JOLUTA, MEXICO, 2009
SHE WOKE TO a sound. Not his breathing or
occasional sighing, which she incorporated pleasurably into sleep,
but a sound she wasn’t sure of. Regretfully and carefully she
unwound them, his leg back to him, her arm back to her. He’d gotten
up to pee a little while before and had put on his boxer
shorts.
There was a faint light of dawn making its way into
the room. She crept quietly out of bed. She found the housekeeping
smock in a ball on the floor and pulled it on, zipping slowly so
she wouldn’t wake him up. She turned to the window. She could
barely make out the leaves of a mango tree. She stood, alert.
She heard something again from the same direction.
It was probably a bird or some other little animal. The landscape
was tropical and busy around here. She walked along the edge of the
room toward the window, trying to tune her eyes to the dull
light.
“Daniel!” She screamed his name before she had time
to think it. There was something there. She couldn’t make out a
face, but she was almost certain she could make out the shape of
something in the half-open window. She tried to make sense of it.
Was it a gun?
Several things happened at once and without any
perceptible order. He sat up at the sound of her voice. She ran
toward him as fast and as hard as she could to push him out of the
way. The gun fired and she screamed and Daniel was suddenly on his
feet shouting.
She didn’t know what was happening. He was holding
her and yelling like crazy. She saw blood, and she was scared that
he was shot. He pulled her off the bed and carried her out of the
bedroom to the big room. She heard another shot behind them. She
was crying. “Are you hurt? Are you okay? Did it hit you?” She
wasn’t sure what she was saying and what she was just
thinking.
He was running through the house, out of the house,
onto the beach. He was running with her across the sand, and she
heard a third shot. They were going to die. Where could they go?
They couldn’t go back to the house. They were easy targets on the
wide-open beach. Ahead of them was only water.
There was blood on his chest. Oh, God, was he
hurt?
He ran with her down to the surf and pulled her
into the water with him. It wasn’t until she was trying to swim
that she realized she could barely move her arm. Distantly, she
heard another shot. “Take a big breath,” he ordered her. They went
under together and he pulled her along and she swam as best she
could. It dawned on her that her shoulder hurt. Had she injured it
somehow? He was swimming so powerfully for the two of them, it made
her think he couldn’t be badly wounded. He pulled her up for a
breath and then down again.
When they came up for the next breath she saw the
floating dock right in front of them. This is what we would do
if we were on vacation, she reminded herself incongruously. He
swam her around to the other side, pushed her onto it, and quickly
scrambled up behind her.
She was aching for breath. She put a hand to her
shoulder. She saw the figure on the beach with the gun. Joaquim was
what Daniel called him.
She felt Daniel’s arm supporting her, his other
hand unzipping her smock. He pulled it gingerly over her shoulder,
and it hurt. He was taking off her dress, and they were both going
to die at any moment, and she felt oddly calm about it all.
“We’ll be easy to kill out here,” she said, trying
to catch her breath.
“If he wanted to kill us, he would.” He was
studying her shoulder, and she realized for the first time that she
was the one who was bleeding.
The gun was trained on them. “You think he
doesn’t?”
“I think he would have already if he was in any
hurry to.”
“Did I get shot?” she asked incredulously.
“Your shoulder caught the edge of a bullet that was
not intended for you. You jumped right in front of it, my girl, and
scared the shit out of me.” She couldn’t believe he was smiling at
her, but he was. “There’s a deep scrape but not a bullet. We got
lucky there.”
“Who was it intended for?” She cast another wary
eye at Joaquim and his pistol on the beach.
“It was intended to intimidate us and get control
of us but not to hurt you. Joaquim might not have minded shooting
me, but it would have been an anticlimax. He wants to put me at his
mercy. That’s the kind of person he is. He wants to do to me what I
did to him—to take you away from me and have me know that you are
in the world, but I can’t have you. He probably thinks you still
belong to him. I’m not saying he won’t shoot me or both of us as a
last resort, but it’s not what he wants to do.”
“Why not?”
“Because then he loses us again. He’s got us in
this life but not the next. He can remember, but he can’t recognize
souls.”
“He can’t?”
“No. He couldn’t in the past, anyway.”
“You can?”
“Not perfectly but yes.”
