Nine Minutes

You lift the phone off the rock, and the folded receipt that wedged it goes off down the cut in the wind. You carry the phone up to the mouth, because from the rock the bats are a ribbon, and from here they would be bats.

They come straight out of the black at the lens, close enough to see their folded ears. The wind comes down the cut and lifts the frame, and you hold it with both hands. At minute nine one clips the lens, and the picture goes sideways and stays sideways. You hold it there.

Julia comes up the shoulder with the recorder dripping under her arm. She looks at the empty rock, and at the phone in your hands. She takes it and stops it. The file says 9:12.

Vera Quan wanted thirty, she says. She runs the file back to minute nine and holds it on the sideways bat. I'll tell her nine. Dusk tomorrow, same rock. She puts the phone in her pack, face down.