A Voice in the Evening

At Camps Bay, the sunset had begun to put color into everything that had looked white at midday. The beach was warm ivory, the foam faintly pink, and the pale fronts of the restaurants across Victoria Road held the light in their windows. Behind Lindiwe, the Twelve Apostles rose in deepening shadow. She stood with her sandals in one hand and a paper bag in the other, watching a line of surf approach the granite boulders, when a man beside her said something she almost recognized.

“The gull has been waiting longer than you have.”

She looked down. A large, attentive bird stood several feet away, watching the bag that contained her sandwich. The man smiled and suggested she keep it closed. Lindiwe did, laughing at herself, but the strange feeling remained. His voice was low and easy, with a slight roughness at the ends of sentences. She knew it. She was nearly certain she knew it.

He seemed around forty, with close-cropped hair and a blue shirt open over a white T-shirt. Nothing about his face helped her. She wondered whether he had been at the wedding the previous evening, though surely she would have remembered dancing with him. The thought came with such immediate pleasure that she was glad he could not hear it.

They moved away from the waiting gull toward a broad patch of dry sand. He asked whether she minded company and introduced himself as Ellis. She gave her name, then admitted that she was trying to work out where they had met. He considered the places she offered—her friend's wedding, the airport, the coffee queue earlier that afternoon—and shook his head. He lived in Cape Town and had spent the previous evening recording in a room lined with blankets.

Lindiwe was about to ask what sort of recording when a volleyball rolled between them. Ellis stopped it with his foot and returned it to its owner. By then they had reached the sand, where people were settling onto towels for the sunset. He spread his light jacket beside the spot she chose and sat down, leaving enough room between them for her bag.

At thirty-nine, Lindiwe had attended enough weddings to know how an evening could become a series of accounts she gave of herself. Yes, she still lived in Durban. Yes, she liked her job. No, she hadn't brought anyone. She had enjoyed her friend's celebration, but she had added this extra night because she wanted a little of Cape Town without having to answer a question over a centerpiece.

Ellis asked what she had liked best about the visit. When she told him it was the long drive down to the sea that afternoon, with the first unexpected blue appearing between buildings, he seemed pleased by the specificity. He had grown up inland, he said, and still noticed that moment. Sometimes he took a longer route home simply to have it again.

She divided her sandwich and offered him half. He accepted, then described the elaborate lunch he had intended to make before spending three hours correcting the pronunciation of a fictional village. That was when the shape of the mystery changed. She asked what he recorded, and he told her he narrated audiobooks.

The adventure novel she had listened to on the flight was among them. He had played its ship's captain, its treacherous navigator, even the elderly woman who kept interrupting the expedition to complain about her luggage. Lindiwe stared at him, then laughed so suddenly that he began laughing too. For several days he had been crossing an imaginary ocean in her headphones. It was no wonder he sounded familiar on this shore.

She told him which character she had loved, and he confessed which voice had been hardest to maintain. He did not perform any of them for her. She liked that. Once the surprise passed, he was simply Ellis, sitting with sand on one wrist and a crumb at the corner of his mouth. The voice belonged to a person who sometimes lost his place, forgot to buy milk, and wanted to know what she did when she wasn't going to weddings.

Lindiwe explained that she worked as an insurance assessor and had an undignified enthusiasm for amateur dance competitions. She was good at her work, less good at dancing, and much more willing to admit the first. Ellis asked what she liked about the second. She described the brief relief of having to listen with her whole body, of being unable to plan anything beyond the next step. He looked at her while she spoke, and she felt the warm, unmistakable pleasure of being interesting to someone she wanted to interest.

They finished eating and walked toward the promenade for coffee. At a pavement table, a sultry woman with sea-green eyes and a wine-red scarf was stirring a small cup, her shopping bag tucked under her chair. Lindiwe passed close enough to catch the scent of orange peel from the glass beside her. Around them, cutlery sounded against plates and the restaurants began to brighten as the beach grew softer and less distinct.

While they waited at the counter, Ellis asked when she was leaving. Tomorrow afternoon, she told him. His disappointment was small but visible, and it made her braver than a polished invitation would have. She asked if he could be persuaded to show her that longer route he took to the sea. He said he could, with a look that made the ordinary promise feel unusually intimate.

They took their cups back to the promenade and sat facing the water. The sun was nearly gone now, leaving a brilliant orange seam beneath the clouds. Lindiwe rested her hand between them. When Ellis's fingers touched hers, she turned toward him and threaded them together. She had spent part of the evening recognizing his voice; now she was learning the quiet things that no recording could have given her, the warmth of his palm and the hesitation before he moved closer.

“May I?” he asked, looking at her mouth.

She answered by setting down her coffee and touching his cheek. He kissed her gently, then drew back just enough to see her smile. She pulled him toward her again. The second kiss was slower, and she felt him relax into it as her fingers curved around the back of his neck. The traffic and the surf continued around them, familiar sounds that suddenly belonged to this particular evening.

When they parted, he laughed softly, a sound she had never heard through her headphones. She liked it better than any of the voices she knew. They exchanged numbers while the last orange faded over the Atlantic, and she saved him under his own name. Then she slipped her sandals back on, took his hand, and asked him to walk with her as far as the next pool of light.