I clutch some sand in my fist and let it drain slowly past my palm. It's cold and granular, the way sand doesn't look on travel posters. My nails and knuckles are blue. The ocean, for it's part, is only slightly greyer than the sky and heaves in painful undulations like the sides of a dying rhino. The fact that there's a family down the beach trying vainly to ignore every discouraging sign of nature only makes things that much more depressing. Some people don't know when to quit. Some people just need to learn to let go. I turn toward Ellie, staring gravely out to sea, knees tucked up under her chin, handkerchief tied over her raven hair which waves gently in the cold. Her black eyes sparkle cooly as behind her, in an alley off the boardwalk, a shower of brilliant blue lights attend the efforts of a spotwelder to repair a damaged fire escape. Gulls wheel lazily through the mourning sky, calling rotely to one another. It feels like I'm trying to swallow a porcupine. T.S. Eliot tells us that the world will end with a whimper instead of a bang, and here on this beach, eyes fixed on the greasy grey horizon, my world snivels to such a halt as to perfectly confirm that thesis. My mind rolls tape of the scenes we had together. Soft-lit vignettes of happiness and insular bliss. One from a restaurant down the street, warm sake and cold beer; another in her mom's driveway near Disneyland, watching fireworks over the park; IHOP after a trip to the mountains; movies in bed. Special interest is given to a northern suburb at four in the morning, fifth of July, where two kids stand on a friend's front lawn after everyone else is in bed, tripped out on psychadelics and giggling like idiots under the critical gaze of prowling neighborhood cats. Jump cuts entirely composed of her laughter. Dim-sum with her mom in China town; The timeless hush before dawn and work as she lays against me, warm in slumber and dreaming. The reel terminates in pops and buzzes, and flaps against the end of the spool. My heart swells with a sickly yearning, and my chest feels like a phone booth with too many frat boys crammed inside as I cast about lamely for something to say. But there's no point anyway. Everything's been said already.