From: bobandcarole@aol.com   
      
   Story: Karina   
      
   by Vivian Darkbloom   
      
       Passersby stared at me curiously as I stood facing a haphazard   
       diagonal, staring intently ahead of me in the dusk twilight. In   
       lonely absence, her aura haunted me as the fading warmth of the   
       day. While I thought to myself that, just maybe, I was feeling   
       the way she had felt, that very last time I saw her, standing in   
       that same spot, facing the same direction, at a bizarre angle to   
       the flow of traffic, ignoring the absent stares of orthogonally   
       half-drunk voyagers in bright tacky warm-weather clothes, feeling   
       the warm roughness of the sandy cement against the soles of my   
       bare feet.   
      
       An innocent glance at the bloom of a vine twined around a square   
       wooden post next to me. Intricately random folds of orange   
       tropical flowers trigger the memory of her smile, a memory which   
       washes over my psyche in a tidal-wave of menacingly gentle sweet   
       aroma, threatening to crush the world in darkness with the agony   
       of her missing beauty, as arm-in-arm lovers contemptuously drive   
       their harsh laughter into my heart, like broken looking-glass   
       shards, or splinters of weather-worn planks of a sunken warship   
       listing beneath the mud of eons.   
      
       An older woman in pink shorts and white sun-bonnet, toting a   
       large rustlingly full plastic shopping bag, filled with gifts for   
       the grandchildren back home, whips around the corner, adjusts her   
       course to avert collision, bumps gently into me. "Sorry," I say.   
      
       "Sorry," she says, and is gone. I continue to stare intently in   
       the dusk twilight of the receding day, reliving the event on this   
       same spot only a few hours ago.   
      
       "What are you looking at?" I had asked when I first saw her, she   
       balanced on one foot in the blaring noonday sun, oblivious to her   
       precariousness as she stared off into the distance.   
      
       "Come here, look," she said. I placed my chin on her tiny   
       shoulder and followed her gaze. Through a tiny chink in the   
       hedge-wall glittered the dancing sparkle of sunlight on the   
       distant waves.   
      
       "The ocean," I said, breathless.   
      
       "Yeah." Her soft hair brushed my cheek as she turned slightly,   
       pursing her lips with the coy smile now etched into my burning   
       pages of memory.   
      
       She must be about eight years old, wherever she is now, with a   
       calm, reserved adult-ness and long coils of beautiful dusty-   
       blonde hair, the steely twinkling blue eyes.   
      
       The `K' she drew with her big toe in the sand on the pavement.   
       "So I remember this spot," she said, smiling secretly at me.   
      
       "K, for?"   
      
       "Karina," she reminded me. Pronounced like the girl in Bob Dylan   
       song,   
      
       Corrina Corrina, gal where ya been so long?   
       I been wondering about you baby,   
       baby won't you please come home?   
      
       I sang the song to myself as I remembered in the twilight our   
       mid-day "tryst," cursing this purgatory of infernal waiting as I   
       watched through the tiny chink where the glittering waves would   
       have been in daylight, seeing nothing in the pitch-black of   
       night. Until a miracle transpired: at that very instant, the moon   
       raised its curious brow over the horizon, and my eyes were met   
       with the sparkle of millions of tiny twinkling pinpoints, dancing   
       on the waves.   
      
       Passersby stared as I stood diagonally transfixed.   
      
       Walking back to the parked rental car, my stray libido must have   
       been unconsciously working overtime, because I started feeling   
       like Shrek watching the villagers sharpen pitchforks: little   
       girls flushed smiling as they met my gaze, and parents almost   
       imperceptibly tensed as I walked by. If only they realized, none   
       of them were the one I was looking for.   
      
       The merry-go-round spun aimlessly, populated only by a mother   
       standing next to her little girl on the horse, braced against the   
       centrifugal force, both watching stoically ahead as the horse   
       circled around and around, expectantly if the laws of physics   
       were about to shift and the horse would change direction, or   
       perhaps transfigure into a gloriously live winged unicorn,   
       bearing the both of them away into a land of unimagined wonders.   
       At the center of the carousel, mirrors reflected every which way,   
       and the carillon bells jingled their tuneless music-box calliope   
       melody.   
      
       Art gallery walls spaciously enclosed hollow laughter and   
       specious kitsch, weasely obsequious salesman grins and the   
       flashing credit-cards of casually wealthy retirees in expensively   
       ugly shorts. The shallow smell of money. And while the moon   
       busily made its way across the starry sky, the guy who drew   
       portraits every night, sitting in the exact little niche in a   
       storefront alcove, silently studied the face of a squirming,   
       giggling youthful boy, surrounded by the critical gazes of his   
       family.   
      
       A front-line soldier patrolling the trenches dug in against the   
       onslaught of transient visitors, each of whom was expecting the   
       perfect vacation, the Portraiteer calmly studied the face before   
       him. The private's wages were a fraction the income of the   
       gallery-chain owner who sat at this very minute comfortably   
       absorbed in a widescreen TV-commercial for a ridiculously large   
       expensively gas-guzzling automobile. The corpulent General was   
       cozily ensconced, safely away from battle lines, yelling at his   
       wife in the kitchen for an extra scoop of ice-cream.   
      
       The tall masts of ships anchored out in the harbor stood swaying   
       as thin shadows against the night sky, talking to each other in   
       the soothingly mysterious language of ropes ringing gently   
       against hollow metal poles, accompanied by the occasional crash   
       of waves on the rocky shoreline.   
      
       As I drove the highway to my temporary dwelling, the rental-car   
       radio gently crooned a Polynesian love-song. At the end of the   
       driveway, the motor fell silent. The house was dark and empty,   
       aside from the gaunt shadows of ghosts of vacationers and   
       revelers from years gone by. Letting myself in, the key clattered   
       to a rest in hollow silence on the bland, chipped formica of the   
       kitchen counter.   
      
       Lying in bed, the memory of her returned once more, the first   
       time I saw her, earlier that same day, in the brilliant morning   
       light waiting to board the plane. Ahead of her parents, she   
       lugged the bulky suitcase, wheeling it into position in the line   
       immediately behind me just as her parents exploded into an   
       argument.   
      
       Or rather her father exploded, make that her step-father -   
       dressed in a loose business suit, minus the tie, top shirt-button   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)