The Skyline of a Ship

management is a merry administrative mess; as a result, we almost only get some dry gruel to rehydrate ourselves, and no one ever knows what's in it (but when you're lucky, you can recognize the taste). Most of the time, the powder blends in the tanks, then in the trucks, then in the packages they give us every week.

  I only have one plate, so I pass it to Lily and eat out of the box. We are sitting cross-legged on the ground of the junk room anyway. We are quickly done – I can't help but look away when she gives herself a good shot of insulin in the arm. The insulin is the hormone she's missing, the vital hormone that smells like green shield bugs, costs a lot and must be kept away from the heat and humidity.

  Then I ask her to help me hold the slats of her bed-to-be (some scraps of wood left over from my attempt to build a hen house on the roof) while I fix them using wall brackets. She looks relieved to make herself useful, and I think about how to push the conversation a bit further. Since Lily arrived, we've talked about the dog she had to give away to come here, her non-existent family, and the walk to go and hunt the gulls in the dunes. But I'd like to ask her why, exactly, they sent her to me.

  Lily doesn't allow me time for that. Standing on my bed, holding a slat at arm's length, she starts to waver. I quickly catch the piece of wood before it hits her head. She falls on the blanket. I see her shaking. She wants to talk, but her jaw is too clenched. I jump at the door and open it on the fly. I fall on my knees in front of the microwave; I lift it furiously. Hurry, is there anything in the stash behind the stool? Anything sweet? Nothing. Desperation. Suddenly I light up. I know: I still have a pack of orange juice next to my computer. I run to it and go back to Lily.

  Her eyes are closed, she's straight as an arrow. I spill some orange juice everywhere trying to make her drink but, actually, I can't even open her mouth. So I take a deep breath in. I take her pulse, then sit next to her trying to calm down. It's not that bad. Nothing but a pretty severe episode of hypoglycaemia. As long as she didn't bump her head, everything's fine.

  Indeed, Lily wakes up half an hour later, her face greyer than ever. In the war lead by the dark circles around her eyes to conquer her face, the cheeks lost ground again.

  She splutters that she's alright. Right. After the fright, I suffer the backlash of exhaustion. Why on earth didn't she tell me? I grunt. Moreover, I may not be a specialist, but I know that a hypo can be avoided. For instance by properly dosing the insulin, that precisely lowers the blood sugar levels.

  With a softer voice, I point it out to Lily, knowing that I wouldn't teach her anything. Her voice suddenly fills up with a violence I wasn't prepared for. She tells me that the problem comes from what we ate, 'from this fucking shitty food'. She has no idea what's in it. There is no way to distinguish boiled pasta from a squash mash. In other words, she doesn't know how much carbohydrate she ingests, and since the insulin has mostly to be dosed depending on that, she goes from hypo to hyperglycaemia.

  I'm pretty shaken. I state that I find it stupid, just to say something, maybe. But, actually, I know very well that only the truly sick are prioritised and entitled to receive personal food. For the others, we only know what we eat five days a month, when we get fresh products.

  The end of the day is rather tense. In the evening, Lily apologizes. She tells me that the hypos cause a rush of adrenaline. I hardly listen. I don't like to be yelled at, and I still resent her a bit in spite of me, even though it's childish – at least I manage not to show it to her.

  Before sleep, we have a walk in the park along the sea. At night, the water is no more than a long black thing whose shivering back softly glimmers under a half-crunched moon. We can clearly see the strings of foam shading the shore. I want to soak my feet in the cold water. I take off my shoes and run on the beach. Lily follows me.

  I drop my fir green jacket at the foot of the bed and sit cross-legged facing the window. It's already 9:00 p.m., I'm just back from class, and Lily has been living here for a week now. As a matter of fact, I can hear her typing on the keyboard from across the partition. The noise stops. She appears in the door opening, dressed in her unpaired pyjamas, with a grey tiled bottom and a top that is so big that three of her could fit in it. She smiles and says that there is some (cold) food for me in the microwave.

  And in her hand, a syringe. I look at the thing, the origin of the tenacious bug smell in the air. Then I turn my head away, open the window. I knew this would happen sooner or later, because that's also why I'm here, not just to watch her when she collapses or forgets her injection. In fact, she's been preparing me for two days; she talked about it just yesterday.