“So then what’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know, and neither does he. When he brought
you here I think he probably hoped that I would show up, but he
didn’t expect me to succeed in running away with you. I am almost
sure this was not in his plans. He knows we have no options right
now, but neither does he. Besides shooting us both dead, all he can
do is stand there and wait to see what we do. He can’t leave us and
get a boat. We’d be gone by then. He can’t swim in after us.”
“So what do we do?”
“For now, it’s a stalemate. We’re all going to
wait.”
“We are?”
“Unless you have a different idea.”
“I’ll get to work on that,” she said. She realized
he was pulling at the bottom of her smock, and she sat up. “Is this
really the moment for that?”
He laughed. “I wish it were.” He was examining her
hem. “Listen, I know you haven’t got a lot to work with,
clothes-wise, but do you mind if I rip off the bottom couple of
inches? I want to tie up your shoulder.” He gestured to his wet
boxers. “I’ve got even less to spare.”
“I think we should use yours,” she said.
“All right, then,” he said. He stood up and started
to strip, and she couldn’t help but admire his beautiful body up
and down.
She was not in her right mind. She’d been too drunk
with happiness to sober up properly. She suspected he felt the
same. The world wasn’t big enough to contain the magnitude of what
had happened between them last night. There was no way it was big
enough to contain this, too. She didn’t want to sober up.
“Stop. I’m kidding. You can rip my dress. We don’t
want to be totally naked out here.”
“Don’t we?”
“Not with our audience.”
He expertly tore the bottom few inches straight
around the hem. He snuck a peek under it. “You are driving me
insane in this thing.”
She laughed. “It’s not the outfit I would have
picked for our reunion, but I admit it’s easy to get in and out
of.” She couldn’t quite believe that they were still lusting after
each other.
He carefully and expertly bandaged her shoulder to
stop the bleeding.
“You seem like you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m a doctor. Did I mention that?”
“No, you are not.”
“Yes, I am. A few times over.”
“You’re too young.”
“I’d been to medical school already. I skipped
ahead a bit.”
“A bit? A lot.”
“Okay, a lot.”
“Do you work in a hospital?”
“Yes.” He tied off the bandage, kissed her breast,
pulled her smock back into place, and zipped her up. “You’ll be
fine, ma’am.”
“Another scar for my collection.”
“You have many bullet wounds?”
“I mean the kind you gather over lifetimes, that
stay with you after you die. Like this one, right?” She pointed to
her upper arm.
He tipped his head. “How do you know about
that?”
“From Constance.”
“How do you know about Constance?”
“I was Constance.”
“I know, but how do you know that?”
“I read a letter she wrote to me.”
He glanced briefly at Joaquim on the beach and back
at her. “And how did you do that?”
“I went to Hastonbury Hall in England and found it
in her old bedroom.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You are kidding
me. I don’t know what to say.”
It was fun, having this to tell him. “Remember the
hypnotist I told you about? I did a regression under hypnosis and
went right back to Constance. She was desperate that I find her
note. And she’s been badgering me and making me remember things
ever since.”
“Unbelievable.”
“She is.”
“I was wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
“When you were Constance I told you your memory was
only ordinary. Now I see I underestimated you.”
“Because that girl would not leave me alone. She
would not be happy until I got with you.”
Daniel laughed. “Is she happy now?”
Lucy laughed, and she also felt as though she was
going to cry. “She’s very happy now.”
DANIEL LOOKED UP at the sky. He felt that he could
see the sun arcing across it, and he really wanted it to slow down.
He heard the slap of the water against the float. He felt a silky
strand of her hair tickling his armpit. He felt as though he’d
smoked a whole lot of pot. He knew he had no right to be happy with
a gun trained on the two of them. He knew he should feel anger and
outrage, but he couldn’t quite help it. Fear almost always trumped
joy, but not today.
“I should be coming up with a plan,” he said,
twisting a strand of her hair between his fingertips, “but all I
can think about is how you look under that dress.” He rolled onto
his elbow. “I can’t take it.”
“Maybe we should do the deed right here and now,”
she said. “That would show him.”
“That would probably get him mad enough to shoot us
both dead.”
“But we’d come back together, wouldn’t we?”
He sat up and looked at her seriously. “If you love
me even a tiny fraction of how much I love you, then yes. I am
almost certain we would.”
“Then we would,” she said simply. “Because I do.”
She thought of a darker possibility. “Maybe us together is exactly
what he doesn’t want.”
