[sweet wicking action]

a love story

They say that God is everywhere. And they say it is impossible to know God, impossible to see God, impossible to define or categorize or label God. But that isn't the truth. The truth is that God is not everywhere. Cannot be everywhere. She is here, in San Diego and her name is Eloise. And she is beautiful. Once, she roamed free. Once, she swam from the depths of the Andes, all the way downstream, across the continent without her family or companions or direction. Once, she spent an entire year exploring the Atlantic Ocean, looking for love. Don't we all?

The first time he saw her, sparks flew. With closed eyes, the picture in his head was of solid white light, of energy and power, shot through with veins of pinkish lust. The flat red of resentment. Mustard yellow for disappointment and acceptance. And the glare of confidence that hurt his eyes.

He must be ill. His brain hurt. What was hurt? Could it hurt? Maybe it didn't. There were no pain receptors in the brain. There was some mechanism for making him think that it hurt, and it was not something that he appreciated right now. It was a squeezing pain. As if he'd woken up that morning, and his skull has shrunk a few sizes. There's a novel thought, right? Do skull's even come in sizes? They certainly don't shrink while you're living, most physical attributes don't. Sure, the pupils in one's eyes will expand and contract with the light, and the gaps between each vertebrae close up over a lifetime, allowing for one to shrink with age. But the skull. The skull. It just seemed so unlikely that it would change size over the course of a few minutes. Perhaps his brain was growing. Or just sloshing around, slamming against the inside of his skull. There was no explanation for it, but his brain hurt.

"Ouch." He spoke aloud, but there was no longer anyone there to hear, or answer. The sound traveled through the bones of his head, to his eardrums, through and past all of the delicate things in there, so that he could hear the sound with his ears and auditory nerve. The pain in his brain hadn't stopped yet. But at least his ears were working. He flexed a muscle in his arm, and the fingers of his hand contracted together, opening and closing in unison. He was hardwired that way. Muscle memory wanted him to spread those fingers open, twist them apart, but he'd trained himself. On the surface, fingers were a concept way beyond him.

His eyes were open, so he must be hallucinating. She floated in the air, hovering just out of reach, and just in front of his eyes. A dolphin. He blinked and she was still there. His brain still hurt, but her image was helping. Did the sunlight cause hallucinations? Or stop them? Was her presence healing his injuries? What does the world look like through dolphin-colored glasses? So far, it looked very, very good. Like there was nothing else right with the world. Immersed in dolphin, the throbbing in his mind began to subside.

"I quit. I quit my job. I quit my job today." There was no good way to say those words. Not to his wife of twenty-five years. Not to the mother of his children. And especially not if he was going to follow them up with more depressing revelations. He was slumped in the driver seat, forehead sweaty against the steering wheel, eyes and cheeks crusty with tears. He'd been crying for a month. The words felt good in his mouth, felt perfect, he'd practiced for hours to hone each inflection for the perfect sense of pity and shock. And he'd tear up on cue. It was all set. Let her be home.

"Honey?" His voice cracked with the strain. "Are you home?"

"Upstairs dear." The sound of her floated down from their bedroom. There was concern in the words, and quiet patience. There had been no clues, and she was still on edge.

"Come on down here! I want to show you something!" He slid a hand along the wall, flicking at switches and illuminating the foyer. His feet slid over hardwood floors, waxed to a high gloss. Footsteps clattered on the stairs and he looked up at his wife.

"I quit my job today." She stopped dead in her tracks. A muffled snort came from the room behind him, and a Labrador retriever swam in his sleep. "But, I also bought you a boat."

"Start over from the beginning." She was very proper in her anger, always allowing him a chance to explain.

"I quit my job. And I bought you a boat. Happy Anniversary?" In his head, in the silence, he added, "And I'm leaving you."

She blinked her disbelief and went back up the stairs, only somewhat less enthused. The next day he went looking for work. When he came home that night, he was the newest third shift member of the San Diego Zoo and Aquarium cleaning crew. She would come, she was on her way, and he was waiting.

It had been weeks since Eloise left her home, the place of her birth, a crystalline pool of icy water in the foothills of the Andes mountains. She was five years old and on her own for the first time. One day, she'd opened her eyes and had just known. It was time to leave the nest, time to mate, time to procreate. But the one for whom she was destined was not there. She could hear his thoughts, see the shape of his mind, wrap her brain around him. But he was not there, and she would go to him.

The journey was fast, each day sliding by like the current--full of fish and plants and hidden, swirling, eddies. One morning, she saw dolphins. Bubbles and clicks and chatter surrounded the group, but it was nothing new for dolphins. Just a bunch of nine year olds talking about the usual nine year old stuff. Just like home.

