speak comforting nonsense to? Or for herself, emptiness solid and cold as basalt within her?
Jade eyes still vivid in her mind, Romy turns, clutches the bedclothes to her throat, casting herself back onto the surf of sleep.
To forget.
* * *
The taxi dumps them along the boardwalk where Cherry Beach used to be.
Lost, Karl scans row upon file of houseboats, junks, hundreds of floating shacks bobbing on calm waters behind breakwater rip rap, boulders hanging with every form of plastic flotsam captured by the tide.
Villar passes a hand over the ruby eye and the hack grumbles in Punjabe, roaring away, setting the dock arock.
Sun rising above the hills, they walk north past a motley line of floating houses, shops, some Karl can't tell what they sell, junk all he sees. Broken, torn, soiled, castoffs fished from torpid surf. Things he wouldn't let in his barn. Kids line the walk, eyes vacant, slack faces growing animated at the sound of their approach only to lapse back into their daze seeing their a
Jade eyes still vivid in her mind, Romy turns, clutches the bedclothes to her throat, casting herself back onto the surf of sleep.
To forget.
* * *
The taxi dumps them along the boardwalk where Cherry Beach used to be.
Lost, Karl scans row upon file of houseboats, junks, hundreds of floating shacks bobbing on calm waters behind breakwater rip rap, boulders hanging with every form of plastic flotsam captured by the tide.
Villar passes a hand over the ruby eye and the hack grumbles in Punjabe, roaring away, setting the dock arock.
Sun rising above the hills, they walk north past a motley line of floating houses, shops, some Karl can't tell what they sell, junk all he sees. Broken, torn, soiled, castoffs fished from torpid surf. Things he wouldn't let in his barn. Kids line the walk, eyes vacant, slack faces growing animated at the sound of their approach only to lapse back into their daze seeing their a