33. Pullau Pangkor, Malaysia: Deus Ex Machina

– Denise concluded, and got to her feet. A ghost of sand slipped from her hand but vanished before it hit the beach. Her affectation seemed to have failed; she looked simply weary.

I said, “Thank you.”

“Well, that’s finished,” she said, with a quick ferocity. She looked at Ralph and changed again, became sad and ashamed. “Don’t look at me that way, would you? I don’t know what . . .”

He said, “Are you all right?”

It was such a sensible question. In the midst of all the high drama, it seemed actually rude. I frowned at him, but Denise answered straightforwardly, “I’m all right. But I’m sad from all this. It’s strange being here on the beach. I do feel very strange.” She looked up at the sky, and then back at us, and then up at the sky. She said, abstracted, “Does anyone else feel strange?”

I felt really fucking strange but I didn’t say. Ralph just came to me and took my hand. He was looking at the sky, too. It was shot through with cloud, the moon a russet blot. It seemed to tremble under its load of light.

And Denise walked down to the sea where my brother had walked down to the sea, she moved fluidly as if singing. At the labile hem of water, she stopped and tensed. She whispered something, then said aloud, “Oh, my God.”

The brilliant lozenge appeared, superimposed on an ashen cloud.

It slipped to and fro as if frisking.

The insects’ tweeting switched off. The sea alone moved.

Then the beam grew explosively: into our faces. Boomed.

It filled the world and it was gone.

Denise Cadwallader was gone.

She really just wasn’t there. The sea came and went as before, the sand made the same fuzzy drawings in the dark. The sky was shot through with the same clouds, and the inanimate moon stood where it had been, as if feigning innocence.

Her footprints were clear where she had crossed the wet beach. You could see where at the end she had gone up on tiptoe. Then the next wave filled them.