“I suspect he doesn’t.”
“Maybe we won’t give him a choice,” she said. She
sat herself between his legs and pressed her back against his
chest. “There’s no way he’s getting you without me. He’s not that
good a shot.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he
said.
She shook her head. “You’re not going anywhere
without me.” She might have sounded like she was kidding, but she
wasn’t. “Wherever we are going, we are going together.”
He frowned at her.
“Seriously, Daniel.”
He held both her hands and rested his chin on her
good shoulder.
“So besides both of us getting shot, what are our
other options?”
“We could swim in to shore and take our
chances.”
“And what chances would those be?”
He pressed his lips together. “I don’t know.
Probably end up at Joaquim’s mercy. That would be his option of
choice.”
“And what happens then? He takes me hostage? He
hurts me in some way, and you have to watch? He forces you into
some humiliation and then he ends up killing you anyway? That’s the
kind of showdown he’s looking for, isn’t it?”
“I’m almost sure it is.”
“He doesn’t care about committing murder, does he?
He can just skip to another body if he ever gets caught.”
Daniel nodded.
“That is the worst of all worlds. Are those the
kind of chances we are looking at?”
Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t want
to enumerate what would happen, but he couldn’t stop her from doing
it.
“Is there anywhere we can swim to? Can we try to
swim around the headlands and make our way in?”
“He’d get there faster.”
“Do you think anybody ever comes here?”
“It’s not impossible, but I think this is a pretty
remote spot.”
She thought about that. “Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“If by some miracle we can’t think of, we do get
out of this, what then? Is there anywhere we can go or anything we
can do where he won’t find us?”
“Probably not for long.”
She looked discouraged, and who could blame her?
“Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever think we were meant not to be
together?”
Her face was serious, but he couldn’t help smiling.
“No. We are meant to be together. We are just meant to want it very
badly.”
She smiled at his smile in spite of herself. “I’m
running out of ideas. Are you holding something back? Do you have
an idea here?”
He lay his head back and looked up at the sky. “I
have the idea of being with you a little longer.”
“ARE YOU SCARED of dying?” she asked him.
The sun was rapidly making its way to the top of
the sky. He lay on his back and she was curled up against his side
with her head on his chest. He felt remarkably relaxed.
“No. I’ve died many times. I’ve only made love to
you once, though, so that’s the miracle I’m focusing on. Joaquim
can’t take that from us one way or another.”
“Do you think we’re going to die?”
He breathed in and out, in and out. He’d never felt
the warmth of the sun so purely. “Lucy, I don’t want to have to
think about it. I just want to think about you. But if I have to, I
guess I think it is likely that either we are going to suffer or we
are going to die. I’d rather die, and honestly, I think I can die
happy now.”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
She lay back beside him. “Did you call me Lucy
before?”
He turned his head to look at her and shielded his
eyes from the sun so he could see her well. “It’s funny, I look at
you now, and you are all I can see.”
She shook her head. “We’re on a float in the middle
of the water. I’m all there is.”
He laughed and pulled her on top of him and hugged
her. He kissed her neck and then her lips. “Lucy,” he said. “Lucy.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think that is a perfectly good name.”
He kissed her chin. “Lucy. That’s you.”
BY THE TIME the sun was stretched overhead, Lucy’s
skin was turning pink and she was getting thirsty. She could tell
he was, too, but neither of them wanted to say anything about
it.
“I’m seeing a problem with the waiting,” she
said.
“Tell me.” He pulled her onto his lap.
“I’m going to get burnt to a crisp, and we’re both
going to get very thirsty, and it’s not going to feel good. I’m
going to try to be brave, and you’re going to start worrying about
me, and then you are going to do something you’ll regret.”
“You are right.” He kissed the side of her face.
“So maybe we should undress each other and enjoy what we have
left.”
“I don’t want him to kill us.”
“I don’t, either.”
“And we can’t just wait forever.”
He nodded. He didn’t want to mention that he didn’t
think Joaquim would let this stalemate go past sunset. He’d never
been a patient man.
She was quiet for a while. He wrapped a hand around
each of her feet. “Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Anything.”
“What kind of a death is drowning?”
He looked at her in surprise. “What do you
mean?”
“I mean, how is it? Does it hurt? Does it take a
long time? Is it worse than, say, getting shot to death?”
