One winter morning, watching Bein read his breakfast paper, Kohke decided to kill him. He stood behind Bein, aligned a pistol barrel with Bein's skull and worked the trigger. He had reasons for wanting Bein dead, but watching his lover shake about the floor, smearing blood on the linoleum, he could not bring those reasons to mind.
        The pistol must have wavered when he pulled the trigger, for Bein did not seem to be dying properly. After a writhing agony he fell still, attempting to catch his breath. And then, calmly, he asked Kohke to call an ambulance.
        Unable to bear the thought of shooting Bein again, Kohke carried the pistol from room to room, finally submerging it in a pitcher of orange juice. He telephoned for help. Paramedics arrived, the police alongside. The first extracted Bein. The second discovered the pistol, remanded Kohke to custody.
        In an interiorly-mirrored room, Kohke began to lie. He had not known the gun was loaded. He had pointed it at Bein only as a prank. He had thought it a novelty cigarette lighter, not a real gun. He lied even about matters of no consequence. Slowly the lies accumulated, crowding each other awkwardly. Yet, when the police received word that Bein, rolling into surgery, had absolved Kohke of blame, they grudgingly released him.

In this fashion a measure of uncertainty slipped into Kohke and Bein's relationship. Never having shot anyone close to him before, Kohke had difficulty unraveling post-shooting etiquette. Was the relation terminated? Kohke wondered, as he waited for Bein's release. Could they be said, now, properly, to have a relationship? Had the shooting freed him of sexual and emotional obligation to Bein? Or had any potential release been countermanded by Bein's refusal to blame him?
        What, wondered Kohke, did Bein actually know? Officially the shooting was classified as an accident. Perhaps even Bein himself believed it to be an accident: after all, he had not seen Kohke pull the trigger. Or perhaps, thought Kohke, Bein has only classified it such so as to be able, later, to avenge himself against me.

Alone in the large bed, beset with uncertainty, Kohke had trouble sleeping. He would awake, the stench of gunpowder strong in his nostrils, feeling he had been shot. The day after the accident he contemplated visiting Bein in the hospital, but he could not bear to see Bein so soon, partly from shame, partly from fear of violating post-shooting etiquette. How does one apologize for shooting someone?  Sorry to have shot you, Bein didn't ring properly, nor did My apologies for the accident, Bein. On the second day, he stayed away because he could develop no convincing lie to justify his first-day's absence. By the third day, the pattern was fixed. Visiting Bein now would seem unusual.
        He kept himself apprised, bribing an intern named Chur to provide him daily reports. It was from Chur he learned of Bein's transfer from critical to stable condition. From Chur, he learned that bullet fragments had lodged in Bein's brain, causing blindness. He was told that the second bulletó
        "The second what?" asked Kohke.
        "Bullet," said Chur.
        "Bullet?"
        "Yes, of course," said Chur. "Mr. Kohke, you fired twice."
        Second bullet? He had no memory of firing a second bullet. Indeed just the opposite: he remembered shooting once and not again. How had he managed to blot out this second bullet which, according to Chur, had rendered Bein immobile, paralyzed from the neck down?
        Presenting himself at the police station, he asked to examine his arrest report. The sergeant assigned to the case chatted at him idly while Kohke thumbed through the file. Yes, he saw, there had been two bullet wounds, one in Bein's skull, the second in his back. Two cartridges were absent from the orange-juice drenched pistol. He had fired twice. His body had pulled the trigger while his mind huddled at a safe distance.

Research led him to understand where he had gone wrong. The caliber of the pistol he had found in Bein's top drawer had been woefully inadequate. It was, he learned during an awkward parkbench conversation with a war veteran, more appropriate for the slaughter of dogs, small children.
        The police had the gun now. Despite his awkward success soliciting the veteran in the park, Kohke could not imagine entering a munitions shop to purchase a more powerful weapon. It went contrary to his character. Nor would the police so easily excuse a second incident.
        Perhaps, he thought, the relationship has been successfully terminated and I will never see Bein again. Or perhaps when Bein did come home, crippled, he would prove a different man. A so-called new man. Then, the circumstances that had culminated in the shooting would not accumulate again. Yet even in the best of circumstances, Kohke was not certain he could bear living with a man he himself had crippled.

