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 fa
ce. “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.
PETACALCO, MEXICO, 2009
SHE RUBBED HIS back and waited for the morning to come. Every so often she prodded him or felt his chest to make sure he was still going. Every so often he let out a satisfying groan.
There was enough dawn that she could see the shape of their rock. It had three peaks and several gullies where the rainwater had gathered. She was desperate to drink it, but Daniel was collapsed across her legs and she didn’t want to wake him yet. The rock was red in some patches and black in others. It had a few tenacious vines growing at odd angles and a whole lot of bird shit. A handful of gulls were complaining and gossiping on the other side. The air was clear and the light was coming on fast now, but there was no land in sight. Daniel had swum them a very long way.
It was chilling to think back to the night they’d spent. She would take it on in pieces, she decided. Just one thing at a time. The first feeling she thought of was falling down through the water. She was willing to die, but he wasn’t.
She didn’t know how he’d done it. For hours, many hours, after she could no longer move, he was still swimming. Not just himself but the two of them.
They were going to make it. She hadn’t been able to think how they would, but because of him they had. There was water enough to drink to keep them for a couple of days. The sky was clear and the water was calm. Somebody would have to pass by. They would get picked up eventually.
And then what? What would happen to them then?
He stirred and turned over onto his back. She leaned down and kissed his mouth. The rock surface was not comfortable. The backs of her legs were all scratched from it. You’d have to be half dead to actually sleep on it, which in fact he was.
She wondered if he was having bad dreams, because a look of pain crossed his face and his body shook and then stiffened. His face compressed in terrible anxiety before it opened again. She rubbed his stomach and chest with the lightest fingertips. She wished she could do something to take the nightmare away.
The early sun rose high enough to stick a ray in his face and pry open his eyes. His eyes closed and opened a few more times before he could focus on her. “It’s you,” he said.
“It’s me.” She kissed the center of his forehead and both temples.
“I’m happy. Where are we?”
“We followed a seagull to a rock. Do you remember any of that?”
He thought a minute. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. “No.”
She shook her head and smiled at him. “You’re losing your magic, baby.”
He smiled weakly.
She smoothed his hair sympathetically. “I bet everything hurts,” she said.
He nodded.
She gently pulled his head onto her lap and cradled it. “Honest to God, Daniel. I don’t know how you got us here. I think your memory used to be your magic power, but I think you lost it and got a new one, which is a special kind of swimming power.”
“It hurts to laugh,” he said.
“We’ll talk about sad things, then.”
He nodded. He reached up and touched the zipper of her smock. “I remember that dress.”
“You mean smock?”
“Yes, I love that. I love taking it off.”
“That’s not sad, though.”
He shook his head painfully. “That’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She leaned over him and kissed him upside down on the lips. When she lifted up, his eyes were open and his face was serious. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know what I did the first time I saw you?”
“No.”
“I was a soldier and I burned your house down.”
“When was that?”
“Five forty-one A.D.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You died. I’m sorry.” He pulled her head down to his and buried his face in her neck. It was almost fifteen hundred years ago, but she could feel his raw shame, and she wasn’t about to disregard it. His breathing evened out, and he let her head go. “That’s the main thing I wanted to say. I think about it all the time. I’ve been wanting to tell you for so long.”
She rubbed his chest tenderly. “I’m glad you told me.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, because now I can tell you that it’s okay.”
“How can it be okay?”
She looked down at her hands. “What Daniel taketh away, Daniel giveth.”
“What do you mean?”
“You gave more than you took, my love. We’re all square. You’re allowed to forget it now.”
HE WAS SITTING up next to her a couple of hours later when he heard the drone of a motor over still water. “It’s a boat,” he said to her just before it came into view.
It was a fishing boat and coming in their direction. They both stood up and waved their arms. It turned out Lucy could do a taxi whistle. It hurt his ear, but he couldn’t help but admire it. “Will you teach me that?”
The boat captain saw them and steered over. He had two crew and a smelly net full of catch. He immediately invited them on. Daniel forgot how odd they looked until he saw it in the strangers’ faces.
“We’ve had some trouble,” he said in his stilted Spanish.
“I see that,” said the captain. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Would you mind dropping us up the coast?”
“Of course not. We can leave you at Petacalco. You can go from there to Guacamayas or Lázaro Cárdenas.”
“That would be fine. Thank you very much. I wish I had money to pay you.”
The captain looked at him in his boxer shorts as though he might laugh. “I can see you travel light.”
They sat at the back of the boat. The captain lent Daniel his cell phone, and by the end of the hour-long journey to Petacalco he’d arranged a car to drive them to Guacamayas, a rental car in Guacamayas, and a chartered flight from Colima to New York, leaving that evening.
She, who did not speak Spanish, looked at him in disbelief. “You have no money, no credit card, and no ID. How did you do that?”
“All you need are the card numbers and a decent cell connection.”
“So how did you get the numbers?”
He pointed to his head. “I remembered.”
JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, NEW YORK CITY, 2009
HE SAT FOR two hours on a bench facing the wall in the United terminal. He made travel arrangements on a newly bought cell phone while Lucy slept with her head on his lap. After he finished, he waited for her to wake up and then took her to a bar in the next terminal over, where they could sit by the window and watch the planes take off. He ordered them each a bourbon for old times’ sake.
She was dressed in jeans and a flowered shirt and a sweater and a down vest and socks and boots and proper underwear now. She had a suitcase full of clothes they’d bought in the last few hours. Kennedy was like a miniature shopping city, though not a very nice one. He made her promise and swear she would save the housekeeping smock forever and wear it for him when he saw her again.
He handed her a folded piece of paper. “I wrote everything down, okay?”
She nodded. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it.
“I put all the numbers you’ll need into your phone.”
“Right.”
“Have you thought of what you want to say to your parents and Marnie?”
“Still thinking,” she said.
He nodded. “Your tickets, your itinerary, your passport, your travelers checks, and your money are all in the envelope.”
“Your money,” she sa
id.
“Well, I gave it to you, so it’s yours.” The cash he’d given her was the least of it. He’d spent an extraordinary sum securing two black-market passports in Mexico the day before.
“Are you rich?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“Very?”
“I’ve had a long time to save up for a rainy day.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that about you in high school.”
“I’m glad. Why not?”
“Because if you were rich, I would have thought you would have gotten a new pair of shoes.”
He laughed. He pictured those tan suede shoes in the bedroom of the bungalow in Mexico, where he’d kicked them off in a frenzy of desire. “You know, I was sorry to see those go. That’s another thing I’m going to take up with my asshole former brother.”
She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. “Daniel, I don’t want to do this.”
“I know. I don’t, either. I don’t want to be apart from you, and I’d do anything to avoid it, but this is the only way.”
“I think I’d rather drown together.”
He took her two hands and kissed them front and back. He kissed the tender part of her wrists and each of her fingers.
“It’s beautiful where you are going. And I promise you will be safe.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it is one place in the world Joaquim would never dare to set foot. They would see through him instantly there.”
“So why won’t you come there with me?”
“I will. When I’ve done what I need to do, I will come and get you. And then we can live wherever you want. You can finish up graduate school in Charlottesville, we can move to D.C., we can live in California, Chicago, Beijing, Bangladesh. We can move back to Hopewood and live in the room next to your parents.”