Without another word, he put down his storycatcher and jumped into the water.
“No!” I shouted. This river was teeming with stories, and even a few whole novels—it was very harmful to swim in. I spit the bullet out and ran to the edge of the bank. For a moment I thought the Suicide was dead—I couldn’t see him, and I was sure that he’d been memoried. Then he surfaced, his hair slicked back and his eyes alight.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“What?” he hollered. “It’s so refreshing!”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“What?”
“The water?”
“Why would it?” he shouted.
“Because of the stories?” I shouted.
* * *
The trout’s name was Tod. With one D. My heart made arrangements for him to arrive on a Monday morning that August. Sure enough, I heard the spit of an engine outside my apartment that morning and I looked out the window and saw a trout riding a motorcycle into the driveway of the apartment house. I went outside and opened my shirt and my heart jumped out. He and the fish did this weird handshake, and then my heart turned to me and said, “And this—this is Chris.”
The fish nodded. “Ah. The funeral crasher, yes?”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
The heart flashed the trout a look, and the trout gestured to my chest. “May I?” he said.
I planted my feet and the fish jumped into my empty heart cavity. I could feel him shifting and settling. Then he said, “How’s that feel?”
“Weird,” I said.
“It’ll probably take some getting used to,” said the heart.
“We’ll be fine,” the fish told the heart.
The heart checked his watch. “Well,” he said. “I’m going to hit the road. Miles to go before I sleep and all that.” The heart got on the fish’s motorcycle and started it up.
“He’s taking your motorcycle?” I asked the fish.
“Yup,” said the heart.
“He’s borrowing it,” said the fish.
“Right,” said the heart. “I’m just borrowing it.”
“And bringing it back in the exact same condition. Or else he’s going to get his ass kicked by a school of pissed-off trout hearts.”
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” I asked the heart.
The heart revved the engine and kicked the clutch. “Chris?” he said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“I’ll see you next week,” I said. In my mind, some of my thoughts started to cry. The heart waved to me. “I love you,” I told him, but he was already driving away.
* * *
The trout heart was different than my biological heart, but I liked him. First, he was a big reader. My biological heart hadn’t read a full book in years, but the trout spent all of his free time reading. That night, in fact, I lay on my back on my broken futon and we—the trout and I—read the same book simultaneously. It was a new waternovel called The Complete Absence of Twilight. We both read the entire novel, and then we discussed it. I found it pretty abstract, but the trout said he liked that aspect of it.
When I woke up the next morning, though, the fish was gone from my chest. I spent ten minutes looking for him—I checked the bathroom, the kitchen, the basement—before I looked out the window and saw the trout heart jogging up the street toward my apartment.
I ran outside. “What the hell?” I shouted.
“What?” he said.
“I woke up and you weren’t here,” I said.
“So?” he said. “My hours are eight a.m. to midnight. From 12:01 to 7:59, I’m my own fish.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?”
“What do I do when you’re not here?”
“Make do! What did you think, that I’d work for you twenty-four hours a day? Have no life of my own?”
While my biological heart spent most of its time in my chest, the trout heart was probably in my chest only fifty percent of the time. If we were out storycatching, for example, he’d often jump down and walk around a little. A few times, he even cast a line to catch a few stories.
“What are you doing?” asked the Suicide, who was standing downstream.
The trout said, “What do you think I’m doing?”
“A fish catching stories?” said the Suicide.
“Got a problem with that?” said the trout.
“Just never seen it, is all.”
“I can’t imagine there’s much you haven’t seen,” the trout said.
* * *
With the trout heart in my life, though, I went to St. Paul’s less than before. The following week, in fact, I didn’t go at all. That Wednesday, the Suicide called my cell phone. “Christopher?” he said. “You coming by?”
“Not tonight,” I said. “We’re just sitting at home and reading.”
“We?” said the Suicide.
“Me and the trout,” I said.
“Hi,” said the trout heart into the phone.
“I’ve got fresh bul-lets!” sang the Suicide.
“No thanks,” I said.
“You sure?” said the Suicide.
“Maybe another time,” I told him.
* * *
Two or three days later, the Suicide came to AquaBooks during my shift. He walked right up to me where I was shelving books in the Romance section and grabbed my elbow. “Christopher,” he said.
I twisted around; the Suicide’s overalls were dirty and his face was a sale.
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry I haven’t called you back.”
“I found her, Christopher.”
“Who?” I said.
“Melody.”
“Melody?”
“Yeah. I found her. I was out catching stories and I found her.”
“Where?” I said.
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “But I can show you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“It’s out past the Gorges,” the Suicide whispered. “But it’d be impossible for you to find her without me.”
