He said his eyes rasped audibly when he blinked. Which wasn’t very far from the truth. Very small amounts of dust particles crept into his eyes at night and bonded with his cornea to form a strange layer of gritty paste on the surface of his eye. In a literal sense, his eyes were like sandpaper.

Not, of course, that anyone else could see it. He had been to doctors who told him nothing was wrong, gave him simple saline drops and the equivalent of a pat on the head. He had been to several shaman who told him that the condition was a result of his continued ignorance. So he had tried to learn everything there was about physics, chemistry, mysticism, philosophy, society, psychology, languages, literature from every available culture – anything that was in the world or hidden between the cracks of physicality. The condition remained. He was a medical mystery.

“So that’s why I’ve come to you,” he concluded.

“Well, Mr. Marson, what do you expect me to do about it?”

He paused to take in the bleakness of my habitat. The air was cold and pulling moisture from the ground. “Why do you live here?”

My focus left his face and wandered to the grey-white horizon. “Because it’s home,” I replied with a shrug.

He blinked slowly, wincing a little as he opened his eyes again. “I want you to be my companion to every type of habitable place on the planet, from least to most hospitable. After that, I will ask you the same question and I want a better answer. Because that is the last thing I don’t know. And if that doesn’t cure me, I will have my eyes removed.”

I ran my tongue against the back of my teeth to keep my face neutral. “Why me? That’s a lot of pressure on a person.”

He smiled. “Because you, like me, have never really seen.”

She was writing on paper so thin the ink was bleeding onto the table. Indelible marks on the forty-year-old Formica. So obviously this was the end of nothing. Hints of thoughts were there beyond scrubbing and bleach. They had to know that.

The pen moved carefully, its tip fine enough to tear the paper in a sudden surge of emotion. She remained reined in and solitary. Each letter self-contained. Deliberate. She crackled underneath the stoic scratching.

A thunk against the window. Her hand jerked with her head, made gift-wrap crinkling noises as the page crumpled and tore. Thoughts became pianos and singing and cackling chatter. Her fingers pulled the rest of the page into her fist.

She had never believed in bad timing. It was foolish and elastic against the rigid reality of choices. Leeway thinking, as if there could have been another route. She stared at the table. Not a complete word in the ink tracings. Just self-important permanence. She wondered if there were any way a bird could survive an eight-story fall after being stunned against a window.

My gran used to say, “There’s only darkness until you open your eyes, but never stare directly at the sun.” But when I combined those two pieces of advice, I noticed that it was brighter staring at the sun with my eyes closed than keeping my eyes open after bedtime.

After visiting gran, my oldest brother would tell me that she was a senile old vampire. I would swear I didn’t believe him, but each time I saw gran, I would try to examine her papery skin and puzzle over the cloudy centres of her eyes without her noticing. My mother told me, after gran died, that gran was careful never to let on that she knew what I was doing.

But that was the memory. The one that triggered my reaction to Jason at the newstand the day before the eclipse. Try explaining that connection to the cops as a man is standing in front of you bleeding from the mouth.

We were looking for a savior long after saving our ideals was beneficial. I mean, we couldn’t conceive of deeper shades of bleakness. Marshall Pennigton had a slick-toothed smile and apologetic eyes. He had us believing he damn near invented achievement.

Jenny knew that was a lie, of course. She knew better than any of us that what we really wanted was just something to work towards. Our constant frustration was, to her, merely our failure to accept that our lot was never to reach our goals.

Depressing? Yes and no. Jenny was our real source of hope, though it wasn’t nearly as apparent before that sentence was written down just now. Our adoration was shown in constant condescension for her blindness regarding Marshall’s worth. Marshall made glory attainable in our eyes. We did not realise he had said nothing about the road.

Sometimes what I crave more than anything are the keys. He used to say that he loved they way they sounded when he tossed them. Like singing. Their collisions in the arc of air shivered down the metal and that shimmer of sound landed flat in his palm.

I would lay them out on the table. Rows of keys thunked methodically so I could compare the teeth, could run my finger along the varying grooves. I was searching for the similarities.

She never understood. She only cared about latches and locks. Ways to make tumblers impassable without keeping anyone out. My bird of paradox.

There had to have been a crisis. Amid all those lockless keys and keyless locks, there must have been a clash. A clanging. A doorbell. Some sort of chaotic alert. There couldn’t have been only a light chinging as she slid the key under the door and rid herself of all access to my life.

She was thinking about the way Perry used to whisper across her throat like a silk scarf. Which made her feel naked and uncomfortable. She didn’t trust the touch of silk. It seemed too delicate for her clumsy mouth and fingers.

But this one! This one felt like tree bark. More real, more alive, more immediate beneath her fingertips. Not that she could touch him yet. The more she looked, the more she wanted to run her thoughts between the convolutions of his mind, to find it rough and smooth and solid and fragile (if she knew how to feel the cracks) next to her skin.

And he was speaking to her now. A voice that hid the twittering of small, homey birds. That thrumped with seasons and patience. A smile that rustled in a gust of wind. She leaned against it and sighed.

