He reached his hands through his hair. He pulled. He wanted to scream. She hated him now. She couldn’t trust him now. If he opened his mouth wide enough, he could swallow enough water to drown quickly, save Carly and himself from the harm of his mistakes, mistakes he had made or would make in his life, his life pieced together by frozen memories and mistakes.

  “You didn’t have to talk about it. You could have said anything.”

  “Like what?” he said. “That I was young? That I found her in a tub of blood and water? Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  Carly froze; the raindrops caught in mid-air, the river stuck at his chest. He wanted to press his hands to her and release, to freeze her into forever, like his mother did, which he knew he couldn’t do—with the neon sign, he saw on her face, the difference between the tears and the raindrops fixed to her cheeks, the strands of hair stuck to her neck, the drops of water that refused to sink into her skin or her coat. The storm wrapped around them uncomfortable, and her eyes sharp where softness had been.

  “I know she’s not coming back. I didn’t fool you. I didn’t break you. I’m the one that deals with it.”

  “Do you?” The water began to fall again. “Or do you just pretend to?”

  “It had been enough,” he said.

  “What had been enough? Pretending?” Peter wanted to nod. The water was at his neck. He didn’t want Carly to sink in it, to be taken by it. “It’s not real,” Carly said.

  He was almost underwater.

  “It was real enough.”

  She grabbed his arm. The pressure of her fingers over his coat. He wanted to keep her hand there, to bring her closer to him and wrap her in his body, protect her from the rain and the flood and the tub always on the horizon. The neon light flashed.

  How quickly we find excuses to run, Peter thought, from ourselves and each other. Carly thought it was easier or safer to spend time with herself rather than with the people she cared about. Then she would end up alone. Peter had done it. Sofia had done it. Carly was doing it—he was doing it—he had done it for so long he didn’t know if he could stop. And now, as the rain fell and Carly’s words seeped into his skin, he knew he wouldn’t stop. He would break away before he could get hurt, like Carly did, like he had done, even though he knew it was too late. This time. The heavy pain had wrapped around his body the moment he met Carly, the anxiety of possible hurt squeezing tighter until it eventually suffocated him.

  “You don’t touch broken things.” He tore his arm from her. He wanted to keep the imprint of her palm on him, but it would fade. Instead, he gave into her argument and pushed her away like she tried to push him. It was the trait that Peter understood defined his life, where one half of his heart had been shattered by loss while the other remained intact, even if slowly shriveling from neglect. He preferred the familiar pain of loss to the unbearable pain of heartbreak. And so he tore himself away, because it’s easier to be alone.

  “I don’t want to be fixed. Broken is all I have left,” he said. He rubbed his hand over his watches. The water rose again. His words constricted around his ankles and made it impossible to move. He wanted to say sorry, to wrap his arms around her and float away together. He wanted her to know him and his life, but when he finally moved, she was already floating away, like his mother had done.

  “It’s not the things you said. It’s the excuses you made.” She drifted farther from him. The neon sparked. The rain looked like sunflowers or stars falling to the earth to tell him it would be okay. He never heard the words; too soon, the world went back to black. The rush of the water rose above his head. He couldn’t see Carly anymore. His eyes closed. Body under. His legs cold. The rain swallowed the street. She was gone. He thought he saw the tub—his mother, Claus—reach over the hill and ride the river down to him. Reach over the tub and pull him inside. But he would rather swim away. Rid himself of the tub and go after Carly. Claus was supposed to look out for him, but he had left in the boat with Peter’s mother, and Peter chased away Carly, the remnants of her gone in the rain, and the tub always near, no matter how far he ran. He let the water run over him, run through him, and when his words disappeared, he floated away with the storm.

  Chapter 35

  Sam pointed into the distance. The sky was still blue.

  Claus saw the boat, a shell of a van with no roof. Its sail blew hard, expanded, contracted, expanded. The boat came closer.

  “Where is the wind?” Claus asked.

  “There’s no wind?”

  The ship edged closer. Sam watched Claus. Claus watched the sails. In. Out. Like breath, deep and concentrated. If it was that easy to push the sails, Sam would have tried long ago, but wasn’t sure she hadn’t already tried.

