The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  “Not as it currently exists,” Anika replied. “Which brings us to option number two. Which is not optional.”

  “Which is?” Harry asked with trepidation.

  “Fix your Vienna book. Stop blowing off that deadline, and stop pissing editors off.”

  “Or?”

  “Or, Harry, I am going to fire you as my client.”

  “You mean that.” The statement wasn’t a question.

  “You know I do. I meant it when I said I was fond of you. But that doesn’t mean I have to put up with this nonsense, and I won’t.”

  Harry believed her, which didn’t make the sinking sensation in his stomach any more pleasant. Anika wouldn’t be wrong to stop working with him, either. Not after the book he’d failed to write either on topic or on time. He’d missed deadlines before, everybody did, but not like this.

  “All right,” Harry said. “I’ll fix the Vienna book. For real this time. And drop the book about...I’ll drop the short book.” He barely stopped himself from saying the Betts book in time. It was a conjuring and he was afraid of it.

  He was also so, so, screwed.

  HARRY RETURNED TO HIS employer dismayed, chagrined, and working hard to figure out his next steps. Now he had two crises on his hands, Anika and Eliza, and not enough time to deal with the first and not enough data to deal with the second.

  When he pushed open the door to his office, he found Jonathan standing over his desk laying out manila folders. Harry groaned at whatever responsibilities they represented.

  Jonathan straightened up and turned around. “Quarterly sales reports for you to take a look at.” He pointed at one stack. “Cover proposals for your feedback.” He pointed to another. “And a final stack of random stuff people have wanted me to get to you for the last week and that I want off my desk.”

  Harry nodded mutely. No one liked a random stack. Not that he knew how he was going to passably perform his job in his current state anyway.

  “What’s going on?” Jonathan asked, frowning.

  “This miserable job.” Harry muttered. He picked up one of the folders and flipped through it, doing a poor job of pretending to look interested in its contents.

  Jonathan heaved the very deep sigh of the extremely long-suffering. “You can tell me now, or you can send me a panicked email about deadlines and schedules at two in the morning that I’ll ignore. In one of those situations I’m going to be infinitely more helpful to you.”

  Harry leaned against his desk and tossed the folder down.

  “Harry,” Jonathan scolded.

  Harry shot him an apologetic glance and straightened the folder so that it was in line with the others. “I didn’t write the book I was supposed to write in Vienna. Instead I wrote a book about my mid-life crisis brought on by a woman half my age – who was engaged, except she’s just come back from a trip where I know she was wedding dress shopping, and she’s not wearing her engagement ring.”

  “Are you talking about Eliza?” Jonathan looked gleefully aghast.

  Harry gave him a baleful look.

  “Don’t glare at me, you’re the one who apparently wrote the book about her,” Jonathan retorted. “Though, let me tell you, you were not subtle about her before that.”

  “Then why’d you ask if it was her?”

  “I like knowing my snark is tuned correctly.”

  Harry sighed. “Yes, it’s about her. Anika says she can’t sell it, and I was fine with pining after Eliza from afar, but now she’s perhaps ended her engagement. What am I supposed to do?”

  Jonathan looked as wearied by Harry’s mental state as Harry himself felt. “Problems have solutions,” he said, giving the folders on the desk a last nudge with his fingertip. “As to Eliza, you can get a grip and find some appropriate boundaries or you can be a human resources nightmare and send her an email like the gentleman that you are. Then you two can talk like adults who clearly have some sort of non-professional something going on.”

  “What?!”

  “She curls up in your office chair like she’s portraying domestic bliss in a coffee commercial.”

  “Why do I ask for your opinions again?”

  Jonathan drew himself up into his primmest, straightest posture. “Because I’m right about everything.”

  “I hate you,” Harry said weakly, but he felt his shoulders loosen slightly. Having someone else tell him what to do right now was exactly what he needed. “I don’t suppose you also have a brilliant common-sense solution for what to do with my mess of a book?” he asked, already knowing that was hopeless.

  “Which book?”

  “Either.”

  “Sit down, write the damn Vienna book and try to remember it’s not about you.”

  “Fair. And the other?”

  Jonathan smiled. “Have you ever considered self-publishing?”

  DO YOU STILL WANT TO talk about those media proposals for Philippe and Paris? Harry emailed Eliza that evening. He hoped that she had gone for the day, but whatever was afoot, she was having a rough time of it. He didn’t need to make it worse. He did need to help her get her work done, even if he’d be happy to avoid facing her until tomorrow.

  When half an hour passed with no reply Harry began to relax. After forty-five minutes he’d still heard nothing from her and also realized that he was hungry. Ordering takeout would solve that problem, but not his restlessness. He needed a break from his desk.

  The test kitchen was empty and dark when he arrived. He flipped on the lights and turned on the radio, spinning the dial until he found NPR. The cupboards were as well-stocked as usual, and in no time at all Harry was whisking eggs for an omelet and humming to himself.

  Until something moved in the corner of his eye. He glanced up involuntarily and nearly jumped out of his skin. Eliza was standing in the doorway watching him.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” Harry said inanely.

