In a dream, I searched for others. I climbed a sandy rise leading up from a seaside cove. I wandered into a rambling house, almost a bunker, made of small concrete rooms fixed to a hillside. I was dry and thirsty. I discovered a bathroom but couldn't draw anything from the tap because there was no water. Everything smelled of lime dust and raw stucco. The polished stone tub had been crudely mortared into a tiled stall, open to the room along one side. The cement floor was decked with a polished mosaic of random pastel stones. On the side of the tub bordering the bathroom, streaks of dripping grout, evidence of hasty work, ran down to an unusual tile fitted into the floor running the length of the tub. At first this long, narrow strip appeared to be a single, hand cut stone made to fill an erroneous gap in the poured concrete. This special piece of tile was incompletely finished with white glaze. I kneeled down to examine it. I ran my hand across its smooth surface. The glaze moved. It animated. A portion of a face, a woman's face, pressed upward against the inside of the glassy layer as if it were elastic. The figure was alive. It, or she, was embedded in the glaze, actually was the glaze. She spoke.

"Please don't look at me because I know my face is ugly and no pleasure to anyone. Look away and leave me."

Amazed, I traced her outline with my finger. The full face could not be made out. A slice allowed me to comprehend the mouth, nose, eyes, and central part of a forehead out to the corners of the eyes, from the hairline to the lower lip. The filmy coating seemed to restrain the face like white latex. The figure was extraordinary, beautiful, and in torment.

"The world of women would hide themselves for jealousy if there is a race of such people as you," I said.

The astounding face protested, eyes shut, "No. It isn't so. I am the only one. There are no others. I live in this stone. It is my punishment."

"What could someone as lovely as you have done to deserve a curse like this?"

"I lived alone and above all others," the face said. "When the sea rolled and people called for help, I did not answer. I felt myself above them, and so it was, because I had built my house on stone. They lived near the sea. They fished and boats were their rocking houses. But the winds came. Waves dashed their boats on rocks. The seas foundered their houses under oceans of spume. In the storm I closed my windows and bolted my doors and pitied their cries for help. I knew I had built on stone. What was I to do if others were so simple and improvident."

The face withdrew behind the milky film. "What happened?" I called and passed my fingers over the now hardened surface, hoping to touch the figure within. The inanimate stone didn't move. In my dream, I wondered if I had dreamed of the face. I stood to go and wondered why I hadn't heard a single sound of life in the strange seaside village, only the sursurrus of wind and surf. The place was empty. I was completely alone, inheritor of a house built on stone. Should I stay and close the door behind me or go in search of others?

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