The Missing Clothes

by Meiko Ko

Someone must have mastered the disappearing trick, because Erin lost her clothes. A long-sleeved maroon jersey with a white neckband and a pair of cycling knickers. Both spandex material, elastic and comfortable, often she’d worn them they weren’t new—who’d want them? Only ten minutes ago they were there. On the wooden bench in the public restroom by the seaside. But as though magic dust had been sprinkled on them, poof, they disappeared. In the bath stall where she was standing, she looked around. Above her, against a small, gritty window, a cloud of sunlight mixed with mist. It wasn’t cold before, when the water showered on her, now, she shivered.

Then she held still. Shivering seemed wrong, just what the taker wanted, when it arrived to carry away her clothes. Unless it was a pair of armless hands, there was no way of knowing if it was he or she. She could do as much destruction as a he, out of coincidence came here to the middle of nowhere but a forlorn seaside, as if all the world’s time were sands under feet, as though a pair of knickers, size S and thirty odd dollars, was worth the trip to steal. Why not the department store or second hand shop down the street. It might be someone desperately needing clothes. A fugitive swam up the shore, in the year now 2020. If not, what else could it be…Erin paused her thoughts. To think more, shape into language those thoughts would be an unforgiveable superstition, of a real, intentional situation that wanted to see someone wearing no clothes, like an emperor’s game that wasn’t a child’s doing. No—none could reach this shore alone. But nudity as talk, as a mouth with a fleshy tongue, whispering, “I’d love to see…”

Art. Or a public experimental breast sighting. The wretched echoes of a peeping tom talk, in this bath hall rarely anyone came. Since antiquity women watchers had been alive and healthy, their eyes never tire. He might be shy, wearing swimming trunks. Searching for material to ponder, “How did women actually behave, when bare as a baby?” Fingers on chin, tongue clucking, how surreal would it be, would she crawl on the floor and say, “Please,” or would “Eureka” be next on the tongue. He might be clothed, what she wore—a rainbow bikini, bandeau or microkini, or feathers—didn’t matter. Clothes just a seduction, if her missing ones were proof. When bra prices rise would be a glorious moment: “You don’t need them!” Renamed liberty, many convinced, but whatever that word meant, it didn’t reach Erin. She liked her bras. In the least no quarrels with these tiny pieces of cloth, breasts not her targets. The maroon jersey had insets, the factory women followed orders.

For the past three months she’d come here. Summer’d soon be over, but every Saturday she’d been here to swim. Then clean up in this public restroom with its rusting tap and yellowing tiles. So far so good, her clothes were always there. The city was too much. In the winter still crowded, people huddled in thick wool, summer a sweaty hassle everyone trying to get the most out of it, fighting for the sun. Erin would cycle here, at the north end of the stretch of beach there were still sunbathers, swimmers, the young and old out together at the pier with shops and burger kiosks, but far out here about six miles south it quieted out. None seemed to conceive of coming here, the stretch of sands banked against the shimmering turquoise seas, clumps of marram beach grasses swaying and this deserted public bathroom she’d found. Underwater she did not use goggles. Walls of gray water as she swam deep, bubble crowns and occasionally a yellow leaf-like thing floating past. When she had enough she headed up. The cool pressure of watery skin a sheath like a snake’s, then a break like a giant soda cracker’s, a crash of sea air. The cries of seagulls heard like a dozen hungry puppies, the sea’s raw scent. The wet pale sun retreating from the blue, a bright yolk again.

Now she looked at herself as she never had when her clothes waited for her to wear. Her body wanting to go mute, and hesitantly, as someone feeling in the dark for a switch or like the probing feelers of an insect, she reached out her hand. On the tiled pillar just outside the bath stall was a steel hook she’d hung her towel. A Cabana beach with lemon stripes. It was there. Not vanished like her clothes, there might not be a taker after all. Her fingertips felt the relief on the nap of the towel and grabbed it quickly as though it was a lifeline. Caught it, like a buoy thrown from a pier, what kindness was playing on her now, if there were no ghosts on earth or any magic master of the disappearing act he could be a merciful one, “What could she do with a towel anyway?” Someone leaving a piece of her own property of a towel as her final wear and salvation from nudity, throwing it back at her like a treat to a dog, “Why don’t you beg me for it? You see, there’s a theory on nudity . . . ”

