A woman named Annie says that her lover, Ben, is experiencing evolution in reverse. She immediately clarifies that this is not meant to be metaphorically; he literally transformed from a man into an ape and at the point she is narrating, he’s become a sea turtle. Her best guess is that Ben is going back through a million years of evolution every single day. At the start of the story, Ben—in sea turtle form—calls a water-filled baking pan home. When she comes tomorrow he will be in a more regressive state.
Ben’s backward trip to primitivism of an extreme sort seems to have coincided with an observation he made to Annie one day about how there seemed to be a direct ration between growth of the brain and reduction of the ability to feel empathy and sympathy toward others. They then made love after which he told he wanted to sleep outside that evening. The next morning she woke to discover that Ben was still there, but not as the man she knew. Instead, there was a fully grown ape on her patio. Taking things in stride with the expectation that it was only temporary and the Ben she knew would be back soon. Only now, with Ben reduced to a turtle, is she starting to wonder if perhaps that was a folly and a dream.
When she returns home from work the next day, Ben is still in his pan, but no longer a turtle. Now he is a salamander. This is the final stop along the line of her patience ability to handle the situation. Not able to bear even looking at the salamander Ben, she takes the pan down to the beach and sets it afloat on the waves.
As he floats away, she is determined to engrave every memory she has of him onto her consciousness because now that he’s no long there in physical form, her job is to remember.
