Slip and his fine hair that shed anywhere and his low boy voice. His voice was like the back of a spoon. The way Bend wanted his voice inside of her mouth.
They were in her bed. Bend was twisting around and flipping her pillow over and then over again. She was hoping it wasn’t keeping Slip up. It was. Slip was on his back with his eyes closed, but he was awake.
Finally, Bend just asked. She asked Slip to sing her to sleep.
“I don't have a really good voice,” he said.
Then he took a deep breath in through his nose. On the out breath, he produced a hum. It vibrated the plane beneath his jaw. Bend lowered her forehead into that space, and then folded her wrists under her own chin. She tried to not let her restlessness make this position uncomfortable.
Slip started off in a wandering around way but the tone swooped into Bend’s ears and arrived completely intact inside of her, resonating so whole and pure that she, becoming more and more asleep, had a blurry sense that she might be humming also.
In her mind, Bend began stringing words along to the sound:
A baby bird falling out of a nest: baby bird, baby baby, land ing on… the lily pad.. anger ing… the frog.. fly, fly, fly, up, up, up…
A floating paper boat attached to a large metal anchor in an impossible way: ne ver sink ing, stay ing put, rock ing onthe rocky waves…
Bend arranged words syllabically like this, until she was entirely within the cave of Slip’s voice, dreaming.
*
In the morning, the two of them drove to the desert. There was no plan or reason for it other than Slip realizing that they could. Two weeks ago, Slip came into the fortune of a big car.
It was because Slip’s cousin turned twenty nine and decided he had to quit his job and move to New York and find something out. Slip’s uncle called it pointless and his cousin called it clarity until one morning the cousin packed his bags and was gone. Slip’s uncle was left with a car almost the size of two parking spaces that he couldn’t bear to look at nor bear to sell.
Slip was five years younger than his cousin, but because he wasn’t his uncle’s own son, he took on a rubbery, ideal quality. Slip did a good enough job at most things. He was responsible with his responsibilities. So the car was given to him to use and look after.
Slip never really thought about owning a car before. The world already felt plenty open to Slip. He figured that he could go anywhere he wanted to, and so he often was. But a car brought with it new facts and possibilities. Mainly that when Slip went somewhere, he could stay there, no matter when the buses stopped running, or where in the sky the sun was. With a car, Slip could stay for as long or as short as he wanted to. A car suited Slip. He felt grateful and awake. Then, Slip met Bend.
*
That morning with Bend, it occurred to Slip that he could drive all the way to the desert. He had the thought out loud. “I can drive us to the desert,” he said.
Bend asked, “today?”
Slip packed two pairs of underwear and four pairs of socks. Bend packed four pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks. Three big hoodies between both of them. Three big blankets that they threw into the trunk.
They went to the store for supplies. Slip bought a flashlight. Bend bought baby wipes. They didn’t know how much water. They shrugged and bought two gallons and two big water bottles. They said they’d come back once they ran out.
The sun was at its highest point as Slip drove them in his small boat of a car, into the desert.
*
The cacti greeted them like soldiers. Standing tall, not moving. Surviving surviving surviving. Taking the rain when it came.
Bend felt obligated to salute them. She did so in the passenger seat, discretely with her right hand, so Slip wouldn’t see and ask what she was doing. She didn’t want to make a show of it.
They arrived once they decided they did. It was a spot off the main road, some yards away from a fire pit they saw. They parked and sat in the open trunk of Slip’s car, looking out and eating apple sauce cups, using the foil covers as spoons.
The sky was dusty pink. The mountains had a strong stare. Big, angular slabs, most of them. But some of them looking strange and precarious. Like a giant hand gathered up every stray giant rock and pushed them all together into a pile. Bend looked at those ones and wondered how they stayed.
She could open her mouth and point it out to Slip. Bend could ask, "how do those ones stay up like that?” From anything he said, Bend could find an answer. If Slip talked about geology, she’d try to follow along. If Slip talked about aliens, she’d enjoy it. If Slip shrugged or said “I don’t know,” they might start kissing.
Bend had all the words in her throat to start the conversation. But the stakes felt high. When two people are saying nothing together, the stakes can get so high.
She drew squiggles on the back of her hand with her index finger. She could hear flaps of birds’ wings. Bend let a new thought develop inside of her. The origin of the musical sound. Birds, did music start first with the birds. It would make sense if it did. They can fly…
Slip broke the silence. Slip said “this is so nice.”
