I wrap my hands around my tea. One of the boxes from this morning’s delivery has already been cut open by someone else, and I reach over and grab out a copy of the Chronicle. I have a few minutes before I need to get to my chores. Right now, tea and a paper – a morning crafted for happiness.
And I’m at work.
Life is sometimes truly good.
A sip, and the tea is warm on my tongue. With a jostle of the newsprint page the day’s headlines leer up at me in bold black. Single-phrase proclamations, shouting their way into my attention. Speaking of the weather, the traffic, the political climate. Some of it interesting, most of it routine.
Ordinary.
Normal.
That’s usually how it is, just before the world changes.
Looking back, staring into the past from all that my present has become, I can honestly say that the world we inhabit is a mystery. I’ve never in all my life had to come more to grips with that fact than now. A mystery, and a puzzle.
I met her on Tuesday morning at 8.25 a.m.; I remember the timing exactly. The contours of my watch’s face, the position of its hands, I remember them in the same way poets remember the flowers on hillsides or the scents in the breeze on the days they experience love. Impossible to forget.
I’d been told a little about her. I was familiar with the kinds of details shared about individuals on a printed page, cutting a lifetime of reality down to basic facts: the length and colour of her hair, her height. Weight, at least approximately. As if these things mattered. Yet they were there to be had, and I had them in hand as I first walked in to meet her. Everything a man could possess to go on.
Except her. The experience of her simply couldn’t be compared to what I’d imagined. Or anything I’d ever experienced before. She was altogether more.
The first thing I noticed were her eyes. I’d never encountered eyes like those. I’ll never forget how they first moved me.
I think she knew, even then, that I saw something in them. That the sight of her captivated me. But, despite their potency, their vivid hue, it wasn’t their colour that captivated me. There are only so many colours eyes can take, and I’ve never found the variations to be all that engaging – whatever she or others might think.
It was their intensity. God, staring into them was like beholding a cry that had been given physical form. Her eyes were her plea, and they seemed to hold, just behind the shine of their lenses, an entire world that was screaming to be set free.
And then we spoke, and reality began to fall apart.
The change today came in an instant. My headache had been getting worse, despite the tea. It was still early, but the throbbing at my temples was becoming more than a mere distraction. It’s like this too often, though, and I’d already swallowed two pills to combat the customary. I’d be a Tylenol addict if they didn’t tell me it would melt my liver into goo, so I’m an ibuprofen addict instead, popping two or three at a time throughout the day, for the little good they do me.
I’d downed them in a single swallow, then set about my morning tasks. They hadn’t taken long, and the papers – which I’d already skimmed through – were now racked and the latest editions of the magazines placed prominently on their shelves. The boxes they’d come in were flattened and out back with the recycling, and I’d managed a handful of sales to the business types who wanted a paper to go with their croissant as they headed off to the office.
And then I was alone. The bliss of the job. I’d opened my laptop at a moment when the ebb and flow of the shop had been mostly flow, and called up a familiar selection of news feeds. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in this little shop in this little city that makes me so keen on keeping up with the news. It hardly matters to me, most of it, but I read it with diligence.
My headache notwithstanding, I refocused my eyes on the computer screen. Minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty, had passed since I’d started my usual scanning, and thus far the online media wasn’t proving itself much more enticing than the day’s print versions I’d already perused.
The headlines were hardly works of art. I know a lot of effort goes into them by the poor saps whose job it is to dream up one-liners that make the boredom-inducing sound enticing. But effort isn’t always enough to breed interest.
STOCKS TRADE DOWN – BROKERS KEEP HOPES UP.
That, in the journalistic world, is apparently what passes for catchy. The down and the up; directional contrapposto. Whoever wrote that got full marks in Journalism 101.
BART TRAIN DELAYS THROW PASSENGER PATIENCE OFF THE RAILS.
This attempt to convey poignantly uninteresting content about the Bay Area Rapid Transit system under the guise of a catchy tagline – it’s an art. Like a record producer fronting an album with one catchy tune and filling the remaining eleven tracks with artless crap. By the time anyone hears them, the’ve already bought the record. (Though I can hear Tim Cook yelling at me now: ‘No one “buys a record” any more, Amber. It’s all about streaming, about personalized subscription!’ then smiling seductively and somehow charging me another $9.99 a month.)
CRACKS IN BRIDGE DIVIDE COUNTY OFFICIALS.
I’d paused at that one, tapping to see the paragraph-length summary. The concrete of a sixty-year-old bridge outside Napa, in our neighbouring county to the east, was suddenly the cause of ‘grave concern’ amongst the county administration (note the adjective ‘grave’ in a story that might involve tragedy: I read enough to know that’s strong copy), despite the fissure in the concrete having been visible for more than three decades.
I tapped my keyboard again, my waning interest spent.
Then, without any deliberate intention, my glance wandered upwards. A few headlines above the one I’d clicked, less than an inch away from scrolling off the top of the screen, a different caption grabbed me.
I can’t identify precisely how it did it – how it affected me. It was a spark, and it launched a fire in my spine that shot through me like badly wired electrics. Before I’d even taken full account of the words, I could feel the voltage in my head change.
I shoved my tea aside with a jolt, slammed the palm of my hand against the spacebar to stop the feed scrolling off the screen, and glued my eyes to the headline. I was barely aware that I had all but stopped breathing. My eyes didn’t want to focus.
The words were simple and unadorned.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON SHORELINE. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
And there it was, that buzzing at the surface of my scalp again. Electrics. An immediate tension in my chest.
There was nothing in the headline that should have caused such a reaction. It presented none of the witty word play of the other titles (wit, I have often observed, is generally disapproved of in writing about death, since almost nobody successfully navigates the line between banter and respectability). It was unfussy. A simple statement of fact.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON SHORELINE. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
I read it again, and again, and gradually became aware that my spine had gone rigid. I’m sure there was a thin film of sweat between my fingertips and the etched