The Vagabonds (2007)
“It is, she knows, a razor clam, or maybe a mussel or oyster; the parking lot has been littered with shells, a white glaze of shattered dropped shellfish, and there are only two cars. Joanna drives past. A brand-new Volvo station wagon, complete with baby seat and snowshoes, waits at the edge of the path to the beach; a fisherman’s truck stands idling there also, and the man inside raises his hand. She waves back—it’s the thing to do—but parks at the end of the lot. There, smoking, she stares at... the bay.This day it’s green and wintry, wind-roiled, with ice in its foam. She rolls her window open and hears the crackling tide. The sound, Joanna tells herself, is like a cocktail shaker’s, the salt and sand and wave spume all freezing and mixed in together. No ships are on the water, no line at the horizon’s edge beneath a glaucous sky. This is her lunch break and time to be private; holding the smoke, she inhales.The winter has been long. It is February 10. Ice and snow have settled in, and she feels the way that clam would feel if it knew itself caught in the gull’s outstretched beak and ready to be dropped.MoreLess
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