Free Scavenger Reef by Laurence Shames

something went wrong. Nina had the
sudden certainty that she was holding not her husband's arm but an
empty sleeve. When she looked up they were standing at a broad
intersection. Many traffic lights were flashing and the wind was
blowing from everywhere at once. Augie was now standing outside his
coat. He was naked, pale as egg, and skin was blowing off of him,
his face was distorted and flesh was being stretched and torn away
like leaves from a tree in the first November storm.
    Nina sat up groaning, then leaned back on
her elbows. She brought a hand to her throat and felt her racing
pulse. She poured some water from her nightstand carafe. A late
moon had risen and a dim ivory light was spilling through the thin
curtains. It put a soft gleam on the pine-cone bedposts, and the
gleam reminded Nina of the delicious and secure fatigue of
childhood. After a while she went back to sleep.
    When she dreamed again, the dream was
gentler. She was on a beach, sitting at the water's edge, letting
wet sand sift through her fingers. The sun was hot on her
shoulders, the water so flat she could see the place where the
earth curved underneath it. Augie was behind her, lying in a
hammock. At least she trusted that he was: She could only see his
leg, pegged in the sand like a bird's leg, his toes faintly
wiggling just below the surface. She was happy. She looked down the
beach and saw a black man selling coconuts. He was wearing a big
hat of woven palm. She wanted to buy a coconut for her husband. She
wanted to surprise him, to see him drink the rich milk through a
straw. But there was a dilemma. She was happy as she was, knowing
Augie's toes were wiggling. She would be happier sitting next to
him and giving him a coconut, but she feared that if she reached
for greater happiness she might lose the happiness she had. She
glanced up the beach, then back at the hammock. She gestured toward
the man with the coconuts. Then her nerve failed and she woke up
just enough to break the dream, to finish it without an ending.
    She rolled over and smoothed an imagined
crease in her pillowcase. Her leg twitched once, she cleared her
throat, and some time later her husband appeared to her once
more.
    He stood before her looking very old and
thin, as if he'd been dead for many years. His hair was pure white
and hung down past his shoulders. He had a beard dry as tinsel on
his sunken cheeks, and his cheeks were not ashen but burned the
color of rosewood. He wore a threadbare shirt, a pauper's shirt,
and on his shoulder perched a parrot.
    "Nina," said her husband. "I've come
home."
    The widow smiled sadly on her pillow. Augie
had never before appeared in such a ghostlike way, never seemed so
old, so low, so fragile. Yet his deep eyes in the moonlight seemed
at peace. "Augie," she murmured. She froze his image for a moment,
nestled it into her shrine of recollection, then blinked herself
awake.
    Or thought she did. The apparition did not
vanish. The widow tried to shake herself out of a sleep that was
stubborn as memory, stubborn as love, struggled upward as from a
dive where one has gone too deep, but still her husband's image
loomed before her. She was dreaming now that she was sitting up,
looking past the dead man's tinsel hair at the familiar curtains
moving with the breeze, though she knew this could not be.
    "Whiskey sour," squawked Fred the parrot.
"Pretty Nina."
    "Augie?" said his wife.
    He sat down on the bed. He'd grown so light
he barely made a dent. His wife reached out a trembling hand to
touch him. The parrot fluttered in protest and moved to its
master's other shoulder. "I'm very tired," said the painter. "Very
tired."
    He swiveled slowly on his shrunken hips, let
himself fall backward, and was sleeping in an instant. The bird
jumped onto its bedside perch and sat there preening in the
moonlight.
     

part two
12
    Nina Silver lay awake the rest of the night,
afraid that if she blinked, her husband would again be gone. She
held back from touching