Tourist Magazine

- Please, come under my umbrella.
- No, thank you; I couldn’t—I really couldn’t.
- Please, you’ll be soaked, you’ll be soaked right through; there’s room, there’s plenty of room
- But you might get wet, I might brush up against your sweater and you might get wet; no, I couldn’t possibly.
- You must; I’ll not feel right ‘til you step out of that weather. Please, there is room.
He slipped under then.

- Hello,
he said to her; they were just meeting.
- Hello,
she said, brushing her hair from her face and behind an ear, holding the wooden ‘J’ of the umbrella’s handle closer to her chest. They stood face to face.
-Your back must still be in the rain, she said quietly, you’ll need to move in some, I should think. Only an inch or two . Maybe I could move closer to you— I could you know, I could shift. Don’t bother moving, I’ll come to you.
She shuffled toward him, her feet sloshing in the puddle they were standing in. She clutched the wooden grip even more tightly to herself, pulling it between her breasts, mounding them beneath her sweater.
He looked up, chin-up, considered the silver skeleton, its skin—as she drew in under him—and said,

- Oh, hello... again; hello ...?
- Susan—
- Susan; hello Susan. Some weather we’re having.
She looked past him, by his shoulder, into the falling—saw it dimple in the street while collecting—and agreed:
-Yes, some weather; I’d rather some other weather.

They chuckled, each gasping giggle collecting up in the umbrella’s ellipse; he dimpled when she flickered across his face, candle-quick. Her glasses fogged some, the moisture rising from his sopping wind-breaker which lay plastered to his shoulders and arms—to his chest—a vibrant red: revitalized by the rain: new again.
- Are you Jeremy?
- No, my name is Eben; why did you say—
- Jeremy? I just thought you looked like a Jeremy. I’m good at this, usually; I’m usually pretty good at this, at guessing names. Eben ... yes, Eben—Eben’s good too. Hello Eben.
- Hello Susan.

They tried to shake on it but weren’t afforded the space. She shifted the umbrella from hand to hand then as they fumbled around, once tilting the canopy so that the rain was on her neck for a moment.

- Shall I hold it a while?
- Well...
she said, feeling the back of her neck with a white, slight, fluttering hand, all right, if you would, for a little while. Take the handle, here, grip it near my hand.

His hand was wet, he’d wiped it on his pants—on his thigh—but his pants were soaked. Her fingers left little cloudy ovals on the polished wood that faded soon after she let it go.

-I’ve got it now,
he said, and raised the umbrella a little. Cool air rushed in to fill the expanding space; the draft found their seams and slipped between them— she shivered and fingered the ends of her sleeves, trying to pull them down over the backs of her hands. The thin cotton did little to warm her. She pressed into him then, tentatively, hoping he wouldn’t notice, hoping he’d chalk it up to casual elbow-rubbing, the kind that takes place in crowded spaces, in long lines: when waiting.
They stood without speaking.
Water passed from his jacket into her sweater, from his forearm: he held the umbrella like a saber, formally saluting. She held her arms beneath her breasts; she hunched, pushing her shoulders and chest into him, if only just. He was clammy at first.

- Maybe I should hold the umbrella again;
she offered him,
we can keep switching, to avoid the monotony of all this standing around in the rain.
- Okay.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

They were standing too close now for him to draw them up in front of his chest as he had when first sliding under the canopy. Nor did he want to. While passing her the umbrella, when she had pulled back from him to take the grip, his arm chilled suddenly at the loss of contact. Now, standing as they were, he could feel the tight ball of her fist where his ribs met, at his sternum. She leaned in without looking at him, he leaned in too, flexing his hands by his thighs, his jacket still seeping into her chest.
He checked his watch.. Stretching his neck, peering down his cheeks, he tried to see the time at his wrist—over her shoulder, down her spine—as he raised his arm up behind her back, in the exact same motion he might have if she weren’t standing there at all.

- Don’t hang your arm back down again.
- Sorry?
- Don’t let go.
- I was just checking my watch—
- I know, but still, hold on to me a little. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression; I’m just cold. I’m freezing. Pull me close, the water has seeped from your clothes and into mine, it’s everywhere and slowly spreading—if you let go, I’ll freeze.

- Maybe I should let go, so as not to soak you even more.
- No, that won’t do, we need to heat the water between us to keep warm—have you ever been scuba-diving; ever been in a wetsuit?
- No—
- It’s the same principal, you know; your body warms the sea between your skin and the suit’s casing. The water’s always warmer where you are, you carry it with you as you swim.
- Oh....
He adjusted his arm.

She felt his hand now on her shoulder, felt the fingers flexing: inching in place. He brought his other arm to bear as well, straight up, like pumping iron’s exaggerated last repetition, like carrying a load of wood cradled in the crook of an arm. When he touched her shoulder with it, when he placed his second hand, her world expanded. Had he, as she assumed, placed his arm conventionally—straight up, like pumping iron, like carrying a load of wood: cradled? The second hand—it appeared magically on her body, as if by premonition—felt different. Was it the same that he’d flexed by his thigh in an earlier guise of indecision? It felt heavier than that—it was a weight. It was as if he’d sent his arm and hand behind him and over the curve of the horizon, over sea and land, around the earth’s ellipse and back again to settle on her shoulder—landing like a dove but settling like a stone. It brought with it the weight of history pierced and sewn, of breached zones of time linked in flesh and bone, though those same and invisible borders threatened to fracture the reaching arm. Even broken, it was the weight of its pieces and parts: a load that settled on her shoulders and she slumped a little into the body of the boy, of Eben, with whom she shared the warmth and calm of the umbrella’s permeable enclose. Like a teepee, though it was his hand pushing her in.

- Hello again,
she sighed into the space between them, though there was precious little left, pockets only, the water warming and bonding them. They stuck together. In her chest was the handle and shaft, still in her grip, but digging in, leaving a dent, no doubt, in the soft, wet skin beneath her sweater’s thin layer of damp cotton.

- Hello Susan,
he returned, because it was new again; he’d need to introduce himself to her, hoping she’d recognize him. So much had passed, yet hadn’t passed, between them. They shared water-diffusing and, though it was warm like blood, it wasn’t blood, it didn’t course through them, it pooled and spread on their skin, so there would always have to be reintroducing: renaming.

- I’m Eben.
He said his name in that space, aware that something very private was happening in a very public place. While waiting, while noplace, something, somehow had gone beyond the border of the present, returning to determine what it had left from where it wasn’t anymore. It was a jarring recognition of the present as present, an overlapping of in-betweens that he was both living in and recognizing himself as living in. Everything was new in his inability to grasp just how, exactly, he was living, and where.

The new world, of world inside world—of world on top of world—was both elating and heavy, breaking and bonding in its contracting, in its pushing together—my G_d, what is pushing them together? —of two strangers waiting in the rain, for a bus—did you know they were waiting for a bus? —they couldn’t see coming.

He considered their little world in silence. He dreaded the bus and its coming because he knew the-bus-and-its-coming, the way it pulled up to the curb, a whale, and sighed to a stop with its squeaking blowhole and open mouth, the maw of the thing visible: its shiny bones and stomach’s rubber lining.
Looking up at the umbrella’s fragile skeleton, he sighed, his breath rising up and catching in its protective covering. On his chest, under the umbrella and inside his embrace, She felt him rising and falling: ebbing. She scratched her cheek and nose across his nyon jacket, breathing in, as she did, through her nose, arresting the fluids that were collecting there.

-I’ve never been scuba diving either, she murmured.
He sighed again, a low rumble in her ear. She nuzzled his windbreaker with her cheek and jaw; the cold metal shaft of the umbrella intruding on her space: she felt it on her skin.
I’ve never even been to the ocean. I’m frightened by it—by its enormity. Have you been to the ocean?
-Yes.
-Did you go in?
-Yes, it was wonderful, but cold. I was off the cost of North Carolina—it was May. The sea strips you of your body heat.
-Where does it go?
-I don’t know, maybe it goes to join the Gulf Stream. Or maybe it just dissipates. Maybe it just goes away.
He shifted his grip then, a little uncertain, and his body cracked from hers. She stutter-stepped in a tiny flutter toward him as he rocked back on his heels, momentarily off balance.
-Eben?
She formed his name like a question.

He didn’t let her go, but instead tried to regain his composure by flexing all the tiny muscles in his feet—along the arches and into the toes, the balls of his feet and the pads of his toes pushing down hard on his soles. He stiffened his back muscles too, the ones in the small, now making them rigid and hard as she pushed into him: glistening head and jaw, the balled fists of her hands on the grip, her tummy and hips and hard, little knees.

He fell backwards, still gripping her tight; in his ears, a roaring sound.
She fell on top of him.
They were unable to fall in any other way.