Part Three of Three
He stretched a hand skyward to blot out the stars. In the moonless summer night the glittering fabric seemed almost close enough to touch. Yet the true distance was insurmountable, and he let his hand fall to his side.
“What are you looking for?” he asked of her as they stared into the night sky.
“Looking for?” she replied. A faint scent of flowers wafted on an unfelt breeze, a counterpoint to the constant song of crickets.
“Looking for,” he said.
For a moment the crickets stopped their calls and gave way to faint echoes of traffic.
“Nothing, I guess,” she said in a half-whisper.
“Nothing at all?”
“I don’t know.” A pause, and a single cricket resumed its song. More followed until they once again filled the air. “Happiness, maybe.”
“What’s happiness?”
They both fell silent in the scenery. The grass that carpeted the slope on which they lay was cool and colorless in the dim light. Beyond some unknown distance rose the mountain horizon, a ragged cut of black fabric sewn against the sky. Above that horizon stretched a flickering array of lights, pinholes in a curtain that separated night from day.
“What are you looking for?” she returned.
The mechanical chatter of a distant train drifted across the two. For a span of seconds the muffled sound competed with the natural harmony of crickets until it faded slowly and was lost.
“A place to stay,” he said, closing his eyes. “And someone to let me stay, I suppose.”
There was no reply.