by K B Jensen
“Can I show you how to skip properly?” he asked on the third day, breaking the silence that had come after she had asked him his name. “You need the right kind of stone, a flat one. You have to arc your wrist like this.” He held her hand and she felt her knees go weak as he wound her wrist back and forth and swayed her arm. After a moment, she pulled away like he had hit her.
“Do you live around here?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Want me to walk you home?” he asked.
“You know I can’t be seen with a man like you,” she said, looking up and down the beach. “It’s better if you leave me alone.”
He winced but walked away. He knew the rules, too.
That night she was unable to sleep. She just kept rolling and turning in her bed, wrapped up in blue sheets. The whoosh of a ceiling fan reminded her of the waves. The clouds were rolling in. The wind was building outside. When it came down to it, she knew almost nothing about him, just that he liked to throw stones. And she wanted to hate him. She wanted more than anything to hate him, to forget him. This is my life, she thought, a mess, a tangle of sheets.
She unwound the sheets and got out of bed. When she got to the pier, he was already there, skipping stones across the waves before dawn. The rocks jumped across the dark, silvery water.
He tried not to look her in the eye as she walked by. His eyes stung as they stared and blinked down at the sand, but the moment she passed, he looked up and watched her walk away. She had small, white flowers in her black hair.
He started walking behind her, reached for her arm. She turned and shook his hand off her. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you. I can’t talk to you.”
“Why not?” he said.
“Not a good idea,” she said.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
The wind whipped his black hair over one of his eyes and she wanted to wipe it away, wipe it back. Would it kill her to reach up and touch his hair? Would it kill her to touch him? She wondered.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“I don’t know you,” she muttered. Why couldn’t she just keep her eyes off him, she wondered. She stared at the sand. She looked down at the dark silvery water lapping her sandaled feet, down at the rocks, the tangled green black seaweed, crab claws, the stones, trying not to look at him in the dim morning light.
“What do I have to do to get your attention?” he asked. “To stand a chance.”
She didn’t answer.
“Marry me,” he said breathlessly.
She laughed. “You’re joking,” she said.
“You could marry me. I’d do anything for you.”
“Would you?” she said. “Do you know what I’d have to do for you, for a stranger, if I married you?”
He looked down at the white sand and seashells.
“I’d have to give up my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents. I’d have to forget everyone else I ever loved to be with you. I’d have to kill their love to get yours. They’d never approve.”
“My family would accept you. But if they didn’t, I’d walk away from them as long as I had you.”
“And my faith, would you accept that?”
“And your faith.”
“You don’t know me. You’re playing with me. I can’t give up my family,” she said. “It’s not that easy. I don’t even know you.”
“I feel like I know you,” he said. “I’m not playing. Let’s just talk for a while. Walk with me.”
They walked for miles along the beach. The sun was just starting to split silver and gold across the sea. The fishermen were casting their nets out on the water. They were distant figures, outlines, in their boats.
“I’m studying to be a doctor,” he said. “I’m a respectable man, you know.”
“Are you?” she said, laughing. “I haven’t decided what I want.”
“What kind of man you want or what you want to be?” he asked.
“Neither,” she said. “I’m still young.”
“How young?” he asked.
“Nineteen.”
“Ahh, a rebellious teenager. I’m twenty five.”
She said nothing, just crossed her arms.
“You ask me a question, now, anything at all,” he said.
“What are you most afraid of?” she asked.
“Watching you marry another man,” he said.
“You’re a man with an agenda,” she muttered. “I don’t trust you.”
“So you’re most afraid of me, then?” he said playfully.
“No, I’m most afraid of wild dogs,” she said, smiling. “Are you a wild dog?”
“Maybe,” he said.
The air smelled of salt and they came across the old chapel. It was one of those relics from the Portuguese, small, wooden and weather-beaten with a gray cross hanging on top, slanted with gold paint flaking off. He pried a board off the side of the window and hopped inside.
“Want to see?” he asked. He pulled her by the hand over the window ledge.
Why did she feel so at ease with those dark eyes and that warm voice?
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “But I’ve never brought a girl here, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He chuckled.
He flipped the light switch and a few light fixtures lit up the room: burnt-out bulbs and chandeliers dotted the hallway. She was surprised by the flickering electricity.
“You could marry me here,” he said.
“But we aren’t Christian,” she said.
“A technicality that works in our favor. We don’t have to choose one faith over the other, a new faith,” he said. “Marry me.”
“How?” she said. “There isn’t a priest here.”
“There’s no one here,” he said.