“Does she still want to marry me?”
A light flashed in his eyes. “You can ask her that yourself when you see her.”
Then a Marsha called me to the front desk, and I told the Suicide that I had to go.
“Call me,” he said. “Today. OK?”
* * *
And I was just about to call him, on the walk back to my apartment that night, when the trout heart stopped me. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
“Did you hear what he said about Melody?”
“And you trust him?” said the trout.
“Of course I do. He’s a friend of mine,” I said.
The fish snorted. “Suicides aren’t anyone’s friends,” he said. “He’s just pretending to be your friend so that you’ll—you know.”
“So that I’ll what?”
“You know what a suicide is, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is that what you want? To kill yourself?”
I shrugged. “No. I don’t know.”
“Stop for a second,” he said. “Sit down.”
By that time we were right near the corner of Main and Pearl. I found a metal bench and sat down.
The fish said, “Do you mind if I try something?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“I’m going to take a look at your missing.”
“In my mind?”
The trout nodded.
“Right here?”
“If that’s OK,” the trout said.
“Will it hurt?”
“Not at all.”
“As long as it doesn’t hurt,” I said.
The trout began moving through my body, right there as I sat on that bench. He swam up through my chest cavity, past my lungs, through my neck, and into my skull. Soon I could feel him swimming around inside my mind. “Wow,” he said.
“Wow wh
at?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said.
“What do you see?”
“It’s just, there are some serious gaps between one thought and the next.”
Then he didn’t say anything for a while. I looked up and down Main Street, and tried to think something intelligent so that the trout would see the thought. The City of Coolidge, I thought, is a pair of sandals.
“How is Coolidge a pair of sandals?” said the fish. Then I felt him swim across to the other lobe, and he said, “Wait a second. Hold on. I think I found something here.”
“What?” I said.
“Oh jeez, Chris.”
“What? What do you see?”
He swam back through my neck and into my chest and leapt out onto the bench. “Chris. Melody didn’t choose to have cancer—you know that, right?”
“This is my story—my Coolidge,” I said, my voice quivering. “And I make the rules. No one dies here unless I say they do.”
The fish rolled its eyes. “I’m sure she loved you, Chris. But it sounds like she was really sick. That’s probably why she—”
“She still loves me,” I said. “And we’re going to be reunited.” I fished in my pocket until I found my cell phone.
“Melody is dead, Chris,” said the fish. “You attended her funeral, for Chrissakes!”
I dialed the Suicide. “Did you see that memory in my mind?” I asked the fishheart.
Tod nodded.
“And did you actually see Melody at the funeral?”
“But that’s because—”
“Hello?” said the Suicide.
“I want to see her,” I said.
“I knew you would,” said the Suicide. Then he gave us directions to the place where he’d found her. “It’s not far from my cabin, actually,” the Suicide said.
* * *
I’m not sure exactly what town he led us to—someplace past Blix, to a road that was covered with trees that moved aside as we reached them. We turned onto it and the trees folded over the road behind us. Soon the road dead-ended, and that’s where we found the Suicide, standing in a clearing and chatting with a tree.
The fish jumped out of my chest and onto the grass. “Quite a spot,” he said.
“Pretty stunning, right?” said the Suicide. Something about him was different today—his face was shiny, his voice a blade.
“How do you know about this place?” I said.
“I told you, because I live out here,” he said.
“Really,” said the trout heart. “I assumed you lived near the church.”
The Suicide shook his head. “I’m about a mile that way.” Then he looked to me. “Ready?”
“I am,” I said.
“I think I’m going to stay here,” said the trout.
I shot him a look. “You sure?”
“Suit yourself,” said the Suicide.
“Why don’t you come along?” I said.
“Nah,” said the fish. “I’ll guard the truck—it’s got all of our stuff inside.”
The empty cavern of my chest echoed.
“Let’s boogaloo,” said the Suicide.
I tried to catch the trout heart’s eye as we started down the crinkly path, but the fish was already moseying over to a nearby creek. I turned back to the Suicide, who was moving quickly down the zigzag trail. Soon we were far from the truck, and deep in the if of the forest, where the insects spoke a different language and the trees clung nervously to the steep sides of the bank.
“How long have you lived here?” I said, just to make conversation.
“All my life,” said the Suicide. Then he said, “How are things going with that trout heart?”
“Fine,” I said.
“He’s kind of conceited, don’t you think?”
I didn’t respond.
We walked for another few minutes, and then I had to stop and rest. “Melody’s out here?” I said, hunched over to catch my breath. “Really?”
“Just up the way,” said the Suicide, and he continued on down the trail.
