I unplug anything I can think of, but the clock runs on batteries and it keeps ticking. Other than that, it's silent. The house holds its breath.

To look outside I have to peer through the boards over the window. When I do, the smell of fresh pine tickles my nose. The boardwalk glitters through the gaps like an abandoned wrapper. I wonder what it would sound like out there, with all the tourists gone and the town empty.

Across the street, the neighbors' window reflects the sun in a flat sheet of white. They didn't bother with boards. The house might be all right, but I worry about their restaurant. It's right on the beachfront where hungry tourists can find it.

On sunny days, David's Honda would glow cherry red in front of our house. Now the driveway is empty.


David is walking up and down the beach with a tackle box slung over his shoulder. Smooth translucent lumps of beach glass, strung on wire and hemp, dangle from his long fingers. The tourists buy bracelets, chokers, keychains. Sometimes when they give me pictures to develop I recognize something he's made.
His workshop is the kitchen table. He gets so absorbed that he won't notice if the spaghetti boils over.
When I get angry with him he holds me until I shut up. Then he pulls out his guitar. The music never leaves him.


I boarded the windows because the walls are covered in photos and I don't want them ruined. I had to look for a long time to find one of him that was formal enough to send out with the announcement. Almost all the pictures of us are spontaneous. I like them because they're not like the dull, posed ones I have to handle every day at the camera shop: fat man in front of fry stand, fat man in white shorts, fat man with freckly wife, fat man unaware of the enormous wave behind him.

I leave the window and start taking down the ones I like best. They go into stacks on the table beside David's most recent project. I can't tell what he had in mind. It's still just a heap of blue and green pebbles, lightly frosted, the way that things get when they've been tossed around by the tide for a while.


David is playing guitar in front of the neighbors' restaurant. It brings good business. Their mom-and-pop joint has to compete with fast food stands down the boardwalk.
Tourists know he's not one of them because he tans, he doesn't burn like them. He's been here all his life, which my family thinks is a bad thing. The tourists give him tips and ask what it's like living right on the ocean.
They ask if he has a boat.
They ask if he has a girlfriend. They ask if he wants one.
They ask if he'd like one on the side and add that his wife doesn't have to know, which makes us both laugh. The ones who ask that are about fifteen and flat as a low tide sandcastle at high tide. They like his music and his tan.
David is mine.


I rubberband the photos and put them in my pocket. I sent a few with the neighbors when they left this morning, after promising that my sister was coming to give me a ride.

Suddenly it's all too close, with the house silent except for the clock. I can't breathe in here. I sweep the beach glass into my other pocket and take David's guitar from the corner. The stiff new strap scratches my shoulder. When I unbolt the door, the pressure changes. The sky is the color of smoke, and little bursts of clouds skitter across it. The sunlight fades. The air is thick.

The guitar bumps against my hip as I walk down the middle of the street. It turns out that the neighbors did put up storm shutters for the restaurant. They're the same vinyl as the ones my boss and I put up at the camera shop. They're advertised as able to withstand terrific pressures. For the house, boards were cheaper. I'll find out soon if they work.


David is glowing like a skinny sun god, but day by day he dims. The machines whirring and beeping and ticking all around him are bleeding his color away. It takes a long time to drain the summer from him.
I wait every day. My boss covers for me. The neighbors tell me that people notice him missing from the beach. My family pays the medical bills because David and I don't have enough saved up, and for once they don't say anything.
A little money comes back from the insurance company and from the wreckers who took what was left of the Honda. I buy a new strap for his guitar and I bring it to show him, but his eyes stay closed. The doctors say he's only breathing because of the machines.
They say that what is David is gone.
I believe them because I can't hear the music now.


Heading down the boardwalk and out onto the empty pier, I call my sister. She's on West Coast time and is just having her lunch break while it's getting toward evening here. She asks how I'm doing with David gone. She asks about the weather. It's not bad; the wind has picked up.

She asks other things. Will I be home for Thanksgiving? We'll have to see. I'm not sure of my plans right now. I don't mention that the town is empty now.

When we hang up I drop the phone over the edge of the pier. The ocean swallows it in a gulp. The waves are coming in faster than usual, throwing white froth against the beach. Spray soaks through me.

Since no one will see, I take off my clothes and drop them in, too. They clump around the girders like dead men washing in and out. My pants sink faster because of all they have in the pockets.


David is gone. I wait while one by one the machines go quiet.
I squeeze his hand.


It';s a relief not to hear the clock anymore. I sit down, careful of the hot cement, and dangle my feet over the edge. If it were sunny I'd burn like the tourists. I hold the guitar on my lap the way David showed me, but I don't play. Music is his, not mine. Instead the waves and the wind fill up the silence.

While the hurricane is still a smudge on the horizon, the first rain starts to fall. It comes in fat, heavy drops. When they plunk onto the guitar, it echoes. I tilt it upwards and let the rain spatter over it. It makes a sound almost like notes, almost like music.