The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  “Like me.”

  “Like you. You’re so familiar to me. I still don’t know why. It’s been like that with others too, but they’re people I’ve known for years, so it’s different. That’s about being comfortable and not having to think and, frankly, being submissive. It’s easier, sometimes, to give people things, but with you I want.”

  “I’m fairly sure,” Eliza said, tugging on a lock of Harry’s hair, “that being a little submissive is a form of wanting things.”

  Harry shrugged. “Sure. Generally not things that involve fucking the other person into a wall though.”

  “I certainly don’t mind,” Eliza said with a little laugh.

  “I’ve noticed,” Harry said, playing again with the key around her neck.

  “Does that frighten you?” she asked.

  Harry shook his head. “I feel like I should say yes. But no. Also,” he said, because this seemed very important to add. “I still like men and women. It hasn’t been like...my male ex-lover had to die so I could be with a woman.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  “I don’t know. Some people are strange.”

  “You’re strange. And not because of who you do or don’t take to bed.”

  “Quite.” Harry smiled at her.

  “I want to tell you about my key,” Eliza blurted.

  “You don’t have to,” Harry said. “You didn’t seem to want to talk about it.” The truth was, the key hanging around Eliza’s neck unnerved him. He was a rational man of the twenty-first century who believed in science and logic, and yet...and yet. He’d already tied the story of meeting her into the myth of Ys and a woman – her name had been Dahut – who unlocked a gate and flooded a city. And now Paris was a little bit under water and here Eliza was, a key around her neck.

  “I know I don’t have to,” Eliza said. “But that’s why I want to.”

  “All right.” For all his fears, Harry couldn’t refuse to listen to her story. Not after she had listened to his.

  “It’s odd. In a lot of ways. But then, you’re the kind of person who understands strange things, I think.” Eliza settled herself more comfortably on the pillows.

  Harry didn’t find that particularly reassuring, but he nodded at her to go on.

  “It’s the key to my hope chest. The one filled with all the things I was going to need for my marriage to...whoever suitable I was going to marry. It’s been missing for years, but I found it in my room the last time I was home. The one where I went wedding dress shopping...and where I decided not to marry Cody.”

  “I always wondered what happened that weekend,” Harry said softly, already a little ashamed of his fears. What right did he have to weave the life of this woman into a narrative of his own imaginings? She had her own dreams and goals and struggles and needed no one to add to her burdens.

  “I know you did. Well, that’s what happened. I went wedding dress shopping, and realized...well, but that’s a longer story,” Eliza said, her cheeks coloring slightly. Harry was deeply intrigued by that, but didn’t interrupt her to ask. “Anyway, I realized I couldn’t marry Cody. And then that night I found the key and.... Something in me broke. Or was fixed, perhaps. It felt like the key to my own freedom. That as long as I had it, no one could control my fate except me. I kept the key, as a talisman, I guess. Of everything I still needed to guard myself against. The life I was raised to want and now, hopefully, will never have.”

  Harry stared at her. If he had wanted to invent a narrative for Eliza’s key he couldn’t have come up with one that fit his own Ys obsession so well. He was horror-struck, and he was elated. And he felt, as he had never felt anything so strongly before, that he and Eliza were meant to be together.

  THEY SPENT THE REST of the day lying twined on the bed, talking and reading and getting up eventually only to confirm that yes, room service was still operating, and then to eat.

  They sat at the little table in the corner of the room, Harry wrapped in his robe brought from home and Eliza in one of his cardigans, sharing bread and cheese and wine. It was as enjoyable as the rest of the day had been, but the darker it got outside the more Harry felt a growing sense of dread. Which perhaps was natural enough, regret at a perfect day winding to a close. But he couldn’t shake the sense that it was something more.

  Eventually the rain outside slackened. Eliza pushed herself up from her chair and went to the window, the navy cashmere of his sweater just covering the swell of her ass.

  “Do you think it will stop by morning?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Then I suppose it’s back to the book fair.”

  “Yes,” Harry said. He wondered if Eliza felt as melancholy and uneasy as he did.

  “And then New York.”

  “Also yes.”

  “Should we talk about that?” Eliza asked.

  Harry wished she would turn around. He wanted to see her face. “Would it change anything?” he asked carefully. Talking was probably good. But he’d never made an art of it, not with Meryl and certainly not with Steven. There seemed to be more to lose in the exercise than gained.

  Eliza did turn her head then, a little, a smile pressed into her shoulder. “I don’t think much could change what we are.”

  HE WOKE THE NEXT DAY to Eliza sitting up in bed next to him, scrolling through her phone, a slight crease between her eyebrows.

  “What is it?” Harry asked muzzily.

  Eliza tossed the phone aside and slid under the covers next to him again. “Cody won his election, as Twitter has just informed me. And one of my meetings from yesterday is apparently important enough to have been rescheduled. So I’m staying for an extra day, maybe two. Waiting for final word from on high from your boss who I still have never seen.”