“Well.” He thought it over. “I’ve done it twice.
That was a long time ago. I’ve gotten shot twice. That was more
recently. I would say drowning is, overall, better.”
She rubbed her hands together. She licked her dry,
chapped lips. “Then that’s the worst that can happen, right? And I
grant you it’s pretty bad, but it’s better than giving him the
pleasure of taking our lives. What do you say? We’ll just jump off
this thing and start swimming.” She gestured out to the open sea.
“Either we’ll make it to China or we won’t.”
He squinted toward China.
“So what do you say?”
“I say there’s weather coming in.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a storm out there, and it looks like it’s
coming this way. I don’t know if that’s good for us or bad.”
“How could it be good?”
He thought about that. “Less sunburn. Less thirst
if we could catch some of it.”
A shot rang out, and it startled them both. “I
think he’s getting tired of waiting,” Daniel said.
She curled herself tighter around him, and he knew
why. “I think we should make our move,” she said. “Come on. I know
you don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
He was in a daze. He wanted to touch her and talk
to her and smell her smell and watch her laugh. He didn’t want to
die. He didn’t want this to end. But he had to shake himself out of
it. He didn’t care very much about what happened to him, but he
cared about what happened to her.
“Is this really what you want to do?” he
asked.
“Yes.” She put her feet over the edge, and he
followed her. He noticed she was staying very close to him,
touching some part of him all the time.
“Are you willing to choose this? Do you really
believe the things I’ve told you so completely that you are willing
to swim to China?”
She looked him in the eyes and checked him.
“Yes.”
She wasn’t kidding around. He had to contend with
that, and it forced him to have to be serious, too. “Stop for a
minute, Lucy. Think it through. I’ll let him shoot me, and you go
back to him in peace. Maybe that would satisfy the bloodlust for a
time. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt you. You could head back to the States
and go back to some regular kind of life. That would be the most
sensible thing to do.”
“How can you even say that?” She twisted his big
toe, hard. “I could never let that happen. Anyway, do you really
think he’d leave me alone? Do you really think he’d let me go back
to a regular life?”
He wasn’t going to lie. “No. I don’t. But there’s a
chance.”
She chewed on her bottom lip. “I like that about as
well as I like the rest of our chances. Anyway, I’m not going
anywhere without you. We’re swimming to China together. And if the
worst happens, I’m dying with you before I’m living without
you.”
“You said something like that once when you were
Constance, and I talked you out of it.”
She looked at him ominously. “Fool me once,
Daniel.” He heard her Virginia twang.
She put out her hand for his. “Ready?”
“I don’t want this to end,” he said.
“It’s the beginning,” she said, with a certainty he
envied.
They pointed themselves west. He leaned over and
kissed her. “To China,” he said.
She nodded. Her chin quivered, and he could see
that she was afraid to open her mouth for fear she might cry.
“I love you,” he said.
She gave him one last look, a teary smile. She held
his hand so tight his fingers went numb, and when she jumped he
jumped, too.
ANOTHER SHOT RANG out as they plunged in. He
wanted to keep holding her hand, but he knew it made it hard for
her to swim. He thought about her shoulder. They swam with a sense
of purpose, but he knew they wouldn’t last very long.
The sun was still shining down into the water, but
he saw a bolt of lightning in the distance and presumed that would
be the end if it didn’t come before. He watched her pink legs in
the water, the scraggly smock. He was still holding off on the
reckoning, but it was starting to come after him cruelly.
A part of his mind was back on Joaquim. The waves
were getting bigger and frothier, which would make it difficult to
target them from the shore. A few hundred yards farther out and
they would be out of his sight and out of range. He was
calculating, as Joaquim would be calculating.
Joaquim could try to go after them in a boat, but
the weather would make it difficult. No reasonable boat owner would
agree to let a craft out in a storm. Maybe Joaquim already had a
boat. Maybe he’d steal a boat. But if he left the beach even
briefly, he’d be giving up his command of the shore. He must have
believed they would come in at some point. He knew they had no
other option. The one thing he couldn’t control was their ability
to die. He couldn’t chase them where they were going.
They’d made it another quarter-mile or so when he
saw that she was out of breath, and he feared she was in pain. He
slowed down and bobbed for a minute. It took work not to get
buffeted. “We can take it easy,” he told her. “China isn’t going
anywhere.”
