What He Saw

By Michael Winter
· Illustration by Paul Kim
Fiction · From the June 2006 magazine
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Ah yes, he said. And Elsa knew he was realizing she was not rich. She knew too that this was their yacht.

You she said.

We are not at these hotels at all.

He asked why San Sebástian.

My boyfriend, she said, he has a film in the festival.

He looked around. Your boyfriend is in the water

For a second it was possible that her boyfriend was a porpoise.

He doesn’t swim, she said.

He is from Canada; it is too cold to learn to swim. And he translated for the girl, who must not have been more than twenty-two. They were laughing at a country where you could not swim because of the water.

He chooses not to swim, Elsa said. He can swim very well.
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1 comment(s)

christopherOctober 21, 2010 16:23 EST

I imagine the line, "She let go of the buoy. She let go of him. She wanted to be anchored only by her heels and knees around his legs and what he had pushed in." was rewritten several times over to lessen the dead giveaway of such a pleasurably private act. great story.

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