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In the end, they settled in a small town by the sea. The house was not big, but with enough space to live comfortably. Grissom was still working for the same NGO; his duties had changed, though, so he didn’t stay away from home for too long. His beard was often longer than it should have been. Sara scuba-dived cleaning stretches of sea, guiding expeditions on the ocean floor, or for studies on underwater flora. Her hair was always shorter than it had been in the past. Grissom and Sara carried on their life together following a calm but constant movement. They shared their intimacy at least once a week and despite the many years they had spent as a couple, it was still fun. They lived like a married couple, albeit they never married again. Their – little – spare time together was spent reading books on the beach (little importance was it summer or winter), watching movies at the little local movie theater, or at the street market. Once a month, they were even able to share a dinner out.
That day, Grissom had to give a lecture at a university some fifty kilometers away from the town they lived in – something happening two or three times a year. He had just reached the car outside their house when Sara caught up to him, handing him a folder he had forgotten. She also reminded him of their meeting with Luis that evening to watch the lunar eclipse on the beach. Even though Grissom and Sara had been living in that small town for several years now, they had established very few personal relationships. The day they met Luis, though, they understood he suited them. He was older than Sara but younger than Grissom, kind, good company, and very respectful. He led a group of friends – Mary, Philippe, Gregory, and Brandon – which terribly called to their minds the Las Vegas group. It was almost as if they had never left, but in a more healthy environment. Neither Grissom nor Sara ever talked about how much that group made them feel at home, although it reminded them of a place they had fled.
The evening arrived, wet and hot. Grissom and Sara joined the group on the beach, at the bathing establishment managed by Philippe – fifty square meters furnished with beach chairs, beach umbrellas, and a snack bar as large as a spit. On the roof of the bar was a streetlight casting its light up to the shore where quiet waves ended their run. The music had been chosen by Gregory – better, he had just entered “moon” as a keyword on Spotify – and it was placidly given out by a bluetooth speaker.
The place was welcoming and warmed by an active conversation about the possible effects of the eclipse on the local population, made more lively by some beer and a couple of joints. When Grissom and Sara arrived, they occupied the two beach chairs left free for them, had a beer (while, as always, skipping the joints), and then listened with amused interest to the theories of their friends. All the members of the group were foreigners, came from big cities, and local inhabitants with their curious personalities were still one of their favorite entertainments.
“Maybe mister Vynel loses his voice!” hypothesized Gregory, manager of a fishing store. “Holy heaven, when he enters the shop you’re catapulted into Times Square! When he leaves, what a peace…”
“Perhaps Mrs. Iliano finally heals from halitosis,” Brandon, a nurse at the local dentist, dreamt. “It makes me sweat to see her in the waiting room…”
“You should come working with me,” ironically proposed Mary, manager of the small beauty salon in the center of the small town. “You would enjoy the show… ”
Grissom and Sara joined the group, but they looked up at the sky more often than their friends.
The eclipse began about an hour after Grissom and Sara arrived. The group was talking about the universe. Grissom, the oldest one and the most educated, was giving one of his expositions – not as verbose as it could have been, Sara noticed. In explaining the greatness of the Immeasurable, he helped himself with a torch he brought from home, drawing infinite spaces on the sand with it.
The natural exhibition started, and even Grissom fell silent. The shadow started to give the moon an unusual shape.
Alie Gatie’s Moonlight was diffused by the bluetooth speaker at the climax of the eclipse. At that moment, a musical piece that none of the bystanders would have purposely listened to sounded perfect to everyone.
I bought you things that I didn’t even have the money for
If I could make you feel so rich, I don’t mind feeling poor
There’s something about you so addictive, had me needing more
Yeah, I just wanna hold you
Baby, you the one I want
The bittersweet character of the track infected them. Their hearts turned quiet and beat at the rhythm of the gentle waves arriving at the shore under the influence of that very moon which hid second after second.
Since you left me every night I go stare at the moon
Wishing it was you and I that’s something we would do
Every Sunday morning I go watch the flowers bloom
I do things we used to do hoping I’ll run into you
“It’s the right time for a bath in the ocean,” started off Mary, who had recently come out of a tempestuous relationship. “Somebody’s joining?” she asked.