Slip was full of great, true things to say like that. Bend nodded. Bend did not ask any questions.
*
Once the sun set, it got very cold. They were shivering under their hoodies. Bend thought about the three blankets in the trunk, and became concerned with the idea that they weren’t enough. Maybe they would lose a lot of heat out the windows of the car. They could get sick from being so cold.
“Do we need more blankets?” Bend asked.
“Yes,” Slip said. “One hundred blankets. Maybe even two hundred.” It was not a super funny joke. Still it made Bend laugh.
They put the seats down and lined the trunk of the car with one of the blankets. Then realized they forgot pillows. Slip rolled up the extra hoodie to use. It was not big enough for both of their heads.
“You use it because I have too big a head,” he said. Bend took his head under her arm when he said that. She fit him above her hip like a soccer ball. There was a perfect size to his head. Bend said it. She said, “there is a perfect size to your head.” Slip dove under her hoodie and twisted around and tried to lick her underarm. Bend pushed him off and he fought and they wrestled. Slip was more ticklish than he let on. Bend took him down. The effort from their bodies heated the car. And the two other blankets were plenty, and they were warm.
Then Slip deep into the night, singing. Singing Can’t Buy Me Love, howling the vowels, his eyes on the sky. Because Bend had had a thought that Slip wouldn’t like her anymore if he saw or heard her pee.
She was in a tricky circumstance because she was afraid to go into the dark brush alone and she couldn’t fall back asleep with her bladder full, pushing out her stomach. So she had nudged him awake, and they went outside together.
Slip was facing away from Bend and waiting, and Bend hadn’t even pulled her pants down. He was doing small jumps up and down to keep warm. He was trying to encourage Bend behind him. He was shouting “it’s just pee! it’s just pee!” The words were rising and landing in time with his body.
Bend couldn’t go. She couldn’t detach from the thought she had. The only solution was for Slip to stand several feet away and look up and only up at the sky, and spin around five times so he became disoriented to the direction Bend was in, and then sing, loudly, to cover the sound of Bend peeing. And he did it, of course he did it.
*
The morning came easily in the desert. The sun zippering a heavy jacket off the sky. It was like that. The two of them took off most of their clothes and laid on top of them in the dirt to feel the new light on their skin.
“Will you get bored today?” Slip asked. His eyes could barely open to look at her under the strong sun.
“No,” Bend answered. She had her arm draped over her face.
“What if you do?” He asked.
Slip knew about boredom. It was a sudden agitation that came down in front of a person like a cheap plastic screen. A bored person would tap and fidget and say “what should we do now?” when Slip had been fine doing what they were already doing. Looking together, sitting together, walking around together. A bored person made Slip itch and tender and frustrated. He would not feel better until he got to take a long walk alone.
Bend was thinking in quiet. “If I get bored, I won’t mind it,” she decided. She lifted her arm from over her eyes and turned to him. Slip was smiling.
Slip poured a generous amount of water over his head. Then Bend’s. Then he doused their shirts. He poured the water as if it could not run out.
They sat with their wet shirts over their wet heads and they played tic-tac-toe and drew faces with sticks in the wet dirt. They watched a little beetle as it crawled and asked each other questions about colors and shapes. The difference between turquoise and aquamarine. When rust was a beautiful color and when it was ugly. Bend preferred the sound of the word octagon, but the shape of a hexagon. Slip agreed.
When their shirts dried and they got too hot they went into the car for shade and coolness. The car was hotter than outside. So they started driving, in search of some other place to be.
*
Bend had her hand out the window. The air seemed to love her hand. The car seemed to love her body. Her hair seemed to love her face. How did Slip seem. Slip in the driver’s seat. Next to the open window. Golden wind on golden eyebrows. Upright and bouncy and open. Slip seemed so familiar.
The familiarity was some burst open thing pouring out from her: an old feeling of smelling Slip and an old smell of seeing Slip: bright dust, smooth mud, an old wet towel, sprinkler water. There were images too. A frayed knot. A little ditch dug. A shaded corner of pavement and brick.
Bend knew Slip as this information and it was the same way a person knows the smell of lime zest or gasoline without anything in front of their nose, or can replay a loud pop or a thud to themselves without replicating the exact volume. Bend did not see Slip exactly but she recognized him, the presence who was Slip. Slip in the dirt. Slip as the tug on the other end of a rope. Slip around a little bend.
