Now she tugged him toward it, something new at the corners of her eyes, a tightness. Gulls scattered as they came hand in hand up the beach to gaze into shadow beyond empty doorways. The sand had subsided, allowing the structure’s facade to cave in, walls gone, leaving the floors of the three levels hung like huge shingles from bent, rusted tendons of finger-thick steel, each one faced with a different color and pattern of tile.

HOTEL PLAYA DEL M was worked in childlike seashell capitals above one concrete arch. “Mar,” he said, completing it, though he’d removed the microsoft.

“It’s over,” she said, stepping beneath the arch, into shadow.

“What’s over?” He followed, the straw basket rubbing against his hip. The sand here was cold, dry, loose between his toes.

“Over. Done with. This place. No time here, no future.”

He stared at her, glanced past her to where rusted bed-springs were tangled at the junction of two crumbling walls.

“It smells like piss,” he said. “Let’s swim.

The sea took the chill away, but a distance hung between them now. They sat on a blanket from Turner’s room and ate, silently. The shadow of the ruin lengthened. The wind moved her sun-streaked hair.

“You make me think about horses,” he said finally.

“Well,” she said, as though she spoke from the depths of exhaustion, “they’ve only been extinct for thirty years.”

“No,” he said, “their hair. The hair on their necks, when they ran.”

“Manes,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. “Fuck it.” Her shoulders began to heave. She took a deep breath She tossed her empty Carta Blanca can down the beach.

“It, me, what’s it matter?” Her arms around him again. “Oh, come on, Turner Come on”

And as she lay back, pulling him with her, he noticed something, a boat, reduced by distance to a white hyphen, where the water met the sky.