Drowning in the sea. That was the trick of it. To be seen to swoon, to fall to the bottom. The pretend to expire. It was the pearls that weighed me down. They alway do. Spiros bought them for the moon. That is what he said. The moon. As if the moon had a price. All things had a price. He gave them to me in the back garden of the hotel under a moon that was more red that white. A bad luck moon. But the band played on in the gallery and couples in their best passed under the lime trees. The sea beckoned. That was before the ball. The ball and the accessions and Spiros's hand too close on the small of my back, his bad breath whisper in my ear. Turn the other cheek. Who could do that. The roulette wall took another spin and the room washed away from me. The sea. I remembered it. From when I was young. I heard a poem once, a young man with brilliainteened hair, a white shirt and white spats, talking into a microphone as big as his fist. His own poetry he claimed and he intoned the words. The briny deep. The utter desolation. The sea, oh the sea. Anyone who was truly listening groaned or giggled. That is how I knew the poetry was bad. Spiros brought another draught of champagne and I toyed with the stem, because I would not drink. What did they know of the sea? How could they now what it was like in the deep, what was desolation, what was true. The sea in the deep reaches is dark, always dark, and very very silent. It is where we wait, if we know what is good. My father, he takes hims time in coming. He spends most of his time asleep. You might wonder if the dreamnt, but that is a human construct. (It is all the rage at the hotel to talk of dreams and portents and oral fantasies; it's that strange little Austrian who makes them speak so, and if he has handsome in his own way/intriguing in his own way, with his dark piercing eyes, I know to stay away. I know the secrets he might guess). No I do not believe that my father dreams. I believe his slumber is just that, the sleep of the ages. We dart around him, keeping watch, letting nothing distrupt his rest. But then -- when he wakens. Imagine the world ripped open. Imagine the heave and puncture, the gaping wound, the solid tear. That is what happens when the ocean makes way for his waking. The other creatures of the deep