Gregory was the first one and everybody else followed. They tried to persuade Sara, but she declined. For how they knew Grissom, they didn’t even dare to ask.
The eclipse ended at around 4 in the morning. Grissom and Sara went back home on foot. A flat couple of kilometers – the sea on the left, the roadway on the opposite side. The path was in dim light, speckled with the islands of light from the lampposts adorned with efflorescent flower beds around the poles. To be out, together, at that time in the morning like now, didn’t happen very often to Grissom and Sara. Or better, they probably hadn’t done it since Las Vegas.
They walked home with a loose and easygoing pace – Grissom on the side of the sea, Sara on the side of the roadway.
“You’ve been pretty taciturn, tonight…” Sara said at one moment. The sentence arrived delicate, and a bit muffled by the sound of a bigger wave.
“That’s true,” Grissom admitted.
The incompleteness of his admission was stressed by an amused look he threw at her.
“Yeah, not that usually you’re the life of the party,” Sara translated with a cunning smile.
Grissom agreed with a joyful nod of the head, and then he turned his gaze to his left, towards the sea. He saw some lights – a couple of ships, several miles away one from the other, sailing along the coast heading south.
“I appreciate that you noticed my being more taciturn than usual,” he observed. He watched her proudly, as she walked by his side. “It’s comforting.”
Sara welcomed that sweetness with a waiting sigh. Grissom’s sweet words always anticipated a reflection. An in-depth explanation of something he had been thinking over for a while – hours, weeks, or months even.
Sara’s expectation was confirmed.
“But there’s something else you didn’t notice,” Grissom suddenly added.
He pulled out of his pants pocket the torch he had used during his explanation on the beach. He turned it on and off a couple of times with a satisfied air. Then he handed it to Sara.
She took the torch without questioning, aware that that was a clue and as such had to be analyzed. She didn’t need much time to be surprised.
“You’re right, I didn’t notice it, it’s from Las Vegas.”
There was a particular emotion in her voice – for how Grissom knew Sara, he would have said that it drew a carpet of affection patched here and there by a feeling of fear. Or better, it made pass through the sense of excitement you feel when you see a falling star, and you’re overwhelmed by the anxiety of choosing the right wish to express among the many in store.
Grissom confirmed. “Yes, it comes from Las Vegas.”
“How do you have it?” Sara asked. “It was in our kits. And the kits were property of the department.”
“I kept it with me when I left,” Grissom simply replied.
Sara’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”
Grissom replied with just an airy shrugging. Then he gently took the torch from Sara’s hands and put it inside his pocket again.
They walked for a while before talking again. Sara eventually couldn’t resist the curiosity.
“And that torch has something to do with you being taciturn tonight?” she asked.
Grissom looked happy that she asked. He took a long breath. “This morning, a student asked me a strange question,” he said. He shrugged. “He caught me by surprise, at least,” he clarified.
“It had to be a very strange question to catch you by surprise…”
Grissom smiled at Sara’s observation and put an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her happily. He left his arm around her shoulders while his free hand slipped into the pocket of his pants. He looked at the sea again.
“Have you ever had the feeling of not being what you were meant to be?” he asked thoughtfully.
Sara turned to him and then followed his gaze. She realized that he wasn’t watching anything in particular, just the line of the horizon. Observing attentively, you could see it was starting to take shape between the darkness of the sky and that of the sea, in the aloof and torpid yawn of the day. Darkness above, darkness below, and a dark line in the middle.
“Your student had to be a…quite particular person to ask such a question,” Sara commented.
Grissom could feel all the compassion, empathy, and warm fondness that Sara was able to feel for a young human being asking that kind of question to a professor.
“He didn’t ask it. I am asking it to you now,” Grissom murmured.
Sara didn’t reply right away. She had had so many meetings with shrinks that trick questions didn’t catch her by surprise, and she was great at avoiding them very stylishly. But not with Grissom. Not anymore. Thus, she took her time in order to provide him with an honest and reasoned answer.
“I used to think that I was what I was,” she said at one moment. “I thought that I could not be anything else than what I was. I thought I deserved what had happened to me in my childhood.”
She stared at the sea, on the other side of Grissom. A while later she looked towards the front and the right, at the sidewalk, and then at the roadway.
