The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  “None of this explains why you wrote a book about me. While you, let’s not forget, completely disregarded any and all respect I, and my work, deserve. Not to mention my autonomy. Or my ambition.” Eliza fidgeted with the key she still wore around her neck.

  Harry looked down at his hands and then back up to her. “Because the only time I don’t feel as if I am in exile is when I’m with you.”

  THE NEXT DAY ELIZA did her best to bury herself in work. Gina, Philippe’s fiancée, sent her an email – she had evidently seen Harry’s TV performance – that was both sympathetic and kind. Eliza was touched by her thoughtfulness, and even made herself exert the effort to reply and say she was fine, just furious with Harry.

  And confused about him, she admitted. The confession to a near-stranger felt less awkward than she had expected, and she felt better once she’d made it. Perhaps this was why people gossiped to casual acquaintances at work – or talked to therapists.

  Eliza worked late that night, and it was with great relief she watched Harry slink home shortly before seven. After he was gone she slipped out of her office and headed for the test kitchen.

  Once she reached the door she closed her eyes, trying to remember the code Harry had punched in the first time he’d brought her here. In her mind’s eye she could see his fingers deftly pressing buttons; she tried the same pattern and was relieved when the lock gave way with a heavy click.

  The kitchen was blessedly empty and she stood in the door taking a moment to collect herself. It was hard to be here without Harry in his shirtsleeves, making them food and being so charming.

  But that was absolutely the point. She closed the door firmly behind herself and crossed the kitchen quickly. She opened cabinets and storage drawers, looking for the sturdiest pan she could find and pulling out every fire-related tool she could lay her hands on.

  When she was satisfied with a dented five-quart sauce pan and a small kitchen torch, she pulled the key from around her neck and dangled it over the pot. She didn’t actually know what it was made out of, or if the stove or a little torch meant for creme brûlée would get hot enough to melt it, but she was determined to find out. The only way to be truly free – from Cody, from Harry, from any man that would impinge on her freedom – wasn’t to possess this talisman, but to make sure it didn’t exist at all.

  The process did not go as intended. With the small torch, she burned the ribbon before she managed to melt the metal, and the key clattered into the bottom of the pot. She turned a burner on to high, and hoped it would be enough. And also that she was not about to poison herself with toxic fumes.

  She was holding the handle of the pot with a trout-shaped oven mitt and stabbing at the half-melted key when the door to the kitchen opened.

  Eliza jumped, but it was Jonathan.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I am one hundred percent certain I should be asking you that,” he said drily.

  “I’m melting a key.”

  “Ummmm...”

  “The one I wear around my neck. The one in the book. The one I have because I didn’t want my wretched ex-fiancé to have it.”

  “The honorable representative from the state of Massachusetts,” Jonathan intoned.

  “That one. Yes.” Eliza stared down at the key, and stabbed it with the fork again. Then she looked up at Jonathan. “I think I ruined your pot.”

  Chapter 16

  The Evil Eye

  Harry

  WORKING WITH AN ELIZA who did not hate him was an improvement. But that lack of animosity held little promise beyond peace. They were not co-conspirators, and they were not friends. They did not spend meetings emailing each other, and Eliza did not spend her evenings sipping tea and dozing in his office. Instead, spring turned to summer, and she went out with the women in marketing or grabbed coffee with Jonathan.

  She had friends, and Harry felt relief.

  As the days passed and grew sultry as only June in New York City could, things between Eliza and Harry began to warm too. Not back to where they had been. But they started, once again, to chat in the halls when they passed each other and exchange covert glances over the most egregious presentations at meetings. Sometimes one or the other of them lingered in an office doorway for a moment, and they traded stories there was no need to trade.

  Eliza had stopped wearing her key.

  Harry noticed right away but didn’t dare ask about it. Not when the origin of that particular fashion choice was so personal, and not when she had been naked except for it when she’d first explained.

  At first he thought she might be tucking it into her tops, but she wore her hair up often enough that he’d have been able to see the lace at the back of her neck. Then, he considered that she might have secreted the thing somewhere else on her person or simply been lugging it around in her purse.

  Eventually, however, he succumbed to his curiosity about the matter. He cornered Jonathan in his cubicle to ask if he knew what had happened to it.

  “You mean the one that’s the star of your book?”

  Harry took a deep breath. Titling the book after Eliza’s key had not been his gravest mistake. But that he hadn’t fully considered the narrative behind the object when he had inserted it into his tale, must have only served to make everything worse. “Yes.”

  Jonathan’s eyes widened in a look of mingled judgement – about Harry, he was sure – and excitement. “You’re going to love this.”

  “I am one hundred percent sure I am not.”

  “She destroyed it.”

  “What do you mean she destroyed it?” Harry asked with something approaching alarm.

  “I mean she melted it down in a pot in the test kitchen using the stove and a creme brûlée torch,” Jonathan said, stunned disbelief all over his face.

