“Yes,” I agree. “It was,issurprising to me still.”
“Why?”
I meet his gaze, so earnest and unfettered. So open. “My family history is complicated,” I confess, catching flashes of my mother’s eyes full of words she could never bring herself to say, my grandfather’s arm across her shoulders, pulling her into him. “You should know something about me,” I add in a whisper.
For a second, I think I might let it all spill out, a fraught and desperate story growing between us like a puddle of sins. The shame. The power. The fire. The portrait of my grandmother over Solidago’s haunted mantel. The sea and the night. The years after. The loneliness. Even the Fathom.
How will he react—no secrets, no drama—when he realizes that’s all I am?
I say, “Clark isn’t my real name.”
He’s quiet for a moment, digesting. “Okay.”
I sit up and he follows, his eyes careful as if cupping a baby bird. “Aren’t you going to ask what my real name is? Where I come from?”
He smiles slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. “I could. But I have a feeling you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
16DARK WATER
I’m standing in several inches of dark water. By the time I made it back to my condo, night hanging over the city, the entire thing had apparently flooded.
“A burst pipe,” the maintenance man says beside me as he runs a hand over his protruding abdomen. “It happens.”
“In September?” I ask, incredulous. “It’s not even winter yet.”
He smacks his gum. “Must have been a bad connection or something. Better get a plumber here pronto. I’ve shut your water off for now, so you’ll need to spend the night somewhere else.”
“You think?” I ask, irritable, as I consider how much of my furniture may be ruined.
He doesn’t seem to notice the venom in my voice. “Lucky you’re on the first floor or you’d be liable for damages to the units below you. I’ll bring the shop vac down and get this mess cleaned up, but I suggest you reach out to your insurance company as soon as possible. You’ll need new floors, probably baseboards and drywall too.”
I stand, mouth agape as it’s been since I first walked in the door, and mentally tick off all the things I’ll have to replace—sofa, armchair, wool rug. I let Roger have the recycled black walnut table and chairs since he’d bought them to begin with. My bed frame is metal. We never managed to agree on a headboard. Butmy bedding has been soaking up the floodwater like a wick where I left it hanging, unmade, so now it and the mattress will have to go. I glance at the kitchen cabinets and wonder. At least there’s not very many.
The condo itself is hardly a prize—barely more than a studio in a grubby corner of the city. Roger only moved in with me because it was closer to his work. But it wasmine. One small thing I’d built for myself in a shifting, transient existence. And it was clean. Which is not something I can say for it anymore.
“Why does it look like this?” I ask the maintenance man, forgetting his name. Jerry or Terry or Perry? “It’s…murky. Like it’s dirty or something.”
He shrugs, nonplussed. “Beats me. Must have been a buildup in the pipe.” He rolls his eyes. “You’d be surprised what washes up in this city.”
His words are little comfort under the circumstances, and the wet, slopping sound I heard in Arla’s basement repeats itself in my memory.
I slosh toward the bedroom door and peek inside. The dresser is some kind of veneer over MDF, so trash now. But atop it, the painting of Thalassa stares at me, daring me to make an accusation. I narrow my eyes. “Let me gather some things and I’ll get out of your way,” I tell maintenance man Gary or Larry.
“Not a problem. Leave a key and I’ll lock up for you when I’m done,” he says with a hearty sigh.
“Just leave it unlocked,” I tell him. “There’s nothing worth taking now anyway.”
The truth is, like the rest of my life, this condo was furnished like a mid-tier hotel lobby—generic and uninspiring. I don’t have an attachment to any of it. There’s nothing of value here. I pull a large duffel bag out, leftover from my foster days—I was lucky to have it, most kids don’t even get that much—from a shelf in my closet because my actual luggage was lined up neatly on the floor. I cram most of my clothes and a few shoes into it, the small assortment of toiletries I actually use, and my laptop and phone charger. I sling itover a shoulder and stand before the painting, staring into Thalassa’s stormy eyes with a narrowed gaze.
It would be so easy to go over to Arla’s, to plead my case and glide right into the space she’s slotted for me. But that poster, the strange chamber, the underground tunnels all make for poor roommates in my book. I’m not keen on sleeping over whatever it is they’re hiding.
Is that why this happened? To push me deeper into Arla’s grasp?
“I don’t know if you’re responsible for this,” I tell the painting in a thin-lipped whisper, “but you’re coming with me, so please don’t flood my friend’s place.”
I tuck her unceremoniously under one arm and head outside, where I pull my cell phone out, thumb hovering over the contacts. Arla’s name shines up at me, then Brennan’s. Both a firm and resoundingno, especially since for these purposes, they’re one in the same. A little farther down, I see Levi’s.Tempting, but I’m afraid of bungling what we have, the perfection of today, my messy life (which has just grown exponentially messier). Moving frompassionate, inaugural trysttoindefinitely crashing at yoursin a day feels warp speed even for us. There’s one other person I can call. Someone who, despite my rigid resistance, has always put me at ease, who I am certain will not see this as an imposition but as a sign of progress.
Aaron picks up almost instantly. “Is this for real?” he asks, cynical. “Are you actually calling me right now? Did you forget to reformat the Vivid piece before sending again? Because if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, always go with Helvetica. It’s cleaner.”