“He can’t shoot us from here, can he?”
“Not likely. I can’t even see him anymore.”
“It’s just us, then.” She was shivering.
“Just us.” He put his arms around her. “How’s the
shoulder?”
“I’d say it’s the least of our problems.”
He nodded. He wished they could skip over this next
part, because it wasn’t going to be fun. The water was getting
colder, and it would slow all processes down, including
death.
“What happens if we don’t get there?” she asked
breathlessly. “How do you die?” She didn’t look frightened so much
as determined.
“You don’t give yourself to it,” he said. “You let
it take you. You just keep going until it takes you.”
“Does it last long?”
He didn’t want to go into the biology of drowning.
It would only scare her. “A few minutes. You’re strong and your
body will struggle, but I promise you something.”
“What is that?”
“At the worst possible moment, the most painful,
darkest moment when you can’t take it anymore and you are afraid,
that is when a feeling of peace and comfort will come over you, and
it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt.”
She looked hopeful. “Does that happen to
everyone?”
“It will happen to you.”
THERE WAS A strange stillness that came over them
through the next stretch. They did their swimming underwater,
coming up for fewer breaths. He stayed close to her and watched
her. He felt almost hypnotized by the slow beauty of her body under
the water. He fought with himself about whether to try to support
her and give her a rest or not. He didn’t want to drag it out. As
terrible as it was, there was something lovely about the way the
waves surged around them and yet the sunlight continued to filter
through. He thought of his first life in Antioch, as a
five-year-old lying in the river through an earthquake. He thought
he saw eternity then, and he wondered if he would see it again with
her.
She was remarkably strong. Her body was giving her
a great burst of energy, and he could see it in her legs and her
face. He knew she wasn’t feeling pain anymore.
And then slowly, in time, she began to falter. Her
movements slowed. Her strokes were less precise. It was happening
to him, too. It didn’t disturb him in himself, but it hurt him to
watch her. He didn’t want to watch, but he wasn’t going to spare
himself, either. He had dragged her into this.
And then came the moment, unexpected though it had
to come, when she stopped laboring. Under the water, in the
speckled sunlight, she turned her face back to look at him. It was
not a smile but like a smile. It wasn’t a face of fear. It was an
expression of faith more than anything. She had faith in him and
the things he promised her. She trusted him.
This was what it felt like to be loved. Instead of
warding it off as he used to do, he let it sink in. He tried to
open up every part of himself to take more of it in.
And then, to his horror, she lifted her arms over
her head and began to sink. He watched it as though in slow motion.
The sun was streaming down in shafts, fluttering around her. Her
hair was a slow golden cloud, and her hands were open.
She was sinking. He saw the back of her head, her
open fingers sinking down past the level of his chest. She was
pulled down by the hungry darkness of the bottom. She was leaving
the sunlight and leaving him, and he was frozen by the sight of
her.
You have to let her go.
Why? A voice in his head was bellowing at
him, waking up the rest of him.
Because this is how we save ourselves. This is
what we chose. This is what we’ve been waiting to do all these
centuries.
What were all those centuries? They were days and
years and months of memories. They were nothing. They were thoughts
in his mind and nothing more. Could he really be sure of any of it?
Did he have any real, tangible reason to know he had ever come back
from death or ever would? She believed him. But did he believe
himself? Was he so confident he was willing to sacrifice her?
Because maybe he was crazy. Maybe it was as simple
as that. He belonged in a mental institution with all the other
people who shared his views. Why did he think he was any better?
Just because he was good at keeping his crazy ideas to
himself?
How could he be sure there were any lives before
this one? He couldn’t. How did he know there would be any lives
after? He didn’t. What if he’d invented this memory as a way to
contend with a life of abandonment and abuse? Damaged people did
strange things. How did he really know he wasn’t crazy? He didn’t.
It was easily possible that he was living one long delusion and
he’d dragged her into it.
It was all just stories, he knew that much. But
what if they weren’t true stories? Could he take that risk? Could
he really let her go on the strength of that?
Thoughts were nothing. Memories were nothing. They
were nothing you could touch. They took no time. You could fit them
all on the point of a pin. You could bring your entire world into
doubt in a span of a few seconds.