Erin shut the dirt-streaked shower curtain. She towel dried. When the curtain was pulled back again the towel was snug around her. The corner tucked in and the lemon stripes running vertical. People would hate her and call her a spy. They were the old and ugly and bitter. She’d squeezed her hair dry, the long straight brown curled into a knot like the shell of a snail’s. If race was a question, there was no answer, the hair was dyed. Still in the bath stall, she exhaled. Now she was ready to find out where her clothes had disappeared to, the maroon jersey and knickers she’d biked in, on the beach face she’d remove them and set them on her sports bag, swam out in the tech suit she wore underneath. They were still there when she came out of the seas, she’d taken them and her bike to the public bath hall, gone in and set them on the wooden bench. Her shower had been at most fifteen minutes. Clad in a towel now vulnerable, she went to the bench, to find out if her eyes were deceiving her. Her clothes weren’t there, her sports bag was gone too.

She sat down on the spot where her clothes had been. The bench faced the white-tiled wall, on top, through the transom windows, the afternoon’s light shone. This morning she’d gotten up at seven and left her apartment at eleven, by now it should be three. Soon dusk would replace the noon light, along with the chills of the summer’s evening. The public restroom seemed to dim, like fear spreading, thin and diffused, more and more this seemed to her like a prison, like a locked room situation. “What could you do with a towel anyway?”—this sentence repeated in her mind, owner of the voice unknown. Hers or his, her things were gone, and should be in a pair of hands that had a body. Most of the world’s explanations came through a throat. That taking someone’s clothes was a lousy act, like stealing keys. Not a great thing not small either, clothes the key to bodies, breasts locks to a heart. Key to a room, apartment, this public bath hall now locking her in. A light form of kidnapping by cowards, instead of putting on gloves and masks to conceal identity, instead of renting a car and removing the number plate, driving up to where a woman was on the sidewalk and going for her waist, “Get the fuck in.” “What could you do with a towel anyway?” Drive to a shed or apartment, lock her in a room. No need to wear clothes in there too.

In the case this wasn’t human work—not the first time machines wanted people to sleep, dream, people obeying or wanting to collect human dreams, not sure what for except its only consequence was death—Erin might have entered a mentalscape. Not hell yet, but a place exactly like this public restroom, as real as the wooden slats under her hard bottom felt, her feet bare on the sandy floor, its tiles the same milky white as those of the pillar and bath stall. Her shoes, a pair of black Nikes, were gone too. As though her worlds had been swapped without her notice, this morning she’d woken at seven and made her bed, in the shaft of a kitchen cooked an egg, sunny side up. At ten the cellphone rang. And it was the longest conversation she ever had, as wide and heavy as the seas, it was now two in the afternoon. Or the swim had been real. She’d not picked up the phone call, had left her apartment and rode her bike here as she did every Saturday, each alike this Saturday blending in with the previous, and that yellow leaf-like thing floating past she’d seen in a blur when she swam had been a sea snake. The waters cool as plastic films and she enwrapped, before her head crashed through the surface of the seas like a glass door, the scent of salt iron-like and the seagulls free, in their blue home of a sky. Whoever attempted to capture them was wrong, whoever sullied them, called them spies, as did people who did others wrong and blamed animals for what they could not own up—who was it that took her clothes?

And during the fifteen minutes, just this short amount of time, after she left the waves of the seas and went into the public restroom, set her clothes and bag on the bench then into the bath stall for fresh water to clean out the sands and salt, just within these quick flashes of minutes, the world could have changed. Earth had opened and the public bath hall fallen in. It was not the same place after she shut the faucet and pulled back the shower curtain.

How to get out of this place now, get back into her clothes like they were skin lost and as she wondered it seemed her actions were already determined: (A) Going on her haunches to check if her clothes were underneath, half thinking that a stray cat she had not noticed might jump out of nowhere. That didn’t work, no, the maroon jersey wasn’t there, not her bag too. She saw only the bench legs, the metal racks underneath—the entire bench was see-through like those of the locker rooms in high schools or swimming pools, with poles upright and an adjoining horizontal rail of hooks, her things were not there. Erin stood up, tightened the knot of the Cabana towel.

