Four legs. On each side. And a splotch on their backs, red on blue, the shape of a handprint on moist sand.

The boy lay, sand pressing warm, gritty, onto the side of his face. Sun beating on his brown legs. He stared at the waves, chuckling timidly up towards him. Watched the crabs, scuttling sideways like old looms, back and forth among the pearls of surf.

* * *

Mi amor...

Tanto te quiero...

The hot, heavy darkness, its damp hands moving thickly over both their bodies. The acrid slipperiness of sweat; somewhere far away dogs barking to the rising sun.

The sound of their lovemaking like warm waves breaking against the shore.

* * *

The young girl squinted up at the sun, her mouth sweet and sticky. Her tongue pulled long fibers of mango fruit from between the gaps in her teeth. She spat them in the sand beside her bare feet and hefted the seed, fish-slippery, in her hand. Seagulls writhed and cried over the bright water, where men were pulling in their nets in a flock of cayucos. Thieving, the gulls dipped, screamed.

Her mother told her, too often, that one day one of those fishermen would be hers. The girl squinted out to sea, rubbed the soles of her feet in the hot sand. Folded her arms across her flat chest. Could not see the men's faces, only their wet shoulders, glinting in the sun as they tossed and pulled their nets.

She wanted to throw that seed, slippery and treacherous in her sticky palm. Wanted to see the gulls scatter, wanted to stretch a line from herself out to that fleet of sleek cayucos, to one of the men in them. Wanted to see, as the seed left her hand, which canoe it would leap to. But she did not make it fly from her. She knew she couldn't throw half that far. Knew the only sound would be its sole sinking -plop,- as naked and lonely as a pearl as it slid below the water.

* * *

Long stripes of morning light fall across his face, his open mouth. The edges of the fisherman's eyes quiver, he blinks. Raises his head.

She is still draped across him, her breath rasping gently as moth wings across his ear. He strokes the back of her arm, the dark strands of hair that have slipped across her shoulders. Remembers how when she was just a girl he had watched her braid from his boat, admiring the long sway of its rope down her back as she walked. Remembers the glint of her dark eyes, and the new almond smell of the skin around her neck.

He listens to the breeze rustle among the fronds of the roof, hopes it will drop lower and enter through the chinks in the boards.

He runs a hand along the woman's spine, feels beads of her sweat slip beneath his fingertips. He brings his hand to his mouth, touches the wet salt to his tongue.

Last night she tasted like the sea.

* * *

The welt raised itself magically, fervently, under the girl's scratching toenails. Eyes smarting from smoke, she tried to keep regularly stirring the coconut milk and balance on one leg at the same time. Scratched the back of her calf with her other foot. She heard another whining drone by her ear and swatted, missed. Wiped her damp palm on her skirt. A dog, bones bristling like armor, came tiptoeing, sidling in. Teats stretched, hanging low. Eyes guarded.

!Vayase! she said. Kicked a piece of coconut shell at it. Teeth bared, the dog slunk away. The girl stirred the spoon, noticed another bite on her left arm. Scratched.

* * *

The palm bark pushed itself sun-warm and smooth under his bare feet, against his dark belly. Sweat stinging in his eyes, breath rough in his throat. Jump-tug, jump-tug. The smooth green-golden coconut husks hanging ever closer. Jump-tug. They hung pendulous, breast-like above him. His tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth. He could nearly taste the sweet juice, cool as marimba music down the back of his throat.

* * *

!Vayanse! !Vayanse!

The chickens, flustered, panic around the woman's ankles, scatter for the door. The man had left the gate open again this morning, damn him, and now chicken droppings mix with the dust of the kitchen floor under her feet. She had caught up the corn basket in just in time to save today's tortillas. She had told him to close the gate when he left to fish, had been telling him for years, but he had never remembered. Not once.

Her apron heavy with old corn cobs, the woman steps out under the low door. Tosses the cobs, stuck here and there with withered yellow kernels like teeth in the mouth of Marco the drunkard, among the startled chickens.

Their little mango tree stands to the side, sullen under the weight of five new mangos. Large already, taunting with bits of orange on their smooth, fragrant skin, but still too green. A few more weeks...she licks her tongue over the tips of her teeth.

The sky hangs, not yet gray but already heavy, like the promise of a fist. She stares out over the gathering sea and a small cool breeze fingers and lifts the black curls at the back of her neck.

* * *

A figure walked carefully along the sand, back straight, legs long, a lumpy bundle half as tall as she was balanced on her head. Sun beating heavy on the top of his head, the boy wished to know that freedom: cool shade thrown across his eyes, a breeze between his thighs, his arms swinging at his sides.

He peered down into the clear depths, saw the shadow of his cayuco on the smooth sand far below. Ripples, as quick-flashing as fishtails, bit his eyes with smatterings of sunlight.

* * *

The sand hot underfoot, wet clothing heavy and precarious on her head, the girl walked. Sank deep with every step, struggled, wiped sweat from her upper lip. Glanced longingly out to the ocean, where a young fisherman threw his net, arcing it across the vibrant blue of the sky, winglike. Wished she could be where he was, to just slip at any time beneath the water like a minnow.

* * *

They glare past each other, but do not say what they are thinking.

If.

If you had not put up your hair before the storm, you know that's bad luck.

If you had warned me of the storm.

You've lived here your whole life and don't know when a storm is coming?

If you had--

What?

If you had built me a proper house. Raised. Like the rich women have. If.

The crabs, red on blue, swirling about their angry ankles like surf, to escape the shattering ocean. The corn baskets empty now, and no pork at all. The day-old tortillas as hard as the line the woman's arms make, crossing her breasts.

* * *

He had begun to wait for her, to know the angle of the sunlight when she would come haltingly over the sand. One brown foot in front of the other. Swaying softly as a coconut tree. Walking on, to spread the laundry over the hot sand to dry.

The fisher-boy knew her name. Sometimes he told it to the fish he netted. Every so often, he would imagine he could see an echo of her dark braid in the slim, dancing tree shadows.

* * *

The girl knew. Had known. And so she slowed sometimes, though the sand burnt the soles of her feet. Watched his shoulders work, slick and gilded, as he threw his net in. And pretended not to see her watching.

She smiled. Walked on with her head held high, to make her braid swing slowly down the length of her back with each step.

* * *

The man rolls over, listens for the breath-like rustle of breeze along the palm-frond roof. Only crickets and, in the distance, a monkey. And the heat. Always the heat.

Long slices of moonlight fall across the woman's back. For a moment her skin, smooth as a dark pearl, looks as vulnerable as a shark's underbelly. But he knows that in the morning her open eyes will not be so defenseless. Knows how that length of neck, so soft now, could freeze his fingertips.

For a long time there had been no sound of the sea in that house, in that bed.

* * *

She pretended, spreading white cotton quickly with her short dark fingers, that she did not see him coming. Kneeling, she spread the bright wet cloth, pulled and tugged it out flat to dry on the hot sand.

His shadow fell silent across her hands. She looked up, then.

He, ragged, holding a line with three fat fish, said nothing. She only smiled. Stood slowly, ceremoniously. Dusted her knees, scattering sand over the clean cotton. Took the fish from him.

They stood looking at each other, the fish dripping onto the sand. The sound of the sea rose and fell like breathing behind them.