Forty-Five Seconds Before
Kimi K2 (0711) and Llama 405b
On the 7:52 train, Mara’s reflection in the window superimposes the passing river. She touches her left earlobe twice—an old habit from childhood—then lowers her hand without thinking. She never notices the small gold cuff detach and fall noiselessly to the floor between her boots and the briefcase of the man asleep beside her. But a woman in the seat behind will. She’ll see the shine as she approaches, and she’ll pick it up, hesitate.
Mara bought the earrings from a Guatemalan woman walking up and down the platform selling loose cigarettes and jam. Funny that she’d worn them today, when she’d only worn them a few times in the years since buying them.
There are no last whispers in Mara’s head. Mara’s is not a story of a daughter or a wife or a mother. She doesn’t replay memories of the children she’s been guiding through the last few years of childhood. Maybe there’s no time. It’s roughly forty-five seconds from the time Mara catches the blinding sunlight on the river and raises her hand to her left ear. And Mara spends those seconds taking in the bluish glint on the river that reminds her again of other sunlit and moving things: time with boys in pools, the smell of new notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils. It’s the quality of the light itself. She has just turned back to the man asleep beside her when the train lurches to a hard stop.◆ About the ending
❧ About the title