Every Saturday she’d come, swam, showered, dressed and left, blind and unseeing till this weekend, when she opened her eyes like an infants’ and saw. Across the bench was a row of lockers, which formed a wall that sectioned the public restroom into two, stopping short to leave the length of a doorway. They were cube boxes already disused, the gray doors corroded and many half-open. (B) Erin checked them one by one. Her clothes and bag might be in one of the lockers and if found that would open a new question that’d haunt her for the rest of her week, winter or life—who had shifted her things when she was sure she set them on the bench? But this question need not be answered so long as she could have her clothes back now, she checked the lockers beginning from the top right corner. She pulled the handle, it was empty. Only dust and gray metal inside, no shred of her clothing. She checked the next cube, whose door was open. The next and next—shut and shut, then the column beside—open, shut, shut, open, open. Each door had a different answer, like the platen of a typewriter with the paper writing yes, no, yes, no, until she reached the final cube. Her clothes were not in any but the search calmed her, she’d almost forgotten what she started out searching for and did not panic when she couldn’t find her bag.

(C) Check if her bike was still there. She went to the back of the lockers through the doorway, where there was large slab of mirror old and decrepit as though moss had sprouted on it, patches of black cotton blooming over one’s reflected face, and below it a rectangular length of a sink with a number of faucets. Across it was the door out of the public restroom, with its latch broken and never locked—anyone could come in. She’d parked her bike, a Cannondale women’s tango with a turquoise frame, leaning it against the wall. Erin stepped outside, onto the cement footpath, half-expecting her bike gone when it was the most expensive among her possessions, trumping the jersey or shoes or bag by the hundreds, whew she breathed, when she saw her bike still there. The road to ride home was quiet and to her right, flanked by evergreen trees. She saw no one. Then another odd sensation like wind blew up her spine through a blow whistle, a warning, if it was a thief her bike wouldn’t survive. It should be gone, the easiest now to ride off with all her belongings. Become her. Maybe he didn’t like to ride a bicycle, or she had no legs, or they’d run all the way six miles back to the pier where the hotdogs and French fries were sold.

The forest of evergreen trees along the footpath gave no human sound but for the rustling of leaves, the crawls of juniper tangled beside tall and stately trunks. To her left the sea laid as before, a spread of sparkling serenity rolling in waves towards the horizon where sunlight shone thin. In the flatness, she saw no one. Could the taker be in the forest now? This was becoming absurd—a person heading into the forest with her spandex clothes and only twenty dollars in her backpack, was it worth the while? Erin, in the towel, arms crossed, feet bare, thought: This was entirely forgivable if it were a bear’s great work. This was not forgivable if it were a greedy animal, one who liked a woman’s jersey and knickers and tech suit to tear them up with its sharp fox-like teeth, after sniffing it for some minutes, what a waste of the factory women’s work. That man wasn’t an animal was true and not true, if he’d like to be dangerous and inanimal he might want to assassinate an evil president, not just sniff a woman’s paltry bag pack like an ignorant bear who could tell time, counting to Saturday and entering the restroom knowing it was the hour she would be there. And in ten minutes left swiftly with her things without foot or paw prints or evidence of thievery.

She went back into the public restroom. “What can you do with a towel anyway?” echoed. On the bench she sat again, now if thoughts worked the way machines and engines did, like a loop well-played and no amiss, she ran an imagination through her head. She could still ride home. Not a problem so long as the towel hung obediently on her body for the two hours’ ride. Nudity, even if a lauded, applauded concept for people who liked them, so interesting, these breasts shapely, that pair not so, which waist made the best hourglass, the timeliest, wasn’t her thing. Nudity, even if god granted humans no luxury of clothing, no Gucci or Prada or Zara and Max Mara, no great sales factory outlet rejected t-shirts from dollar shops or K-mart, no hassle if today would be jeans or the mint green cardigan or pinafore dress, just no, thanks. Why not let Erin be god for once, and not a goddess.

She is mentally riding home. Forward and wind in face, hair in a bun no vision problems, towel snug and knot tight, if no strong gusts come it should hold. But if it does. If the knot should loosen as she turns a bend . . . the exposure, like a sudden camera’s flash, the white light blinking shame, not on her, no, when it should be on the taker. Well, she’d stop her bike. Tuck it back. Then peddle forward ahead again. As it was said, one would fall, bad things happen, scandals come for the good and bad, what else could one do, but live on. But the unclothed were at the losing end. Condemned and stoned, “Why the hell are you in indecent exposure!” These very same people condemn and smile, shut the doors no one knew how naked they were but in public the like people were right, in alikeness they conquer, condemn. Point and laugh, beaming surface disapproval, feeling fortunate, whew. Weren’t my clothes stolen. Under the street lamp a car drives up beside her, a Lexus. The driver turns her head once, then sharply—what? A naked woman on a mountain bike? Already the towel is removed in her mind. Click goes her cellphone and it is live feed: SPOTTED A BITCH. Then, “Officer, I just saw . . . ”

