Ten

Eric sleeps late.

It’s the curtains, the blinds, he tells himself.

“Nothing to wake me up,” he says.

He decides to set an alarm for the next morning, not remembering his device is dead, nor that his charger is missing.

He showers, for a long time, then goes downstairs to eat another huge and delicious breakfast. At the back of his mind is a vague thought, a mere feeling, like an itch that wants to be scratched. But it’s so faint, and he’s soon able to ignore it. There are firm fresh raspberries in a bowl on the table. He takes a mouthful, then a few mouthfuls more, until the whole bowl is finished.

He sits back, and sighs happily.

Only then does he see a short handwritten note leaning against a vase of flowers in the center of the table.

It’s a lovely day for a swim. The south pier is the best.

He picks the note up, slowly.

“So it is!” he says.

After breakfast he rolls up a towel from the bathroom and sets off, to the south.

As far as he can remember, he hasn’t been to the far south of the island yet, and it doesn’t even occur to him why he can’t remember if he has or not. Nor does he realize that he has lost track of time, though he arrived only a few days ago.

Homeway twists and turns past more colorful houses, until he reaches a junction, where a tiny wooden sign points the way to the pier. He follows this smaller path for a few minutes more, and then he sees the sea in front of him.

It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful, it takes his breath away. It’s not spectacular, it’s not jaw dropping, it’s simply a lovely sight that makes the heart glad that such places exist. The grays and browns of the rocks, the trees and the wild grass, the sea, waiting for him, and only for him; the place is utterly deserted, he can see neither people nor houses.

He goes down to the pier and, taking his shoes off, sits with his feet in the water for a while, then undresses and slides into the water, swimming far out away from the jetty.

He turns and looks at the island, and feels that little itch at the back of his head again. He swims closer to the pier, ducking underwater for long spells.

Suddenly, as he surfaces, someone is there in the water with him, an arm’s length away.

All he sees at first is a splash as they dive in, but moments later, a head and shoulders break the surface in a tumble of water.

It’s Merle. Her wet hair is drawn back, and down her neck.

Neither of them say anything, and as Eric treads water, Merle edges closer.

There’s that gently intense look on her face again, that’s something he does remember, something that is pushing through the clouds in his mind.

She reaches out a hand, treading water, and their fingertips meet.

She whispers, just loud enough to be heard over the shushing of the waves.

“I followed you.”

Eric hesitates for a moment, wondering, but then he’s laughing, and Merle is, too.

“You.”

They swim together, far out to sea.

They duck under the surface, twisting and turning, hand in hand where they can, and gliding through the deep, Eric’s lips brush her neck, just once. Finally they come up for air. And when they do, they do so laughing.

“This is ridiculous!” shouts Eric, and Merle shrugs, and smiles, as if to say, so what?

Eric tries again.

“Have we done this before?” he calls.

Merle is a few strokes away. He pulls his way over to her, and tries again.

“Have we done this before?”

Merle shrugs again.

“I feel like we’ve done this before,” he says, intently. “But a long time ago. A very long time ago.”

She’s gone, under the water again.

Eric thinks about his life, something he usually avoids, because it has not always been an easy one. He wonders if a few moments of utter and total joy can be worth a lifetime of struggle.

Maybe, he thinks. Maybe, if they’re the right moments.

*   *   *

They swim some more, and finally, exhausted, climb onto the rocks to dry in the warm sun.

Eric turns and holds Merle’s hands. He looks at his hands, a little older than hers. He looks at her younger ones. What if it were the other way around? What if his were the younger hands? Would it matter?

He asks himself why this hand, is his hand. Could it have been someone else’s? And why is that her hand? Does it matter? And what if she were different? No, he thinks, as these strange and somehow foolish questions roll around in his head. No, it wouldn’t matter. Even if she were different, she would still be she.

“This is ridiculous,” he says again, and she sits up, and gently takes his head between her hands.

“Why?” she says. “Why is it? Why is it any more ridiculous than a thousand things? That the earth spins around the sun, that water can eat a mountain away, that a salmon can swim a thousand miles across the ocean to find the very stream it was born in. It’s not ridiculous. It’s just … how it is.”

Suddenly she fumbles in her clothes, spread on the rocks, and finds a watch.

“I have to go.”

“But, stay…”

“I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head.

She will not be persuaded otherwise, and Eric watches her clothe her naked skin and then, like a dream that drifts out of reach on waking, she is gone.

*   *   *

He dozes on the rocks, the sense of Merle around and inside him, seeing her slender limbs, smelling the salt in her hair, imagining that the warmth of the sunshine is her hands on his skin. He realizes that for the first time in a very long time, his heart is beating slowly and calmly. Peacefully.

*   *   *

He wakes some time later, with that itch once more.

Something starts to rise to the top of his mind.

He walks home, trying to get ahold of it, whatever it is. He’s sure that it’s something he’s supposed to be doing.

As he enters the house, he thinks he hears the back door, the kitchen door, shut.

He shrugs.

Maybe just the door slamming in the wind, though he doesn’t get as far as noticing that there is no wind.

He hangs his towel over the balustrade to dry in the sun, and comes back into the kitchen, where he sees that someone has left him a jar of that tea, and he decides the best thing to do is have a drink, to think about whatever it is he’s supposed to be thinking about.

He brews the tea, not really noticing that it has a slightly different taste, that it has become a little stronger.

And so he drinks, and the forgetting begins again.