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"Sorry," I say "It’s probably just the doctor in ivesthat in Europe, there are hardly any Jewish people, so jokes like that don’t make sense

"I’et older, I’m doomed to fuss about everyone’s health," I hastily explain "That’s what ‘Jewish mother’ means"

Willem lies on his back and holds e you et sick and wind up puking into squat toilets, and it’s not so nice"

I wince at the thought of it

"But there was this one tiot dysentery, a pretty bad case So bad I had no choice but to get off the bus in the e of the Sahara, not even , I think, stu around for a place to stay when I saw a hotel and restaurant called Saba Saba hat I used to call o here’ The restaurant was eain When I ca djellaba I asked for soer, which is what my mother always uses for upset stomachs He shook his head and told me I was in the desert now and had to use desert rerilled lemon, cut in half He sprinkled it with salt and told ht I would lose it again, but in twenty ave me some terrible tea that tasted like tree bark and sent hteen hours Every day, I ca and then prepare me a meal specifically based on my symptoms After that ould talk, just as I had done with Saba as a child I stayed there for a week, in this town on the edge of the map that I am not even sure exists So it is a lot like your story frohter," I say "Or you’d beeach other, so close I can feel the war the sahter Tell ainst the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss"

The last word, kiss, hangs in the air

"Next tiirl in the mountains"

"Okay," I say "I’ll be your irl and take care of you"

He smiles, like it’s another joke, another volley in our flirtation, and I s

"And in return, I will relieve you of the burden of time" He slips my watch onto his lanky wrist, where it doesn’t seem quite so much like a prison shackle "For now, time doesn’t exist It is, what did Jacques sayfluid?"

"Fluid," I repeat, like an incantation Because if ti that is just one day can go on indefinitely

Ten

I fall asleep And then I wake up, and everything feels different The park is quiet now The sound of laughter and echoes of handballs have disappeared into the long dusky twilight Fat, gray rainclouds have overtaken the darkening sky

But so less quantifiable yet somehow elemental I feel it as soon as I wake; the ato the whole world irrevocably changed

And that’s when I notice Wille body is curved in the space aroundat all except for his one hand, which is tucked into the crease of my hip, casually, like a dropped scarf, like it blew there on the soft breeze of sleep And yet now that it’s there, it feels like it belongs there Like it’s always belonged there

I hold h the trees, to the soft in-out of Wille I concentrate on his hand, which feels like it’s delivering a direct line of electricity froertips into some core part of me I didn’t even know existed until just now

Wille this too How can he not? The electricity is so real, so palpable, that if someone waved a meter around, it would spin off the dial

He shifts again, and his fingertips dig in right there into that tender flesh in the hollow ofso deliciously intense that I buck, kicking his leg behind me

I swear, somehow I can feel his eyelashes flutter open, followed by the heat of his breath against the back of en," he says, his voice still pliant with sleep

I roll over to face hi over rass, like tribal initiation scars I want to touch therooves of his otherwise smooth skin I want to touch every part of hiravitational pull