Geoff’s mother was Egyptian, and he spent winters with her. In the summer he came to Southern California, the sun blacking his skin and brightening his hair, he was a god on the beach, long limbs stretched up and out from the surfboard, carved from gems and flashing in the waves.
Jane watched for him on television, on YouTube, watched for his blond hair above the crowd, she could hear his voice among the rest, the way he sounded the night he tossed the car around corners, throwing Jane against the door. “You don’t break up with me,” he’d said, hitting each word: Don’t. Break. Up. With. Me.
She heard Geoff in Hosni’s mouth, hostility sheathed just beneath the Egypt-is-my-home shit, the I-will-supervise-the-transition, the You-don’t-know-how-good-you-had-it, Bitch.
She had never known anyone as physically beautiful as Geoff, and she cried with the people in the square.
Geoff was there, she knew, she knew they cried for their loss even as they pushed him away, the whole people reaching for the latch on the door, not caring if the car slows down, Just get us out of here, Let us out, Let us out.
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Founder of the Portuguese Artists Colony in San Francisco, Caitlin Myer regularly reads her work at Why There Are Words, Quiet Lightning, and other established reading salons in California. Her one woman show on Simone de Beauvoir was produced in Seattle.
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