In the midst of such reflections, the hospital telephoned. Bein would be released in four days. He had requested that Mr. Kohke take him home. Was Mr. Kohke willing to accept responsibility for Mr. Bein?
        No, he said, all apologies, and recradled the headpiece.
        He sat beside the telephone, scrutinizing the pale lampshade. Apparently the relationship was not terminated after all, but continued to limp on.
        It would look suspicious both to Bein and to the police if he refused to take Bein in. He could ill afford suspicion. He had been hasty, foolish.
        Holding his hand out to the lampshade, he greeted it enthusiastically. Getting up, he went to look at himself in the mirror. In the glass he could still perceive the old, pre-shooting Kohke, largely intact. Hail, fellow, he thought.
        "Bein," he said to the mirror. "What a pleasure to see you again."
        Watching his face as he said it, he saw no revelation of anything, let alone guilt. Surely Bein, blinded, would notice less than he. He closed his eyes.
        "How was your stay?" he heard his voice smoothly say. "I must apologize for not visiting. I had been informed that healing takes place more rapidly in solitude."
        I will keep him off balance, he told himself.  I will give nothing away. I will maintain the upper hand.
 

He could not imagine pushing Bein's wheelchair over and over the spot where he had been shot. Yet he was concerned that moving would excite Bein's suspicions, allowing Bein to gain the upper hand. Compromising, he rented a new apartment in the same buildingóone floor lower than the original apartment but identical in every other respect: three dusty rooms, doors sufficiently wide to admit Bein's wheelchair, the final room with a window opening on an airshaft.
        At the appointed day's appointed hour, he walked to the hospital. Bein was slumped in the circular drive in his wheelchair, a nurse posted beside him. You're Mr. Kohke? she asked as he approached. He nodded. Kohke? said Bein.
        Kohke nodded again. "Hello, Bein."
        "What's wrong?" asked Bein, face squinching.
        "Not a thing," said Kohke.
        "I don't want to go home with him," Bein said to the circular drive.
        "Nonsense," said the nurse.
        "I didn't think you'd come," said Bein. "Why did you?"
        "I'll leave you two alone now," said the nurse, smiling grimly then slipping away.
        "Well, shall we set off?" asked Kohke, briskly jabbing the wheelchair apartmentward.
        They traveled several rugged blocks without speaking. As they passed other people, Bein would turn his head, directing one ear or the other toward their voices. His ear is his eye, thought Kohke, listening to the faint clack of the wheels.
        "What's wrong?" Bein asked again.
        "Nothing," said Kohke.
        "Why do you do this?"
        "Do what?"
        "Refuse to share your feelings with me."
        "Bein," said Kohke. "I beg you."
        When Bein wouldn't stop speaking, Kohke set the brakes on the wheelchair and abandoned him. He crossed the street and looked at Bein from the other side, watching the foot traffic flow around his lover. He could hear the sound of Bein's voice, see his lips move, but made out none of what the voice was saying. He stayed, waiting for the moment when Bein would realize he was no longer present.
        Was there a way to end the relationship immediately? Could he abandon Bein on the corner?
        He stood watching Bein's mouth move until he could not bear it, then watched instead Bein's wheelchair, and finally turned to watch the traffic light as it turned, then turned, then turned again.

