it was just like that

this afternoon i was hanging out with kate and owen. owen is a misplaced beatnik; there's nothing else to say about him. kate, she is kind of funny; she has orangish hair that is kind of frizz-curly with side bangs. she looks really nineties. and she wears terribly red lipstick and white blouses. she usually has paint on her hands, and sometimes she wears men's boots. we've been friends for a while, i guess.

when i got to their house, kate was on the steps with her legs sticking out into the dripping rain, drawing on a yellowy piece of paper. it was a kind of abstract collage of tiny shapes and arcs around some rain clouds and a disfigured face. she looks really sweet, but most of what she does and says is not pretty or nice. the rain made little mud puddles and flat grass on the yard and ground around in the gravel driveway. owen was sitting on a porch chair tying knots and stuff with this funny skeletal emerald string. he wore a burgundy sweater and he was kind of scrunching his face so his black-framed glasses sat in a funny place on his nose. his hands are such boy-hands-- the fingernails are bitten down shorter than you think possible, and they're all imperfect and flattened at the tips.
"hey, guys," i said. "what is that?"
own looked up at me.
"hey, janie. it's a seacatcher."
"a what?"
"a seacatcher. it catches bits of sea that are in the air and your eyes and the words you say and the tv and stuff."
i went over and looked at it. it was a kind of complicated spiderweb of twigs and string.
"that doesn't make sense," i said.
"here," said owen, handing it to me.

and there were inky squid eyes blinking into mine, barnacles pinching the skin on my arms, the continual grey sound of moving water, coral fish and nautilus spirals-- a salt-green wave smashed up against my chest and i stood there breathless as owen took the seacatcher knowingly out of my hand.
"damn," i said.
"yeah," said own. owen is a misplaced beatnik. nothing he does makes sense.