  “I didn’t.”

  “I can see that.”

  Eliza stared at Harry silently, refusing to grant him an explanation of what she was doing sneaking around the office at this hour.

  Harry shrugged his shoulders, trying to rid himself of a sudden, unnerving chill.

  Eliza stepped all the way into the kitchen and surveyed his work. “Omelets, Harry? All alone? Really?”

  “You’re going to judge my cooking?” He barely restrained himself from blurting out a question about her engagement.

  “Your cooking is fine. I’m judging the fact you’re cooking and didn’t invite me down.”

  “I thought you went home,” Harry repeated. “I sent an email, you didn’t reply,” he added by way of explanation. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “I closed my email, I was trying to get actual work done.”

  “Ah.”

  For split second, it was as though Harry’s vision shifted. Instead of standing in the office test kitchen, they were standing in Harry’s kitchen at home in a scene far more domestic, but as strangely tense as this one.

  He blinked, hard.

  Eliza frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m....” As a matter of fact, Harry wasn’t at all sure he wasn’t in an accelerating process of losing his mind. But he could hardly tell Eliza that he was having domestic fantasies about her so vivid that he had, briefly, lost the ability to speak.

  He turned his back to her and turned on the stove. The flame snapped to life with a click and hiss.

  “Did you break off your engagement?” he asked. The words that he’d been working so hard to suppress came out of his mouth as if without his knowledge or permission. He winced at himself. So much for being graceful

  Eliza paused before she spoke. “How do you know I was the one who broke it off?”

  “Because I know you.” That wasn’t graceful either, but it was true.

  “You do, and I did.”

  There. One piece of information I needed. And so many questions still to answer.

  “You didn’t tell me.”
Harry wasn’t accusatory, just confused. About so many things. To cover, he poured the beaten eggs into the pan and sprinkled on toppings without paying much attention to type or quantity.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with you,” Eliza said. “And what did you want me to do, text you from the scene of the crime?”

  Yes. Desperately. “May I ask where the scene of the crime was?”

  “In the airport. By the security line.”

  Harry tried and failed to stifle a laugh.

  “It’s in the papers too,” Eliza said. “I either just ruined Cody’s political career or made it.”

  Harry thought he could hear a smile in her voice. “Depends on the sympathy vote?” he asked.

  Eliza nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Something,” Harry echoed.

  “What about this?” Eliza asked, gesturing between them with a courage Harry didn’t share.

  “What about it? We’re friends.” Internally, he cursed himself for saying the responsible thing.

  “Are we, Harry?”

  “I sure don’t know what else we are.”

  He risked a glance at her. She stood, her arms clasped demurely in front of her, but her eyes were sharp. Angry or hurt? He didn’t know, but he was instantly contrite. Yet he didn’t know how to take the words back any more than he knew how to bridge the perilous space between them.

  Eliza gave a heavy sigh. “Do you need help?”

  “Stop doing that,” Harry snapped.

  “Stop doing what?”

  “Turning the subject. Pretending there’s nothing peculiar between us.”

  “I’m doing no such thing,” Eliza said. “You’re the one insisting we’re friends, all simple and neat. I’m the one asking you if you need help before you burn your food.”

  “There you go again!”

  “Do you want to start a fire, Harry?”

  Harry cursed and turned back to his smoldering omelet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he plated the thing, not that it was edible. “It’s been a long day. Week. Month. Year.”

  “I know.” Eliza’s voice was weary, her face strained. “For both of us.” She perched herself on one of the bar stools arrayed around the central island and arranged her skirt carefully, giving them both time to recover themselves. Which should have dispelled the tension but electricity still crackled in the air around them.

  “I’m going to have to start again,” Harry said. “Do you want one?”

  “If it’s not any trouble.”

  “None at all.”

  Harry grabbed more eggs from the refrigerator and started on a pair of omelets while Eliza spent a solid five minutes poking at the complex coffee machine trying to get it to work. Harry churned through a mess of thoughts in his mind, doing his best to organize them into anything useful. Eliza was now single. They were going to Paris together. After all the time Harry had spent fantasizing about going on holiday with her, now he had to face the near-reality of it.

  “Harry?” Eliza said eventually.

  Harry realized he’d been quiet for far too long. “Yes?” He only barely restrained himself from adding an endearment.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Nowhere. I was just enjoying being here with you.” Well now I’ve done it.

  But any hopes he might have had for a reaction that would help him decide what to do next were for naught. Eliza simply smiled at him as if he’d said the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, he had.

  She put down her coffee cup, and her hand rested naked on the countertop. Harry desperately wanted to take it up in his own. It would have been so easy. But he couldn’t, not here at work, not without her permission, and not so soon after a breakup he still knew nothing about.

  And even if none of those things had been true, she was still too young, and he was still too old.

  Eliza

  THE FIRST FEW WEEKS of March were not that different, at least weather-wise, from February. While less cold and damp than Boston, the season was still a grind that Eliza and the whole of New York was ready to see end.

