The lights of the ships burned on the horizon, steady and evenly spaced. I imagined the lonely men on their wet, treacherous decks, looking back at the lights along the coast. I got up and poured myself another glass of whiskey. When I returned, I pushed Alissa from my mind. I told myself I was here to mourn, after all. Not to pine.

I woke up in the morning to the sound of booming waves and the unflinching horizon line of the water meeting the sky. I stood at the window awhile and watched the clouds shift, contemplating the warp of the earth’s roundness extending just beyond my frame of perception.

I knew Judy would have been outdoors already, and she probably would have dragged me with her. So with her in mind I pulled on my jacket and headed into the cold air. I tried to retrace my walk of the day before but I didn’t get far. Well before the giant rock I turned around and found a breakfast place with decent pastries and fresh-roasted coffee.

When I got back, there was a call from Alissa waiting for me. Her work was not very pressing, she said, and I should call her if I wanted to make some plan. I dialed immediately and we agreed to meet in an hour or so and take a drive to a bookstore I knew down in Florence, about fifty miles south. Hanging up, I felt a twinge of fresh guilt. Was I betraying Judy in some way? Was I being diverted from my ritual of remembrance? I decided if I was, I didn’t care that much. I’d come to the coast for something magical and this was what the coast had provided.

Around noon Alissa showed up. She was wearing a bright orange anorak, a canary yellow mohair scarf, faded blue jeans, pink socks, and powder-blue clogs. The spectrum was almost blinding, but somehow it all held together. She’d always had a way with color.

“Morning,” she said. “It’s still morning, right? Or no?”

“Close enough,” I said. “Come on in. I need to get my crap together.”

On the way through the door, she tripped over the threshold. She had a bumbling, comic way of comporting herself. The two parts, the artfulness and the klutziness, clashed in a way that was hard not to find winning.

“I packed us sandwiches,” she said, holding a brown bag. “But look.” She opened the bag to show me two sandwiches that were mangled almost beyond recognition. “I don’t know what happened. The peanut butter was really hard.”

“They don’t look that bad,” I said.

“They look terrible.”

“We don’t have to eat them.”

“But I made them for us. We can’t waste them.”

“Okay. I’m sure they’ll taste good.”

“I can’t believe I can’t even make a sandwich. Who does that?”