Vimbai wrote it down and promised to stop by.

That night, she dreamt of sea and whales. The whales floated on the silvery ocean surface like balloons, and water from their blowholes rose and fell like the fountains in Longwood Gardens. The whales sang in surprisingly soft voices, a rhymed children’s song Vimbai could not remember when she woke up; but as the dream retreated, she kept smiling—the whales were a good omen.

Chapter 2

No wonder the rent was so cheap—the house was in a woeful state of disrepair, its wooden siding bleached by the ocean winds to the color and consistency of driftwood; the street on which it nominally stood proved to be a cul-de-sac, almost concealed by the sand blown off the dunes that surrounded the house like waves. The surf pounded the beach nearby, and Vimbai suspected that the house wasn’t condemned only because of pure oversight, since it clearly violated several zoning laws and the next good storm would likely flood it. Still, she could not deny that she was thoroughly charmed.

She lingered for a while on the porch, cracks between the boards wide and gnarled like fissures in dry clay. She thought she caught a palimpsest of motion in the shadows under the porch, a quick shift of light and a change in the quality of the cool dusk. Some wildlife was bound to nest there, and for no good reason Vimbai hoped for a den of the tiny dwarf foxes that still lingered in the barrier islands, despite the constant expansion of the tourist towns and vacation homes. The foxes who begged by the roads, their red tongues teasing and wet between their sharp teeth; a whole nest of tiny pups, Vimbai imagined, cuddled together in the somber secretive darkness under the porch.

“Do you want to see the rest of the house, or are you content with the crap under the porch?” a female voice said next to her.

Vimbai straightened, smiling. “I thought I saw something under there.”

The girl who stared back at her smiled too, then laughed. “Of course you did.” She was taller than Vimbai, and gave off an air of good health and clean strength. She wore a somewhat unseasonable yellow tank top and bleached cutoffs that exhibited her long strong legs to great advantage. She shook hands with Vimbai. “I’m Maya. We talked on the phone.”

Vimbai nodded, her fingers trying to hold their own in Maya’s strong grip. She shook hands like someone who liked to show strength from the beginning, but Vimbai did not think her threatening. If anything, Maya reminded Vimbai of herself, in her need to establish dominance from the start. So she squeezed back as hard as she could. “I’d like to see the rest of the place, if you don’t mind.”

Maya smiled more, released her grip, and turned away giving Vimbai a chance to wince and mouth ‘ow’ while shaking her hand.

Maya motioned for Vimbai to follow, and stepped through the banged-up screen door much molested by the elements into the kitchen that bore traces of recent but unthorough cleaning. A few plates dripped in the rack, and the linoleum floor shone with fresh traces of water. The windows let through the pale light, and its diluted quality testified to the fact that the panes had not been washed in a long while. Formica counters, bottles with bleach, and a patchy geriatric refrigerator sighing in the corner.

“It’s modest,” Maya said, noticing the trajectory of Vimbai’s gaze, “but it works.”

Vimbai nodded and followed Maya to the sunroom or perhaps the den—there was a TV and a concave couch, which at the moment cradled the languid form of a very young and very white man who Vimbai presumed was the second housemate.

“This is Felix,” Maya said. “He’s quiet, so pay him no mind.”

Felix offered no opinion on the matter, and Vimbai dutifully turned her gaze to a couple of mismatched chairs that huddled by the wall, as if not quite believing their luck in having been rescued off a street corner on a garbage pick-up day, and a stern wooden table, covered in slicks shaped like pizza boxes. Good student living, familiar from the visits to Vimbai’s study group buddies off campus. A sense of hastily put together and transitory space, with a modicum of effort to make it one’s own and yet not to get attached. A ficus slowly dying in its way-too-small pot by the window where there wasn’t enough light.

“The rest is straightforward,” Maya said. “Bedrooms are upstairs, and then there’re bathrooms and closets and shit. You want to see it, or do you want a beer?”

Honesty born out of living at home for all her life, under her mother’s hawk-like gaze, compelled Vimbai to say, “I’m not twenty-one yet.”

Maya shrugged. “I don’t card. Don’t worry, if you’re in no shape to drive, I’ll tell you.”

“Okay then,” Vimbai said. “I guess I want a beer,” and only then realized that she had forfeited her right to the rest of the tour.