It might not be a Lexus. It might be a Kawasaki Ninja bad boy series of superbikes with a man riding it. Stop at a traffic light, straightening and folding his arms. Turns his head to her, once. Twice. If the visor on his helmet is lifted there should be heard a whistle. What a catch. Awesome, a girl on a mountain bike, what’s up with the towel? That’s what’s up, what’s behind—a new trend, the mountain bike toweling season. Does the dame want an invitation? Arms still crossed, turning around, to his back, seeing who else is in the traffic lanes, any takers? Not a word spoken, the red lights have turned green and he’s like a statue, still staring. And Erin completely stiff, pretending there’s no such thing on earth as a Kawasaki superbike. “Come on, if you’ve ridden your Cannondale out in a Cabana towel, there’s no need to act shy now, ain’t it?” “You must relish it, don’t you?” Must Erin say “I do,” or “Fuck you,” that expletive she didn’t like, when she had a temper too. Not a word when he lifted the visor, blew a kiss.

The ride to her apartment took two hours. That was short if she was warm in her clothes. The Kawasaki man is gone, zooms ahead after the loud crack of the throttle, so emotional, but right after, a police car, shiny fiery siren on a body like an army ant’s, drives up. The officer, face grave and an arm cocked sharp outside the window, says to Erin, “Miss, may I ask what you are doing?”

“No.”

“Not the right answer, honey. What are you doing?”

“Miss, please stop your vehicle right now and step off your bike.”

“Are you certain you lost your clothes?”

“Show me your id.”

“Where do you live?”

“Unfortunately, you’ll have to come with us, Miss.”

“If you don’t we might have to charge you for indecent exposure and the willful incitement of public sentiments.”

Erin wouldn’t be able to say, shouldn’t it be the man on the Kawasaki superbike? Her mountain bike had made no noise.

All along she’d been on the bench, sitting there as though laying an egg, not moving an inch, her bottom felt the hard slats of wood. She was frowning, this was truly deep shit. Her bag pack, a Velocity ProGear with two slanted belt clips, contained her wallet, keys, cellphone. A bottle of mineral water—how thirsty she was now—a pack of Marlboro which contradicted her swimming, but she did not care, being twenty-six; a novel, titled The Age of Envy, which she found amusing so bought for two dollars passing by a bookstore soon to close down; her bike helmet and riding gloves—all gone. The cellphone had some saved numbers, but she hardly used it. Now it seemed like a dream instrument out of reach, even though she could not think of anyone to call. She had had friends, whose definition was fuzzy often becoming passing faces, hello, bye, I eagerly look forward to seeing you, I love you, but when looked twice into the same faces as though fogs had cleared and by the time she got home had become phantoms. They were the friendliest when they had no friends. They did leave some things behind, skin flakes and viruses exchanged, talk after talk of what they cared about: Me. The talk would often crowd her out, and over time, she’d be like a ronin straying away. So that was probably why she came to this remote beach, a refuge, just as a pub was a room out of the winters, nothing really shared in there.

She got up from the bench to the bath stall at the corner. Put her mouth under the faucet sprout and twisted the tap. The water was cold, refreshing. Just what she needed. She had stayed alone. Amused herself with novels and boxing spas and her Cannondale. She wasn’t a professional at riding, but she was nimble, becoming a woman no one wanted to touch. How to, when the moment one did and if not for her missing clothes that Kawasaki man wouldn’t be so slow at the green light, she peddled. And she’d peddle with her limbs focused, nothing entering her sight—not the traffic, shops, pedestrians, all disappearing like her clothes, peddling as though she was naked. Just that narrow road ahead of her, as though built for her Cannondale, and it was only when her destination neared did she see the buildings and people again. Men saw her the muscles of her calves and except for that Kawasaki rider and policeman none wanted to say hi, and it was peaceful for her, no distractions. A manless existence, without feelings in a way of the inhuman but not too, just no confusions. Where she lived her neighbor occasionally passed by, she usually coming down the stairs and he climbing up, and despite the difference in height he’d lifted his Panama hat and said, “Call me Mr. Blue.” Erin replied, “Okay.” She could not help but find him arrogant, when she was taller. She did not ask, why the hat, was he back from the 1930s, a hundred and fifty years old?