My grandfather, if this old photo is any indication, was not a particularly handsome woman. My grandmother had something of the Hollywood starlet in her look, but my grandfather was little more than dignified-looking in his bold eyeliner and knit cardigans. His jaw and his nose, strong and Scandinavian, did little to enhance his femininity.

Grandpa liked Fortrelle dresses. Sturdy fabric, he said. And it was. I still have one of his dresses hanging in the back of my closet in perfect condition (though slightly musty smelling). He wasn’t much for the showy patterns my grandmother loved. He liked plain, straight lines that flattered his build. And living where he did, he didn’t want to draw much attention to himself.

Not that any of his neighbors made comment about it. That was something I never understood. According to family legend, everyone accepted his odd attire as if it were nothing. All the ladies of the neighborhood would go to Grandpa for tips on the most flattering styles, and Grandpa’s Swedish-tinted voice would praise or scold them depending on the day and according to the dress. Whatever he lacked in beauty, he did make up in style.

Except for his love of Fortrelle. The actual memories I have of Grandpa – not the legends or the colourless photographs, but my times with him – have a rough polyester texture. Sitting on his lap with my head against his chest because he had let me stay up past my bedtime. There was a heartbeat, the push and release of lungs against his ribcage, and that enduring fabric.

“Hey, do you remember that time I thought I was in love? But then it turned out I had appendicitis, so I never got a chance to tell him? And then when I came out of surgery, it turned out he hadn’t ever lived here? So it turned out I wasn’t in love after all. But that was pretty funny.”

I stare at her.

“Anyway, I just bring it up because there was this other time that we were taking about relationships and how you didn’t think you’d ever get married. And I told you that I was sure you would find someone some day, but you didn’t believe me. And then it turned out that you were right. Life is so weird!”

I blink.

“Wow. I just realised that I’ve known you since you were thirteen. Remember how awkward grade eight was with Julie Swinton having that enormous crush on you? Didn’t she move away, and you didn’t have to deal with it anymore?”

“That wasn’t – ”

“Wow. I just can’t believe all the time that’s passed. Isn’t life interminably dull sometimes? And then just like that something exciting happens! And all that seems to do is highlight the excruciating boredom of the dull times.”

“Ma’am, would you like to order?”

“Oh, what? Gosh! I haven’t even had a chance to look at the menu. Can you give me a few minutes?”

“Of course,” I reply. I turn and walk back to the kitchen.

“This is ridiculous,” I said to Sid the line cook.

“What? Oh, wow. Did it happen again?” he replied.

She knew the church doors would be open for at least another hour. She remembered a time when they were never locked. But maybe that was a world she had dreamed. Maybe churches had never been sanctuaries.

She shivered as she ducked inside and eased the door into place. It had been years since holy water had touched her fingers. Now it dripped down the bridge of her nose from the start of the cross on her forehead. She wiped it away uncomfortably.

“I just came to get warm,” she whispered to the statue of Joseph that stood in the corner of the entrance. Even the whisper seemed too loud to the phantom families that gathered under Joseph’s painted wooden smirk. They sucked in their breaths and peered disapprovingly at her from the corners of their eyes. She pulled her jacket tight over her stomach.

The thin carpet muted her hard-soled heels as she moved back toward the tiny flame near the tabernacle. “I just came to get warm,” she repeated to the statue of Mary silencing the snake beneath her foot. The snake’s tongue flicked in the low light and Mary frowned at its movement, directing the woman to the small chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

She stumbled a little over the sight of the nun kneeling in the first pew – head tilted back slightly, eyes fixed on something unseeably beautiful. The nun blinked and turned to her. She blushed and lowered her eyes, uncertain of the pure adoration she had witnessed.

Rising a little stiffly, the nun shuffled out of the pew and squeezed the woman’s arm with a smile in passing. Her rubber soled shoes swished against the carpet as she exited the side door.

“No, really. I just came to get warm,” the woman protested. Her voice disappeared into the harshly muffling walls.

He was methodically pulling wings off various insects he had trapped in jars when she walked through the garden. She paused to squish one of his poor wingless victims on the path.

“How many more?” she asked.

“Well, I have thirty-three sets right now. I figure I’ll need more than eighty to get the proper size. How is the glue coming?”

She took off her shoe and inspected the bottom. “I’ll need a few more of these. And I still haven’t heard back from Lucy on the spirit gum.”

He nodded, then turned back to the dragonfly he had carefully pinned to tree stump. Delicately, he twisted the first of the four wings from its body. “You understand this is just a prototype. The real wings will be extracted from birds.”

She shifted her weight from her shoe to her bare foot, wincing a little at the pebble that dug in. Her mind went deaf under the shudder of stepping on bloody wingless birds to make the glue that would hold the feathers together.

“I think I’ll need a hammer to kill the birds,” she said. “I don’t think I’m big enough to squash them.”

“Whatever works,” he replied and snapped the last clear wing from the dragonfly. He smiled, holding it up to the sun. “These will be beautiful.”