“I want a beer,” Felix said from his trough on the couch, miraculously brought to life by a single phrase.

This outburst of verbosity encouraged Vimbai to give him a closer examination. First thing about Felix that she—or anyone, for that matter—noticed was his hair. It wasn’t merely long or big; it undulated. The color of it was darker than black, a pure absence of light, so dense that no individual strands were visible. Occasionally this alarming hair reared up like tongues of flame, and then ebbed, calmed, and returned to its peaceful slow and hypnotic movement.

“I know,” Maya said. “It’s like a fucking lava lamp.” She had returned from the kitchen bearing three golden long-necked bottles, and handed one to Vimbai. “It’s even better with beer.”

Felix sat up and extended both hands to take his, a motion that Vimbai found childlike, almost animal-like. For the first time, Vimbai got an unobscured look at his features.

Felix could’ve worked as a model for a Raphaelite painter specializing in cherubs—he had smooth porcelain skin and a small perfect mouth that seemed painted on—if it weren’t for his eyes. Gigantic and fierce, with jaundiced whites streaked strongly with fat red capillaries, they rolled in his head with quiet fury, quite independently from one another.

Vimbai took a long swallow of her beer. She was aware that staring like this was impolite, but there was just no helping it when faced with Felix; fortunately, he seemed to neither mind nor notice—although the exact direction of his gaze was impossible to determine.

Maya pushed her gently toward one of the armchairs, and took the other. They did not speak a while—Vimbai staring, Felix preoccupied with his beverage, and Maya apparently giving Vimbai a chance to decide whether Felix was a sight she was willing to behold daily. Maya sat in the armchair that used to be burgundy, but currently hesitated between pink and gray; the original color survived only in the piping of the armrest over which she slung her legs carelessly, showing Vimbai the pink soles of her bare feet. Her black curly hair had been freed from the scrunchie that had held it together, and sprang up like a halo to rival Felix’s.

Vimbai smiled and took another pull. “I like it here,” she said. “It’s a nice place.”

Maya nodded. “And I,” she said, “I would like my other roommate to be a girl, and a black girl at that. His pale ass,” she motioned at Felix, “is plenty for me.”

Felix grinned and bobbed his head, as if acknowledging a compliment. “There are forces in the world,” he said cheerfully, and drank.

“Yeah yeah yeah.” Maya waved her hand in the air. “Whatever.” She turned her attention to Vimbai, a smile hiding in the plump corners of her mouth ready to come out as soon as Vimbai gave a signal. “So, what do you think?”

Vimbai shrugged and nodded, and found that her tongue had grown fat and lazy. She had had alcohol before, and half a beer never had this kind of an effect on her—no, it was this house, the languorous strangeness that colored the air despite the mundane furnishings; it was Felix and the black hole of his hair, Maya’s sharp gaze and quick speech. The house in the dunes pulled her in, and she imagined herself sinking all the way, deep beneath the waves of sand where it was quiet and golden, blue shadows of the trees above dancing—or perhaps it was the ocean with its still forests of kelp and bivalve shells scattered about on the wavy sand bottom, shells empty like open hands. She imagined picking up one of these shells and whispering into it, her eyes closed, her weak hand pressing the pearly concave surface to her lips. Another shell to her ear, whispering in the susurrus of the sea, talking in monotone, come back, come back, baby, come back home.

And then her own lips, her slow tongue shaping words like stubborn clay, I’m sorry, mama, I’m so sorry. The sea between the shells a distance, pounding of the surf, the impossible separation by many tons of dense and cold water. Two continents, too far apart to ever hope for reconciliation.

Vimbai pressed the phone receiver to her ear, the voice of her mother so far away, so defeated and alone. “Mom?” Vimbai whispered.

Only the static of the ocean answered, the empty static in the shell of the phone like a small ghost trapped in the wires.

It came over Vimbai whenever she stayed in the house long enough. Being trapped in amber, in ocean water, in time, in distance, suspended and separated finally from everything in the world. She used to dread her mother’s reaction, what she would say if Vimbai decided to move away from home; more than that, she feared her father’s resigned and unconditional support. Now, she could only whisper faintly into the phone, her lips salty and barely moving, I’m sorry, mama, I’m so sorry. She did not let them help her move; her separation, this carving herself off from the rest of her family, had begun.