When he looked away from the traffic light, it was growing dark. Bein was just as Kohke had left him, still slumped in his chair.
        "You came back," said Bein, as Kohke affixed his hands to the grips. Kohke employed a bright voice to respond, the same voice he employed with dogs and small children: "Of course I came back." Reaching down, he levered the brakes off, began to rotate the chair about.
        "We're going back?" asked Bein, pale eyes staring not at Kohke but above him, at Kohke's nonexistent hat.
        "Back?"
        "To the hospital."
        "You've been released, Bein. You can't go back."
        "Where am I to go?"
        Kohke did not answer. He began to push him down the sidewalk, clicking over cracks until they reached the apartment building. Holding tight to the chair's vulcanized grips, he took Bein up the steps backwards, drawing the chair up a tread at a time, shaking him, regressing a few treads, turning the wheelchair about until he was convinced Bein would be unsure of how many flights they had mounted. Then he was at the door and had opened the door and they were both in.
        "Welcome home," he said. He lifted his ex-lover out of his chair and into the bed.
        "This is my bed?" Bein asked. "It doesn't feel like my bed."
        "Nothing feels the same after you've been shot, Bein."
        "How would you know?"
        "That's just what they say."
        "We're not going back to the hospital?"
        He could not bear Bein's face up close. Kokhe kept casting his gaze about, finally letting it rest upon the buttons of Bein's shirt, a string of tiny, bland faces.
        "No," said Kohke to the buttons. "You're done with the hospital. You're home now."
        Bein turned his head slightly, dimpling the pillow's case. "Take me back."
        Kohke left the room, went to the kitchen. He was thirsty. The refrigerator was unplugged. When he opened it he found the air inside had turned.  He plugged it in, closed it.
        He listened to the hum of the refrigerator. He could hear Bein's voice abuzz in the bedroom, still speaking. He could not hear what he was saying. He went back, stood with crossed arms in Bein's doorway.
        Bein fell silent, whorling one of his ears toward Kohke. He stayed like that, motionless, regarding him with his ear, as Kohke grew uncomfortable.
        "What is it?"
        "It doesn't feel right," said Bein.
        "Don't be crazy," Kohke said.
        "What's changed?"
        "Nothing. It's all the same."
        "It doesn't feel the same."
        Kohke went back into the kitchen. He wandered all around the kitchen and then left the apartment. There was the hall, the floorboards brightly polished and throwing light up against his shoes. There was the light switch, apparently innocuous, the paint worn thin upon it. He went back into the kitchen, looked at the refrigerator until he couldn't stand to look any longer. Thirsty, he opened it, found it empty.
        He went back to Bein's room. Standing in the doorway, he watched him. Slowly, Bein smiled.
        "The sea," said Bein. "I no longer hear the sea."

The sea, thought Kohke later, sitting in the hall just outside the apartment, What sea? There was no sea. They were hundreds of miles from the ocean, there was no river or other water within sight or hearing of the apartment. The bullets had damaged Bein's thinking as well as his vision.
        "The sea?" he had repeated, standing before Bein.
        "Yes," said Bein. "I don't hear it."
        "I don't recall having heard a sea," said Kohke carefully.
        "You wouldn't," said Bein.
        "What does that mean?"
        "Is the window open?" asked Bein. "Open the window and you'll hear it."
        Kohke looked back at the window leading into the airshaft. "I have to go to work," said Kohke. "I can't bother with that now."
        "Work?" asked Bein. "You, work?"
        "I've changed, Bein," lied Kohke, "I really have. I'm a new Kohke."
        Bein contorted his face in a fashion the meaning of which Kohke found difficult to determine. Backing his way to the front door, he left.

On a park bench, ogled by a veteran whose hands fumbled deep within his pockets, Kohke considered life with Bein. Bein had come home with him, which Kohke reluctantly classified as promising. Bein had mentioned nothing about the murder attempt, had not blamed him. Also promisingóunless Bein's silence was seen as biding his time so as to exact his revenge. Yet how, he asked himself, could a paralyzed man take revenge? Disappointing, though not yet cause for alarm, Bein sensed the wrongness of the apartment, felt despite the identical floorplan that he was not at home. Such wrongness, Kohke suspected, could lead to recognition of other wrongnesses, and must be corrected.
        Yet the sea? What was this talk of the sea? How could it be classified?
        Deserting the bench he returned to the apartment building, borrowed the key for his former apartment from the manager. He went from room to room, listening, first with windows closed, then with windows open, then some opened, some closed. He turned on the water, listened to the pipes tick. He was unable to identify any sound that even remotely recalled the sea. He stood on his toes, squatted down. There was, he saw when crouched, a faint rust of Bein's blood still marring the pebbling of the linoleum. Hurriedly, he left the apartment.
        Bein's brain must have fused two memories, dredging a past sea into his present life, or simply evoking water from empty air. The sea, he told himself, returning the key between thumb and forefinger to the manager. He wants the sea. The sea is what he'll get.
 

He purchased a tape recorder and a cassette series entitled The Soothing Power of Nature. In the back room, he opened the window, plugged the recorder in, set it on the sill. The cellophane crackled stiffly coming off The Soothing Power of Nature. He dropped the cassettes down the airshaft, except for one, marked Aqua Vitae, which he inserted into the machine.
        When he pressed play, he heard a short feed of blank tape then the sound of waves. He listened for a time, set the recorder to play continuously.

