by Erin McRae
The Opposite of Drowning
Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE OPPOSITE OF DROWNING
First edition. April 23, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
ISBN: 978-1386155850
Written by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1: The Grace Kelly of Publishing
Chapter 2: An Odd Man on a Long Flight
Chapter 3: The Curse of the Supermarket Sauce King
Chapter 4: In This Company of Exiles
Chapter 5: Old News is a Terrible Way to Ring in the New Year
Chapter 6: A Meal for Penitents
Chapter 7: The Body Politic
Chapter 8: In Countries of Exile
Chapter 9: A Girl and her Key
Chapter 10: These Messages from the Dead
Chapter 11: In This City of Lights
Chapter 12: The Bells and the Flood
Chapter 13: At the End of All Things
Chapter 14: A Book but not a Refuge
Chapter 15: American's Newest Heartthrob
Chapter 16: The Evil Eye
Chapter 17: Through the Stones and Behind the Gate
Chapter 18: Every Day for the Rest of Forever
Also By Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
About the Authors
As a species, we have always written of the flood.
Chapter 1
The Grace Kelly of Publishing
Harry
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Harry told the person on the phone. “The chapter was fine yesterday.” He’d sent off what was supposed to be the final edit for proofreading before he’d gotten on a plane two days ago. The last thing he wanted to deal with was more changes on a project he’d been working on for over a year.
“Harry, you’ve got four ghost stories in a book that’s supposed to be a memoir about food and travel in the folksy westernmost province of France,” his agent, Anika, told him. Her tone was somewhere between weary and placating, which, as Harry knew from long experience, wasn’t good. “Just because you write about them beautifully.... Look, you’ve already got a tone issue. Cutting one – just one! – of your tales about shades from the beyond will help balance it out a bit. If you want my suggestion, the one about the drowned city of Ys is particularly extraneous.”
“The book is about the physical and emotional experience of a journey in Brittany. It’s impossible to understand Brittany – not its food, not its architecture, not its people – without understanding its ghost stories,” Harry protested, wishing he was in Brittany right now himself. Although, in truth, he would have taken just about anywhere that wasn’t another anonymous hallway outside of a relentlessly organized conference on the second day of the five-hundred-and-somethingth annual Frankfurt Book Fair.
“Yes, and you have four of them, not including the one about the shipping container full of Garfield phones.” Anika retorted. “None of them make the book accessible to your core reader demographic.”
Harry was silent just long enough to convey his deep annoyance. Of which Anika was already well aware. “What are my options?” he finally asked. As if he still had any.
“You can make a case for keeping it, but then it’s another week of back and forth with the powers that be. So why don’t you just say ‘yes, Anika,’ and go back to your weekend of schnitzel and bookstalls.”
“You make it sound so much more romantic than it is,” Harry grumbled.
The Frankfurt Book Fair was a staple of the publishing industry calendar. He’d been coming here nearly every year since he’d started in the business. Now that he was about to turn fifty and was a managing editor at a respectable publishing house – as well as a vaguely successful writer of mid-list travel memoirs – he tended to regard the whole affair as a week-long slog. Who looked forward to endless meetings and too much drinking before returning home to deal with a disaster of an inbox?
“Also, I did get your draft of the Vienna book,” Anika said. “Thanks for sending that along.”
“Did you read it yet?” Harry perked up a little in hopes of praise.
“I got it yesterday, so no I did not.” Anika laughed. “Now go enjoy your trip on the company dollar, I have people to talk to who are less annoying than you.”
Harry said a relieved goodbye and turned his attention to his assistant, Jonathan, who had appeared in the hallway in front of him. As ever, he vibrated an eager urgency.
“What is it, and is it a disaster?” Harry asked.
The corner of Jonathan’s mouth quirked up. He was in his late twenties, far too pale, preppy, and dark-haired. A literary assistant straight out of central casting, Harry always thought. Together they made their way downstairs to the hotel lobby where, hopefully, Harry’s next meeting would be more satisfying than the phone call with Anika had been.
“So the rep for that distributor you wanted to meet with keeps blowing me off,” Jonathan told him. “And Hazleton cancelled the meeting for tomorrow, but Carla sent over the cover proposals for Sonia’s new book, and Philippe called three times –”
“Philippe can wait.” Harry flipped open his daybook to take note of the meeting cancellation.
“I’ll save him for when you want to get out of something, then,” Jonathan said placidly as they turned a corner.
Harry, more intent on being annoyed with this trip than where he was going, crashed into someone, while Jonathan dodged out of the way of the awkwardness.
Harry apologized automatically and took a step backward before even looking at the person he’d just collided with. When he finally did, he stared. She was beautiful, and he recognized her from somewhere, but he had no idea what her name was; Harry always remembered people’s names. He frowned at her.
The tall woman with golden-brown hair who reminded him of no one so much as a brunette Grace Kelly stared back incredulously.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, in case she hadn’t heard his initial apology.
