|
|
She hasn't seen me... I'm sure... Either that or my presence is so unimportant in her universe that I mean as little as the plants and bushes she's crushing as she bolts off into the coming dark.
I wait, immoble, for a few minutes... Perhaps expecting to hear her howl again, but the night remains quite... accept for the hiss of the stream crawling over rocks and under the bridge towards the ocean.
I look under the bridge, where the corspe of the notebook she destroyed met the water and follow what I guess was the path it must have travelled down stream while I was watching the woman howl and scream on the bridge above. I notice, a dozen or so yards past the bridge a sheet of paper, torn from the notebook, snagged on the branches of a small tree that has fallen into the stream.
Curiosity grabs me.
I walk down the edge of the stream, around the foot of the bridge and reach the point where the page is imprisoned in the water. I grab a stick and try to free the page, drag it to the bank of the stream, but my shoe, immitation leather, slips on a greasy rock and I sink up to my knee in the stinging cold water.
Frustrated, I stretch out my arm and grab the page from the water.