She was knowing Bend from memories that weren’t hers and that were rushing in at once and crowding her out from the inside. Replacing the feeling of Bend being Bend was the feeling that she was a homesick stranger. It set off some kind of defense system in her brain that started zapping the unearthed information. Lasering over every sense and image all kinds of identifications: Dream. Idea. Wish. Imagination. Probably from a picture she saw. Probably from a book she read. Probably not important. Probably makes no sense.
The tinkering activity went on until every pure artifact was all lost. And Bend was left with no facts and only certainty: Slip from some run they had. They had been very young together.
Her certainty was chipped and small, but because of this was also strong. It was the smallest diamond of itself. It could not be dissected or hammered out any further. It shone and shone.
Bend reached her hand out and placed it on Slip’s thigh. She opened her palm up to him.
Slip took her hand by the wrist. He twisted it around to put the back of it up against his cheek. He panted out with a lazy tongue and looked over at her. A smile started in his hanging open mouth.
“Your hand is so niceeee and cooooool,” he said.
Everything uncomplicated itself then. Because Slip was so happy being beside her and he expressed it so freely but without begging or slobbering or expecting. And because Bend liked him back very easily. She did take him home with her the first time she met him. She didn’t even think twice about doing it.
*
Slip stopped at the first structure he saw along the road. There was a sign in the front, “Geodes Shown Here.” A few chimes attached to the door rang as they opened it. Inside was cool and empty of people.
The geodes were in display cases. It was unclear if they were for sale or not. Bend and Slip went around pointing at their favorites through the glass. Bend was interested in the outsides of all of the geodes, their plainness. Slip wanted to touch them.
There was a back room off to the side, past the displays. They couldn’t see into it, but they heard a fan whirring.
Then there was a sound of wood sliding across linoleum and a not yet old woman emerged from the room. She had broad shoulders. On them, her blouse hung like an armor chest plate. Other parts of her also seemed impenetrable. Her eyes were set deep into her face and her brow pushed forward, so that her natural expression was one of a squint in bright heat.
“We like your geodes,” Slip said. “Could we touch them?”
The woman considered. “Which ones?”
Slip pointed to a deep purple geode with a milky blue outline. From the way she handed it to him, he understood to be careful. He held it so close to his face, as though it might have an important smell. He held it up for Bend for her to see, he held it so close to her face that her eyes crossed. Then he placed the geode lightly on the counter and met the woman’s gaze.
“Can I see that one also?” he asked, and again the woman removed the geode from the display case and handed it to him. Slip closed one eye and pressed the other practically into the rock.
“It’s like each one is a cave I am in...” His voice was soft and from it the woman’s face softened too, and revealed more of her eyes.
“Which is your favorite?” He asked, and the woman blinked. Then she turned to a shelf behind her and back around holding a small, unassuming geode. Burnt orange lines circled into it like tree rings, surrounded by a deep black. Slip held it in his palms and watched it catch the overhead light.
Very quietly, he said “Woaaaaahhhh” and the woman tilted her head a little to look at it the same way he was.
“Like this color,” he whispered to Bend.
“Yes, that kind,” she answered.
*
Slip was leaning over the wooden part of the counter very comfortably. His legs were crossed under him and he was propped up on his elbows. He had started asking the woman questions about finding and identifying and buying and selling geodes. The woman was answering with authority and warmth. Bend listened to them and occasionally spoke. She stood with great awareness of whenever Slip shifted his weight and pressed his hip against the side of her waist. Slip’s hips shifted often. A long time passed quickly.
How time seemed to Slip: like water from a fountain. It drained out through a bottom and erupted again at a top. He could not hold it, or track it, or stop it. He could only be situated under it, getting washed in something that was all one and never ran out. Time was not in segments but one great rush.
Bend experienced time also with no exact end or beginning. But it was not like a fountain, it was like a rope growing at both ends. It circled around her and lassoed her in. Certain points of time made up distinct knots on the rope: permanent, unrepeatable spots. But her proximity to these points was always changing. Sometimes, she could feel very far from anything she had experienced or known. Other times, a certain collection of moments gathered close to her waist or her forehead, and it was all she could feel and think about. But always, she was aware of the growing wideness of time, looping around her in a changing shape.
So Bend saw time moving around her but couldn’t join it. And Slip was within time moving but couldn’t see it. So this was a difference between them.
