"Boyett-EpiphanyBeach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Boyett Stephen R)

Today is slim pickings. Condoms, a flip-flop, a comb, some change. He tosses the
coins one at a time over the flat black water, counting skips. One, two,
three-four-five, and gone.

His record is twelve, with a silver half-dollar.

The final penny he saves for a hovering seagull, but his hands are not well
designed for throwing and he has never hit a seagull yet. Or any other bird, for
that matter.

The Creature is about to lie on the sand when something catches his eye. It's on
the dunes past the beach, between him and the distant pier on the north end of
the bay. Some kind of bright sign hanging from a wooden post driven into the
dune. But it's not yet late enough in the day for the Creature to venture from
the shore to investigate it. He doesn't move very fast on land (which is why
it's good he looks so scary -- if they came after him, he'd never run away in
time), and he doesn't like to be far from the water in broad daylight. The sun
dries him out, and if he's sighted by anyone with more presence of mind than
those who holier and run, all kinds of unwanted attention will end up being paid
to his aquatic home.

He lies on the wet sand near the water and shuts his eyes. Already he feels the
light, the heat, drying him. He feels it deep in his seamed joints, an invisible
presence against his dosed eyes. His sensitive eyes, each pupil the size of a
fingertip (cavern eyes, dead sea eyes), a thin membrane dividing sight from
blackness. The sun dries the ridges of his scales, drains the canyon fissures of
his joints, feathers the lettuce leaves of neck gills, parches the webbing
spanning fingers and toes to brittle parchment.

And deeper than skin: as if his bone is bleached and marrow become porous chalk.
In water he is buoyed, supported, a creature more of space than of earth, living
in a three-dimensional world of shifting temperatures and currents rather than
crawling the flat skin of land. On the beach, though, the light presses down on
him, the heat presses him down. He feels connected to the ground.

It is a delicate balance he must maintain: he cannot breathe air, and can hold
his water away from the lagoon only twenty or thirty minutes. If his skin dries
it will crack and split, and he will weaken until he cannot drag himself back to
the water to breathe, and he will die.

Ashore his sight is blurry because his eyes get so dry.

So offshore forays are few, and sunbasking is reserved for late in the day, in
the off-season, very near the water indeed.

The Creature opens his huge eyes and splashes water away from them. The sky
ripples and clears. A private plane is a black T moving against white clouds. It
pulls red letters along: TAN, DON'T BURN!

The Creature waves to the airplane and shuts his eyes again.