Scene One

Sabina scowled at the horizon. There a silhouette walked, whether with a limp or a swagger she couldn’t decide. At the current rate of travel, the silhouette, which she assumed to be human and most likely male, would reach the intersection of Tarmac Drive and the highway at precisely the same moment as she, according to her calculations. The last thing she wanted was to talk to anybody. She preferred the flora and the fauna, the ocean and the sky; that which was and let her be.  She dropped her gaze and watched the gravel and hard dirt pass beneath her feet. The wind billowed her skirt in front of her and long dark hair slapped against her cheeks, temples, and into her eyes. She turned her back to the walking figure and a particularly frigid pacific gust blasted her in the face. She walked backwards slowly, pulling her thick red sweater around her shoulders and over her head, and feeling the way with her feet.  

            At the other end of Tarmac Drive the lopsided old Victorian perched precariously, about 20 yards from the edge of a cliff that dropped down straight to the beach. It shrunk slightly with each step. Now she scowled at the backdrop of clouds and fog that darkened the sea even as sun shone on her back.  On most days in November the fog hung off the coastline until evening, when it came to tuck the shoreline in for the night with thick blanket of fog. But, this morning, dense clouds drove the fog bank to shore, reminding her that the winter’s first major storm was due. 

Not today, please, spare our house, her ritual prayer escaped soundlessly past her lips and took flight towards some nebulous god that Sabina had a little hope existed. There used to be a good 50 yards between the house and the cliff, but at the beginning of the rains just a few years ago the cliff had collapsed, taking a piece of her tiny neighborhood with it.  Since that day, on any day that the sky brooded, Sabina silently prayed the same small prayer.

            Sabina’s skirt clung with wind to the rhythmic rotation of left and right leg. It’s hem, damp with salty dew-soaked dirt from the road, rubbed against the backs or her legs and bare ankles. She shook it free but it only took moments to resume its previous position and subtle torture.  She turned back around, pulled up her skirt, and shook it again with minimal success. She wished she had worn her boots.   

She looked up and sighed. She was still on track to meet with the silhouette at the intersection, even after the backward-walking time delay. Now she could see that the silhouette was a man and seemed to be limping (or swaggering?) at an unnaturally slow pace.  She stopped and watched him reach the crossroad. He stopped, turned, and looked at her. She thought of turning around and going home, but rebuked herself for almost getting nervous like a silly little girl. She took a deep breath and began walking slowly again, returning her eyes to her feet, disappearing and reappearing in turn. She hadn’t looked up when the man’s voice broke the silence.

“Good afternoon, miss.” He waited in vain for her response.  “Sorry to bother you. I’m not from here.” Sabina let her gaze rise, from his black leather shoes, up the seams of his gray wool suit, to his the scruffy hair on his face that resembled a beard and his mouth, which smiled as if he were letting her in on a joke. “I am looking for somewhere to buy some hydrogen peroxide.”

Though she thought it an odd first thing to say to a person, Sabina responded politely, “I would go to Cole’s Pharmacy if I were looking for some hydrogen peroxide.”

“Cole’s. That would be in town somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you’re headed that way, I hope you wouldn’t mind if I join you? I’m good at conversation.”

Sabina lifted her gaze to his, which met hers and bore too deep.  They were friendly eyes, soft and brown, but there was something in them she didn’t trust; the way he looked right into her, invading her space, as if her were looking for something. And she didn’t like the smug look on his face, either.

Town was to the left; to the right was nothing for 10s of miles. “My walk ends here,” she said, “I’m just checking the mail.” She opened the empty mailbox and looked inside.

“No mail on Sunday,” the man said, still standing there with no indication that he planned to leave anytime soon.

“I haven’t checked it in a few days.” Sabina said, though she had checked it the day before.

“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business,” he said, without a hint of smugness. “I’ll just be on my way.” He bowed his head and touched the top of his hat.

Sabina was suddenly ashamed at her lack of manners and quick judgement. “No disrespect taken. I hope you find what your…hydrogen peroxide, Mr…um…?”  The man stood quietly looking at her, leaving the inquiry hanging between them, as he seemed to contemplate.  He looked young to Sabina, though he could not have been much younger than her at 27. “Robin,” he said, finally.  

“Good to meet you, Robin.”

“..and you are?”

“Sarah,” She lied.

“It’s a pleasure, Sarah.”  He smiled again, sincerely, not smugly, and Sabina thought he might be rather handsome behind his scruffy facial hair.  “Thank you, ma’am, for your help,” he said and walked away without looking back.

A man like that is up to no good, she thought, as she looked away. She turned her back to where they had met and began the brisk quarter-mile walk home willing herself not to look back.

