Intertidal

Spirits.

Toria doesn’t speak German, but no language is necessary. Her voice melodious with children or men, she tilts her head and orders our drinks. Gin-tonic, always. Lights sweep the room, shading us ocean-deep. The barman leans in and whispers in her ear.  

Starfish.

Toria is mercurial. “I’ve spent so much money from the divorce. This year’s been a sex sabbatical,” she says, listing the men she has screwed. Reflections from a disco ball dapple her face. ‘They complain that women just lie there,’ she says, rattling the ice cubes in her glass. ‘They call them starfish.’

There’s a hairline crack running through her. One knock in the wrong place, and she will smash into pieces.

“I want to dance. You coming?”

I shake my head. The polished floor gleams, hard as a frozen lake. Toria slips into the heaving bodies peppered with lights.

Mining.

Toria’s father is Cuban. She found a paper on his research into the copper mines in Santiago. She could contact him but prefers her memories: a red ukulele, strummed high on his chest; the gap between his front teeth. Toria doesn’t talk about him, but he’s in her long limbs and sallow skin. Her hair swings and resettles after every spin on the dance floor. At rest she is shop-mannequin-calm, but when she moves, she’s feral. 

White.

In the ultraviolet light, Toria’s teeth are arctic. She pushes her way to our table, her arms outstretched. I resist. Our hands separate. Hers are clammy, mine are cold. She disappears, swallowed into dry ice and the cloying smell of Red Bull. I will go home without her tonight.

Wild.

When I return, Jakob is writing, the crown of his head illuminated by the reading lamp. “Where’s Toria?” he asks.

I slump on the sofa and rub the sore red line on my feet.

“She picked up some guy.”

Jakob massages the bridge of his nose. “She has something restless. Something wild.”

His eyes catch mine, and he puts on his glasses, rereading what he’s written.

“I can be, too,” I say, biting his neck. He laughs and pulls me onto his lap. I want to sleep, but Jakob’s words flit in the air, trapped birds, feathers scattered, wings beating. She’s wild. Restless. Animal.

Jakob will know how wild I am. How wild I have been.

Intertidal.

A halo of light shudders on the ceiling, and a wisp of frigid air licks my skin, my arms and legs splayed starfish-wide.