Torren pulled up the anchor. I’d offered to help but she brushed me away. Wondered if she’d be the same if I opened a door for her or stood back to let her walk in somewhere ahead of me. Her father watched her, chain smoking, wet cough rasping. Light was coming up. From the cabin another cigarette butt flicked away, floating down like landing lights on a plane in distance. Felt gnawing on the end of my line and yanked it towards me. As the line wisped up it floated in without sinker or hook.
“Let me,” Torren said. She reached past me and took the hand line. Backs of her hands were scratched as if she played with cats. “Haven’t really done this before, have you?” I said I’d forgotten. It’d been awhile. Nearly added I’d been trying to forget all kinds of things. The light in x-rays. Taking the diminishing body of someone you loved into your arms. How they felt lighter week by week. Changes in their voice. At that time Lara and I still slept without clothes. Drew her so close, could feel the bones of her spine. But their symmetry seemed to have changed. Pieces of her jammed into me like a stone in my shoe. At times her pain must have eased and she’d sigh quietly, breath soft and deep before her body stilled.
Torren threaded line through the hook. It moved in her fingers like sewing. Across the boat someone shouted ‘Got one!’ and we watched them haul it over the boat’s side, dropping it writhing on the boards. A flathead, it flexed side to side, gills opening and closing desperately. A man hunched over the fish, wrenching at the hook.