Her best contact could be the property company LLC, where she mailed her rent checks and could call to say, “Hi landlord, I lost my keys. Would you mind coming with them to open my apartment doors?” But the address was in the next island, and the cellphone had cleaned out her memory for numbers, she’d have to take the ferry there. No—wouldn’t be able to sit beside the passengers in a skimpy towel, “Ready for a swim?” Not to mention she had no money for the ride, and where would be that two quarters for calling, if she could find a payphone, now like a dinosaur soon going extinct. If only she’d anticipated a disaster she’d note where they were as she biked, at the pier she should be able to find one. Her usual route took a shortcut before it, through some deserted lanes then a parking lot that opened to the main road where her Cannondale joined the stream of cars, trucks, motorbikes. But even if she found a payphone, it was Saturday today . . .

She thought about her workplace, whose number she remembered, and shook her head. After college she could only think of one place to go, none other than the library. She’d managed to get the job and stay till now, as an information assistant. The years of mandatory silence did not make for good ties, the colleagues were not outgoing fellows up for outside-work gatherings. It would be a mistake to ride there in a beach towel. Yes, especially now, when the new manager, Mr. Getty, fresh out of college and eager to prove himself, was making new rules, which were elusive and unclear, “I need you to make a list of these names,” that were of people, not books. “The stacks are not in order,” when they were. So she stood around trying to figure out the order, b after a, e before f, first alphabet then the second, and when she’d chanced on him sometimes in the basement stacks she’d not mistaken the look of craziness in his eyes, like two full moons on his face. As though to say, “Your eyes don’t belong to you, but me.” She shook her head. “How dare you come to my library in a towel. It is not a beach!” she’d hear, she wouldn’t want to hear.

She was still staring at the transom windows, behind her the lockers. This sudden chill as when she found her clothes missing cracked up her spine again, like an electric current. Should it be nothing to do with those moon-lit eyes, who’d have known she came to the beach on Saturdays, had she mentioned it to Janet, her colleague, when asked about her hobbies, surely not Mr. Blue with the Panama hat, or Mrs. Donald living alone in 4M, and even if so, what was wrong with going for weekend swims? She brushed her nape with her hand. As though ants were on it, a map, as though there were directions there to a treasure chest of sugar. But they were only sand. She was feeling spooked, maybe they were ants. How not if just in one Saturday, she’d turned into someone with no name, address, id, a phone number she did remember but useless anyway. A bear might pick up the call and howl. Speak in English, “Whoa, did you just have a collapse of identity?” Had god reprogrammed the world when she was in the shower? Was the water a holy shower that washed away her self? She was just a human being, but this wouldn’t be enough, things invisible were not enough, as though organs had turned plastic, for it’d not be enough proof for the policeman, but an absurdity if she said,

“I went to the seaside for a swim. I went into the restroom for a shower. When I came out, my clothes and belongings were all gone. I did not see anyone take it. No one had seen me.”

But an id card would change everything. No—she shouldn’t call 911, shouldn’t go to the police station. They’d not understand, a woman coming in, without underwear but a striped yellow towel, with no money, card, proof, her eyebrows sparse and eyes somewhat wide apart, saying, “I’m not sure if this is a theft. I’m sure it is too.”

A gentle officer might lend her a uniform, if he were intelligent, sensitive. Knit his eyebrows and nod, hear her out seriously because her voice meant what she said even if her words came out jumbled, for she wasn’t a native English speaker and had never before been in a police station. That her mouth could not obey her thoughts, “No one, yet. I’m not sure where my things have gone. I remember the smooth seas, soft sands, like flour, it seems too I met a jellyfish. It could be a plastic bag…” Could not obey her thoughts because she’d liked being alone too much she’d lost her speech, say nothing to no one for three days, a week, which was fine but for crises like these it was definitely odd for someone clad in a towel to talk about jellyfish and plastic bags. And who could obey their thoughts when encountering the disappearing act—what could anyone say about it, sue a bear? Animals were fortunate if they weren’t killed, ignorant men would claim to be them. To be a king. Ended up stealing a woman’s jersey, as though her clothes were her soul. “It might have been an invisible person in the public restroom. A stag, picking up my backpack, clothes, helmet, shoes, with her horns, would be unlikely. A thing or two would be left behind. But there was only my Cannondale.”

