The waves washed ashore with the pulsing tenor roar. The palms swung left to right in the treetops like the locks of a teenage girl. Dry and hot, white sand shifted patterns as if they were sheets on a slept-in mattress. The sky, blue and pockmarked with cotton candy clouds, not a trace of rain in them.. Transparent, weightless crabs scurried from side to side on the beach in synchrony with each other, as if they were a school of fish, a flock of flying birds. And high above, in the distance, a lone man stood, naked but for his white bathing suit, in his tai-chi position, his eyes closed, breathing in the salt air and feeling the warm rays of the sun on his shoulders.
Lying in his Baltimore bed that sleepless November morning, the steady patter of rain on his slate roof drumming its beat, Charlie did his best to transport himself into paradise, to take himself out of himself, to slow his racing heart, to lubricate his dry mouth, the salve the dull nausea that consumed him, to squelch the incessant refrain from Carmen in his head, and to take his mind away from Michelle and her straight, blonde hair, vanished since February.
From one second to the next, transforming himself to paradise, he waited for thoughts of Michelle and Carmen to evaporate, for the cold Maryland rain to stop, for his anxiety to abate. But Charlie knew they were stronger than he.
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