  The boat pushed closer. The bright pink base, the green butterflies painted on the side. The roof had been torn off and the sails hung high off the mast that was stuck in the center of the mutated van with its crushed front end that seemed familiar.

  A howl broke the silence. Claus grabbed Sam’s hand hard. Hard. His furry paw. His tense grip.

  The boat pushed against the tub. A ramp slammed down onto the porcelain.

  “You are dead,” Claus said. A wolf, matted and dark gray fur dangled off his body, loose and long, bits of dried blood flaked from his chin and swirled in the air with the smell of rancid death—long death, death that had been buried underground long enough to decay, absorbed by the mud and forgotten, death. The cross of a sword pressed against the Wolf’s chest.

  “No more than you,” the Wolf said. He touched the stub where his ear once was. His fangs were green. Spit fell from his snout in long strands puddling on the floor.

  The Wolf stepped toward the tub. The cross of the sword deep in his chest, shining with a plastic handle.

  “You know who I am,” the Wolf said, staring into Sam’s eyes; his eyes black, a color Sam hadn’t seen in the endless sunlight.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Claus said. He pulled down the sail and wrapped it around his fist, a shield made of sailcloth.

  “I’ve been searching for you. I’m here to say hello, lungs and all.” The Wolf took a deep breath; he took another step on the ramp towards the tub.

  Sam stepped back from Claus, unsure where this wolf had come from, unsure where she could hide.

  “Leave,” she said.

  “It’s never that easy wherever you are,” the Wolf said.

  “And where are we?”

  “Somewhere different.”

  The Wolf reached his claw into the tub. It was half the size of Claus, like jagged glass. Claus slammed it with his sailcloth shield. The Wolf screamed; he stepped back. Larger than Claus—so much larger than Claus. So fearless a bear. A guardian. She needed to be guarded.

  “Was that necessary?” the Wolf said.

  Claus raised his shield again, made himself ready.

  “Is your visit necessary?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. His fangs showed. “Can’t have a job unfinished.” His chest inflated. All the air around the sea sucked deep into the Wolf’s lungs. The sails fluttered. Water pulled from the ocean. Sam’s hair almost pulled from her head, sucked into the Wolf’s lungs with the air and the water. Claus almost lifted from the boat. The whole world Sam knew about to be inhaled. Water flew with her hair, ready to be drawn into his lungs. Claus’s foot was trapped under a rope. Sam held to the mast.

  “A breath will only push us away,” Claus yelled.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  The Wolf breathed deeper.

  “Everything will be okay,” Claus said. He held up his shield.

  “What?” Sam held tight to the mast, tried to press her chest against the metal, felt her feet almost lift in the wind.

  Claus covered his eye. The Wolf held his breath. Sam closed her eyes tight—tighter, and braced for the blow. She heard a sigh. A thud. A scream.

  She opened her eyes. The Wolf’s jaws were wrapped around Claus’s tattoo, around his heart: Try Me. The Wolf tore into Claus. His teeth clenched; the tear soft; his growl furious, grave, rasping.

  The Wolf’s eyes pressed against Sam’s chest, cold poured down her spine, hitting every bone. The Wolf pressed his teeth deep into Claus; Claus screamed. The Wolf growled; Claus didn’t bleed. His shield dropped. Limp and weak in the Wolf’s mouth, less than a child, a child’s toy, defenseless and small in clenched jaws. Sam searched the tub for a knife, a razor, any object that could stop a wolf, that could save a friend. She found a bar of soap and Claus’s pajamas. She let go of the mast, grabbed the galaxy pajamas, wrapped the soap in them, and swung it around her head like a mace.

  She slammed the mace into the Wolf’s head. Clunk. He tore his teeth from Claus. She swung the mace again, watched as the Milky Way slammed again into the Wolf’s head. Clunk. Claus was silent. The wolf turned his head. His eyes black. His teeth sharp.

  “You won’t feel a thing,” the Wolf said.

  “I’d rather feel everything,” Sam said.

