Anna meets me at the beach only during a thunderstorm. The parking lot is empty, puddled with dirty water; columns of sand snake across the asphalt, dodging scraps of garbage that swirl through the air like drowsy tornadoes.
Holding hands, we march down the beach, our toes digging into pasty sand.
As the tide rises, we climb atop jetties, stumbling over lichen and sinkholes, slicing our feet on barnacle shells and chunks of granite. A physicist, Anna will gaze at the ocean for hours, calculating in slow breaths, her voice heavy with gravity and refraction. I sit beside her, playing with the thin fabric of her linen shorts. When a bolt of lightning flashes, when the sky explodes with thunder, she lays a hand over her heart and sighs. She says, "If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water."
When Anna and I go to the beach, she talks of storms. She hands me binoculars so I can watch cumulonimbus clouds. She tells me they are responsible for heavy rain and gusty winds. The color of day-old bruises, they sag in the air like chunks of ambergris. Anna tells me that at any given moment there are nearly two thousand thunderstorms in progress over the earth's surface, that lightning strikes the earth one hundred times each second. She is in love with the weather, umbilically connected to the stratosphere. Each clap of thunder curls her toes, each crashing wave generates a child's laugh. She explains that every thunderstorm needs moisture and air. "Moisture to form clouds and rain," she says. "And then warm air that can rise rapidly." She burrows into me, hiding her face in the folds of my sweatshirt. "But there needs to be a lift," she whispers.
"A front or a sea breeze that can lift the air to begin the process."
Anna tells me to close my eyes, her fingers skimming my lashes. When I try to speak, she presses her finger to my mouth. "Shhh," she says. "Listen to the raindrops hit the water." I remain silent, the words collecting in my throat. I want to spill them onto her lap, knowing she'll dismiss them with a glance toward the sky, wringing them out like she does those titanic puddles that soak into her extra-large sweatshirt. Leaning forward, she catches raindrops on the tip of her tongue. Each muted splash drives me into silence, and I become envious of hydrogen and oxygen.
In the gloom of twilight, shadows blot the landscape like ink on paper. The sky splits open in sheets of rain, and while Anna basks in the tiny splashes that echo around us, I dream of being a cirrus cloud. My hand skis down her outstretched leg, slicing through streaks of water, docking at the arch of her foot where I rub the skin in slow circles. I long to trigger a chemical reaction, converting her barometric words into a coze of possessives.
Remembering that the typical thunderstorm lasts an average of thirty minutes, I will lock her in my arms and count the mile-long seconds that linger between us, bridging the timeless gap between peals of thunder and sparks of lightning.