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  • The Paris Review

    The Siren Song

    by Nina MacLaughlin Nov 18, 2019 5 minutes

    Gustav Wertheimer, The Kiss of the Siren, 1882

    Four surfboards leaned against the wall in an unfamiliar room on the far edge of the city. I’d woken up after two hours of sleep in a bed too small for two people. The concert the night before had been loud, the sound had come in not just through the seashell curl of the ears, but through the skin to the guts and the bones. It was December and before heading north toward home, we walked the beach—it’s easy to forget in the compression of steel and cement that the city touches ocean, too. We were quiet, tired, and stunned by the force of our recent collision. I squinted in the light, that unforgettable light, that pure, so-bright December light, there on a beach at the far rocky edge of the city.

    “I need you to know that I’m

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