*
The woman had gone into the room again and come back with three cold soda bottles and an anonymous bag of pistachios and dried cherries. Slip took a handful from the bag and ate from it as they talked. Bend watched.
Slip putting the whole pistachio into his mouth, shell and all. Sucking the salt off of it. Then cracking the shell with his back teeth, hard and confident as if he didn’t know his teeth could break. Then moving the two pieces between his front teeth, cleanly taking them out of his mouth, discarding them into a tin can the woman put on the counter. The woman doing the same. They may as well have been dancing together, doing this. Dancing without dancing to some silent rhythm.
Slip said something that made the woman laugh with her stomach and she looked like a new person, laughing. She looked younger.
Bend now had a thought: probably many people felt that they knew Slip before. And so possibly many people did. Possibly to Slip, the entire world was his old town. Everyone in it was someone he might know. Everything he wanted was something he could retrieve. If it was running, he could chase it. If it was buried, he knew where to dig.
It would explain a lot. How he pulled out the smiling from underneath a person. How he fit into the sounds of a place. It was easy to Slip. Like he was always picking up where he left off.
Bend’s ideas were too big for her but even if they were far-fetched she understood what they were revealing: Slip was not going to stay. Because there is no way to reunite without leaving, and Slip was reuniting all the time.
Bend, with her sorrow that went from her throat down her legs, could no longer stand so well. She leaned her hips towards the counter to balance out her wilting knees.
There was a knot directly at her stomach, she felt it. But it was tied into some bigger thing, and soon that thing was going to stretch and pull it back into its oblong orbit that she could only watch and not control.
Slip leaving once and leaving again and leaving soon, Slip probably leaving through a doggy door. Not shutting anyone out behind him, but going all the same.
*
A voice went like a cracked egg onto Bend’s head. It was his voice and it was saying “Thank you so much!” It ran down cooly over her ears. Bend found a shallow breath happening in her chest and hoisted her self onto it.
Slip was so excited and his excitement tugged on Bend. Made her drop her heavy ideas so she could stand up straight again and look over at what Slip had seen.
The woman was gifting them some remains of a broken geode in a small velvet bag. “For a souvenir.”
The woman shook the bag and the little pieces tumbled out and scattered onto the counter in tiny pat sounds. Sparkly purples and dull browns.
Bend took the smallest of the pieces in her hand. She wanted to swallow it. She wanted the geode to go down her throat and into her stomach.
Slip had a similar impulse. “What happens if you eat it?” he asked. The woman laughed again.
The time of saying goodbye happened the way it does. Plopping down, all clumsy and obvious and innocent. Both of them saying, “well… thank you for everything…” until there was nothing else left to say. The woman looked at Slip as she said “Come again.”
On their way out, she had suggested an attraction some miles away for them to go and kill time. As Bend and Slip walked back to the car, Slip confessed that he already forgot the name of the place and the woman’s directions to it.
“Me too,” said Bend.
A sort of allergic reaction to the phrase “killing time,” they decided.
“We can go searching for your cactus,” said Slip.
The night before, Bend shared a vague idea about finding the tallest cactus in all of Arizona. Bend saw in his eyes that Slip was true in intending to do this now.
*
It was good to drive in the car and play loud music. Music with strong drums, and other music with only guitar, and some songs that ended on a loop with a choir fading out, like how it used to be. The wind was making the warm air feel cool. And the cooled warm air lifted the hair from their heads and felt nice on their scalps.
There were many tall cacti but they hadn’t seen the tallest. They’d know it when they saw it. They were going fast and singing and laughing. Bend would be singing to a song and Slip would turn down the music really fast to catch her voice alone. Only a few times he got her. She tried to do the same to him but he was too quick.
Occasionally Bend would point to a cactus off the road. Slip had good instincts. Alert and immediate. He would step off the gas right when he saw Bend move to point out the window. They would crane their necks to see the cactus going by. Neither of them would say it was the one and Slip would accelerate. They drove and drove. Slip was really great at not stopping. Bend was really great at going along.
Bend made sandwiches on her lap with honey and almond butter. Slip aimed for potholes and made small swerves on the road as she did this. Laughing. The sandwiches turned out well. Bend said she should have thought to bring cinnamon for it and that made Slip laugh, and then Bend laughed too, and both of them laughed more. Something funny in wanting to make what was already good perfect. Something funny in not explaining what’s so funny. Slip’s teeth made round bites in the soft bread. One of his front teeth was a little shorter than the other. Bend thought about kissing the shorter tooth. Just that she would like to do that.