“But it seems that the path of life is long enough, and you have all the time to change yourself,” she said. When she finished speaking, she kept staring at a billboard on the other side of the road. “Maybe one of these days I’ll make it once and for all,” she concluded.
She inhaled some air and turned a serene smile to Grissom. He squeezed her gently.
“You made giant strides,” he whispered nonchalantly. He kissed her temple. “Years ago, you wouldn’t have replied to Erik as calmly as you did yesterday,” he joked, recalling a discord Sara had had with a coworker.
“I appreciate that you noticed my being more taciturn than usual. It’s comforting,” Sara replied, echoing Grissom’s words and smiling proudly.
They passed a couple of lamp posts, avoiding their light and silently inhaling deeply the smell of the ocean – a smell that had become familiar to them, but which still held a characteristic of extraneousness.
“I think I’m missing your long hair,” Grissom said out of the blue.
His voice harbored some kind of surprise. He turned his look at Sara’s hair, as though he wanted to verify the truthfulness of what he had just said. Below her hair, Grissom found Sara’s eyes staring at him palely offended.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he lovingly said. “You know I don’t mean you don’t look nice.”
He threw her a vaguely severe look, warning her to not even draw that topic out. A movement in his peripheral vision made him turn his look in front of them, to the sidewalk. A runner was approaching, and the couple moved over long before it was needed to let him pass. Grissom and Sara watched him stealthily as he came closer, wondering what might take a person to go jogging so late in the night – or so early in the morning. The blond and skinny young man greeted and thanked them with a look only before passing them by. In a handful of seconds, with a constant cadence the soft noise of his steps distanced behind Grissom and Sara’s backs.
“I’m not saying you don’t look nice. It’s something more of the sentimental kind…” Grissom continued as if he never stopped speaking. “I have some good memories about your long hair.”
“When we first met my hair was not very long,” Sara quickly objected.
“In fact, I’m not talking about that.”
“So the day we first met is not a good memory to you?” Sara jokingly asked again.
“I’m not talking about that,” Grissom repeated, avoiding answering with the skillfulness of an invertebrate.
They were almost halfway. A bend and they were in front of a gas station. A lake of light was to be crossed, then they would have sunk down in dim light again. Their pace didn’t change. As they walked through the light, Grissom didn’t explain the meaning of his speech on Sara’s hair, and Sara didn’t ask. The lake passed and a breeze welcomed them on the other shore of dim light. It carried fragrances of the ocean different from the ones they had smelled before the gas station.
“It’s more a sensation,” Grissom reprised. “The memory of a glorious time.”
Sara was puzzled. “Glorious?” she asked with a hint of irony.
“I once told you that I missed working side by side with you.” Grissom shrugged. “It’s still so,” he admitted.
Sara’s pace hesitated, but Grissom held her with his arm still around her shoulders.
“Since you left Vegas the first time, nothing has ever been the same,” he said. He anticipated a possible objection from Sara by adding, “…and I’m not saying that I don’t like our life together.” He made the home keys clink in his pocket. “Not that we spent much more time together out of work in Vegas than now…”
“Maybe even less,” Sara added with delicate joyfulness.
“But there we had our work, right? Our meetings in the break room, or waiting for results from trace or DNA…” He stopped speaking for a moment. “Those too were moments we spent together,” he concluded with shaky self-confidence.
Sara drew closer. “For sure,” she said.
“And it was fun.”
“It was.”
“I think you’re the person I’ve spent most of my time with, more than anyone I have ever known.”
The last straight road before the last bend before their home unrolled in front of them. Both of them felt the sweet comfort of being close to home.
“Have you read that article about how people think about sharks' size?” Grissom asked.
Sara knew nothing about that.
“It seems,” Grissom explained, “that non-expert people see shark’s size not as they really are. They see the small sharks bigger and the big ones smaller. Skewing off by half a meter on average, and sometimes up to a full meter.”
“Why are you talking about sharks now?”
“Because maybe, about the thing of your hair, I’m seeing that period more ‘glorious’ than it actually was, but –
A car slowly passed on the road and Al, a fisherman friend of theirs, greeted them waving his hand out of the window. Grissom and Sara reciprocated it.
“…but I would like to spend more time with you.”
