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Show 229 miles in every direction, could see to the very edge of the earth. Everywhere it was the same. Everywhere there was sand, and if he squinted he could make out, in the distance, dunes. The dunes were made of the same sand he could feel on the back of his hands, the back of his neck, the same sand he could taste on his lips and tongue and could hear, fine and gritty, between his teeth. Like everything else under the sun, the dunes in the distance were absolutely, perfectly and impossibly, white. What was he forgetting? Philip considered the barn, the neighbor's bay; heard dogs barking. And from outside, from in front of the house, he could hear laughter: Tia's silly giggle, almost a whinny, and Molly's low chuckle; the bass and tenor roars of Paul and that man he hadn't yet met, Jonathan. Party noises, Sunday afternoon in Ohio noises, but where in it was his wife, Julia? "Philip?" Behind him, she was behind him in the kitchen. "Philip, darling, what are you doing?" He thought about it. Remembered the two dead birds in the sink, the knife in his hand. "Fixing the chicken," he said. There was a barbecue grill going out front. "Cutting them up," he said, "getting them ready." "You're looking out the window, sweetheart. You're just standing there, looking out the window, not doing anything." Of course she was right. He looked down at the two chickens in |