Bein was lying on the bed, his head sunk deep into the pillow, his blind eyes wandering the upper rim of his orbits.
        "Good morning," said Kohke. "How are we today?"
        "Give me to someone else," said Bein.
        "We don't know what we're saying this morning," said Kohke, his voice cheery. "Do we?"
        "One of us doesn't," said Bein.
        Kohke positioned the wheelchair next to the bed, tugged Bein over until he was beside it. He forced Bein's feet onto the floor. Slipping his arms around Bein's chest, he locked them behind his back. He heaved Bein up, dropped him into the chair.
        "No need getting dressed today," Kohke said. "We won't go out."
        Wheeling Bein to the table, he began to feed him. Bein chewed then sat awaiting the next bite, mouth ajar. Kohke poured him a glass of orange juice, expecting to see the pistol's snub as the juice in the pitcher drained away.  He clacked the glass's rim against Bein's teeth.
        "I hear it now," said Kohke as Bein swallowed.
        "Hear what?"
        "The sea," he said. "I hear the sea."
        "Sea?" said Bein. "What do you mean?" And, when Kohke wheeled him back, pushed him back into the bed: "You're hearing things, Kohke. Imagine that."

The cassette ran nearly constantly. Despite Kohke's efforts at preservation, it acquired a dull hiss, degenerated into a sound hardly recognizable as water. It had been a mistake to buy the tape, to try to simulate something that hadn't existed in the first place. Yet, now that it was done, Kohke felt he had committed himself.
        Oddly, as the tape deteriorated Bein perked up, claimed to recognize what he heard as waves. Kohke could not tell if Bein was toying with him or if, somehow, he heard it now. Perhaps it was simply that whatever dementia had first caused Bein to believe the sea existed had now returned. It had all gone wrong, Kohke felt, and there was no putting it right. Better to let the tape run down to its own extinction.
        This was how Kohke came to identify the waning of his relationship with Bein. When the tape snapped, the relation would end and he would be free of Bein. He wasn't certain how this end would occur, but he was certain it would.
        Bein began begging Kohke to take him down to the sea. He wanted to touch the water's edge.
        "You wouldn't feel it," said Kohke. "No point."
        No, insisted Bein, his face would feel it. He wanted Kohke to carry him down to feel the breeze, then out into the water in his arms. They would walk out until Bein's face was floating, licked by the waves.
        "Like a lily," Bein said.
        I can't stand it, thought Kohke.
        He was tied to Bein, obligated to him until the tape broke. Still, there were distractions. There was the veteran in the park with his fluid and somewhat inarticulate consolations. It was better than nothing, though all the while he thought of Bein alone in the apartment, the tape winding slowly down. There was shopping, his imaginary job, other excuses. Yet each time he went back he found the situation less bearable.
        He considered simply leaving, abandoning Bein, letting him starve to death, though he worried the neighbors would hear Bein's cries and rescue him. When he had nearly worked up sufficient nerve to desert Bein, the hospital called, inquired after Bein's condition. How was Mr. Bein recovering? Was there anything they could do? They would call again, the intern said. It made Kohke feel he was under observation. A courtesy call, the hospital called it. Courtesy to whom? wondered Kohke.
        Bein refused to eat, clamping his jaw tight enough that Kohke had great difficulty prying his mouth open. At all other times, Bein spoke constantly, sometimes all through the night, with little order or logic, Kohke trying to find a hidden sense in what he was saying. The stench of Bein seeped into the floors, Bein's skin beneath his clothing starting to weep after Kokhe began to neglect cleaning him. There was the veteran in the park, then the return home, then Bein's voice again asking for Kohke to carry him down to float in the water.
        "Like a lily," Bein said again. "A water lily."
        "Too steep," said Kohke, gritting his teeth. "Too rocky. Too dangerous."
        Bein kept asking. He was willing to take the risk, Bein said, and if Kohke was to lose his balance and fall, Bein would absolve him of all blame. "Write a statement absolving yourself of blame," he said to Kohke. "Put a pen in my mouth and I'll sign it."
        As the tape became sheer hiss and squeal, Bein became more insistent. He must go to the sea, Kohke must take him. He spoke about it, talked it through, until Kohke covered his ears. He sat in place, watching Bein in bed, listening to the rumble of Bein's voice gone inarticulate through his hands. Yet, no matter how silently he covered his ears, Bein would quickly stop talking.
        "You've stopped listening," he would say, then lapse into brooding silence. Yet as soon as Kohke uncovered his ears, Bein would begin speaking again.
        It made Kohke wonder if Bein could see, if he had regained his sight after all.
        Kohke grew nervous, distraught. Bein, however, seemed calmer and calmer, focused on the sea.
        "If we can't climb all the way down, at least get me closer," Bein suggested.
        "Close? You want close?"  Kohke knew his voice was too loud, strident, but could do nothing to tame it. He gathered Bein in his arms, strapping him into the wheelchair, rolling him quickly from his bedroom through the hall and to the back room. There, near the wall, near the window, he reached out and turned the volume up.
        "You want closer?" he said. "This is closer."
        He watched Bein sit, head cocked, just a few paces from the tape recorder, listening, smiling. The tape speeded and slowed as it played. Kohke watched the awful smile, Bein's face all aglow. At first Kohke only watched, without comfort, and then, disturbed, he approached, ready to push Bein out the window.
        Yet, as he came close, Bein turned his head and seemed to look right at him. The smile on his face tightened. Kohke stopped. Even when, a few moments later, Bein's eyes drifted in opposite directions, Kohke found he could not bring himself to push Bein out.
        He would be a new man, he told himself. When the tape broke, etiquette would be satisfied and he would end the relationship. Bein, we're not right for each otheróyou prefer the ocean and I prefer the mountains or I want to give you the opportunity to see other people, Bein. Someday, he told himself, Bein would thank him. He could last until the tape broke if he could get Bein to stop talking about the sea. He would last that long, then he would bathe Bein, feed him, and get rid of him.

