The Arizona sun beat the desert like a thousand burning stones. The dry air whistled furtively through the arms of cacti and across rocks jutting out of the gold-red carpet. Sand whipped along these winds, dancing across the landscape, waltzing past the mountains painted with the noonday sun, and skipping through the fences of the only manmade structure for miles.
A way down a road buried by sand and reclaimed by the desert, a car approached. It was an impressive sight; as the sedan's glinting black roof reflected a cloudless sky, the tires threw silt into its wake. The image was of a vehicle driving through a sienna ocean. Dust swirled in the air behind like sea foam or steam after a rain.
The car stopped at the end of a worn, dirt path that led from the building to the road. Down that way the fences rose up like silvery nets, sharp and formidable. They surrounded a large building, as gray as the atmosphere surrounding it, and closed in a quarter-mile-long yard. Guard towers connected each side of fence at the corners. Barbed wire dominated.
The passenger door of the sedan opened, and a woman climbed out. She was young, around her thirties. Dark waves fell past her shoulders, covering a name stitched into her jacket. Her hair was picked up in the wind, catching on the glasses she took out as protection against the unyielding sun.
A moment later, a man opened the driver's side door. He was older than her and much more aged. There was a leather toughness to his face and skin that told you this was a man who had seen more than was his to see. Despite the creases on his forehead and between his eyes, he didn't look tired or worn, but venerable; experienced.
He was dressed in a full military uniform, looking much more official and severe than his female counterpart. She wore worn blue jeans and a rugged, olive fatigue. Her aviators caught ghosts of movement as she impatiently began to unbutton it in the desert heat.
The two stood there for what could have been hours. They would look at each other and say a few words every couple of minutes, check the time, and glance at the gray building at regular intervals. They were waiting for something.
The woman grew impatient. She sighed and leaned on the roof of the car. She watched the sand fly by on the desert wind. She tapped a rhythm with her fingers against the roof. The man wasn't so restless. He leaned back against the door, taking in the setting with the placidity of age.
The attention of the pair was stolen by the fence. Its enormous, wired gates creaked with repentance as they opened on hinges worn by sand. A man emerged from the building, walking briskly toward the open gate. The woman's fingers froze in their tune, her attention to this man taken somewhat like a dog to a tennis ball. She straightened, and quickly, with hands that trembled slightly, ripped off her sunglasses.
The man being watched hadn't noticed them yet. He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked, pausing a moment in his stride to adjust the pack he carried. The woman was agitated. She took a step forward, then paused, as if unsure of whether to wait or to approach.
She made her choice when he looked up. Once he reached the open gate he lifted his chin toward to sky, as if he had been waiting for this moment specifically to savor it in this way. His eyes met the blue sky- bluer than the purest ocean; a cloudless, free, unbidden blue- for a small moment before snapping back down to earth and the two people and the black sedan. He froze upon seeing them, just outside the gates.
The woman's foot hit the road's shoulder with a sandy thud. The sunglasses were left, forgotten, on the ground. She was racing toward the man now- a lithe, powerful, graceful run- her canvas sneakers a black and white blur. Dust billowed in her wake, creating airborne clouds; ghosts left of each footfall.
The two met with enough force to break down a door. He stumbled backwards as her weight hit him with the strength and speed of a gazelle. She wrapped her legs around him and buried herself in his neck. He embraced her back, pressing his face to her hair.
The other man, the driver, watched this heart-wrenchingly goofy scene from the car, hands in pockets, a slick smile on his respectable face. His chin was tilted in a satisfied, almost egotistical way. The smile faded to something more guarded as the two approached; wider, yet contrary to his features. It was drawn back, hidden; a fake smile to cover the real one.
The car left dust swirls in its wake. The noonday sun glared down at the black roof; the desert wind pulled at the strong fence and gray building. The car drove on through the sienna ocean, back the way it came.