Grissom’s voice came out certain. No other noise muffled it.
Sara didn’t say anything. She didn’t utter a sound for a dozen meters.
“You already have a plan, don’t you?” she asked, her voice was mixed with excitement and a feverish desire to know.
Grissom smiled at her. “An idea,” he clarified. He left the sentence on the edge.
About twenty meters and they would be at home. The roadway at their right and at their left the railing submerged by the flowering jasmine delimiting Forresters’ garden. Since Grissom didn’t seem to be motivated to explain, Sara felt free to talk about something else.
“Look at Mrs. Forrester’s jasmine,” she pointed out as passing by it. “The past year it had problems with cochineal, but she told me that this year she has subjected it to a protective treatment and I would say –
Grissom stopped walking.
“What would you say about a garden with plants and bugs?” he asked.
Sara stopped a couple of steps ahead and instinctively turned her look at the jasmine.
“You mean…for our home?”
It seemed that in Grissom’s head a new idea joined the one which made him stop walking. “For our home,” he murmured. “Yeah, in a way…”
Sara earnestly reasoned on Grissom’s question. “I would say that a garden with plants and bugs it’s a good place to spend time,” she finally answered.
She saw Grissom turn happy. Thus, a thoughtful air remained on Sara’s face, while she awaited the enlightenment that Grissom was almost trying to infuse in her. All of a sudden, she understood.
“…and it would also involve both our main interests…” she murmured, staring at Grissom as though hypnotized.
That was really what Grissom hoped she would say.
Sara looked stunned. “A botanic garden?” she asked.
“Walden,” Grissom added brightly, proud.
“Walden! You even have the name already!” she exclaimed.
“It’s just an idea…” Grissom minimized, more timidly now.
He resumed walking and overtook Sara. She stood still for some more moments. A few steps away, Grissom realized that she hadn’t followed him. He stopped again.
“You don’t come?” he asked. Some awe was still in his voice, but this time it was tinted with a veil of irony. Sara came back to life again and reached him.
*
When they arrived home, their usual ballet was staged. The rhythm they followed when they entered home and prepared themselves for the night was always gentle and harmonious. Almost every time, Grissom was the last to arrive at the bed.
That night, walking out the bathroom door into the bedroom drowned in dim light, he found Sara sitting on the edge of her side of the bed.
When she heard him arrive, she stretched out on the mattress on her back, leaving her feet touching the floor. She watched Grissom approaching the bed, from below and down to the top.
“What was the question the guy asked you at the university?” she asked him with a serious curiosity.
Grissom slowed down his stride. He leaned down his head and could not avoid an amused smile, but loaded with embarrassment.
“Isn’t it obvious, after the chat we’ve had?”
“Maybe. But I want to hear that from you.”
Grissom sat on the edge of the bed, giving his back to Sara. He took off his watch and left it on the night table.
“Insects are so fascinating. How could you stop dealing with them?” he said.
“He asked that?”
Grissom confirmed, and she turned her look to the ceiling, thoughtfully. They stood in silence for some seconds, so much that at some point Grissom turned to see what Sara was doing. At that very moment, Sara raised and leaned on her elbow.
“Well, it’s not exactly correct to say that you stopped dealing with them,” she objected. She stared at him with a curious air. “You inform yourself, you catch up on the latest news, you exchange messages with some of the most important scholars of the field who still now ask your advice or your help in some study…”
Grissom’s objection came out immediately, with a soft but determined tone. “I’m always out at sea, though.”
The intensity of Sara’s curiosity grew in her eyes. She seemed on the edge of saying something, but she stood in silence. Finally, she lowered her look.
Grissom put a hand on the mattress in her direction.
“I…have always the impression of taking you away…from something, from somebody…” he murmured.
Sara’s objection came out immediately, with a soft but resolved tone. “Or maybe you save me…from something, from somebody.”
She raised a gratified look to Grissom which he welcomed with a smile made oblique by embarrassment.
“Listen,” Sara said then, ”I believe there is no particular…hurry, for the botanic garden, you know…”
“No, no hurry at all,” Grissom confirmed. “If you want, we can see how things move, what happens…”
It was a sentence but had the tone of a question.
Sara approved his proposition. “Yes, let’s see what happens.”