He watched the cloud of her hair sink to the level
of his knees. Don’t drag it out. Don’t make her die a longer
death. Her larynx was going to seal off, and her heart and her
lungs and her brain were soon going to start their involuntary
struggle, and him holding her or interfering with her wasn’t going
to make it any easier.
This was the girl he loved. This was his strong,
beautiful girl.
He’d made love to her in the most exquisite moment
of his life and kissed every inch of her body just a few hours
before, and now she was dying in front of his eyes.
No. There was one word in his head, and it
spread through him quickly. It galvanized every muscle and nerve.
No. She wasn’t leaving him. No. He wasn’t letting her
go.
No. With the word came a memory. He had
watched her die once before. He watched her die because he had
killed her. He had burned down her house and watched her die, and
he’d thought of it and dreamed of it with pain every day since.
No. He was not going to watch her die this time.
We have no choice. We have no options.
No! If you didn’t have a choice, you had to
make a choice. If you didn’t have options, you made some. You
couldn’t just let the world happen to you. He’d done that too
long.
He didn’t see eternity. He saw this girl and this
moment and one slim chance. His body broke out of its strange
freeze. It knew what it wanted to do. It was pure brain voodoo and
bodily torture to hold back from her any longer. He dove down and
reached for her. He grabbed her around the middle and pulled her up
to the surface. This was his body, and it was a good, strong body.
It loved her as he did, because it was him. It wasn’t any more or
less.
He held her and treaded water. Her head fell on his
shoulder. Her limbs weren’t moving. A surge of adrenaline filled
his body as he felt her neck and her chest for signs of life.
She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t taken water into her
lungs, but she had sealed them off, and it was a crippling moment
of suspense until she opened her throat and started breathing
again.
“You are not going to die,” he told her. He felt
the emotion breaking his voice. “I know I said I’d let you, but I
can’t.”
HE PUT HIS arm around her chest, under her
armpits, the way he’d learned in a lifesaving class in Fairfax, and
towed her along. He swam into the storm, because there was nowhere
else to go. The sun disappeared, and the rain came down. He prayed
the lightning would keep moving up the coast and away.
He swam as hard as he could. He didn’t know where
he was going or what he would find besides water and rain. He felt
the current pulling him north, and he fought it at first, but then
he swam with it. How did he know which way to go?
In moments of tremendous stress he used to picture
the world as it would look from high above. But now he saw them
down here, two tiny white faces bobbing in a wide, stormy
sea.
His lungs were raw and his limbs were starting to
ache, but he wouldn’t slow down. He wouldn’t give in. You are
not taking her, he wanted to say to the indifferent ocean as
much as to Joaquim. I am going to keep her safe.
He didn’t know how to keep her safe other than to
keep swimming. He had to fight. That’s all he had. Not memories,
not experiences, not skills. He had a will. And his will was to
fight until he couldn’t fight anymore.
THE SUN WAS cast over by storm, and so it set
without much bother. He knew it must have set only because the air
was suddenly dark and hard to see through. He had long since
stopped feeling anything from his body. His legs were numb. He knew
his arm was there only because it was still clutching Lucy and
towing her along. He knew his body was trying to conserve oxygen
for his brain and his vital organs, but even those were badly
depleted. His brain had entered the phase of slow blur. He should
have drowned already. In his blurry mind he almost envied the times
when he’d just been able to drown in peace.
When he looked back at Lucy he suddenly discovered
that her eyes were open wide and disoriented. Her limbs weren’t
moving. She let herself be pulled along.
His face was so numb he could barely make his mouth
open or his tongue work. “Hey, baby,” he choked out. He wished he
could make his voice sound normal enough not to scare her.
She blinked a few times. “What are we doing?” she
asked. Her voice was barely audible.
“We’re not dying,” he said.
She leaned her head back. “It’s raining,” she
said.
“I know.”
“Are you sure we’re not dead?”
His mouth loosened up a little. “I really fucking
hope not,” he said.
THE THUNDER RUMBLED, but the lightning stayed
away. The wind blew the waves up and over them, and with each one
he glanced back to see her sputter and breathe again.
What have we done? he thought.
His heart was swollen to bursting. It was all
puffed up to start with, with love and lust, and now add
hypothermia and myocardial infarction. Usually you lost
consciousness before your heart exploded, but he was clinging
pretty hard to consciousness. His thoughts were getting dim and
disorderly, but he tried to keep alert and out loud for her.
Don’t you go yet, he begged his heart.