  We start chit chatting idly. She comes closer. It occurs naturally, in the middle of the talk. I don't know how it happened, but I'm holding the syringe and she's seated on the bed in front of me, offering me her back. With a large gesture, she lifts her giant shirt. My pulse increases when I enter the needle in the skin of her shoulder blade. For her it's nothing, it's natural. But I never did that before. I'll have to get used to it, though. The place for the injection has to change regularly so that the skin doesn't get loose and swell.

  Slowly, the conversation dies out. We are seated side to side, in front of the open window. We look at the ghost ship, far away. I wonder if it's possible to live there. By fishing, maybe. And as at some point we would run out of bait, we'd use bits of fish. And we'd do the same for the gulls, too, sniping those getting close. Or we could catch them with a net. For the freshwater, I don't know if there's enough rain.

  My lips remained closed, but Lily says that she thinks there's enough rain.

  Then I look at her. She shivers, the head dug between the shoulders; but her eyes sparkle. I realise that she couldn't live on the ship over the horizon. Without insulin, she'd die in a few months. Or weeks, I don't know.

  Today, I came home and didn't find Lily. She was not in front of the computer, not looking through the window, not painting – the red splashes, on the ground, are dry as blood scabs. A distant hope leads my eyes to the coat hanger: I'm even denied the mere sight of her brown jacket. I'm easily worried, but she's always been there when I came back, always, for a month. Tomorrow, it's Salad Day. I have the feeling that she won't be there tomorrow. I would have liked us to eat together, seated on the wall on top of the dyke, our legs hanging over the beach huts, blue and white.

  I keep going around in circles for a while, then lie down on the bed, crossing the arms under my head. I stare at the nascent crack on the third slat of her bed. I'll have to change it.

  Between that slat and the next is stuck a piece of paper. I rise and reach for it, unfold it – more hurriedly than I'd want to.

  It's covered with thin blue lines. And creased by the hand that held it too long. Lily tells me that she's gone. That she's ashamed and won't come back.

  I don't even take the time to put on my jacket. The night devours me instantaneously. I'm going to Courseuilles, where she used to live; she often talked about it, even about her small paved street, about the yellow gate; she missed it, and I think she's there. I have to walk along the beach for one hour, forty-five minutes if I run a bit. In some places, the sand is so soft that half of my calf sinks in it.

  Actually, I don't know what I'm afraid of, nor what I'm hoping for. Maybe I'm making a big mistake. There's only one thing I'm sure of: right now, I want to see Lily.

  I fall on the ground whilst trying to climb over a concrete block covered with sticky green seaweed. I slip and skin my palms on the limpets. I've left my shoes behind a while ago. I try again, but this time I fall flat on my face on the concrete, slip, and land in a small puddle forgotten by the sea. Then I consent to go around the wall, angrily.

  What was she thinking? Deep down, I knew it was coming. For days she's been trying to tell me something, and I didn't understand. All I could see was that it was eating her, tormenting her. She wasn't the same when she was talking to me. I left the beach and arrived upon the city's streets. I walk along the harbour, dark in the dark night – it'
s been a while since they stopped lighting up the useless street-lamps; as for the cars, they aren't running the streets, ha, ha.

  Finally, I've reached her house. At least I think so, because it's the yellow door. My hand stops right before the dark wooden panel. I hesitate, I knock. I wait. Then I turn the handle, strangled by anxiety. The door wasn't locked.

  Lily stands there, squatting in front of an eager fire. In a corner, there's some stuff that doesn't look like it belongs to her, as if other people were living here – and it must be the case, maybe they are sleeping upstairs right now. The first thing she tells me is that she was about to call. The fire crackles. I think she's lying. I say so in a weird voice, too calm maybe. She answers that it was best for us both that she left. The fire rattles. I utter that I don't understand. She replies that she doesn't need me anymore. The fire sizzles. That's not a reason. And it's stupid. She needs me just as much as when she arrived.

  Something bothers her, for sure, her reddened eyes scream it, her bitter voice sounds like doubt and remorse. For me, there is no problem. I tell her. I lean towards her, put out my hand. The fire creaks. We hold each other in each other's arms. I still don't understand, but I