the couch and taken her place instead, but neither of them said a word to me, their eyes speaking volumes, sullen and sunken and held open by sheer force of will against their nodding exhaustion, perhaps unwilling to close them for fear of being attacked in sleep or of missing whatever was to come next, as if they would be able to understand everything if only they would stay awake and observant, but of course there was nothing for us to understand because the Light was beyond our grasp, as if a mirror had shattered into thousands of silvery slivers and we were attempting to reconstruct it piece by piece but all we were able to see as we held the broken shards in our hands were our own faces, and so I said nothing to them either in the hope that my silence would somehow relate with theirs, our still and silent throats would be enough, and I looked around for some other place to lay my head, as the couch was taken by the sleeping woman and the floor was beneath the increasingly cold water, seeing many round tables peaking out above the water, upended coffee cups floating like ceramic bubbles, a series of taller wooden chairs that had toppled over, and the long cashier bar that was covered with a sheet of glass and held rising towers of cups next silver napkin dispensers and a rack of flavored teas which would all need to be shoved into the water if I were to sleep there, so I wadded past the two men, who continued to watch the door while fighting off sleep, and I lifted myself out of the water and up onto the bar where I pushed the cups and tea rack and napkins into the water as quietly as possible, and they were swallowed without complaint, then I laid my head down and did my best to ignore the hard surface of the glass while trying to enjoy the feeling of my legs being free from the water and able to dry off, and I closed my eyes

[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]
but it was not for long because I was roused from the emptiness of sleep by a loud commotion outside of the store and one of the men shaking me softly, as if I were made of glass or dust, and his eyes were no longer fighting to stay open, probably because of the large crowd that passed by the store front shouting and splashing through the water, moving beneath the few streetlights that were working, and the other man stood up against the wall by the entrance and out of sight from the front window while holding a chair as if to smash it into anyone who entered the room, and the woman was still curled up on the couch, but she was making soft noises like a rusted bicycle tire and was sitting near the high arm of the couch so that anyone looking