  But the dreary weather was no reason to remain locked in her house. Not when she had effectively blown up the life she was supposed to have to stay in this city. The second a weekend morning featured a temperature above freezing, she was out to explore.

  As she walked towards Union Square the key to her hope chest, tucked under her scarf, bounced against her breast. She’d have to figure out what to do with the thing eventually. The contents of the chest could go to someone else, but the key.... She couldn’t give it away or set it down on a shelf or even fling it into a river. As long as it existed, she felt like she ran the risk of being made subject to someone else again. She could only fend that off by making sure it was in her possession all the time.

  Perhaps she needed a therapist, if she was afraid of such a small piece of metal. Or, perhaps, she was the only rational one left in the whole damn world. Her mother, now that she was speaking to her, was making all sorts of dire predictions about the loneliness, regret, and general unhappiness that would be sure to attend Eliza’s newly single status. As if she was going to be doomed to the sort of existence a cemetery ghost might have. Which struck Eliza as far more unhinged that her superstitions about her key.

  Marianne was not much better, but her reactions were far more interesting. While she was as aghast as their mother, and convinced Eliza was having an affair – or should, immediately! – she was also quietly impressed. And, Eliza suspected, grief stricken, that her sister had done something Marianne had wished to and never found a way to accomplish.

  Cody, meanwhile, hadn’t contacted her at all. She supposed that was for the best. After all, she had nothing else to say. But she did hope he was all right. And might have wished for some care from him for her absence. What a completely unfair time for him to finally respect that I know my own mind.

  Perhaps Eliza felt a tug of regret as she arrived at the farmer’s market, a vague sentence that this might be a pleasurable experience to share with someone else. But Cody, had he been here, would have tried to hurry her along. For him food was for sustenance or status. Not browsing and consideration and joy. He never would have understood her need to join the crowd jostling for cheese and bread and vegetables and unusual flavors of jam.

  But Harry would. Harry did.

  Chapter 11

  In This City of Lights

  Harry

  IN THE WEEKS LEADING up to the Paris trip Eliza was as present around the office as always, but she held herself apart from him. There were no dinners eaten together at the same desk, and while she did drop by occasionally to vent about Philippe’s ongoing campaign for a food truck, the after-hours text messages ceased.

  After their strange evening together in the test kitchen, Harry tried to be grateful. He had made his resolution, and Eliza’s distance should have made it easier for him to avoid having regrets. But it didn’t. His life was simply less enjoyable without her enmeshed in the little details of it.

  In an effort to stave off the grey that descended in the face of her reasonable choices, he spent time trying to make his own, making significant headway on the Vienna book and finally getting a workable version of it to Anika.

  If it was impossible to keep his mind off of Eliza, whether he was in meetings or at his desk, he tried to breathe through it and accept that his obsession wasn’t about her at all, but his own wounded self.

  Eventually, their departure date and additional cruel realities arrived. As Harry sat in the terminal at JFK waiting for their flight to board Jonathan sat next to him, his feet propped up on his carry-on. Eliza, to Harry’s dismay, was already in line to get on the plane.

  Apparently she was a frequent flier mile whiz and had upgraded her seat to economy plus while he and Jonathan were stuck in economy. At least Harry could still visit her, assuming such a visit would be welcome. If she had upgraded all the way to business class, putting that impe
netrable curtain between them, he would have been positively forlorn.

  DAWN IN A PLANE WAS always impressive, even when it came at one in the morning according to Harry’s body clock. Jonathan kept his head down on his tray table and tried to sleep, but Harry knew rest for himself was impossible until he got to a real bed. He and Eliza wound up watching the sunrise together in the little space between the galley and the bathrooms where they’d both gone to stretch their legs. While they sipped at tiny bottles of water that didn’t do nearly enough against the dehydrating effects of air travel, brilliant light spilled across the sea of clouds below them.

  But then the plane descended through those clouds. Below them was Paris, at seven a.m. local time, and it was raining. Harry wanted to do nothing more but sleep forever, but first he had to deal with the circus of immigration, baggage claim, and customs, and then he had to put in a full day of work.

  His colleagues were mostly quiet – Harry assumed they were in the same jet lag-induced brain fog he was – as they got themselves from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the venue. Once there, Eliza vanished to go to a meeting with an e-publishing contact, and Harry and Jonathan were left to themselves to set up their table in the cavernous, fluorescent-lit event space.

  “What did I do to deserve you?” Harry said when Jonathan produced cups of fresh hot coffee out of seemingly nowhere.

  Jonathan tapped the lip of his cup off of Harry’s. “Something very good in a former life a very long time ago.”

  THE THREE OF THEM DID nothing that night except eat crepes from a stand across the street from the hotel, then pass out in their separate rooms before it was even fully dark. The next day was a bustle of activity through which Harry wandered still in a jetlagged daze. He didn’t feel like he was coming back to himself until dinner that night. Thankfully the meal wasn’t going to be an elaborate affair. The only people present were himself, Eliza, Jonathan, and Malik, the representative from their publisher’s London branch who had been at Frankfurt as well. Jonathan in particular had seemed delighted to know Malik would be present.