A Correct Arrangement of Bodies and Sea

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Rafito el Varado arrived at the beach by accident, which was the only way beaches ever truly accepted him. He had been following a road that promised nothing—just a thin gray line curling through scrub and rock—when it ended abruptly in sand, as if the land itself had decided to stop talking.

Below him the beach opened like a quiet diagram. Towels were laid out in careful rectangles, bright as flags signaling a truce between the sun and the sea. People lay on them with the seriousness of scholars, their bodies arranged according to some unspoken geometry: backs parallel to the water, limbs folded or extended as if tested by gravity. No one seemed unfinished. Everyone had proper elbows, knees that knew what to do, spines that held the day together. Rafito noticed this immediately. It comforted him.

He descended the path slowly, stones clicking under his shoes like a pocket calculator trying to remember its job. The water was so clear it looked explanatory. Large round boulders sat offshore, pale and patient, as if they had been placed there to hold the sea down.

Rafito chose an empty space between two towels—green on one side, red on the other—and sat without one of his own. He preferred direct contact with facts. The sand was warm but not persuasive. It did not ask him to believe anything.

A man nearby turned over, completing a small but important rotation. A woman sat up and drank from a bottle, her arm bending exactly as an arm should. Rafito admired this quiet competence. He had spent years feeling slightly misaligned, like a thought that arrived before its sentence.

The sea breathed. The people stayed put. Nothing symbolic occurred.

Rafito took off his shoes and lined them up beside him, toes facing the horizon. For a moment he felt anatomically correct, part of the arrangement, another body solving the simple problem of being here.

When he left, the beach did not notice. This pleased him. Some places should remain intact after you pass through them, the way a good afternoon does not need a witness to be complete.