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Show 169 Even at night, it wasn't hard for Tamara to find the place where Steve shot himself. There were still investigation flags on the ground forming a triangle around the last of Steve's dry, concentrated blood, which by this time looked like the remains of a fire. Tamara dropped off another bundle of roses. I put my hand on the part of her spine between the shoulder blades while she cried for a while and then that didn't seem helpful so I walked along the shore. I picked up some small railroad spikes submerged in the sand and felt their rusty texture with my fingers. Tamara never liked to walk down that far with me. She was afraid of the sludgy, dark water. I started to wonder what kind of animals might live out there. In the day we had only ever seen stray dogs and dark birds rising out of gravel, but I imagined the Salt Lake desert animals, like most desert animals, were probably nocturnal. But the only thing I could hear was the thick water, and that only subtly and every so often. The waves on the water were so still they looked like they blurred into the hills, and what I could see of the sky seemed to be pouring onto the earth too, as if night turned the whole world into a wide open lake. It was cold but I decided my vote was to spend the night, even though I already knew I would wake up and not want to remember the cold or the place. "Tamara, are you there?" I called up to her. "Yeah," she said, and she was, even though I knew she wanted to vanish into the water and the salt and the night. |