Whitney tugged and Jenna flinched. The earring popped off easily.
“Oh, jeez,” Whitney said. “Is this a clip-on? You of all people?…”
Whitney still had Jenna in her arm. She leaned her back ever so slightly and tilted Jenna’s head up to hers, looking for something in her face.
“Why do you look so nervous?” Whitney said. “We’re all just having fun with each other, right?” Whitney clipped the earring back in place and Jenna flinched again. “Lighten up, Leonard. Not everything has to be life and death and theories of reincarnation.”
Just as Jenna looked like she might crumple to the street, she lifted the arm that was trapped behind Whitney’s body and slipped her fingers into Whitney’s hair.
“I don’t want to be all mushy,” Jenna said, meeting Whitney’s eyes, two faces locked in an angle, locked in a negotiation of wills. “But I just love this. I love how coarse it is. I wish mine was like it. Instead of this baby hair, so fine you can’t do anything with it. Yours, though, it reminds me of horse hair.” Her arms rose over Whitney’s shoulders and she ran the blue-black mane through the whole of her hands.
“I always wished I’d had a little sister, you know?” Whitney said. “Just a different thing than with a brother. A little girl to look after all your life. I always wanted to be the guardrail for someone like that. Girls can be so smart and so fucking stupid.”
They existed for each other and only for each other. Will and Jack stood silently, watching without breathing, on the outside of the bubble that seemed to have sealed itself around the two women in the alley.
Will’s arms were crossed. He watched the two of them wordlessly. But if he listened closely, he could hear a low groan slipping from his lips.
“So do you guys want to go to this bar or not?” Jenna said, unlocking from Whitney, using the words as a wedge to separate from her.
“No thanks, I’ve really used it all up,” Whitney said. “Like I said…like you said: I’m not twenty-two anymore…”
“But you’ve got our numbers and email…” Will said, from a distance now, having slithered down the alleyway some himself.
“And looks like…” Jack said, pointing to the heavens, to the starless black, the black without holes, “…we’re gonna be stuck right here all over again tomorrow.”
“Until mañana, then,” Will said. And Whitney waved with both hands, and showed them her widest wide smile, a thick red ring of twenty-nine-year-old lips, lit up with pleasure and neon.
When Will turned back down the alley, pocketing his own waves, Whitney was already a storefront along, the gap widening, so that he was forced to lengthen his stride.
Jack’s “Bye!” barked in delay. For all the professional reflexes, for all the legendary hand-eye, his reactions were always a beat behind, like sound in a stadium.
Whitney turned the corner at first opportunity, down a darker alley that ran parallel to the boulevard. She kept a distance Will couldn’t collapse, in space or in spirit, for the entirety of the walk back to the apartment. Will had the keys still, but Whitney knew he wouldn’t dare be anywhere but right behind her when it was time to unlock the front door. He called her name, just once, and without stuttering a step, without missing a stride, she threw two middle fingers with bright painted nails up over her shoulders in reply.
Ljósmyndari
The photographer arrived by boat with four fishermen. The docks were burned badly and the harbor was filled with new rock. They anchored offshore and dinghied in. He dragged his hand in the water. The sea was cool again. As they reached the black beach, they could see the rivulets of basalt that had burned their way into the surf. He poked some with a stick. When it pressed back firmly, he smelled the end of his poker and it smelled like rotten eggs.
They tied down the boat and the fishermen set off on foot for the village. The photographer trained his eyes skyward, to the flowering of black clouds above Holudjöfulsins. The air was still warm and dense with particulate. When he waved his stick, a fine ash swirled around him. He uncapped his water bottle and took a swig. He pulled a piece of wintergreen gum from his vest. He had two cameras with him, and he pointed the first one up.
He shot for an hour. He shot the volcano and the ashcloud and the burned-up homes and livestock. The lava had descended the mountain in spokes that carved the valley floor into ribbons of fortune and misfortune. This home had been turned to ash, but the neighbor’s stood unscathed. He took pictures of good luck and bad luck.
The cloud illumed every now and then, crackling from its center, a weather system all its own. Against the protests of the fishermen, he set off up the slopes of the volcano for a closer look. He climbed for half an hour, pausing only when the rumblings beneath his feet froze him in his boots. The cloud was an impenetrable trap, a light-suck composed, he imagined, of every element in the periodic table. It was black, but marbled. It was so outsize in scale that it was like its very own idea—a tropospheric mass he’d heard was now the size of a continent. It was less than a week old. Astonishing.
He shot from the slopes for an amount of time that was impossible to measure. There were none of the typical reference points. It was an alien landscape at alien altitude, the up swirling imperceptibly with the down. It was a place of pure science, of chemistry and physics, of solids that looked like gases and gases that looked like solids. It was a place he was convinced must be devoid of life altogether. He