Then the sun was peaking low through the mountains and the music over the car speakers was playing softly, having been turned down bit by bit over time.
Bend asked “Are you tired?”
“A little,” Slip said.
Bend said, “We don’t have to drive anymore.”
Slip wouldn’t have stopped if Bend hadn’t said anything. But he did feel relieved.
They pulled off the main road onto a dirt path that led them to another clearing of dusty dirt, surrounded by brush and big formations of rock in the distance.
They did high-kicks and made up stretches. Slip made circles with his hips. Bend made circles with her arms, so big that her torso and head went with. They cracked their backs.
Slip wanted to sit on the roof of the car and so they did. Slip put his arm around Bend and went up and down her elbow with his hand, as if only her elbow was very cold.
It felt good to be there in the still room of the desert, as good as it did the day before, and then even better, because it was all occurring again in front of them. The gentle air and the low light and the crickets growing louder and the birds growing quieter.
And possibly it was a bug like a cricket that made the first musical sound of the world. But the birds ate them and swallowed their sound. And that sound, as it fought to escape from inside the birds, produced a chirp. But it was really the bugs who did it first. The bugs that were close to the low hum of the earth and listened, and used the entirity of their small bodies to produce a response...
Bend pointed to a cactus near the horizon. It jutted above the others and into the sky but maybe because it was on raised ground. It was too far away to tell.
Slip responded to her silence. “For sure that one,” he said.
The geodes in Bend’s pocket poked into her waist and she wiggled them out and Slip took them from her hands and examined them again.
“Do you want to keep them?” Bend asked.
Slip said “Oh, no, you have them.”
“Let’s split them,” she said.
Slip didn’t want a souvenir. He couldn’t keep a souvenir. Slip only kept objects that could function with him in present time. A car. A water bottle. A hat. If Slip took the geodes home with him, they wouldn’t be what they were now. He would put them on a surface and look at them so often they’d turn see-through, and then they’d really be gone and lost.
A person had to be careful not to keep something just because they wanted it. A person had to own only what they could be sure they wouldn’t neglect or take for granted. Slip figured this was the root of a lot of problems: keeping something just because you want to have it, not because you can keep a good watch over it. A plot of land, a plant. A promise, a puppy.
He didn’t explain any of this because he didn’t like how it made him seem, all serious like a philosopher or a parent. He pulled on a strand of Bend’s hair. He repeated himself. “You have them!” He held her hair gently, but Slip was being firm. He wasn’t going to change his mind about it. And Bend didn’t want the geodes at all now that he was so insistent about him leaving them behind.
She said nothing. She laid onto her back across the top of the car. Slip, sensing something, did the same. Bend closed her eyes to seem like she was resting. Because she couldn’t speak right then, because all of her words went hiding. She didn’t understand a lot. There was a lot she didn’t understand.
Why’d he get so excited about a thing he wouldn’t even keep. And if he wouldn’t keep anything would he remember anything. And why take her to the desert. Did he even try to or did he just keep saying sure.
Slip watched her with care and big eyes and Bend felt him watching and understood that he was so willing, and very kind, and that that was why for everything.
Slip had kindness like a red apple or a shiny penny or a big stick. Something unique and lucky that he could give away anytime and never run out of. This whole time Bend had been taking his kindness so personally. Slip would hold the door open for a line of marching ants and it would be no big deal. Bend felt nauseous.
Her feeling that when he had sleep in his eyes and drool on his face it was not gross and that when she smelled his sweat she liked it a little and that when she watched him drink water it was soothing and nearly hypnotizing. What was it there for. It seemed cruel.
Bend opened her eyes but turned away from Slip and toward the staying mountains. The mountains where the ocean used to be, until the ocean left. The mountains stay up holding the memory. Seashells in the rocks. Tombstone mountains. Bend turned her head away from them.
She flipped onto her stomach and let her forehead lean against the glass of the sunroof. She saw through it into the car. She saw they had a little less than a gallon of water left. Bend rolled onto her back. The dark was starting to collect stars, flipping them on one by one. And Slip was still waiting for her to speak.
“We have a little less than a gallon,” Bend said finally.
“That went fast!” Slip was not upset about it. He was not happy either. He was only so surprised.
Slip flipped onto his stomach. He rested his cheek on her forehead. The two agreed on tomorrow, after the morning.
