The Infinite Tides Read Free Page A

there.
    And then, all at once, an explosion of movement so unexpected that he leapt backwards in surprise, his voice making a sharp, quick noise comprised entirely of vowels. Even then his mind did not register what it could be, its size and upward motion impossible. And then he saw it more clearly: a huge black bird that rose out of the field not twenty feet away, its wings pounding up out of the dry grass and thistle, already past the rooflines and rising into the flat blue of the sky and then its wings extending into a single flat plane as it began to spiral upwards in slow lazy circles.
    He did not know how long he stood watching it, but the circles it described continued, the dark shape so wholly unmoving in its rotation that it appeared as if a shadow cut from darkness or a bird-shaped hole in the sky revealing that black space beyond the color of the sun, that point shrinking so quickly that when he momentarily glanced down to the field and then looked up again he could no longer find it. It was as if the bird had risen into the atmosphere or beyond and was itself in some kind of low orbit. He continued to stand there for a long while, scanning the sky, but now he did not even know what he was looking for. A speck of movement. But nothing would be revealed. The only evidence anything had occurred at all was the quick, rhythmic beating of his heart.
    At last he returned to the car and pulled into the street and to the end of the court and then turned onto the farther street beyond and turned again. Another court amidst more stunted trees and the occasional empty lot and he followed the curve of that cul-de-sac and exited only to find himself approaching the rounded sidewalk of yet another court. The lawn beyond the windshield: a yellow waste of dead grass. It is true that things turn out this way. One moment you are an astronaut floating high above a space station at the end of a robotic arm of your own design, the next you are driving through an endless suburb. He again swung the car around and cursed to himself. Grass-covered squares and rectangles. Seemingly identical cul-de-sacs appearing and disappearing as he passed, different only in their state of completion: a perfect model home, then the skeletal structure of a wooden frame, then a patch of bare dirt holding an unfinished foundation. Between these states: a fractal landscape of courts and ways that turned inward upon themselves, thin and many-legged spiders that had, in death, curled into their own bulbous bodies, clutching the empty, still air between perfectly manicured lawns.
    He found a Starbucks and parked. In contrast to the absurd blinding brilliance and slowly rising heat of the parking lot, it was cool and dark inside and he lifted the bag that contained his laptop and approached the counter as his eyes adjusted to the change in light.
    “What can I get started for you?” the girl at the counter said.
    He looked up at the menu on the wall behind the counter and as he did his phone began to vibrate in his pocket.
    “Just a cup of coffee,” he said quickly. He looked at the phone. A Houston area code but a number he did not recognize. “Hello?” he answered.
    “What size?” the girl said.
    “Chip,” the voice said through the phone. “Bill Eriksson.”
    “Eriksson,” Keith said. Then: “How are you?” And then, to the girl: “A medium is fine.”
    “I’m doing good,” Eriksson said. “Doing good. But I’m calling to find out how
you’re
doing.”
    “What?” Keith said.
    “I want to know how you’re doing,” Eriksson said again.
    “No,” Keith said. “Hang on. I’m at Starbucks.” Then to the girl at the counter: “What?”
    She told him the price again and he fished out his wallet. “Sorry about that,” he said into the phone.
    “Hey, no problem,” Eriksson said. “So how you doing?”
    “Fine. Grabbing a cup of coffee.” He handed the girl his credit card and she pulled it through the edge of the register and then