A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“I couldn’t get in,” she says when Ben opens the door.

“The lock is broken,” he says, turning the knob. “Your hair is wet.”

“I stopped for a swim.”

“And I think you lost your shoes.” He points at her bare feet. They are almost back to normal, but the three middle toes remain for the moment webbed and orange. “I rushed back. Are you all right?” she asks him.

“Fine. Everything is fine. The front window has a crack,” he says.

“Stress fracture,” she says, “Did they call?”

He nods. “About fifteen minutes ago. I reported vibration and minor damage.”

In their backyard there is a global positioning monument, a long probe sunk deep into the earth. Every thirty seconds one of five satellites registers the position of the monument, measuring the motion in scientific millimeters. There are hundreds of them, up and down the state. She and Ben get a tax credit for “the friendly use of land.” And every time there’s an event, the phone rings. “Just checking in.”

When she stands near the monument, when she focuses on it, she can feel the satellite connecting, a gentle pull for a fraction of a second, a tugging at the marrow.

“There are footprints,” Ben says, pointing out the press of a paw on the loamy ground behind the house. “I’m thinking dog or deer.”

“Mountain lion,” she says, bending to sniff the print, pressing her hand into the dirt over it.

Ben takes a dry towel and rubs her hair — at the roots her hair is fluorescent orange, the rest is brunette. The color changes according to her mood, or, more accurately, her emotional temperature. The only way she can disguise her feelings or not look like a clown is to dye her long locks. “Are you especially frightened?”

“The tremor threw me,” she says. “Do I need a dye job?”

He nods. “You’re bright orange.”

She is cleaning her brush, her comb, saving the strands, spinning and weaving a Technicolor carpet.

“Did you go out today?” She notices that all the grocery bags on the counter are from iDot.com, the online food store — type in your list and your groceries are at the door within an hour.

“The pollen was high,” he says. “The air was bad. I stayed inside, working. I made you a wonderful puzzle.”

Ben is perfecting a kind of time-sensitive material, a puzzle that shifts so that the image changes as you are piecing it together. Every day he downloads photographs and turns them into something new. This time it’s a picture of the sky at twilight, a single cloud. As they put the pieces together, the blue deepens; it becomes an image of the night sky and, as more of the pieces fit, a small plane flies across the sky, moving silently from piece to piece.

In every room there is a clock; Ben likes listening to the tick, tock, tripping of the hands as he travels from room to room, as sound shifts, time bends.

He runs her a warm bath and sits by the edge while she soaks — ever since the fall in the well, she can’t bear to be in water alone.

“Benjamin, are you still thinking you can stop time?” she asks as he washes her back.

“I’m working on it,” he says.

“How well do you know me?”

“Very well,” he says, kissing her. Her skin is the skin of youth, of constant rejuvenation, delicate, opalescent, like mother of pearl.

“Is there a beginning or an end?”

“No beginning or end in sight — infinity.”

Out of the bath, he wraps a towel around her.

He presses his mouth to her skin, telling her stories.

Her heart races, the watch on her arm ticks faster. She begins to shift, to change; first she is the coyote, then a zebra, a mare, and a man. Her bones are liquid, pouring. She is laughing, crying in ten different languages, barking and baying. His hands slide over her skin, her coat, her fur, her scales, her flippers and fins. He is sucking the toes of a gorilla, kissing the ear of a seal. She is thick and thin, liquid and solid.

They are moving through time: lying on pelts in a cave, in a hand-carved bed in a palace, nomads crossing the desert, calico pioneers in a log cabin, they are on a ship, in a high-rise, on the ice in an igloo. Their cells are assembling and disassembling. They are flying through history. She is a cloud, vapor and texture. She is rain and sky and she is always and inescapably herself.

“Is that still you?” he asks. “I never know if you’re really in there.”

“It’s me,” she says, sliding back into herself. “In the end, it is always me.”

The white van accelerates. He is in back, strapped in, seat-belted, shoulder-harnessed, sitting between two men in suits. She, too, is supposed to be in back, but she is up front, next to the driver. Wherever they go, she is always up front — she gets carsick.

There are escort cars front and rear, small unmarked sedans — white on the West Coast, black on the East.

“Trash day,” one of the agents in the back seat says, trying to make conversation. All along the curb are large black plastic trash cans and blue recycle bins. The path is narrow, the van takes the curves broadly, swinging wide, as though it owns the road.

Something happens; there is a subtle shift, a tremor in the tectonic plates below, and the trash cans begin to roll. They pick up speed, careening downhill toward the motorcade.

“Incoming on the right,” the agent shouts.

The lead car acts like a tank, taking the hit head on, the trash can explodes, showering the convoy with debris: empty Tropicana containers, Stouffer’s tins, used Bounty. Something red gets stuck on the van’s antenna and starts flapping like a flag.

“Son of a bitch,” she says.

In the lead car, an agent whips a flashing light out of the glove compartment, slaps it down on the roof, and they take off, accelerating rapidly.

The motorcade speeds in through the main gate. Agents hover in the driveway and along the perimeter, on alert, guns drawn.

“The Hummingbird has landed. The package has been returned. We are at sea level.” The agents speak into their lapels.

The gates automatically pull closed.

“What the hell was that — terrorists on St. Cloud Road?” she asks.

“Earthquake,” the agent says. “We’re confirming it now.” He presses his ear bud deeper into his ear.

“Are you all right, sir?” they ask, helping him out of the van.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he says. “That was one hell of a ride, let’s saddle her up and go out again.”

His eye catches the shiny red fabric stuck on the antenna. He lifts it off with his index finger, twirling it through the air — bright red panties, hooked on their lacy trim. The underpants fly off his finger and land on the gravel. Whee.

“Where are we?” he asks, kicking gravel in the driveway. “You call this a quarry? Who’s directing this picture? What the hell kind of a movie is this? The set is a shambles.”

The problem isn’t taking him out, it’s bringing him back.

“Home,” she says.

“Well, it’s no White House, that’s for sure.” He pushes up his sleeve and picks at the Band-Aid covering the spot where they injected the contrast.

Earlier, at the doctor’s office, two agents waited in the exam room with him, doing card tricks, while she met with Dr. Sibley.

“How are you?” Sibley asks when she sat down.

“Fine. I’m always fine, you know that.”

“Are you able to get out at all?”

She nods. “Absolutely. I had lunch at Chasens with the girls earlier this week.”

There is a pause. Chasens closed several years ago. “Nothing is what it used to be,” she says, catching herself. “How’s he?”

Dr. Sibley turns on the light boxes. He taps his pencil against the films. “Shrinking,” he says. “The brain is getting smaller.”