Her high heels put her gaze on a level with his, and her eyes were grey. Like the morning light on the ocean, if you went out to sail too early on the Connecticut River. Harry winced inwardly at the absurdity of his own New Englandness. Still, he definitely knew her from somewhere. But, alarmingly, the blank remained.
He cataloged the rest of her, hoping to jog his memory. She was young, probably under thirty, although Harry thought it unwise to dare greater precision. Her hair was twisted up off her neck in an elegant knot fastened with a pin. A pencil skirt and a smart jacket in soft blue wool, along with a pearl necklace – genuine, Harry’s brain observed unhelpfully – nestled against her collarbones did nothing to diminish the retro look about her. Whoever she might be, this was a woman out of time. As Harry stared at her without saying anything, her blush-pink lips parted ever so slightly.
Shit. She wasn’t walking away. So Harry was now obliged to introduce himself. He held out a hand. “I’m Harold Sargent. But please call me Harry.”
She took his hand with firm amusement. Her mouth, which Harry was exerting a great deal of effort not to fixate on, curved in a faint smile. “I know. Elizabeth Ann Abgral.”
Harry blinked. She knew him, and he didn’t know her. Why was his brain betraying him like this? The last name rang a distant bell too; it meant that the woman in front of him hailed very much from the same brand of old New England society families Harry himself regretfully belonged to. But he still had no idea who she was.
“Rea
lly?” he couldn’t help but ask, even if he knew it was rude.
“Yes, really,” she said. “Your new consultant. For innovative digital solutions. To increase your publisher’s profits and avoid layoffs.”
“Oh!” Harry knew they were getting someone to come in for a year to whip them all into shape. And while he was all for improving job security, he had little interest in, or trust of, digital solutions and the wunderkinds advocating them. In all his grumbling about the decision to bring in a contractor for a year, Harry had definitely not expected the result to be a young woman from a dream of the 1950s.
“So, Elizabeth Ann Abgral, does anyone call you anything for short?” he asked more sharply than was polite. Everything about this woman’s existence – as a colleague and a human being – was throwing him.
She blinked at him, arch and maybe just a tad put off. “No,” she said firmly. “Not here.”
ALTHOUGH THE WORK DAY theoretically ended with the conclusion of show hours, that evening Harry found himself at a poorly lit Mediterranean restaurant in Innenstadt with Jonathan, Malik Olowe from their company’s London office, and the mysterious – and increasingly irritated with him – Elizabeth.
“Are you jetlagged?” Harry asked. He was trying to be considerate in lieu of grousing to her about the restaurant or the work day, but the question was still small talk of the most awkward sort.
Elizabeth clearly knew it, too. Her mouth twisted wryly. “Should I be?”
“It’s a long flight. Some people never get used to it.”
“Are you one of those?” Elizabeth asked, indicting him immediately for his uninvited expertise.
“I try not to be,” he said sincerely.
She considered him a moment, her grey eyes flicking over his suit, now wrinkled from the day. “I didn’t fly in from New York,” she finally said.
“Oh?”
“I’ve been in Wales for the last month consulting on the digital presence for next year’s Hay Festival. Since I was just wrapping that up, our boss asked if I could meet you all here.”
“Our boss,” Harry said automatically. “We’ll be working together, then?” He hadn’t imagined he and a consultant being on equal footing in the corporate org chart.
“Do you mind that? Us working together?” Elizabeth asked.
“No more than I mind everything else about my job.”
“Are you always this sour?” she asked blandly.
Harry gave her a crooked smile. “It’s part of my charm.”
“If you say so.”
“Only sometimes,” he admitted. “But having you pop over from Wales...that seems both cruel and unusual. Most especially because there’s nothing to do in that damned town.” Hay-on-Wye was a small community that boasted over twenty bookshops, more tourists than locals, and was only otherwise of interest for being situated on the border of a notably haunted nature preserve. He’d once spent seventy-two hours there doing little more than trying to find a way to escape.
Elizabeth, however, clearly did not agree. In fact, she was staring at him in horror. “Are you an editor who hates bookshops?”
“No, I’m a writer who hates everything. Working in publishing just allows me to seem authoritative about it.”
“Yes, well. I enjoyed Hay very much. Which I assumed you knew – that I was there, I mean – since we’re working together.” Elizabeth said with a decided lift of her well-groomed eyebrows.
When her mobile rang, Harry was already considering the possibility that not only was he wildly attracted to Elizabeth, but that he also hated her.
“Oh – I’m sorry. Will you excuse me,” Elizabeth said before he could continue to dig himself into a deep hole defined by an utter lack of social grace.
She pulled her phone out of her purse and stepped a polite distance away from the table to take the call. She was not, however, far enough away for Harry to refrain from eavesdropping. He watched, not as surreptitiously as he should have, as Elizabeth spoke into the phone. In German. Until she switched to French.
After several minutes, she turned back to Harry. “Is tomorrow at five all right?” she asked.
Harry started both at the English and her renewed attention. “I’m sorry?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Five o’clock? In the evening? A meeting?” Her uptalk was nearly vicious.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harry had zoned out somewhere in the middle of her multilingual high wire act.
