God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name...
This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin
It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say...
-Your Ex-Lover is Dead, by the Stars. Irishais made a marvelous soundtrack to everything Quistis and Seifer a few years ago, and this song just sticks with me for various reasons.
It wasn't that she was surprised to see him on the shore that day.
It just surprised her that it had taken so long.
Seifer Almasy fell into age the same way some folks fall into a river. Some tumbled right in, others tried too hard to hold on to the rope swing, and others still crept their way into the water, dragging reluctant heels in the sand until their buddies eventually shoved them in. They all ended up wet, and with him, he was wetter than most. He was a jumper. She had always known that. He probably didn't even take that deep breath before he jumped. That would have taken far too much time and he never did have any patience.
So to see him collecting shells that morning?
Not surprising.
It had taken him sixty years, but he would be damned before he allowed anyone to beat him to the beach on the day that he had chosen to collect shells.
He skipped a particularly fine conch. Still green from the sea, in that ghostly way of creatures that hid from the sun, it would have been perfect for any serious shell collector. But he ignored it. A scallop went into his plastic grocery bag, then a bit of bleached driftwood, a few chipped bits of pink and pearly white and darkest ocean blue, but never the conch.
He had a beard. That small fact was more amusing than it likely should have been. Wild and tangled and probably teeming with bread crumbs and bacteria, it was still impressive. He looked a little wild himself, stooped over the sand like some ancient soothsayer consulting the grains for divine wisdom, but it suited him. His hair was just as bad, long and unkempt and completely appalling. She was a little shocked to see that it had simply turned gray. It wasn't the white of the foam lapping at his ankles like she imagined it. It was simply the dull flat gray of a sky in winter.
He limped slightly, not from any injury, she thought, but from sitting too long in front of the television. Not that she would ever know that. She knew she would never ask. There was no deformity to his limbs, no defect that she could see, but he limped all the same, carrying his weight as if it were some demon that spoke to him and made him regret ever learning how to walk in the first place.
Tourists had littered the beach so much that shells and other treasures were difficult to find. Bottle caps rusting from the saline air, soda cans, shards of forest green and clouded crystal glass, greasy burger wrappers, inflatable swimming rings in various animal shapes, all popped from jagged unseen projections, all deflated in the same sad way, he sorted through them all to find his shells.
It wasn't as if they were even worth collecting. Most seemed to be broken, nearly all were small and unimpressive. The trash had more color than anything he selected, especially the blue glass. It was beautiful, though it shamed her to admit it.
He adjusted his grip on the bag and leaned back for an instant. It was so easy to forget just how tall he was, especially when he had his nose to the ground like some hound searching for a blood trail. The boy she taught used to tower over her, force his way into her personal space, mock her, intimidate her. The man on the shore? She doubted that he would even raise his voice to complain about his cable bill.
Then again, the seagulls never approached him and no child would run past him to catch a wayward kite or frisbee. They veered from him like a stream around a stone, then continued to play when they were out of his reach. It might have been the beard that frightened them, but she didn't think so.
She reached up and touched her own hair. It was once glorious, all satin and sunlight and summer warmth. Her husband loved her hair and was thrilled when each of their daughters had the same sunny locks as their mother, but he was long dead and her daughters were all married and making families of their own. Why, in only four months she would be a grandmother again. It was only appropriate that her hair be brittle and faded. It was still as thick as it ever was, but that was little consolation when she thought of how it used to be. Now it was simply more of a disappointment to maintain.
She wondered if he had ever married. He had always been so handsome, so reckless. Dime store novelists broke their brains trying to create heroes half as appealing, and none of them knew to just look his way for inspiration. Had he any children? Had he ever taken them to the beach to search for shells? To make sand castles and laugh when the tide devoured them? To chase waves and run from the sea when she became angry at their games? Her daughters loved the beach. Did he have a daughter that loved it as much as her own?
He picked up a shell and considered it for a moment, turning it to the light, weighing it in his palm, up and down, up and down, then dropped it into his bag. The poor bag looked as if it would break any time now and she wondered if he would bother picking up what fell from the torn plastic if it did indeed rip.
But of course he would. Once you were chosen by Seifer Almasy, you were his for life.
She raised her hand to hail him, to tell him that she had thought of him so often that it seemed he had never been truly gone, to say a thousand things she would have said if she had ever had the courage of youth when she was young, then pulled it back to her side as if she were adjusting her sarong. She turned to page 215 and continued reading, just as she had done every Saturday on the same beach for so many years.
It was better to not disturb him.