Inside the hole the size of a cantaloupe in the low, thick, concrete wall were tiny hyper-yellow mushrooms of who-knows-what sort. The middle aged couple in windbreakers strolling past the mushrooms, along with everyone else pursuing the day with the white backdrop, didn't touch them. But the persimmon colored cat on the wall did, dangling its claws at them and sending the spoor kingdom flying between the sharp curled keratin points.
Alongside the wall, in front of the couple, a boy just a few years old was walking on the wide concrete path, wearing an outfit of subtle greens and touches of other wrinkled colors that continued the more abstract layers on the low concrete wall. If the boy had been walking upright, his head would perhaps have peeked over the top of the wall to see the ocean.
As it was. the boy was bending over in a C shape, and as the couple walked along, he kept catching Martin's attention as the scene became stranger the longer it lasted. The boy barely moved up and down with his speedy footsteps, sending a shadow gliding along the wall seamlessly, quietly unnoticed by his parents talking ahead of him on the far side of the wide sidewalk along the beach, dodging bikers and dogs.
The middle aged couple walking behind the boy was holding hands, but then he suddenly broke his pace and released his hold, turning to her with a sudden, forceful sigh. "Ok," Martin said to his wife, Ambry. "I've gotta....My glasses....Do they look off kilter to you? I mean, see where this side goes up at an angle?"
She hadn't noticed it. He had taken them off by the time he asked and started pressing them flat on the concrete, walking them along with his hands, one earpiece after another, looking up at Ambry, at an awkward angle, letting out the air in his chest as if he had held onto it for weeks, and trying half heartedly to make the glasses frames move into balance. He shook his head and flung it off to one side maturely, as if to let go of the hopeless project, making a "ghah!" sound, and stood up again, and they continued walking along the sea path, gazing repeatedly towards the ocean, over the low wall.
He said "I wish I had a movie camera," nodding his head toward the boy bent over at the waist, sliding along closely in front of them. Martin would see him every time he looked towards Ambry to speak. He couldn't explain why it was so fascinating, but it made him happy. The boy seemed as if he were a steady-cam.
"Ever since we went to the red rocks, what was it, two weeks, now, how, you know, everything went off at THIS angle?" He made an emphatic slant with his hand in the air. "My glasses have been like this ever since. We left the camp ground, and there they were, at this crazy slant." He put them back on, and she tried to see the difference without staring, as she was so used to seeing him, looking beyond his momentary appearance, seeing him as a conglomerate over years time. And she was caught up in his expressions, and glancing quickly at the boy to try see what he was referring to. "Well, I really notice it."
She'd noticed that some things he'd been saying lately were extra funny, and tried to remember back as he was talking more about the experience they had had camping in the desert for a few weeks. The red cliffs really had all been at that slant. She unconsciously jerked her head sideways to cock it at that slant for a second as she thought of what it had been like. She was meanwhile also trying to remember if some of the observations he made lately had struck her as funnier because his of the slant of his dark rimmed glasses, the same near-black as his hair and just as shiny. She loved his sense of speech and wry humor, and lately had been embarrassing herself laughing so hard at the absurdity of some of the scenes he described. . . . .