Her head was back. Every so often the clouds let
through a bit of moonlight, and she watched it. The planes of her
face, turned up to the sky, were lovely in the moonlight. She
trusted him enough to die, and apparently she also trusted him
enough to swim hopelessly and endlessly in a stormy ocean.
He thought he heard something besides the wind and
the toil of the storm, but his brain was too slow to process what
it was.
He heard Lucy say something, but he couldn’t quite
hear her. He willed his dead arm to pull her a little closer.
“Is this the darkest hour?” she sputtered.
He realized his teeth were chattering
uncontrollably. His body was shuddering. “W-why do you ask?”
“Because look.” He followed her eyes up to the sky.
He saw a flash of white through the rain and heard the sound again.
He stared at it stupidly. Ideas were clamoring to be thought, but
he couldn’t quite get them started.
“Do you see it?”
“I-it’s a gull.”
It circled them a couple of times, probably
wondering whether it could possibly figure out a way to eat them.
Daniel saw the direction it went, and he followed. He couldn’t make
the thoughts go, but his body seemed to know that gulls did not
stray far from land, especially not in weather like this. They did
not fly this far out to sea without some place to land.
Daniel doubled his efforts. Blindly he knew he had
to follow the gull. He couldn’t let it out of his sight. The bird
soared and stuttered and twisted through the rough air, and the
pain of envy woke Daniel up a little. We weren’t made for water
or sky, he thought. How are we supposed to follow
you?
“It’s gonna land somewhere,” he choked out.
“How do you know?”
“I-I—I just know.”
She stared at him, and concern broke the calm. “How
can you be doing this?” She was shouting at him over the waves.
“How can you still be moving, Daniel? I don’t understand.”
He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he was still moving.
He was glad if his legs were still kicking, though he couldn’t feel
them. We have to live, he wanted to tell her, but he didn’t
have the breath left to make the words.
He was having trouble seeing. He kept his eyes
open, but they could barely make out even big shapes. He was lucky
she had her eyes open.
“Daniel, I see something,” she shouted.
He looked back at her. He tried to focus his
eyes.
“It’s there, ahead of us. It’s a dark shape coming
out of the water. It’s like a big rock. Do you see it?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Can you keep going? It’s so close!” She tried
kicking, too, to help.
It was practically looming over him; he was
practically crashing into it before he could make it out with his
eyes. With a last breath of pure exhaustion, he heaved her up onto
the rock and watched her legs scramble up the craggy surface. He
had only enough mental energy left to feel a slow rush of
relief.
He put his hands against the rock to lift himself.
He closed his eyes. I’ll just take a little rest, he
thought. Just catch my breath.
She was screaming before he knew what had happened.
“Daniel! Daniel, get up here!”
He’d drifted a few feet away. A current had hold of
him. I’ll just rest another minute, he told himself
blearily, before I go over there.
“Daniel! Daniel! Open your eyes. Look at me.
Come back. We’re going to be okay! Do you hear me?”
I’m tired, he thought.
“I’m getting back in the water if you don’t get
over here!” she shouted at him. “I’m not kidding. We’re gonna go
right back to drowning if that’s what you want.”
He blinked his eyes open and shut. He saw her white
limbs climbing back down off the rock. Why was she doing that?
Why are you doing that? he tried to ask, but his mouth
didn’t open. In his confused mind he thought it was a bad idea. He
tried to push himself toward her. Don’t do that. He got to
her and found his hand on her ankle. “Y-y-you’re g-g-gonna drown.”
His voice was slurred, and his brain was so slurred he barely knew
what he was saying.
“Get up here, Daniel, or I swear to God I am going
to drown right along with you.” She had her hand wrapped around his
other wrist. He could feel it there. She placed both of his hands
on a flat spot. “You ready? Stay with me! I’m counting to three.
Ready? One. Two.”
He felt his eyelids dropping closed again.
“Daniel!” She squeezed his arm so hard he
opened them again.
He could see her eyes clearly now, right in front
of his face. “One, two, three!”
With a heave and a thunderous groan, he pulled
himself up on the rock. Like an inchworm, he folded himself
together and pushed himself higher on the rock. He inchwormed one
more time until all but his feet were clear of the water, and that
was the moment his body gave up. It just collapsed and possibly
died, and he couldn’t have asked anything more of it.