9

What’s the most beautiful thing you ever witnessed?’ she used to ask, when we lay curled together in her bay window, playing opposites. ‘I mean, a moment.’

I always said it was the mating of glaciers. ‘And you, what’s yours?’

She never hesitated. ‘The way you looked at me, the first time, standing down in the sand on Baker Beach in your trousers while I sat sunning myself on the rocks. You compared me to a calla lily. That was the moment.’

We played differently now.

%%The month before we left, I heard her on the phone. I seemed to have come in at the end.

‘. . . it boils down to. One person in the mood when the other isn’t?’

There was a pause while, I assumed, the listener spoke. Farhana shook her head. ‘I’m not only talking about sex. Sex is just a metaphor.’

I expected her to elaborate. A long silence instead.

Finally, she exhaled. ‘Yep, that’s what I mean. Uh-huh.’

What did she mean?

‘I mean, that day on the beach.’

Now I feared I could guess.

It had happened the other way more. I mean, my wanting sex while she didn’t. It had happened the other way most of my life. Like a forgiving puppy, I bounced back up again at the merest hint of encouragement. Until recently.

She was saying, ‘Women still suppress it, I know, nothing worse than letting go just to fall on your face. Though letting him decide, you know, what’s hot, maybe that’s worse.’ Silence. ‘Sure, I have, many times.’ Silence. ‘Uh-uh.’ Silence. ‘No. He doesn’t.’

I don’t what? And then panic: it was me she was talking about?

‘Wes? Oh sure, yeah. It bothers him a lot.’

What?

I slammed the door. The door to the house with the five-sided bay window where she now spent more time with her phone. The door in the alcove where the gold rings of the columns now looked prosthetic, like gold teeth on a poor man from Tajikistan.

Why wasn’t I aroused by her lately?

Was it our departure? Ours. I told myself I was at peace with her coming too. More importantly, I was excited about what I’d do there, with or without her, and this had renewed interest in my work. I’d bought a Nikon digital camera to go with my beloved F4, bought a 300mm lens and 20mm extension tube. I spent my free time photographing small fry. A California poppy. Farhana’s nipple. The rainbow in a dragonfly’s wing.

I suppose the image of the magnified nipple and the blurred contours of the breast preoccupied me more than she did, but then, she wasn’t in a very preoccupying state of mind. Always on the phone, always talking about him, her work, her return. Her breasts. She liked me photographing them. Breasts that had begun to stir me only in the frame. At least I didn’t get off on images of other women.

That day on the beach? It excited her, seeing herself magnified. And colour-filtered. Image pre-processing, not to be confused with post-processing, to enhance maximum photorealism. To make the infeasible feasible. She lay on her stomach; I drizzled sand on the mound of her buttocks. It cascaded down her curves, featherlike, matching her skin tone. When we viewed the images together, the texture of the sandspill on her flesh made her wet. We were nestled between the same cluster of rocks where I’d found her the first time, on the far side of the cypress grove. There were others around, though none in our nest, or so we thought. She rolled back onto her stomach, raised her hips high into my groin. The sand scrubbed my erection. I heard the figure behind me, his breathing. I could feel it on my neck. I assumed she mistook it for mine or would have stopped. There was no way she could have seen his shadow on her spine.

Later, we both lay on our stomachs a long time. When we eventually got dressed, we didn’t speak of it. He came when I did. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed.