PHANTOM LIMB

The pavement seemed irregular.  There was something off, in the pitch or the texture, he couldn't place it.  He felt as if he would tip over, or that he had to work extra hard at walking straight.  And he was hot as hell, though the day was bitter and icy, and the wind had probing fingers.  Everything was just a little different.

In his pocket was the rock she gave him.  She didn't say where it came from.  She wouldn't, but not out of any penchant for mystery or secret, more that she was, "less" that way, which of course ended up being "more" according to the old adage.  She handed him the rock from her own pocket and looked straight ahead.  He wasn't sure if she meant him to keep it or to just get the feel of it for a moment.  She said only "check the pockets of any coat of mine and there'll be a rock somewhere in there."  He chuckled trying to maintain the same sense of ease that she just carried without effort.  He hesitated for a moment and then pocketed the stone.  She just took it in stride like it was what she had intended although he had no way of really knowing.  

Now, later, he still walked in the winter sun, after she had left him on the sidewalk.  The rock was warm in his pocketed hand.  The buildings glistened all around him.  The sun reflected off, what, the 30th floor of a black building high above him.  He felt a surge of strength like something out of an ancient Greek tale of heroics, like he was suddenly at the center of an epic struggle, the battle formed around him, the cell eye of a thunder cloud.  The cyclops stared down at him, into him, knowing his every weakness, anticipating everything at once.  The monster owned him, had been awaiting this destined stand and had angled for eons back into time to engineer every advantage up to this circle in time.

Except for the rock.  

He arched his arm behind him, like David's sling, and sent it perfectly aimed upward but expecting, in an exquisite moment of reflection that encompassed the sum of all his hopes and fears at once, the rock to humpback and fall, but it lasered upward instead even as the sun eye widened in knowing surprise.  They regarded each other as the rock between them moved from one to the other, for an eternity.