  Harry smiled. “Did she really?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “She is –”

  Jonathan held his hands up. “Yes. I know. Just because you have bad judgement, doesn’t mean you have bad taste. But you both seem halfway all right now. Don’t... don’t make a thing of this. It wasn’t about you. And I only know because I caught her at it.”

  “Is that why the blossoming friendship?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “No. We’re friends, Harry, because we’re friends. That’s how it works.”

  THE MORE HE THOUGHT about it, the more relieved Harry was that Eliza had destroyed the key. She must have felt safer – from her past, from Cody, from Harry himself – to let that charm go. And while Harry would have never admitted it aloud, he felt safer too. Without that damn key, Eliza was at least slightly less the girl in the Ys story. Meaning in turn, that he was slightly less a devil.

  Life moved on for all of them. Harry went through the editorial notes for the traditionally published edition of The Girl with the Key, and marketing plans and galleys came and went. As June melted into July the trades handed out starred reviews, and only a few industry newsletters wrote a second article on who they felt so very sure the girl must be.

  Harry, Eliza, and the whole office kept their heads down that day, but eventually, he felt duty bound to check on her at least... or apologize again, if it was welcome or meant anything at all.

  “It’s fine, and I don’t want to talk about,” she said when he knocked on her door at the end of the day.

  “I can’t imagine it is.”

  “It’s not your fault. Not this part of it. And I can’t keep retreading this with you every time someone falls in love with your prose. Or with me.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Harry asked.

  “Everything I’ve been doing all along. My job. My words. My life. I already have my next gig lined up.” She leaned forward over her desk. “You’re powerful, Harry, but not enough to stop me.”

  He laughed at that, and she echoed him. He missed her every day. And yet, somehow, this was also, almost enough. “What’s your next stop then?” he asked, jovially.

  �
�Berlin.”

  The world fell out from under him.

  THE WORLD, HOWEVER, continued to turn. The advance for the traditionally published version of The Girl with the Key arrived in his mailbox the same day Amazon sent him an email about how much he could expect from them for its brief self-published availability. The numbers were not insignificant. Certainly, they were more than most authors could hope for, not due to the quality of their work, but because the business was cruel and unfair at every turn to the people who produced the raw product. Harry had gotten lucky.

  And the money... well, the money felt tainted.

  So he set out to spend it. Immediately. Where maybe it could do a little more good or at least be a little more kind.

  “HARRY,” MERYL SAID with a heavy sigh. She was at Harry’s house for coffee on a Sunday afternoon, a cautious attempt towards finding their new normal together. So far, having her here felt about the same as it did when she had visited the city for brief periods before. Maybe we’re making too much fuss out of nothing.

  “You are my favorite,” Meryl went on. “But since when do you make expensive plans you want me to participate in without asking me first?”

  Harry looked from side to side, as if his sitting room could provide the answer. But the Eames armchair and the midcentury prints on his walls stayed silent. Buying tickets to a charity ball designed to raise funds for literacy and arts education with some of the initial royalties from The Girl with the Key had been a lovely idea. Assuming that Meryl would be on call to go with him, less so. And he probably should have just donated the money directly to the cause.

  “It seemed like a blameless way to express my affection for you, and my appreciation for the lack of drama in between us, despite our fears?”

  “Your fears, Harry. I knew everything was going to be fine.”

  Harry wasn’t convinced of that, but now was also not the time to press the point. “If you say so.”

  Meryl twisted the head of her cane around. “Your thoughtfulness, as far as it went, is noted,” she said dryly.

  “So...is that a yes or a no?” Harry asked.

  “It’s an ‘I’d love to go, darling, but I have plans that evening,’” Meryl said, uncrossing and re-crossing her ankles.

  “Ah.” The noise was awkward. “Plans with who?” A lady doesn’t kiss and tell and the voice Harry had heard in the background of his latest phone call to Meryl stuck in his mind.

  He knew little of Meryl’s relationships that didn’t involve himself or the rest of the Miscreants. Up until this moment that had always been a feature, not a bug. But now it left him feeling – unfairly – left out and cut off.

  “If you want to ask if I’m seeing someone, just ask,” Meryl said as if she’d read his mind.

  “I thought I had. But. Very well. Meryl, are you seeing someone?”

  “I am.”

  Harry felt himself go cold. He never cared what Meryl did with anyone, but there was something in the mischief of her grin that made him terrified of being displaced. She’d had serious relationships here and there that had precluded their vague affair from time to time, but Harry had never thought much of it. Even with things between him and Eliza a hopefully redeemable mess, Harry felt uneasy. And Meryl, of course, saw it.

  “Oh, Harry.”

  “I am happy for you, and I want to hear all about him –”

  “Her.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Don’t look so excited.”

  “I wasn’t. I wasn’t!” Harry held his hands up. “I just feel untethered.” Steven was dead, Dennis’s show had helped change the course of his career, and Meryl had slipped out of his bed.

