[Paul watches solemnity beyond Oscar's apparent years fall across him. He understands better now than he did on the beach, or even on the couch, where it comes from. The words that the no-longer anonymous stranger cast before him like dark pearls are heavy on his mind.

Paul believes Oscar understands loss the way that birds understand the wind, and he wonders, for an absurdity of a moment, how Oscar might react if Paul told him that the black eyed man he's so afraid of understands it too. That they've both told Paul the same thing about it, in almost the same words.

Never, Oscar says, and Paul believes him. He doesn't need every gory detail spread out before him like augury.]

No. It doesn't. [He runs his fingernail along the stem of the herb in his palm.] I've always hated losing anything. Even small things. It's not one of my better qualities.

[He allows time for that to settle. He doesn't look around him for the fern, which has long since stopped being exactly the point of all of this, if it ever was, but he thinks about it.]

You're afraid he'll take things from you. [A soft note of sympathy, an undertone of understanding.] What happened didn't help.