"Yo, did you see Eloise today?"
"Yeah, man, she was looking fly."
"I'd hit it."
"[censored] off. She's all...lopsided."
"Yeah, I'd still hit it."
"True. But you'd [censored] anything with two eyes."
"So?"

And then they were gone, in a haze of laughter and boring, repetitive verbal congratulations. She had no idea how they had known her name. They were quite the heroes of the Amazon, but they were not for her. Nobody like them was for her. Nobody. She would have sighed, but it was anatomically impossible. They disgusted her, these—fish. There was something about where they were raised that lent a truth, and a simplicity to their adolescence. But it wasn't in her. Unable to accept the light-hearted nature of this phase of life, she knew what was to come. She knew where they were headed. Clairvoyance ran in her family, and with awareness came depression. Depression and loneliness, and a feeling that something more awaited. Something still missing. Her destiny was to rise above, travel beyond, surpass all her species. She was Eloise. She would be known. She was already on her way.

They had celebrated their anniversary at The Palace, a restaurant touted as, 'the most fun you'll have this year, unless maybe you go to the wake of an Irish acquaintance, so long as you aren't close enough to the family to be truly bereaved.' Later that month, the food critic had been fired for missing several days in the office. Apparently, he had been detained for questioning by the San Diego Police Department. Several thousand pills of ecstasy had gone missing, and he was a strangely prominent subject. Also, the Irish community had complained. Food criticism was a cutthroat industry.

"More wine, sir?"
"No, thank you." It was dry in the room, and he was parched. "I'll just have water." The wine was going to his head, and he worried about self-control. The woman across from him did not seem worried in the slightest. She drank with two hands, and the scent of alcohol wafted off of her body. Like cinnamon and acetone, she was familiar. Nauseous. No surprises. So, he sat in silence. Listened. Watched the muscles in her throat working, swallowing, poisoning the two of them. The glass in her hand was empty, and her eyes searched for someone to berate. He dropped two hundred dollars on the table.

"I'm leaving." The words dropped from his mouth, perfectly planned and perfectly formed. They bounced off the tablecloth. Staining the white linen and they scurried around the table. He smiled. It felt good, talking. He would miss it.

"Hon? Where are you going?" In her youth, she had been a big, bright, shining star at the forefront of her high school forensics team. Each year, they were the fourth place team in the state, bucking for third. Senior year was their year. They would be medalists. No more honorary mention for Clark County East. But she was an innocent girl, oblivious to the baser needs and desires of her classmates. On Homecoming weekend, late Friday night, she chose screw cap champagne once, twice, many times over instead of study. Chose acceptance and popularity and graduated a month ahead of time, with one more daughter than the replacement valedictorian. Time passed slowly for the girl, and she refused to abandon those choices. Her words were confused, and her eyes hazy and dim. But in her heart she knew. The two word sentence stood on its own. In her prime, she could read a man's eyes. Could stare into his soul and pry out startling answers, know his mind and finish his sentences. If it were twenty years ago, she would have read the message, "for Eloise. She is coming here, coming for me." But he was gone, and anyone could read the crushing, suffocating pity in the eyes of the sommelier.

"Dolphin [censored]!" The voice rang out, clear and proud. Not a hint of shame at using the most profane of obscenities in a public place. He had fallen from the ranks of the mighty, and was open to the most scathing of scorn, like a pedophile or a murderer or someone who molests collies. And how did she know? There were no hints. There was nothing but shocked silence, and a man standing near a fish tank. They could not know. Not yet. There might be no shame in the speaker's voice, but at least the bipedal rabble that filled up the amphitheater was able to recognize something, something new was going on here. With clenched fists and a tight jaw, he turned. Teeth grinding together, crazy mouth without the bliss and wonder and poverty of cokehead society. Turned to stare at the old woman calling out to him, isolating him, and wondered internally what it was that she knew. Probably nothing. Most people didn't. Humans. He shuddered.

The walk to the zoo had been long, but the glass was cool against his forehead. With hands cupped around his eyes, he pressed his face to the tank, drinking in the darkness of the water inside. It felt good, the cold and the dark. He breathed deep, in his nose and out his mouth, fogging the tank wall as he pressed against it. And he stared. The silence pressed down on him, heavy on his skin. It was the feeling of her. Of her presence. She was there. Like an opium high, dipped in chocolate and melting and melting and melting and melting, his writhed and yearned and groped for contact. She was there. Only there was nothing but the squeak of his shoes on the tiled floor and his oily skin on freshly cleaned glass. He waited. She was there, and she would come to him.