A few hundred yards farther, he stopped and turned back to me. “We’re here,” he said. Then he stepped onto a giant red rock that jutted out over a turbulent waterfall. “Look down,” he said.
I looked down. I could tell, right off the bat, that the water was tainted. “What’s the story with that water?”
“What’s it look like?” he said.
“It looks like death,” I said.
“Exactamundo,” he said.
“Is this where you get it?”
The Suicide nodded. “This river flows right by my cabin. I just scoop it right into my flask.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
I nodded. The death was sort of beautiful.
The Suicide slapped my shoulder. “Do you want to see Melody?”
I said yes, I did.
He led me to the other side of the giant rock. “See down there?” he said.
I didn’t.
“Look closer, Christopher,” he said.
I looked.
“Lean over. See?”
I leaned over.
“See?”
“Yes,” I said.
I saw memories in the water below: faces and moments and the storied idea of those moments. And among the dead, off to the right, was a face that did look like Melody’s. Have I told you how stunning Melody was? Her face was a Sunday in the spring. Her skin was greenish under the water, though, and her light brown hair moved with the current.
Then I felt a push, and I fell and landed in the water—in the death. The first thought I had was, I’m fictioning—I’m dying. A cold, stabbing pain—an inner scream—began in my extremities and traveled through me.
I swam to the surface. The Suicide was treading death alongside me. “I told you you’d see her again,” he said. “Right? Didn’t I tell you?”
It was all clear. I was dying—I would be dead soon. “Please,” I said to the Suicide. I reached for the shore.
“Just let yourself sink down,” said the Suicide.
I looked below me. Melody’s face was so close.
* * *
But then a line dropped from above. I looked up and saw the fish, the trout heart, with my storycatcher—one that I’d stowed in the back of my truck. Now I was the story he was catching. “Grab the line,” said the trout heart.
I grabbed it and the fish pulled me up—the fish fished me out. He hauled me onto the riverbank, but I could hardly move—there was something wrong with my arms and my legs.
The Suicide appeared next to us. “What are you doing?”
“Saving this man,” said the trout.
“I was saving him,” said the Suicide. “Just like I saved her.”
The trout heart put me over his shoulder and hustled me down the path.
“He wanted to be with her!” shouted the Suicide.
“You wanted him to be with her,” the trout yelled back. “This story never had anything to do with him.”
My left arm was—and is, and will always be—completely fiction. There was death in my ears, in my eyes, in my mind. “Am I going to die?” I said.
The trout said, “Do you want to die?”
“No,” I said.
“Then you won’t,” said the fish, and he started running faster.
* * *
I’d like to end this story by reporting that the Suicide was killed—that the trout took out his heart or something. But that would be a different, better story. This story is, we got into my truck and we drove out of the gorge. But halfway home, on a ridiculous hill on 143, we broke down and had to call a friend of the trout’s to pick us up.
My legs healed, and the death drained from my eyes and ears and mind. The only fiction remaining is my left arm—everything from the shoulder down is invented.
Even so, I understand what happened now. She wanted to marry me—she did. But she died. She loved me, and then she died.
My heart was supposed to return at the end of that week, but it didn’t. The trout heart stayed with me for an extra day, and then had to move on to another client. He called my heart’s cell phone and left an irate message about his motorcycle. Then the trout heart took a cab to the train station.
In the months that followed, I tried filling my chest cavity with other things—fresh flowers, two birds, a stone. I wanted something that reminded me I was still alive. The following spring, I went to the Squeeze Box in Patience and bought a small, used melodica. It was blue and plastic and it wheezed notes every time I took a breath.
But then, one day about a year later, I was sitting at my kitchen table, trying to work on my novel, when I heard a sound in the distance. I stood up just in time to see a heart-driven motorcycle gurgling up the drive.
That summer, my wife sat me down at the kitchen table, started to cry, and told me she couldn’t be married to me any longer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Chris.”
I took her hands in mine. “Can’t we fix this?” I said. “We can fix this!”
My wife shook her head. “It’s too late.”
“No it isn’t,” I said. “We could go on a vacation. Or see a therapist!”
“But it’s already happening, Chris,” she said.
“What is?”
“The divorce,” she said, and she nodded out the window. When I looked outside I saw the arms of our house hammering a for-sale sign into the lawn. As soon as the sign was in the ground a car pulled up to the curb. A man and a woman got out; they looked like us but younger. They said something to the house and the house extended its hand. The man and woman both shook it. Then a moving truck pulled up.
I ran outside. “What’s going on out here?” I said to the house.
“We’ve been drifting apart for a while,” said the couple in unison, and they walked past me and into the house.
“That’s because you said you needed space,” I called out to them.
“I did need space,” said one of the movers, carrying a sofa toward me.
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