  She leaned forward in her chair, her perfectly made-up eyes ready to drive some point home. “Maybe that’s because it was time for you to be untethered.” She sat back again. “And that is why I’m not available on this particular occasion for your not-terrible impulse of generosity. But I think I know someone else you owe something to, and might not despise the gesture.”

  “Eliza?” Harry guessed, even as he trembled at the idea.

  No – not the idea. The fear that if he asked, she might say no. But if he owed her anything – and he owed her a lot – offering her a chance to reject him was the least he could do.

  Eliza

  ELIZA DID THE BEST she could to tune out the noise of the publishing industry speculating about her relationship with Harry. Instead she focused on her work, her own writing and, increasingly, the friends she was making at work.

  “You’re still here.”

  Eliza looked up to find, as she increasingly did these days, Harry in her doorway. “Trying not to be.”

  Mostly, his presence pleased her at this point, but that pleasure always coexisted with what had been lost, and sometimes it was more than she cared for. Especially since it was all his fault.

  “Do you have a moment?” he asked.

  “Yes... no. I mean, I’m trapped here at my desk, Harry. I have a moment whether I want to give you one or not.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean.”

  Eliza sighed and closed her laptop. “Neither did I, believe it or not. It’s not your fault that I always have time for you. Mostly.”

  “Am I allowed to laugh at that?” Harry asked.

  “Yes. Please do in fact.”

  Harry finally stepped into her office and gestured to the door. “All right?” he asked.

  She nodded, and he shut the door.

  “Worried about HR?” she teased, although she regretted it almost immediately.

  “I don’t think so. I hope not anyway.”

  It wasn’t like Harry to stumble over his words. Eliza folded her hands in front of her. “All right. What is it?”

  “Well,” Harry said again. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long, slim box that he turned over and over in his hands. “I got the first of my advance for the book. And seen how much I’m getting for its short-lived self-published life. Which was...far more than I expected or have ever gotten for first quarter sales before. So, I got you something, because it made me think of you. I hope you don’t find it too strange or extravagant or inappropriate, although if you do, no harm, and we can pretend I’ve never done this.”

  “Harry,” Eliza smiled up at him, confused but also terribly fond. Harry could be so bad at things sometimes. Maybe it would be too much, and they’d have to argue about it. That would be unfortunate.

  “Yes?”

  She wondered what he would look like, in the universe where he would ever get married, if he tried to propose. All his polished urbanity would go out the window if he couldn’t even try to give a simple gift without awkwardness. “What are you so afraid of?”

  Harry made a sound that might have been dismay or might have been him clearing his throat, Eliza didn’t know. Without further explanation, he pressed the box into her hands.

  She opened it efficiently so that she could, somehow, assure both of them this would cause no further explosions. Tucked inside a fold of tissue paper was a delicate gold necklace with a pendant of sapphires and the tiniest of diamonds in the shape of an eye.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “And it’s staring at me.”

  “To replace your key.”

  Why do you always have to keep talking in a way that makes things worse? “Jonathan told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t about you,” Eliza said. “Not really. Or, not entirely. But, I got rid of it, because I didn’t need it anymore, and I was safer without it. All your stories about Ys... it didn’t make me feel better.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry for making you a girl that never was. But... we almost drowned Paris. Who doesn’t need a talisman?”

  Eliza laughed wetly and put a hand over her mouth. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Don’t spill any more water for this man. “That we did.” Then she smiled, because Paris, like so many of the things that had hap
pened between them deserved that always. Even if things hadn’t turned out the way she wanted.

  “No one, I don’t think,” she answered his question.

  Harry gave a relieved but still self-conscious grin. “Exactly. It’s an evil eye. To protect you from bad things.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like the expectations the world tries to put on you,” Harry said. “Or on your journey to Berlin or wherever life takes you. But yes. The bad parts of me, at least. Or the myth between us. Consider it an apology to you, and a reminder to me of what an asshole I’ve been.”

  Eliza held the box back out to him. “Help me put it on?”

  Harry walked around the desk toward her. She turned in her chair so that her back was facing him. She held whatever wisps of hair had come down throughout the day up off her neck with one hand and soon she could feel cool metal at her throat, and the soft, warm brush of Harry’s fingertips at the nape of her neck. She shivered. Harry chuckled softly behind her.

  “Here, let’s see,” he said.

  Eliza turned to face him again. The eye rested as the hollow of her throat, too high for her to see.

  “It looks lovely on you,” Harry said. “Regal. As it should be. Queen of a lost city.”

  She reached up to touch it, aware that after everything they were suspended in one of the deeply strange and lovely moments that had always existed between them. “Thank you. I’ll pull out a compact to look at it as soon as you’re out of my hair.”

  “I should let you get back to things,” Harry said, “But I have one more question. And it’s a slightly more awkward one.”

  “Now I’m terrified,” she said like she wasn’t. Is he going to ask me out?

  “I have an extra ticket to a charity event. A ball, really. Benefitting a literary and arts education group.”

  “Extra?” Eliza asked. People didn’t just have extra charity ball tickets.

  “Meryl turned me down.”

  “What did you do?”