Guitar strings, nylon, strummed savagely, then gently, then the pure, resigned voice of yesterdays…Beauty in that submission. Minutes left before my ascension. Moments left, and

Almost there. I’m almost there.

West tossed his guttering cigarette into the gulf. “You’re a smart kid. You can handle it.”

The author’s hands gripped the guardrail. Palms pressed: texture of the names carved beneath. Fingers clawed down, nails on treated pine. Smell of brine. The wind brought with it fragments of the hurricane. A crack and lightning flared behind the veils of approaching rain, fell to black, uneasy, uncertain in that night. Music intruded from behind.

“It’s true?”

Benton sat between the railing and the overflowing garbage bin: popcorn boxes, beer cans, empty suntan lotion bottles, half-eaten barbecue, smokes, rubbers, detritus and evidence that people were here to play, to drink, to fuck, to burn. The shadow of the overhead pier lamp fell over her face. Arms draped around her knees, she focused on something in the gulf, something approaching with vicious silence and wind. “It’s true.” Voice barely audible, Paul didn’t know if she was answering or meditating. He felt what she saw behind blue eyes: the physics of immortality, the intersection of ineffable paths, the tangents, the blessings. He is knowing but he knew he wasn’t.

“How’s the book going?”

“It’s going.”

“Yeah.” West studied the weathered planks below. “It would’ve been okay for a while longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s going to happen in just under six months. There’ll be a crossover. Something’s going to happen in this When that shouldn’t.”

“And you’re here to tell me that it’s my fault, and I have to help you fix it?”