      But whatever age may be or mean, work in the bookshop is a joy. Enough in the way of responsibilities and activities to keep me busy, without becoming crushing. Stress isn’t something I crave, nor the ‘fast-paced action’ of a more pressing grind. Leave the mad rush to others. I crave the quiet. The solitude. The rhythm of a nicely patterned life.

      The solitude, of course, is relative. One is never alone, even in the dim lighting of a small bookshop. I talk with the customers now and then, though the conversations are usually brief and rarely terribly personal. And I have colleagues, some of whom have become friends – an extension of the little family that David and I constitute at home.

      ‘Double-caf, half-fat, cooled down, no foam latté, as the lady ordered.’ As I approach my corner of the shop, I’m greeted by Mitch Tuttle, one of those collegiate family members and, in fact, the owner of the little shop. He says the words in his usual sing-song style. He’s sporting a tired pair of trousers, untended wrinkles long since transformed into permanent creases that spider out from his crotch and knees. A belt holds them in place, hidden somewhere beneath the paunch of a stomach wrapped in a badly patterned shirt. The stress of managing such a bustling hive of worldly activity, he regularly joked, had ravaged his otherwise classical good looks. A boss with a sense of humour is not the worst thing in the world.

      But his timing is off. Mitch is jovial, now, at 8.25 am – a time of day when this is more or less inexcusable.

      He’s carrying a paper cup in his enormous hands. There’s