Brï is floating. She doesn’t know how long she can keep it up, but she isn’t afraid. It feels as though she’s in a turquoise pool—what a novelty; where she comes from, there is nothing like it. Here you can see the fish and the white crystal seabed, everything sharp enough to be studied through a magnifying glass. Every so often she checks; maybe she has relaxed too much and her body is drifting out to sea, but no—the beach umbrellas are still clearly visible, ridiculous. She thinks she wishes she could be carried far away on a current with no return, that it would be a relief not to see the shore so close, and that going back to their side makes her want to vomit.
The temperature is delicious. There is no wind, only 27° of light falling over the near-nakedness of her body. Red nails on tapered feet, pointed tawny knees, a sheer bikini, visible pubic hair, a deep-set navel, a mandala tattoo between her breasts, a Greek nose, and a mole beneath her left eye. Brï does not go unnoticed; she is the kind of woman who only has to look once to set everything around her alight.
All at once she realizes that, if she concentrates, she can feel movement beneath her buttocks. It could be bubbles or loose strands of seaweed; she does not care which, she simply enjoys it. She hums a melody with her ears submerged, and the effect feels surreal, like being inside a dense void—perhaps the one inside her. She cannot remember when she became this version of herself, or the last time she laughed out loud. This trip has only made sense because of this moment of suspension, she thinks, this here and now.
Going back to the loungers, sitting at right angles to their legs, accepting the towel and the kindness, pretending a kiss and finding a good excuse to leave again—these are thoughts she wishes she could stop having. After all, she is thirty-five; it does not seem too late. She wants to taste freedom, the kind she has never known because she never knew herself well enough. She has a thousand and one reasons to be brave and change course. What Brï does not know is that she also has a great deal of ego.
She decides to swim. Her fingers are already far too wrinkled and, more than anything, she is hungry. Swimming butterfly, she moves slowly toward a place as unknown as the abyssal depths. Her legs draw a semicircle each time she pushes and moves forward. At some point she starts walking, still in the water, until her footsteps begin to leave marks in the sand. She weaves around the people and the beach towels she committed to her photographic memory so she would not get lost, and when she arrives, she does not understand. Only her things are there, arranged in the middle of the star-patterned towel. She looks to either side. She does not understand. A note inside her bag explains it. Does she still not understand? Brï stands there, open-mouthed, on a beach crowded with hundreds of vacationers. She cries and does not go unnoticed; she looks, and sets everything alight.
