The Commentator is pleased to introduce Alter Shimon Reiss's original short fiction work entitled "Glass" as the inaugural contribution to our literary section. This section is concerned to showcase the artistic efforts of Yeshiva College's most promising authors and will chiefly feature works of short fiction. An occasional smattering of poetry will also appear in these pages. The Commentator welcomes relevant submissions from readers.

Glass

We were walking along the beach, in late September. It was something of a ritual. When the weather got cold, we'd go out to the beach, and walk for miles. The sand always got into everything, and walking in sand is harder than walking on something solid, but the empty sand and sea were always glorious, even on days like that one, when the sky and sea were a uniform dull grey. She was already dying then. I think that she knew that she was dying somehow, despite the fact that the doctors didn't know then. Looking back, I recall signs that are obvious in retrospect. The weariness around her deep grey eyes, how she stopped for breath more often than she usually did, but in that moment, I was just happy to be with her.

We weren't saying much that day; just walking, companionable. I had been away that summer, but we had talked ourselves out about what we had been doing some time ago, and we were just walking, for the most part. Then she picked up a bit of sea glass. She did that sort of thing, occasionally. She was one of life's natural born scavengers -- my clearest recollections of her are of her delight at finding a nickel on the street, or buying a terrifically ugly lamp at a flea market.

Being a naturally polite person, I stopped when she picked up the glass, and waited for her. She caught up (a little breathless, my memory insists on recalling), and gave one of her grins. Not the little ones, or the polite ones, but one of those bursts of light that made her angular face beautiful. She held up the glass. It was rounded, pitted, and a brilliant blue. It was quite nice.

"It makes you think about the universe, doesn't it?"

Not particularly, it didn't. "Reality is translucent and blue?" I ventured.

Her grin flashed again. I don't have any pictures of her smiling like that. Camera grins, smirks, artificially solemnity, yes. But a smile from the depths didn't seem to get caught on film.

"Well, that. But also things like beauty, change, time, and beer."

"I suppose. Beer?"

"Well, beer bottles are where lots of the nicest sea glass comes from. And transience."

"Hmmm?"

"Well, sea glass never stays the same, unless you take it away from the ocean. It changes and changes, until it turns into sand."

I nodded. "Seems reasonable."

She slipped the glass into her pocket, and we walked on, quiet again. After about a half an hour, she pulled it back out, and looked deeply into it for a second, and then wheeled back, and pitched it out into the ocean. She always had a strong arm, but there was something extra in that throw. The bit of glass arced out, glittering blue suspended between the cold sky and the cold water. It hit water far enough away that we couldn't see the splash.

I didn't say anything. It was her bit of glass. And she was prone to spontaneously explaining things she did.

"It's about transience, sorta." She paused, but I had nothing to say. "I could take the glass out, put it in a drawer or something. But, like, then I'd have it, and I wouldn't remember it." Another pause. I still didn't have anything to say. Could be that on some level, I sensed what she was talking about. "You can't keep things. They change, and change. But if you fix them in memory, they stay there for good, and they don't get all changed." Which is odd, considering how her room always looked like a tasteful garbage dump, with stuff oozing from everywhere. But I understood.

And maybe she saw that I understood, because she gave me that grin again, then turned and ran off to her house. And I went to mine, and that was that.

And maybe she was right, and maybe she wasn't. But there was something to what she had said. And when I see something neat, sometimes I pick it up, and sometimes I don't. But the blue glass suspended between grey sky and grey sea is there unchanging, a beam of light like a smile.