Bulbous and incoherent. The sky is the bluest eye. Hills full of huddled buildings like glimmering teeth sit facing the vast curves of the Mediterranean shore. Each mountain has its coat of fog, just enough to make it seem implausible, a lingering shadow, perhaps Africa on the horizon, depending on the light, and on the height.
"Did you see it?", asks one of the teenagers in a thick Andalusian accent. (L'a vi'to?)
"Did you see it? From the balcony."
The impulse: teenage testosterone. Not to mention Andalusian character. Another boy starts to climb the rock toward the balcony, not even watching his limbs as they grapple the sharp edges and the wall slits his skin - could it be callous? The more we suffer watching him, the happier and more motivated he becomes. His smile widens at the thought of having our attention.
Tan skin plunges into waves lapping in the hollow bottom below the rock. Their skin is as dark as octopus ink, but the plump boy climbing the rock has light blue eyes you can almost see through.
He has reached the top, and stands on the verge carelessly with one hand on the balcony's white balustrade. The groups attention from 70 feet below makes him giddy. He jumps the balustrade into the balcony.
"Do it, pussy!"
The boy raises himself onto the center column of the balcony, which has the approximate dimensions of a matchbox (from the group's angle), and even the young girls cease to make sound. The atmosphere gets tense like when you see an air hostess panic mid-flight.
Four seconds the boy's body scrapes the placid blue backdrop between Europe and Africa. The fifth he spends underwater, a lingering shadow, no more breathless than the rest of us, his eyes in deepest camouflage. We wait to scream.