  She swung the mace. The soap slammed into his jaw. Snap. It echoed in the sky. The Wolf fell to the floor. Claus was still. Sam dropped the mace. She picked up the Wolf. Lifted his body. Strained. Tightened. Yelled. She pushed it over the lip of the tub. The water splashed.

  She felt the drops on her lip as she watched the Wolf sink deeper into the water. She could taste the salt. She could taste the cold. The Wolf dropped out of sight. She added him to the reason she didn’t like deep water.

  She turned to Claus, quiet and torn at the base of the tub. His heart tattoo swollen. She placed her hands under him and could feel his warm fur. She lay next to him and pressed her face into his—cotton and mothballs. He stared into the sky, and she followed his eye, to the blue, to the empty blue—to where the sun hung high, a bright lightbulb hung far beyond reach, for a long time, Claus had said, a long time Sam could now feel. The long time could end, somehow; the sky not the far away empty blue it had been for as long as Sam could remember, an outline of the lightbulb was close, in the sky, while the string hung low, low enough for Sam to pull, to turn off the sun and change the long time of day to a different time. She felt the coarse hairs of the string. She jerked down.

  The sunlight stayed but a crack, an echo, pulsed through the emptiness that they lived in, felt in the sway of the boat and the pulse in the sky. Like when ice breaks on a lake; when it separates between legs, continents adrift, a body stuck between them. She focused on the sun. The large crack divided the center of the bulb. Another splinter of separation. To another. And another—until the sun shattered. Bits of glass dripped from the light and floated through the sky. Claus pushed his forehead to hers. The glass fell like snowflakes. She opened her mouth and let the glass melt on her tongue. The distant light faded to deeper blue, to darker blue, to night—a night she hadn’t seen in a time she wasn’t sure of but knew it had been long. But Claus, with his nose pressed into her neck, a nose she now knew was cold and wet, careful and caring, with not much time left.

  “I always miss the snow,” he said.

  “Like candy.”

  “Yes, my favorite kind, it disappears on your tongue.”

  She grabbed Claus’s paws and wrapped them around her neck.

  “There is nothing to worry about.”

  She could feel him. His soft fur. Everything must be okay. His warm fur. She could feel him.

  “I am fine.” His breath slowed. His eye closed.

  Sam dug her face into his cheek. The night deepened. The silence thickened. She wasn’t sure if she sailed in the water or the sky; both were dark, and both were clear.

  Then the mountains began to shape above her. They rose in the sky, stretched beyond her sight, beyond the horizon she had thought was the end of existence. Perhaps that was the world where something could be, and they could be something. The mountains stretched, and she thought she saw a face mold into the rocks. A face she recognized. A face she thought could save them, her and Claus, if they could reach high enough into the sky. And with a sudden jolt of warmth in the darkness, set beneath the mountains flooding over her like exploded paints, she remembered the promise she hadn’t kept and the life that had eluded her for too long, when she sunk into a couch, overtaken by a deluge of alcohol with the faint sound of a tearful voice beyond the bedroom whispering, hopeful, longing, and young.

  “I told him I would be there,” she said to Claus. “I wanted to give him time. He was just a boy.”

  “He wanted to protect you,” Claus said. “He wanted to be strong.”

  “Stronger than I ever was.”

  Claus closed his eyes and started to drift. Sam whispered more words into the felt of his torn heart, trying to speak it back together, the face in the mountains now clearer with a prominent, granite beard and beckoning smile.

  Sam wrapped Claus’s arms around her, his paws tight around her neck, his furry face against her chest. She wondered if Claus could feel her heart. If he counted her heartbeats with his and wondered why there was a difference.

  Sam reached for the mast and climbed. The metal cold against her palms. She gripped them tight and felt her fingernails pinch into her skin. She climbed the mast. The boat rocked. The mountains stretched. The water rested. The second boat drifted into the distance. Sam concentrated on the mountains in the sky—on the face in the sky that smiled and encouraged her to climb. Her hands ached. She felt sweat drip down her neck, followed her spine and crept slower and lower. She was close to the peak. She could almost reach.

