The beach replenishment was in effect: yellow mine trucks, gigantic and filled with artificial sand. The workers like crumbs against the mine trucks. Mounds of artificial sand were being tossed around: 61,000 tons of sand, and the area becoming more and more vulnerable to erosion. This place was eroding; the beach was being replenished. The city had implemented the replenishment to remedy the damage, but it was already too late for all that.

Glory broke the silence—speaking about people we didn’t know, about their knowledge of the land, things we couldn’t grasp, evolutionary things, the harm of gossip, and about holes, extinction, about what is carried. We let Glory speak. We understood very little of what was explained, except when she spoke of Lloyd:

Lloyd met a man right here on this beach, this very beach, he met a man named D., D. he was known as back then, Lloyd explained, Glory said, and the two had met because they had chosen spots very near one another on the sand, very close to the wet part of the sand and the water, a place not everyone preferred when setting their belongings down on a beach, people usually preferred the dry sand, and that D. had noticed, Lloyd said, Glory said, how both he and Lloyd began to chew on things around the same time—at 3:20 PM (chewing gum) and 3:23 PM (celery sticks) respectively—and they had sat for some time on this wet sand, chewing, before they both began to rub the wet sand onto their individual legs, or on their arms, and even underneath the soles of their feet, using the sand as an abrasive element, and when they realized this shared habit the men felt embarrassed or they felt something close to embarrassment. Lloyd went on, Glory said, that D. smiled and yelled, “I have eczema,” and both their legs were covered with the wet sand, and soon after this, Glory said, they moved closer together. There were rumors about us for a long while, Lloyd said, Glory said, but after a while everyone moved on.

And when Glory was done with this recounting we too used the fake sand as an abrasive element; we rubbed our legs and our arms. Glory didn’t share anything else of substance, or if she did we were too distracted by the seagulls and the pretzels. With the wet sand on our palms we ate pretzels. Pieces of pretzel sticking to the metal wires around our gums, around the rubber bands, the artificial sand moving in and around our mouths. It was windy.

We swallowed the sand. Glory chewed the pretzels neatly. Glory played with the name chain around her neck. We removed our shorts; underneath we wore our lime-green bathing suits. The workers looked at our pubic hairs; the workers were like ants against the mining trucks. Glory remained dressed.