Perhaps, Bein suggested, Kohke could construct some sort of sling and lower Bein down until he was safe at water's edge. Certainly that could be done.
        Kohke did not respond.
        Or if not a sling perhaps Kohke could navigate the path to the water alone until he felt more confident. Then with sheets he could construct a kind of harness and strap Bein to his back. Or perhaps he could fill a backpack with rocks to simulate Bein's weight. Eventually, argued Bein, Kohke would have the confidence and skill needed to carry him flawlessly down to water's edge.
        Kohke chose not to respond.
        Or there was a way to wrap him up, Bein himself suggested, so that only his face was uncovered, to muffle and swaddle him in blankets so that if he was dropped the injuries would be minimal or at least non-fatal.
        "Be quiet, Bein."
        "Even if I broke a limb," said Bein, "I wouldn't feel it. It seems to me a worthy risk." 
        Face quivering, Kohke left the room. He went into the back room, looked at the tape recorder. He walked back past Bein's room, Bein still talking, and into the kitchen, staring first at the hot plate, then the refrigerator.
        He went out into the hall, down to the bottom of the steps, then climbed back to the apartment, shutting the door softly behind him. He listened. Bein was no longer speaking.
        He crept forward to stand in Bein's doorway, looked in. Bein's head was moving slightly on the pillow, the pillow moving as well. The pillow and head taken together seemed a living creature. The remainder of his body seemed a separate object, part of the bed.
        "Or how about this?" started Bein.
        "Please," said Kohke, covering his ears, "not another word."
 