A cacophony of honking erupted overheard and Sabina let her mind wander to the sky where two large Vs of Canada Geese flew. Several of the geese relinquished their pilot positions and glided to the back, some because they were very tired and some because they wanted to stay close to those they loved that were tired.

Then Sabina’s mind began to wander its own corridors. The wind blew harder than ever and though she held tight to her sweater, it flapped madly around her so much that had a bull been in the field he might have charged her a matador. Sabina paid no mind, but stared blankly at the pebbles that passed beneath her gaze as unnoticed as the perpetual prickle of restlessness that afflicted her body and mind.

The ocean’s roar eternal knew how to lull her. Life at the edge of the world touched that timeless cycle of eternity. She wanted to let herself be absorbed into it. One day, she dreamed, she would push off the edge; to sail the ocean, or, as she often thought more likely, to drown in it.

She was surprised to find herself already at the foot of the five long, worn steps of her grandmother’s house, home. She took in the familiar scene; delicately carved angels peering from above the entranceway, the peeling paint, moss and lichen that gave the house its marbled feel. Her grandmother appeared in the doorway and frowned down at her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you back, already? And without the liquor?”

“I’m sorry, Maryann,” replied Sabina, respecting Maryann’s distaste for the word “grandma.” Maryann thought Grandma and ugly word that means you are old.  Sabina thought Maryann was old. Maryann also hated the word mother because that word means you are a slave.

“I can get some tomorrow.”  Sabina said looking at the woman standing above her, arms crossed, not sure if it was safe to go inside or if Maryann had more to say to her.  

“I saw you talking to that transient.” She eyed Sabina suspiciously, “What were you talking about.”

 “He asked directions.  That’s why I came back. I didn’t want to walk with him.“

“Smart girl, Sabina. That man is no good.” Maryann paused, studying Sabina. “Why don’t you wear that sun hat I gave you? Don’t you care about your skin? If you get any darker, people are gonna to think you escaped from the reservation.” Sabina pulled a leaf from the Lupine that grew next to the porch and, in the silence that ensured, systematically tore it to shreds, letting the pieces fall onto the ground.  “You need to get the liquor, Sabina. I’m tired of drinking all this tea. Something’s been trying to get me. I don’t want to get pneumonia, again.  Jesus, I was so sick last summer, I can’t belie-”

            Sabina sprinted up the steps. “Sorry, Maryann,” she interrupted cheerily as she rushed past her and into the house. “I’ll go into town in a little bit, after lunch. I promise.” She closed the door behind her, thwarting what she knew would be another excruciatingly detailed conversation about Maryann’s health history. She could put up with most any of Maryann’s ramblings, but not that.

She crossed the neatly organized, yet dusty and extraordinarily cluttered living room and creaked up the stairs toward her bedroom, past old family photos bordering large paintings: the melancholy impressionist and surrealism by her grandmother, and the soft classic nudes by her grandfather.

Sabina was always sure to avoid looking at the painting that hung directly at the top of the stairs, the one of her grandmother, large and naked in a forest. Her father had hated the painting, but Maryann refused to take it down. It was her testament of love from her late husband, the last thing he had painted. So it stayed there at the top of the stairs, as if it were their destination.

Sabina entered her messy, yet sparsely furnished room. Magazines, books, letters and photos sat in piles on the desk and the floor. She pulled off her skirt and threw it at the dresser, drawers are various stages of closure. It landed partly in the top drawer and cascaded over the drawer beneath, leaving the grimy hem of her skirt toeing the misshapen pile of bedclothes in the wide-open third drawer. She remembered how delighted she had been when her father had come home with the beautiful sky blue dresser. Now it looked as tired and worn as she felt.

Besides her dresser, desk and bed, the rest of her things lived in piles and stacks, in no particular place.  She had not yet learned that the more things she acquired, the more places she would need to keep them. The floor was big. The floor was easy.

 She walked across it and let herself fall onto her bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling.  She liked to imagine images in the cracks. Every few years she would transform the images into a new story by turning the bed like a dial.

Her body lay in its restlessness, her morning journey circumvented. As she considered how she ought to spend the rest of the morning, her hand slid casually across her stomach and beneath her waistband where it lay for a moment before probing the soft flesh around her clitoris. She thought of Henry Fonda for a moment, but worried of the immorality of having dirty thoughts about people without their permission, as if it were a violation on some spiritual plane. She searched more, a string of faces and bodies moved across her mind’s eye like a filmstrip.  Robin’s face appeared, startling her, freezing the rhythm of her hand. She frowned, and shoved him from her mind, as one might shove someone out their bedroom door. She hastily created a lover from scratch, some big, masculine type.  Sometimes she was herself trapped beneath his weight, and sometimes she imagined she was him.  When she finished, she took a nap.