Dead End Rock Island

Maria looked all over town, starting at the sound end and working her way north. Then, she'd move over a block and head the other way. She felt like a fool, peering into shop windows, restaurant windows, back alleys - like a girl who'd lost her keys. Except these keys were too big to lose. These keys were a full grown man. And she had no idea where to start looking.

She was on the verge of giving up and heading home when she received a call from Karen. She'd seen David in the courtyard by the docks, staring off into space.

How long ago? Less than a minute?

Maria hung up before Karen could utter another word. She tried to call again, but Maria let her phone buzz away in her jeans.

She sprinted to the courtyard and found things just as Karen had described. David sat hunched over on a stone bench, facing the grassy yard. His hands were shoved in his pockets agains teh cold, and his hood was drawn up like the shell of a turtle.

Maria apporached slowly, delicately. She sat down on the bench next to him.

"We've been worried about you," she said after a moment's silence.

"Mm," he grunted.

Maria let another moment pass. "Dave, what are you doing out here?"

Dave drew in a large breath. "Thinking about stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" Maria asked, prodding for more.

Dave paused again, considering, and then sprung to life. His right hand flew out of his pocket and he began to gesture as he spoke. "You see how the concrete jutts out into the grass, how it interlocks with the grass? How it's all perfect 90 degree angles?"

"Yes," Maria said slowly. Her eyes narrowed as she peered at the grass, and then shifted back to David.

"I was just thinking, do you think they were trying to say something, when they built it like that. You know, something beyond what it is."

"Like what?"

"Like..." His hands drew grand pictures in the air. "Like maybe nature and man are locked together with each other. Clasped together like a jigsaw puzzle, like the grass and the concrete here. They've got separate identities and separate composition, but you can't really define one without the other." He stopped.

Maria cocked her head to the side. She didn't see where David's observations were headed.

"Do you think death is like that?" he continued. "The grass runs up to some point and just stops. And some strips stop before the others. And what about those slabs there?" he asked, pointing to isolated islands of concrete in the middle of the lawn. "Even where it doesn't belong, it seems like death is there. It doesn't wait at the end, it just appears how and when it wants. It doesn't care how fair it is. It's just a dead end rock island in a sea of dying grass."

Maria resisted the urge to agree with him. As right as it might be, she didn't want to put her acceptance of his apocrypha on him as well. He had enough on his plate already.

"I'm only 23, Maria," he said. He looked left, met her eyes, and looked back to the concrete patterns, casting about for something, anything to accept his wandering attentions.

"Lets go home, Dave," she said. "It's cold out here and we don't want to get sick before finals."

She kept her eyes on him as he nodded with all the determination of dripping honey. Then the two of them stood up, arm in arm, and made their way across the grass, step by step. Walking though a sea of grassy life.