  “Are you?” Harry asked, feeling at least six emotions in rapid succession, beginning with disappointment that he wouldn’t be able to fly back with Eliza and ending with the glorious hope of even one more day with her here in Paris. As far as her ex-fiancé’s electoral victory went, Harry had no idea what to say, so he said nothing.

  “Mhmm.” Eliza rested her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her.

  “I could stay too,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and not sound as excited as he really was.

  Eliza’s laugh reverberated through his body. “You can try. But Harry, one of us at least should try to get some work done after yesterday. You’re lovely, and if you can convince Charley I won’t be sorry to have you here, but I can survive without the distraction.”

  Charley, who Harry emailed while Eliza dried her hair after their joint shower, apparently felt the same as Eliza. Her reply came quickly and was not propitious.

  We already let you ‘work from home’ for a week while you were in Vienna, and we both know how much ‘work’ you got done. Come back to New York and don’t be one more person we have to change flights and schedules for.

  Which, Harry had to admit, was fair. Especially when Eliza emerged from the bathroom bundled back into her clothes from the night of their date and the hail. He’d spent that week in Vienna writing a book he never should have about her, and she still had no idea. After the last few days, he more than owed her a confession.

  Just...not now, he thought, as Eliza leaned over to brush a kiss against his mouth.

  Chapter 13

  At the End of All Things

  Harry

  SUN BROKE THROUGH THE clouds as the plane lifted off the tarmac, leaving Paris and its still-wet streets behind. For the first half of the flight Harry managed to doze in between pleasant daydreams about Eliza – walking with her through the city, eating together, sleeping together. He tried to keep his thoughts of the latter to a minimum. Jonathan, seated next to him, couldn’t read his mind, but Harry felt it was more decorous to save such musings ’til he was truly alone.

  Harry was jolted out of his reveries by a sharp bump of turbulence somewhere over the North Atlantic. While
he’d flown too often to be particularly bothered by the routine shudderings of a plane, he wasn’t able to settle back into his own head again. At least, not so pleasantly.

  Next to him, Jonathan had a movie playing while he typed away on his laptop. He was already reviewing Harry’s schedule for the upcoming week at work, the beginning of which Eliza wouldn’t be there for. Harry was going to miss her, but once she was back....

  Then what? Harry was brought up short. Once Eliza was back, how was that going to go? They wouldn’t be in France any longer. They wouldn’t have the twenty-four seven atmosphere of the conference as an excuse. They would go back to their separate, ordinary lives. Even if Harry knew how to date – and he wasn’t sure that he did – the magic of their time together in Paris wouldn’t follow them back to the everyday grind. Travel was separate. Special. Non-replicable. Like holidays. That was, after all, why his relationship with Meryl had the shape it did.

  “Jonathan,” Harry said.

  “Mmm?”

  “May I talk to you about something that is completely outside your role as my assistant?”

  “Uh.” Jonathan looked vaguely alarmed. He usually did when Harry asked such a question. “Sure?”

  “Stop me if you want. Whenever you want.”

  “You’re not making me any less nervous, Harry. What is it?”

  “It’s...well.” Harry tried to pull his thoughts together and organize them in a way that would make sense to Jonathan while having to provide the least amount of context. “I’m confronting the likelihood that something very lovely has come to an end. I don’t necessarily want it to end, but I have no idea how it could ever continue.”

  “Eliza?” Jonathan said, as if Harry were very stupid for trying to be discreet about the matter.

  So much for not providing context. “Yes.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been thinking the same thing about Malik.”

  “It does, a little,” Harry admitted. “If only because then I feel less alone in my inability to carry on relationships the way I see other people do them.”

  “You mean, between two people in the same place for an extended period of time?” Jonathan’s tone was slightly sharp.

  “More or less.”

  “In my case,” Jonathan said thoughtfully, closing his laptop, “it’s less of an inability to date locally than the reality that being in a relationship with the person I want to date creates a situation where I’d need a visa to be able to be in the same place as him for any extended period of time. Which makes things harder, obviously. But in some ways it makes them easier.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I don’t have to overthink my next steps. The world, not me, is the failure here. We both knew going in what the distance issue was, and I don’t have to spend time worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, it still sucks,” Jonathan said with a half smile. “But it saves me some regrets. You, on the other hand, have gone and done a very messy thing.”

  “It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?” Harry asked, dismayed.

  Jonathan quirked his lips. “With you, it usually does.”.

  Eliza

  ALONE IN HER HOTEL room, Eliza let out a giddy, confused, and frustrated scream as she flopped down on the bed. The only good thing about Harry being on a plane headed back to New York while she was left behind in Paris, is that she had time to think about ... everything.

  While falling into bed with Harry – Hooking up? Getting together with? Are we dating now? Is he my lover? What should I call it? Or him? – had seemed inevitable and lovely, now that she had time to consider it, the choices they had both made struck her as reckless and bizarre. Wonderful, yes. But what on earth had either of them been thinking?

  Nothing. Nothing but that we fit.

  Eliza didn’t know how she had gone from being someone so dutiful to this, but she wasn’t sure she cared. This, whatever it was, was right. She tugged at the key hung around her neck. Maybe she knew exactly what she’d done.

