What the Hand Remembers

Sunset had put clouds beneath Elena's feet. Across the shallow water covering Salar de Uyuni, their pink edges repeated so clearly that she kept looking down to reassure herself that the white salt was still there. Low mountains held a faint line between the two skies. The evening air was cold against her cheeks, and each movement of her borrowed rubber boots sent small disturbances through a world that had seemed perfectly still. She wanted to remember the sensation accurately. She also wanted to know what Felix had done with her coin.

He stood beside her with both hands open, looking unfairly pleased with himself. They were a few steps from their guide's vehicle, within the patch of water he had checked before inviting the group out. Rain had changed the day's route twice. Elena had come to Bolivia hoping for this reflection, but until the guide stopped here she had been careful not to expect it. Now there was more beauty than she knew where to look, and a man she had met that morning was making her laugh in the middle of it.

The coin was an ordinary one from her travel purse. Felix had asked to borrow it while they waited for another visitor to finish fastening her boots. He had placed it on his palm, closed his fingers, and opened them again. Elena had inspected his sleeves. He had willingly turned his pockets inside out. Nothing had fallen, and he had been careful to keep the trick over the vehicle's open tailgate, away from the water. Yet the coin was gone.

At thirty-nine, Elena considered herself unusually difficult to distract. Her work dispatching freight trains rewarded attention rather than charm, and she was good at following several moving things without losing track of any of them. Felix had learned this over lunch and had made no attempt to hide how much it delighted him to defeat her. She had responded by demanding another demonstration, which he refused on the reasonable grounds that he possessed exactly one impressive trick.

Their guide distributed warm drinks from a flask. Close beside the tailgate, a sultry woman with sea-green eyes and a wine-red scarf warmed her hands around her cup before joining the other passengers. Felix passed Elena hers, holding it at the rim so her fingers could close around the warm middle. The small consideration did more to distract her than his performance had. Throughout the day he had remembered that she liked the window open a little, that she preferred the less sweet biscuits, that she wanted to hear the guide rather than compete with the conversations behind her.

He was forty-two, lived in Bristol, and tested lifts for a living. She had initially mistaken his questions about the vehicle for anxiety; it turned out that he simply liked knowing how things worked. Bolivia was the furthest he had traveled since his daughter had left for university. Elena, who had no children, had booked her own trip after persuading two friends that she really would enjoy going alone. She had enjoyed it. Meeting Felix had not rescued the holiday from anything. It had introduced a new and rather inconvenient hope for its remaining days.

They walked slowly across the permitted patch, never far from the others. The reflection became smooth again behind them. Felix tried to describe the strange difficulty of judging distance without familiar objects, then stopped because Elena was watching his right hand. His smile appeared before he turned his palm toward her. Still empty.

“You're looking in the wrong place,” he said.

She told him that this was exactly what a guilty man would say. He laughed, and she felt the pleasure of having caused it all the way through her. Earlier, when he had climbed into the vehicle beside her, she had noticed his untidy dark eyebrows and the crease in his cheek. Now those features belonged to particular expressions she wanted to see again. She was already learning him at a rate that felt unwise and entirely agreeable.

He had learned the trick from his daughter when she was twelve. For a while she had intended to become a magician, and he had been her patient and usually bewildered audience. When Elena asked whether he had shown her that he could perform it himself, he admitted that he had kept that achievement quiet. He liked being someone she could astonish. Elena found herself thinking less about the vanished coin than about the image of him sitting at a kitchen table, willing to be delighted by another person's small triumph.

A breeze crossed the water. Pink clouds broke into narrow, shining pieces, then gathered again as it passed. Elena lifted her cup, and a brief metallic click sounded beneath her fingers. She paused. Felix, looking toward the mountains, became very still.

The coin was tucked under the folded paper sleeve around her cup.

She eased it out and held it between them. The broad grin she had expected did not appear immediately; first there was a look of discovery, as though he had been caught in something more revealing than a trick. Then he admitted that the disappearance had depended on her watching his face. Returning it while he handed over the drink had been easier than he deserved.

Elena remembered that moment exactly. She had been looking at his mouth.

She could have accused him of cheating. Instead she told him she had noticed the handoff and chosen not to interrupt, a claim so plainly untrue that he laughed again. Then she admitted the truth, quietly enough that the others would not hear it. She had wanted him to be pleased with himself a little longer. His attention changed. The joke settled between them, leaving something warmer and less easily managed.

The guide called that they had a few minutes before leaving. Elena could feel the evening approaching its ordinary ending: boots removed, doors closed, separate accommodations in Uyuni. Felix asked whether she would like to eat with him when they got back. She said yes, then took out her phone so they could exchange numbers before the cold made her fingers clumsy. Neither pretended it was merely convenient to share a table.

Beyond his shoulder, the sun lowered into a pale opening beneath the clouds. He glanced toward it and then back at her, visibly reluctant to miss either thing. Elena put her cup safely on the tailgate and stepped close enough to take his hand.

“You can stop distracting me now,” she said.

“I was hoping I could kiss you.”

She answered by lifting her face. His free hand rested lightly against her coat as he kissed her, and she tightened her fingers around his, wanting him to know that there was no uncertainty to solve. The kiss was warm and unhurried. When they separated, his smile was smaller than before, almost shy, and she kissed him again because she liked that expression too.

On the ride back, Elena kept the recovered coin in her closed hand until Felix settled beside her. Then she put it away and offered him her empty palm. He understood immediately. Their boots stood in the tray at the back of the vehicle, the guide knew the way home, and outside the window the last rose-colored water was giving itself back to the dark. She let her shoulder rest against his, already looking forward to hearing what he would order for dinner.