Walon was watching Telemundo when he first noticed her hand, giant and disembodied behind the silver midgets and the screaming, gesticulating host. The shock of recognition was pleasant, because both unexpected and disbelieved. Though he knew that hand as well as he knew his own, and though (without a doubt) it was hers there under the stroboscopic lights, still it was coincidental, spontaneous. He changed channels and when he came back through the hand was gone.

Over the next several weeks he found it on dozens of different stations: casting its bifurcated shadow across news, sports and weather; waving, slightly frost-bitten, at a college football game; glimpsed through a window or across a crowded street during a sitcom. He only ever noticed it in passing, and when he flicked back it would be gone. Through repetition it became significant and portentous.

He came home from work and she was sprawled across the couch. Her sleeves were long and artistic and hung past her wrists. “Walon!” she cried, her face alight, and beckoned him with the fringe of her sleeves. With feet that were not his own he moved toward her, and she held out her arms to him gladly…