Eloise was the rarest of dolphins, a myth come to life, a South American pink river dolphin, and she was magnificent. How she got past customs would be a mystery forever, but he didn't care. Why would he? No one looks a gift horse in the mouth these days. They just scoop the loose hundred up with the rest of their change, and assume that today they were blessed by the gods. And blessed he was, watching her swim back and forth in her tank. He'd been searching his whole life, and nothing would keep them separated now that she was here. Through the haze of river water (flown in from Brazil, at an unsurprisingly prohibitive cost) she coalesced into view. His tongue flicked out, tasting bleach on the glass. Would he be fired for it? It was beyond his concern. Their eyes met. He salivated. He could hear her thoughts, and they were dirty. They reached out from behind the glass, thick bulletproof glass, and they grabbed him, stroked him. He panted, breathing deep. His body pressed against the glass. She did the same, and the world melted away. They swam together. Entwined in each other, arms and fins and slippery skin. She sang to him and people watched. From outside and within, the world watched in amusement and horror and he shook with emotion. The orgasm was strong, staining his pants and streaking the glass. He crumpled to the ground and her mind held him, cradled him, lowered him gently. And when he slept, she would hover. Hurling herself at the glass, driving away the usurpers, giving him peace. Tomorrow, he would be fired. The bleach or the predatory sexual tactics, each was enough by itself. The violent manner he had used to [censored] her, [censored] her mind--no human would understand. But he did not care. He simply stood, spent, as the alarms and sirens began to sound.

Perhaps it was a rash decision, but who are we to judge another? To pass judgment on human and God alike? Only so much time was left in this life, and she was certain to die at her own speed, the pace of her life faster and faster until the end. Before he even felt the effects of a life lived in lower gravity. Her huge round eyes would grow dim, murky, and her body would lose the sleek tautness of youth. She would no longer feel the caress of his hands, and her movements would be slow, awkward. She'd founder in her path, and float with the current. All drains lead to the ocean, and a burial at sea was honorable, commemorating all that was otherworldly about her life. He would not wait. Her thoughts already carried him, folded him into their staccato beat and buoyed him ever higher. They would be as one. Each piece of clothing fell to the floor, but he was not cold. Watch, glasses, wallet, shirt, pants. He discarded them casually, they were never to be used again. He'd never truly understood them. They were the constraints of an earlier life, and he was ready to move on. The guests and the security guards were on the same footing now. Nobody could know what was happening. In their ignorance and confusion they were running, panicked and scattered to the corners of the earth, fleeing the unknown and the terror inside them. With a deep breath and three running steps, he kicked himself high into the air, up ten feet, fifteen feet, up over the wall, arching his back as he flipped and plummeted, waiting for the cold, the dark, and her embrace.

Their love would burn hotter than the fire of ten thousand suns. They would live within, inside of each mind, joined at the hip and the soul while she bathed in his essence and he breathed underwater. As one creature they lived, perfect harmony and [censored] and violence and peace. Until it was over. And Eloise died.

A handful of tourists walked down the ramp to the aquarium. There were some that were black, some white, but they were predominately of unknown Asian descent. Surprisingly fat, but they moved fast. No lurkers here. Just fish enthusiasts waiting to be guided through and around a number of thick glass tanks, waiting to be force-fed common knowledge, knowing nothing more when they left than when they'd come in. They wore straw hats and fanny packs, and digital cameras of varied sizes were slung from their necks or belts, or shoulder holsters. They would be witness to a miracle today. One antsy gentleman had a backup, strapped to his ankle, Velcro closures cutting the circulation to his foot. Poor design and manufacturing policy made the foot just one more irritant in a series of minor medical problems that the man would ignore. The irritation was minor today. And when he gazed upon Eloise for the first time, he forgot all about it. He'd been using both cameras every few minutes. The holster hung empty and the lack of weight unbalanced him, but kept the blood flowing. Years later, he would develop minor nerve damage in the same foot, and attribute it to an ever-increasing chain of unfortunate events with no explanation. His collection of fifty-five orchids, harbored through the perils of three brutally cold winters and one stray cat would be destroyed during a routine burglary. Later that week, his mother would suffer a minor stroke, and be forcibly retired from her position as a kindergarten teacher. And some seven years further down the line, he would be killed in a car accident. As the world spun around him, car flipping end over end through the air, he would remember the feeling of weightlessness and how much he had missed it. The impact of the car against the ground would mangle his right arm and his body would expire slowly, wedged between the steering wheel and driver side door, long shafts of metal piercing vital organs, opening gaping holes in his waterproof skin. And he would remember. Remember that once he had seen the face of God, and she was laughing.