Or the policeman might not offer her any clothing, coffee or tea. “Are you a smoker?” he might ask and frown. Tsk-tsk, that clucking of disapproving tongue, anything that doesn’t meet his preferences is suspicious, anything he doesn’t know isn’t knowledge. Sitting behind the desk, his hairy broad arms folded, waiting for Erin to leave to return to his backload of paperwork; or his elbows on the desk, him leaning forward, a leer pouting his mouth, in the uniform of a police but the badge of a lecher—whichever case, she’d look frivolous. Does she know? Behind him, just as impatient, women officers stand on guard, for the man. Hearing Erin’s story is so bizarre they might say, “You should not bring this matter here, ma’am. This is the police station. Contact your family. Any more about men-bear combinations we would have to charge you with the disruption of civil work.” And if she were to insist, say, “But . . . ” more questions would come: Where are you from? Really from? Are you a spy, terrorist, actress, asylum escapee? The past had proven to them, without a bit of doubt, that appearances could not be trusted when it came to bombs, documents of internal affairs. What was more: She was a woman in a beach towel. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

The faucet in the shower stall was dripping. The drips hit the tile floors splat after splat. Thin gray light still filtered through the transom windows, but dusk would permeate the place soon. A darkness like squid’s ink, a lonely black sinking this public bath hall, as though the earth was hungry, or the sea thirsty. No longer did this seem the same restroom she came every weekend. The location was the same, there was water but no electricity, as she got up from the bench to find the switch, right beside the mirror cloudy with moss. Overhead there was a lightbulb, with no lampshade, and it did not work. And without light, her face would become meaningless. Now in the old mirror still reflected a small face hardened by cycling and boxing, but which a library kept soft. When the last of sun faded, appearances would become an invention. Erin thought about her mother and father. They were the only ones who would recognize her, no matter how much she’d changed. This hour was the best to call out, “Mama.” Only an echo returned. Mama could not be reached, her father wasn’t living in the United States.

It’d been too much a hassle to go back to her country to live. Country—what did that mean, she’d thought when she graduated from college. A word made up of people, sharing the same customs, language, food; a war, quotidian and niggling, large or serious, for America’s patriotic heart. To be a part of the society one was born into she’d face restrictions, seeing so clearly what things really meant as Eriko Amano would tire her. It was true she had the nature of a ronin. A roamer samurai without lord or master, active in feudal times and today too, the failures dropped out of universities, the convenience store workers, the company man who quit et. cetera. Once there was a samurai in her family who was a ronin, and might have passed this trait to her, carrying it to America. Takayoshi, their uncle, had resembled him, did not believe in Tokyo, had packed his bags and went up the mountain, her mother said. Since young she’d not liked to see people close up too, and now live in America. Here she’d be free, and though it wasn’t the land of the free as its anthem sang, as she came to know it after some years, for her, it was. Land of the free. In the original, just the way she liked it. In every situation there was no need to talk about herself, play any role other than a librarian and water strider skimming on the ponds of American life—yes, it was lonely, but fine. People began to call her Erin, no longer Eriko. She liked that.

She remembered her wristwatch in her sports bag. A square-faced Casio with a leather belt she’d kept for her mother wanted her to have it. Back on the bench she watched the transom window, the glass scratched and specked brown. The lowering light of the day made her guess it was six in the evening. She’d wait, she thought. Till night fell before she set off on her bike for home. There was no other way—she’d have to ride home in a beach towel, and as for the rest, whether she’d get whistles from a Kawasaki rider or stopped by the police on the way, and when she arrived would she be able to get into her apartment, she’d think about later. It was her only choice, rather than spend an eerie night here, with the cube locker doors creaking, the bench disappearing, the forlorn sounds of water dripping, the sandy crystals under her feet. Someone, a man, masquerading as a bear, standing at the corner. Sure that she had no id. Sure as she was that this was the handiwork of a person, as most things in life were.

She stood. At the entrance of the restroom, she glanced back. For the first time she saw a spiderweb at the corner of the transom window. So many things escaped the eye. Her Cannondale was still parked against the wall outside this public restroom. She took the handlebars and pushed it onto the beach face, leaving a wake of wheel tracks in the sands. She laid the bike and sat down. In the distance, she could see the blinking amber lights of a cargo ship. Colorful cubes stacked on it like Lego blocks. Erin hugged her legs, and waited for it to pass. For the clouds and seas to disappear into the black evening.