Bend was the one who said “let’s sleep.” Because Slip was yawny and his eyes were drooping and unfocusing and he kept resisting it. He wanted to see more stars come out.
They put the seats down in the car again and set up the blankets again and laid down again. When Slip’s eyelids closed on him, Bend kissed the tops of them and Slip smiled, and then his smile slipped, and he was sleeping right away.
He had his hand on the space above Bend’s stomach and below her heart. Her ribs. Bend laid her hand over his to keep it in that place. She created a scene of them sitting across from each other deep underwater, humming the same song, and she dreamt.
*
In the morning they awoke in the car sweaty. Their sleep was heavy and deep. They were disoriented and thirsty and reluctant.
Bend wanted to wash her face and her underarms. Slip poured the water gallon slowly and carefully out of the driver’s side window, with as much height above Bend as he could leverage. Bend did not get naked. She let her shirt and underwear get wet and she brought the water onto and into her body with cupped hands. Then they switched. Slip took longer with his shower. Catching the falling water in his mouth. Swishing it around before swallowing it.
They changed their clothes shyly and strategically in front of each other. Bend tucking her arms into her wet t-shirt and wiggling on a dry tank-top. Slip turning his back to Bend when he changed his pants.
Between the two of them, they stretched the morning out to noon, and a little after. Slip flossing his teeth in the rear view mirror. Bend tying her shoes the long way. Two bunny loops…
With the last of the water in the gallon, they filled their bottles.
*
Bend and Slip stopped at a gas station off the main road before driving out of the desert completely.
Bend cleaned the windshield. Slip filled the tank. There were very few sounds. The crisp noise of their shoes on the concrete, the handling of the objects in their hands, and the occasional car whooshing by in the distance.
“It’s so peaceful here.” Slip said. The nozzle clicked out of the car. He took it in his hands. Slip, looking at Bend, wagged the remaining drips of gasoline here and there on the concrete as he spoke.
“We’ll have to come back,” he said.
Slip wasn’t lying but what he said wasn’t true. Bend shut her mind to the great expanse of time around her, so she could nod and agree and also not be lying.
Then the tank was full and the windshield was clear of bugs. Both of their hands were grimy. They stood by their opposite car doors. Neither of them touched the handles to open them.
It just broke out. Their bodies moving before they could think. Running down the road, and fast. They didn’t know who started it first.
Bend and Slip ran side by side. Each foot landing onto the pavement like a hard kiss. Bend was so happy running next to Slip, which then made her so sad. The sadder she felt, the faster she ran. The faster she ran, the faster Slip ran, and the happier she became.
Bend got a stitch beneath her ribs. Her heart and her lungs and her throat all jostled together. Still she ran. Slip glided. Slip leapt.
Slip was running so fast. He seemed to have set a finish line. It was some blocks down the road, at the other end of a chain fence that outlined a vacant dirt lot. His eyes were set on it.
Bend didn’t want to be racing but if they were, she was determined to not lose and not win. She wanted a tie.
She leveraged the air in front of her, pulling her arms front to back, pelting her legs into forward space. She was so close to him that she heard the small voice of his up and down breathing.
He was going and going. He was going to jump the fence.
Bend couldn’t jump a fence. At least not quickly like she imagined Slip could. His pace was already too much for her to keep. Slip pulled ahead by several inches, then a foot, then three feet. Bend was behind him now. Now it was more of a chase than a run. Her eyes were fixed on Slip like a leash. His bouncing shoulders and long stride. She was dragged forward and she followed and followed and followed. Then her ankle hit the ground at a tilt. Bend skidded on the sliding gravel. And next was on her knees.
Her palms were scratched. Her shin was skinned. Her chest was heaving and in every part of her face, even in her eyes, there was dust. In her mouth, there was warm salt. Then wet stinging. Bend’s lip cracked and opened. It blared, announcing itself over and over. Bend’s lip. Over and over.
The wind came like a hand under her chin. Clearing her face, drying her blood. Every thing that had to be done was done. Because Bend was no good at chasing and she was no good at holding a leash and it was no good for her to try to be. It was better for her to be alongside what was around her: it was right that she was on the ground now. Flashes of sun went through Bend’s eyelashes and created a beautiful vision in her watering eyes. She saw nothing. The nothing was iridescent.
So Bend wasn’t watching Slip when he reached the fence. But Slip, he didn’t even jump it. There was a torn open part in the chain link. He slid right through.