  The crossbar. If she could only stand on the bar and jump, she and Claus would be saved. If only. She lifted her feet onto the bar. She held the mast for balance. If she could jump into the mountains, they would be saved. If only. She felt Claus nuzzle deeper into her chest. Her heart fast. His heart slow. She reached. If only.

  Chapter 36

  Sofia set dinner on the roof again. The music soft in the night sky.

  “There is more space,” she said.

  Her apartment had felt too small. Every time Peter opened the door, he entered an apartment of decreased size; it still felt bigger than his. He was happy to be outside, out of the box, whether his apartment or Sofia’s; at least on the roof, he could pretend to fly. He offered to help with dinner. Sofia said no, looked at his empty hands and sighed; for the first time in all their dinners together, Peter had forgotten the wine. He sat on the roof’s ledge and looked into the street: empty.

  Peter thought of the plane ticket on his desk. The ticket he had stuffed in the box since he moved to San Francisco with the thought of rest, his feet, his shoulders, his past, if he could have put it all to rest long ago. He had postponed the departure date so often he almost cancelled the ticket altogether—because of Carly, because of Sofia—because of how he looked at Carly and because of the promise he made to Sofia. The look couldn’t get him to hold onto Carly because he couldn’t bring himself to say the words he needed to say, even when he wanted to say them. The promise he made to Sofia became another broken promise in his life of shattered mistakes, in broken forevers, because everyone Peter knew made excuses to run away: the only thing he was taught to do. The departure date was soon. It whispered adventure. He would be in Nepal, away from failure and away from ghosts. He would feel cold, crisp, thin air, not the overstuffed air of San Francisco he wanted to suck into his body, imagining all the crap that lined his lungs, which would soon make him choke. He would soon stand at the gates of heaven and look over the world from a chair made of clouds and feel as the gods must have felt on Olympus. He could watch the world rotate beneath him where he stood in the sky, and from that high up, he could see a world without horizons, where he wouldn’t have to run anymore.

  A glass of wine waited for him on the table. The light glanced against the red hue, turning the crimson color ruby across the table.

  “You must drink,” Sofia said. “We are celebrating.”

  Peter didn’t reach for the glass. Sofia turned from the table and handed him his drink instead. He took it from her. She clinked the lip of his wine glass with hers as a soft breeze blew, rustling the leaves of the herbs and vegetables around the garden. Sofia swayed her hips to a rhythm Peter couldn’t hear, perhaps shaped by the way the leaves danced in the night air.

  “Celebrating?” Peter said.

  “I will be selling my empanadas,” Sofia said. She swayed her hips to the ever-present music in her head and sipped her wine. “They will be a big success, I am sure.”

  “To success,” Peter said in nearly a whisper. He took a small sip of the drink and placed the glass back on the table.

  "Tonight, we have chicken," Sofia said. She had her back to him. She chopped vegetables, or strained pasta, or made salad. How could he just leave? All children leave. They could also return. When had he returned to anywhere? He had never had a reason. He had never had someone on the opposite end of a postcard. Now he did. He had someone he could write to. He had someone to return to. Simple, all he had to do was come back. It shouldn’t be hard; it wasn’t hard to say. It was hard to imagine. Not because he had never returned, but because his mom never came back—his dad never came back, or Claus. Because that was what Peter screamed at the tub, on the dock of the bathroom, alone, the tub sailing into the horizon while Claus waved, Sam silent, Peter’s hand in the air and the watch held to his chest: Come back! It should be easy to come back, but it was just another thing he was never taught how to do.

  Peter sat at the table. Sofia and Peter shared their lives—the lives they were living and the lives they had lived. She would rather see him go than be the reason he stayed, he believed.

  "I said chicken," Sofia said.

  "Great," Peter said.

  "You do not look yourself."

  It was hard to choose the right words when any word he chose could hurt.

  “Everything is—”

  “Do not say fine,” Sofia said. “I have known your faces for too long.” She stopped swaying her hips and took a sip of her wine. “This is not your ‘everything is fine’ face.”

 

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