Chapter Forty-Seven
HECTOR
We eat a little, though neither of us is hungry.
We drink a little, though neither of us is thirsty.
We do these things, because everything ordinary is extraordinary when the time is ticking down really fucking fast.
That night, when the sun sets and the air is misty, we take a walk outside after being indoors for hours. Maybe kissing, for hours. Maybe talking. I don’t need to count the minutes of anything we do. That would mean that time was passing, and I don’t want the reminder.
Outside, the temperature has dropped, and the sun is a gold crescent on the horizon. The lighthouse winks on, and its beam fills the fog with a dull light. Anda eyes the tower like a sulky kid.
“Come on. You should go up there,” I urge her.
“Why? The light hates me.”
I could ask exactly how she knows that, but I don’t. I can see it in how she carries her body. Withdrawing into herself, as if being pelted by acid instead of rain.
“C’mon.” I take her hand and bring her back inside. She drags her feet all the way, but not so much that she’s not willing to come with me. I take both sleeping bags in my arms and lead her through the house and the back corridor to the interior of the lighthouse. Anda sucks air between her teeth as soon as she touches the iron railing.
“Really, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why?” I say, several steps above her. From here, she looks up at me, and her eyes are huge in the darker light inside. Her skin is luminous, as if she can channel the unseen moonlight.
“Because we are opposites. I can feel its hostility for me. And I despise it, too.” She narrows her eyes. “Why are you so insistent on bringing me up here?”
“Because. I never thought I would tell a single soul the truth about me. And I did. And…” I close my eyes, taking a huge breath. “I feel better. Not fixed. Not by a long shot. But better.” I open my eyes and stare at her. “I don’t know, Anda. I have a feeling that if you tried to make peace with it, it would be…good.” She waits for something more, knowing I’m holding back. Finally, I smile sheepishly. “And also, I want to see you in a light, bright as day. All night long.”
Anda smiles a little, but she doesn’t seem convinced. She carries her worry with her like lead weights on her feet, taking one clonking, heavy step after the other up the spiral staircase. Her breathing comes with more effort, a slow rasping sound as if she’s harboring razor blades in her throat. The closer to the top we get, the larger her eyes get, wide with fear and apprehension. When we finally reach the iron gallery, she squeezes my hand so hard that her nails bite into my skin.
“It’s too…” she begins, but doesn’t finish her sentence. She shakes her head and crumples down onto the iron floor surrounding the glass-chambered light. I immediately drop to my knees to help her, but she hisses at me. I back off.
Her hands touch the metal below her and she snatches them away, as if they’d scorched her. She lets out a shriek of fierce anger, an almost feral noise. I take a few more steps away, giving her room. Something incendiary is playing out inside her head. I pray that the sleeping bags in my arms won’t spontaneously combust. Was it a mistake to bring her up here?
“It’s okay. Forget it. We’ll go back down,” I say quickly, holding out a hand. Anda recoils from my hand and grimaces.
“Stop. Just, stop.”
In the slowest of slow motions, she lowers her fingers to the black metal beneath her. Her fingers quiver with pain when they make contact, and she shuts her eyes tightly. Her shoulders shake, and she drops her head, feeling whatever it is that the sandstone bricks of the building have stored up for over a century. A keening issues from her throat, a sound too much like wind against the eaves of an old building.
When she finally raises her eyes, they’re bloodshot. Dark circles shadow beneath them. It’s like she’s mourned a thousand deaths in the space of a minute. I take a cautious step closer.
“Are you…okay?” God, that’s a stupid question.
“No.” She whimpers and wipes her wet cheeks. “But I would like to lie down now.”
“Here? I didn’t realize it would be so bad. I’m sorry. We can go back down.”
“No. We’ll stay here,” she says miserably. “It’s okay.”
I don’t ask again. I shake out the sleeping bags and zip them together so we can lie inside together. She wriggles to get her feet to the bottom, and her body curves around the gallery as the light pulses above us. Anda shuts her eyes tightly.
“I can see the light even with my eyes closed.” She frowns deeply.
I kick off my boots and scoot next to her. It’s cold as a meat locker with the wind up here, but I don’t care. I slip one arm beneath her head as a pillow and wrap the other around her waist. The air is still damp and misty, and I shiver.
“Cold?”
“Not much,” I lie.
She harrumphs at my bravado. She can see right through me. “Well. It is November, after all.” Anda smiles a tiny bit, and I smile back, and her hands move beneath the sleeping bag. The wind around us dies down and suddenly it’s not quite as cold as it was only seconds ago.
Oh.
“You did that, didn’t you? When we hiked on the island. You kept it from being too cold.”
Anda nods.
Every once in a while, I silently freak out. This isn’t real, she isn’t real, this can’t be real, holy hell, what is going on. And then I try not to hyperventilate and remember that she’s here, and I’m wasting my time doing reality checks.
We lie there for a long while, not speaking. Just watching the light pulsing inside our eyelids when they’re closed, letting it bleach the insides of our eyeballs when they’re open. Finally, after a long time, I ask.
“So what did it say? The lighthouse?”
Anda’s eyes are closed right now. I run my fingertip across her dark lashes, and she allows it. “It told me that November was not the only answer.”
“Huh? To what question?”
“I don’t know. I have to think on it. But then it…it asked me for an apology.”
“And?”
“It showed me exactly what I’ve done. So I apologized. And I showed it what men have done to the lake. And it apologized.”
“Are you friends now?”
She shakes her head. “But we understand each other a little better.”
I trace my finger down her cheek, then over the swell of her lips. I want to kiss her so badly, but I now have the distinct feeling that we’re not alone. I pull my hand back, and she catches it.
“Don’t worry about the lighthouse. It doesn’t care about such things,” she says, and puts my hand lower, against her collarbone.
“What things?”
“These things.” Anda slips her hand under my shirt, her fingers touching the ripples of my rib cage and then down, drawing a line across my belly where the waistband of my pants is. My body flashes with heat, and I swallow, shutting my eyes.
“Anda.” It’s a million questions at once.
“Yes, Hector.”
And that’s the last thing we say for the rest of the night.