Sitting in the park, he began idly to gather smooth stones, filling his pockets with them. Later, in the apartment with Bein, he took them out, washing then in the kitchen sink, then placed them in the bathroom, on the counter, the floor. He brought in a fan to give the illusion of a breeze.
        Later, he carried a fist-sized stone into Bein's room, brushed it against Bein's cheek. Bein's head jerked.
        "What's this?" he asked.
        "Stone," said Kohke. "From the sea. The beach rather."
        "The sea?" he said, as if the memory of water had ebbed away and left him again.
        The stone fit Kokhe's hand well. It would be easy to lift it up then bring it down hard. Would Bein's head crack with a single blow?  No. Even two bullets had not been enough. How could a stone do better?
        "Shall we go to the sea?" Kohke asked.
        Bein seemed nervous. "I don't want to go," he said.
        "You've begged me for days."
        "Something is wrong."
        "It's too late," said Kohke. "You're going."
        He went into the kitchen, removed the cardboard canister of salt from the shelves, carried it into the bathroom. When it rains, it pours, he thought. He opened the faucets, set the plug.
        He dumped the entire canister into the bath. The salt swirled in, gathering as a pale silt at tub's bottom, slowly dissolving.
        He went to the back room. Unplugging the tape recorder, he carried it into the bathroom, plugged it in again, the tape giving off now a mere shadow of recognizable sound. He went after Bein.
        "Come on," he said.
        "I don't want to go," said Bein.
        "You don't know what you want anymore."
        He rolled Bein to the edge of the bed. He left him, turned off the bathwater.
        With twine, he knotted Bein's hands together. Pulling Bein off the bed, he stood him up, forced his own head through the space between Bein's arms. With Bein slung like a cape on his back, he began dragging him about.
        He jumped up and down a little, scraped Bein along walls, climbed up and down chairs. He pretended to stumble, pressed hands against knees, breathed hard.
        "I told you it was a tough climb," he said.
        Slowly he threaded his way to the bathroom. Untying Bein's wrists, he sat him against the side of the tub, careful not to let his head touch anything but air.
        "We're here," said Kohke.
        "We're here?"
        Dragging Bein up and over the lip of the tub, he slowly eased him in.
        "Here's your sea," said Kohke. "Enjoy."
        He had to bend Kohke's knees to get him in properly while keeping his head shy of the rim of the tub. He lowered the head down to touch water. Supporting the back of the neck, he lowered the head further, until the water filled the ears and lapped near the edges of the mouth. There was an expression of confusion to the face and then, slowly, the same disconcerting smile.
        "You're holding me," said Bein.
        "Yes," said Kohke.
        "Let me go," Bein said. "Just for a moment."
        Kohke waited until Bein drew a breath then slipped his hand out from beneath the neck. Bein lay idle in the water, chest tight, head afloat, legs crammed against the spigot.
        "I can float," Bein said between breaths. "See?"
        "I can see," said Kohke, picking up a stone from the floor, moved it idly from one hand to the other.
        "It's just my head," said Bein. "No body any more."  He smiled broadly. "You've reduced your lover to nothing more than a head, Kohke."
        Was it an accusation? It was unbearable, this life with Bein, a sort of existence between life and death. He was miserable. But then, as he thought, he came to feel that before that, even when Bein was whole, he had been miserable as well. Why else would he have shot Bein? And before that, before he had met Bein, he had been miserable as well. Why else would he have searched out Bein at all? Whether Bein knew or not, whether he was in jail or free, alive or dead, his life would continue in misery. He would continue, yet Bein, only a head who recognized himself as only a head, was content to float in an artificial sea. He has sucked my life away and taken it for his own, thought Kohke. Yet, even as he thought it, Kohke knew Bein had taken nothing from him, that he, Kohke, was merely looking for an excuse to end the relationship before the tape snapped.
        On an impulse, he took the rock he had been fumbling from hand to hand and placed it on Bein's chest.
        Bein started to slip lower into the water. He tipped his head back, his eyes filling with water, his chin jutting up like an iceberg's tip. Kohke added a second stone. Some water trickled into Bein's mouth. "All right," said Bein. "Hold me again."
        Placing another stone, Kohke said nothing. He watched as Bein tried to expand his lungs, keep above water.
        "Kohke?" said Bein, gargling. "Grr-ogrr-eehh?"
        As he watched, Bein struggled for breath, breathing in and coughing up great gouts of water. Kohke's body too felt heavy and immobile, as if it were helpless. The head shook and turned under the surface, its hair floating and swaying, bubbles spilling from its nose. The head struggled. The body remained calm and motionless, an obscene and swollen ballast. The head kept trying to breathe, the water roiling above its face as it sucked more water in.
        The lips parted and tried to speak but Kohke could make out none of the words. There was only the incomprehensible shivering of lips. Then the head too stopped moving.
        The tape was mere static, all water wrung from it. Kohke stayed where he was on the lip of the bathtub. Staring into the water, he awaited the relationship's end.