“Really? You were listening hard enough.”
“My German’s not as good as yours,” Harry offered. It was true, but not the only reason why he hadn’t followed her half of the conversation.
“Well,” Elizabeth said slowly, as if Harry might have trouble following her English as well. “A meeting tomorrow at five. With the Eastern European marketing people?”
“Have I met you before?” Harry blurted.
“Excuse me?” Now Elizabeth stared at Harry as if he were not just rude but as if he also had two heads.
“I’m just sure I know you from somewhere.” Harry wondered desperately why Jonathan wasn’t coming to his rescue, but a glance at his assistant answered that question. He was far too caught up in flirting with Malik to have any attention left over for Harry’s woes.
“Well, if you do, I have no recollection of it,” Elizabeth said. “Now - I have someone on the phone who might do marketing for you. A meeting?”
Harry made himself focus and mentally paged through his schedule. “Yes. Tomorrow should be fine.”
“At five?”
“At five.” Harry matched her half-mocking tone. Even though he deserved it. He hadn’t been acting like a man who could keep track of his engagements. Let alone remember he had them at all. Which annoyed him deeply. He might have been wildly disorganized as a rule – hence his need for Jonathan – but he always remembered.
He also apparently couldn’t stop talking. “Do you want to tell me about your French and your German?” he asked as Elizabeth slid back into her seat at the table.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said patiently, as if she were humoring an old man. “Schoolroom French. University German.”
“Yet your French is better?”
“I’ve been speaking it longer.”
“Why French and not Spanish?” he asked. When he’d been growing up, everyone in his peer group learned French. But the gravity of the world and the people who thought they ran it had shifted and was shifting again. Someone Elizabeth’s age he’d expect to have Spanish. Or Mandarin. He hoped she wasn’t about to tell him she spoke those, too.
She looked at the ceiling for just a moment too long before returning her gaze to him. “I’m from the sort of family where girls learn French the way we once learned pianoforte.”
“Of course you are,” Harry said dryly. “Even with an MBA, you couldn’t afford to be in publishing if you weren’t.”
That shocked a laugh out of her, a sharp cackle that contained nothing demure and that Harry loved instantly.
“I’m from Essex,” he said, as if to explain his remark about her origins. “Connecticut. I grew up with girls like you.”
BACK IN HIS ROOM AT the hotel, Harry soaked for an hour in the bathtub. Which, miraculously, accommodated his six-foot-odd frame comfortably. When the water finally became tepid and he forced himself to climb out, he wrapped himself in his own bathrobe brought from home and settled in the armchair by the bed. He knew he was strange to pack such a thing, but years of conferences and research trips had taught him the value of making the road seem less alienating.
He should have gone right to sleep, lest his awkward remark to Elizabeth about jet lag become truth. But he needed to wind down. And he absolutely could not shake the idea that he’d met her somewhere before, whether she remembered the encounter or not. He grabbed his tablet off the nightstand and Googled her name.
She’d done her undergraduate work at Boston University, which wasn’t necessarily impressive on its
own, but the MFA/MBA graduate combo was daunting and spoke to family wealth that enabled her to afford such a thing. It was, of course, all information Harry could have discovered from her CV, had he known to expect her and bothered to look at it on the plane. But absolutely none of it told Harry where he’d seen her before.
Annoyed, he opened his email. Not his work account, but his personal one. Which immediately provided a new and much more acute sense of dismay in the form of dozens of emails from the Manuscript Miscreants, all sent within the last two hours.
The Manuscript Miscreants, which everyone agreed was an absolutely terrible name, had existed for longer than Harry wanted to acknowledge. Certainly they had existed for nearly as long as email and the commercial Internet had existed. In the beginning it had been Harry and his three best friends: Meryl Kahan, Steven Stafford, and Dennis Chakraborty. It had never really been a book club – more an excuse to drink, talk, and complain about everyone they knew – but all of them had always read obsessively. It had worked as well for a catchall name for their clique as anything.
Over the years, the group had expanded as the four of them scattered for work and life and had brought new friends and sometimes lovers into the fold. Now the Miscreants numbered about a dozen, and for the last decade and a half they’d spent the week of Christmas and New Year’s together somewhere far from anywhere any of them called home.
The Miscreants were Harry’s far-flung family of choice. Prone to disreputable acts, vicious gossip about anyone not in their circle, and inveterate appreciators of fine food and drink, this year they were renting a house in Trastevere. Formerly the worst, most dangerous part of Rome, where Harry, Steven, and Meryl had once stayed together when they were poor students touring through Europe on the summer before their senior year at Yale, it was now the city’s most fashionable district. And the Miscreants planned to terrorize it.
Harry expected today’s emails to be the usual fare: twenty percent planning and eighty percent Meryl being funny about the horrors of her life as an economics professor at Florida State. What was actually there, however, was a flurry of emails back and forth with variations on the subject line of Oh my God, Steven.