Later I see the airplane man at a payphone when I’m looking for the next gate. I walk by with the Walkman attached, but it isn’t on.

He winks. Looks at my tits. “Nice bra, baby.”

I squint and he fades into the crowd that surges forward, these faceless people arriving and departing and arriving and departing. Then I run to the gate, those tits of mine gone to the wind once more. Never look back, I hum to myself, only forward, only forward. There before me, hovering, as usual, a bit to the left, is the thing in the toga. Every day, every hour sees a change in you, although the ravages of time are easier to see in others; in your own case they are far less obvious.

The blue sky above the Atlantic reminds me of Darren’s eyes. At least they were bright and clear. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream. I close my eyes and wait for sleep to come and it does, leaving when the plane is on approach, when I see Lake Zurich from the airplane window, the Alps, the white peaks soaring into endless blue, the future wide open. We touch down in Switzerland. I cruise through Customs, holding up my passport and giggling because suddenly it seems so funny I’m here and it’s suppertime in Nova Scotia and bedtime in Zurich.

The Flying Squirrel Sermon

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

— T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Ondine parked her car in the dusty driveway. It was hotter than she had imagined it would be this close to the water, but the house was on a dirt road up from the bay, so sea breezes were probably intermittent. The still air was humid and dense, as though it were a massive resting creature pressing in upon her, a presence she had to push through even as it enveloped her.

It had seemed like a good idea to come out and do the research in person. In fact, it was the only way. The old woman hadn’t answered any of the letters Ondine had sent. And she had no phone. It was almost unheard of, someone without a phone, let alone internet. It was no surprise Ondine’s cellphone didn’t work here. Halfway up the mountain she noticed she had no signal when she checked her texts, something she knew better than to do while she was driving but did anyway because there wasn’t a single other car on the road.

She had a feeling of solitude, which then gave her a sense a safety. She knew it was false. All it would take was one deer leaping out from the trees, or a child appearing at the side of the road on a bicycle, something unexpected . . . and then life irrevocably changed. It was hard to believe, with the blue sky, the fields of hay and wildflowers, that there could be any danger here. But this was the place of her family legends, of women evanescing, of dangerous forest streams and sudden fogs.