  The larger problem, perhaps, was what to do next. She desperately wanted someone to talk to about her strange life and lucky heart, to gossip with about Harry’s body and everything that they’d done. But she didn’t have any friends like that who weren’t Harry himself. Not yet anyway. Which left her with a choice between her sister (still confused by her breaking off her engagement) and Jonathan (a wildly inappropriate choice, and also currently on a plane).

  “I knew right away how this was going to go,” she said to the empty room. It wasn’t as good as gossiping, but hearing her own voice did somehow make the heady memories of the last few days feel more real. “I wouldn’t let myself believe it. Who hooks up with their much-older colleague in a catastrophic hail storm that floods Paris, anyway?”

  With no one there to answer her, she picked up her laptop. I am not going to email Harry, she admonished herself. Not because she wanted to play games or make him chase her, but because she had no idea what to say.

  Checking her email, however, meant dealing with everything she had let slide while they’d been wrapped up in each other. She deleted a brief, snide message from her sister about Cody winning his election without bothering to reply. She responded to a long, rambling email from Philippe with a quick note to let him know she had stayed behind in Paris all for him. Then she opened a note from one of her colleagues from her gig work in Wales.

  Don’t know what you’re up to these days, beyond the notes I see in the trades. But I’m jumping ship for _next_ year’s Berlin Book Festival. Please tell me you’re looking for a job?

  Eliza took a moment to preen at the implicit compliment before considering her life. Her current position wasn’t forever and she owed nothing to anyone. Harry was Harry... and whatever it was they were doing could surely encompass even more of the world than it already had.

  I’m not yet, she wrote. But tell me more.

  Harry

  AFTER A PROFOUNDLY uneventful first day back at the office Harry returned to his apartment. He was exhausted but couldn’t sleep even after taking a long shower and making himself a pot of tea. In each case the hot water and steam reminded him too much of Eliza for ease or comfort.

  In an effort to think of something – anything – else, he pulled out Steven’s diary from where he’d left it on top of a bookshelf. Setting his mug of tea on the end table, he pulled the belt of his bathrobe tighter around his waist and settled into his armchair.

  He frowned as he began to read the final entry.

  Harry, the message began. Which was a jolt in and of itself. It had been evident since the beginning that this diary had been meant for him. But Steven had never directly addressed him, and Harry had been able to stay in determined denial of Steven’s motivations and intentions.

  I’m a fool for taking so long to get to the point. Our mistake always was thinking we had all the time in the world.

  I’ve always been a man of science and logic. And yet neither science nor logic can give me an explanation as to why I’ve felt compelled to keep this diary for you. I could just send you email. Or wait until the next time we see each other, to gripe about all the small troubles life brings. But I’ve known for months that we’re going to run out of time, very soon now. Since long before science and the doctors could have told me so. And now you have this diary in your hands, a love letter to the ordinary life we all leave behind – and to you. For the life we never had together, though I think we could have. If we’d known how to talk about it. That fault isn’t yours alone, although I spent a few bitter years in my twenties thinking it was. That was a long time ago, and the life I’ve had instead has been brilliant. It’s been decades since I blamed you for anything. More than I blamed myself for anything, at least. We were both so stupid and so young.

  We neither of us are young anymore, though I’m not sure we’ve grown much wiser either. Certainly if age or disease or impending death could have imparted wisdom I could have told you all of
this much more plainly. But instead, here you are, in your study or your office or wherever you are, and here I am, dust returned to dust.

  There’s not much time left. By the time you get this, there will be none left at all. I’m sorry for that, my very old and very dear friend. But maybe panic and the fear of slipping unheard into the unknown will motivate me to do what I never had the courage for.

  Speak your truth, Harry. We were both afraid of ourselves and our words for so long. No more.

  And finally: know that I loved you and if there’s any sort of soul or anything that survives the body, I always will.

  – Steven

  “Well what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” Harry said aloud. His first impulse was to throw the diary across the room in anger. How dare Steven get all wise and holier-than-thou about how to live life in the face of fear and loss? “Was that supposed to be encouraging?”

  Because it wasn’t. However Steven had meant it, all Harry could feel was rage burning beneath his soul-deep grief. Nothing could help that, certainly not kind words from a man who didn’t have to live to see the hole his own death had left in the world; not regrets over what they had or hadn’t done decades ago; not comforting thoughts that their fellow Miscreants were suffering the same loss as he was.

  Harry made himself set the diary down gently on the end table and covered his face with his hands. Knowing that anger was part of grief and experiencing it were two very different things.

  THE NEXT NIGHT YOU have off, Harry emailed Dennis, can you meet me for a drink?

  Only if you promise not to have any more terrible news to break to me, Dennis replied immediately. Five minutes later came another email. That was a joke. Possibly in poor taste. I’m off tomorrow. But please don’t have any terrible news.

  Knowing that Dennis had been as traumatized by Steven’s death as himself wasn’t comforting, but it did make Harry feel less alone.