“Marry me now,” he said, pressing his body against hers in the hallway, tugging at the white flowers in her hair until they fell onto the floor.
“I can’t,” she said, touching his hair. God, it was so soft in her fingers.
“Please,” he said. “Any vow you want me to take. I’ll take it.”
It was quick. It was so quick that first kiss darting across her throat, flashing across her lips. She could feel his chest pressed against her breasts, feel her back pressed against the wood paneling in the dimly lit hallway. His face was cast in a yellow glow, glowing against the rich red of the mahogany wood paneling behind him, behind her. It was the smell of dust and floorboards and nervous sweat and old lights. It was the smell of skin closing in on skin. He looked golden against the old lights. His lips, his nose, the way the light caught in his black hair.
He unbuttoned her top, trying to unpeel her layers. At first she shook her head to one side but no words came out, and she didn’t stop his hands or hers from their wandering. It felt like he was searching for a way under her skin, like he wanted to live within her and wanted her to live within him. And that didn’t bother her as much as it should have because it was only for a moment. That’s what she thought. No one can live within you forever. That’s what she thought.
It was a strange thing the way zippers and buttons fell away and fabric unfolded and unfurled so naturally until it was just the two of them in that hallway. Soft, bare skin pressed against wood paneling. He held her hand above her head, clasped her fingers within his in a strange kind of prayer and pounded her against the wall until the dust shook off the light fixtures, and floated down silver, almost like a gray mist falling on them. Ashes to ashes, she thought, dust to dust, a funeral of sorts because the moment, the “marriage,” wouldn’t last, even though they wanted it to.
And he was so beautiful with those angel arms holding her hands above her. And the way he looked into her eyes, like she was the only woman in the world. She threw her head back and tried not to scream, tried not to cry, and he buried it all in a kiss. He buried it all in a
cascade of kisses. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Kiss after kiss. Stone after stone.
He was sinking, and she was skipping across the water.
He was sinking, and she was a skipping stone.
* * *
Julie blushed in the dark. It felt like she had shared something intimate with him. It was as though they were two dreamers sharing the same blanket. Peter said nothing for a moment. “But they barely know each other. How could they possibly love each other?” he said softly.
“It seems to be a theme, doesn’t it,” she said.
“Impossible love,” he muttered.
Was he talking about the characters or the two of them, she wondered. The lines were starting to blur in the darkness, with the fatigue. She took off a glove and stroked his cheek with the back of her finger. It was a strange little gesture. Affectionate but not sensual. It felt like they had already done that part. “Love at first sight,” she muttered. “Has that ever happened to you?”
“Maybe. Like I always say, hindsight’s 20/20,” he said. “It’s not always possible to tell in the middle of something like that.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Tell me more about yourself, Peter,” she said. “I’d like to know more about you. I feel like you know way too much about me, through my stories.”
“I really don’t know that much about you, and there isn’t enough time,” he said, staring at the clock in the car. The display was blank, lifeless without the car battery. Peter looked down at his watch and grimaced as he moved his head.
“Why don’t you tell me more about Elizabeth,” she said.
“There’s not much to tell,” he said.
“How did you meet her?” Julie asked.
He paused, thinking.
“Sometimes, I wonder who was to blame,” Peter said softly. “Was it my fault or her fault that I loved her? What was it about her that made me love her so much? Sometimes, I try to find the exact moment it started.
“We were just kids back then, in college. I saw her in the Helen C. White library immersed in a book, her long black hair falling forward as she read, To Kill a Mockingbird. She looks up at me with these sparkling green eyes, and I feel the rest of the world disappear.
“She smiled at me and kept reading. She hadn’t even spoken. It only lasted a second. I didn’t know what to say to her, if I could say anything. I knew I had to say something. I set my bag down and pulled up a wooden chair to the table. There she was diagonal from me and suddenly I saw it, a tiny, black spider dangling in front of her face. Her hand had been pressed against her forehead while she read, hunched over, and the spider dangled below her fingers. There it was helplessly swaying inches from her skin.
“‘You’ve got a spider dangling from your hair,’ I said. She looked up and saw it. She stared at it for a moment. It was actually attached to her hand by a silver string. She watched it, totally fascinated, not afraid, and then it dropped and ran across her arm. I watched it disappear, and I knew I looked a little too long, eyeing her arm a little longer than I should have, admiring a small part of her while I could.
“She did it then. She looked up at me. She had a way of locking eyes with me, a way that made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Maybe that was my imagination. But I felt like the spider then, small and helpless. I felt like running away. She had so much power over me, even then. She was the puppeteer and I was the puppet. I was attached by a string.
“‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
“‘Peter,’ I said.
“‘Like the children’s story,’ she said softly. ‘Peter Rabbit. I don’t know what makes me think of that.’ And then she laughed like music. I loved the sound of it, and that was how it started.”
“And how did it end?” Julie asked softly.
“The usual way. We got into a fight,” Peter said.
“Like a fist fight?” Julie asked.
“No, like an argument. Why would you think a fistfight? You think I’m a violent person?” He inhaled sharply.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I never got a chance to propose you know. She found the ring on her own, rifling through my sock drawer. She was always stealing my socks. Never had a girlfriend who didn’t.”
“You should have found a better hiding place,” Julie said.
“Why hide your heart?” he said. “I was still trying to think of a way to ask her. But all I could think of were clichés. I had gone through a list of things I could do, a scavenger hunt, a romantic dinner, a live band. I even toyed with doing it at a baseball game, asking her to marry me on one of those big screens. Elizabeth loves baseball.
“I came home and she was waiting for me at the kitchen table with the ring in its little black box in her hands. She kept opening and closing it. I could feel a twinge in my heart every time she snapped it shut. There was something so final about that noise.
“‘I’m not ready,’ she said. ‘I want to be free.’
“I didn’t take it well,” he said.
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Julie said. She stared at the condensation on the window. She was tired of wiping it off. There was nothing new to see outside anyway.
“Then what did she do?” Julie asked.
“She left. She said she had met someone else. She said she was tired of me being down all the time. I just couldn’t take it so I started walking. I wanted to get the hell out of the apartment we shared.
“I walked out in the dead of winter, just started walking and walking,” Peter said. “There was something about the snow that seemed to mimic the way I felt. It was cold, frozen and whirling and I just went walking in it. I didn’t care about freezing to death. I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to walk, to get away from it all. I just went numb after a while. It crept into my fingers and toes and then it seemed to spread from there.”
“Did you want to die?” Julie asked. “Is that why you jumped in front of my car?”
Peter didn’t answer. He didn’t even shake his head. “I had a breakdown,” he said. “That’s the easiest way to put it. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone. I felt like everyone would be better off without me. All I could think about was the hurting, the aching in my heart, and I wanted it to stop somehow, and I felt like if I just kept moving, if I just kept walking I would get to the end of it somehow, that I would find a way to end it.”
“Damn, Peter. That’s not good. Promise me you’ll get some help and live your life after this,” Julie said, adjusting her position to look him in the eyes. She put a hand on his shoulder. “You need help, like professional help. There’s no shame in that. You have to survive. Promise me.”
“Only if you promise to finish your book,” he said, with a sad smile. “Why don’t you promise me that?”
“Okay,” Julie said. “I will. Just don’t expect it to be any good… God, I’m tired.”
“Don’t go to sleep,” he said. “Stay awake and talk to me for a while longer.”
“I think it’s been long enough,” she said. “You can go to sleep again. You need your rest. The bleeding has stopped. We just have to wait for help to come, for the day to break. We have to wait for the storm to calm down.”
“Don’t sleep,” he said. “I don’t want you to sleep. I’m afraid.”
“I’m afraid too, but what’s the point in worrying about it?” she asked.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been a friend to me in a dark time.”
“Don’t thank me,” she said. “I’ve done nothing but try to make up for the fact that I hit you with my car.”
He laughed at the ridiculousness of the statement and she liked the sound.
She snuggled closer to him, for the warmth. It was a strange feeling to be so close to a stranger. But she felt like she knew him now. They had traded so many stories.
“I can’t die until I write my book,” she muttered. “I can’t. I still haven
’t finished it. Maybe a little unfinished business is a good thing.”
“There’s nothing more tragic than an unfinished story,” Peter said.
She thought about getting out, but she was too tired to unbury the car, too cold, so she let the snow cover the glass. She curled up against the hitchhiker’s chest and went to sleep. She dreamt of angels.
He was checking his watch when the hands landed on four a.m. She had left the key in the ignition and the other keys on the chain swayed slightly. So I was wrong, he thought, with a smile. Maybe I’m not a psychic.
She was curled up against his chest like a child. He had been playing with her blond hair, winding it around his fingers. Maybe that was creepy of him, but he couldn’t help it. He’d caress it and then put his hand back in her pocket. She was beautiful. He loved the soft sound of her voice, the way she told her little tales. Something about their conversations made him feel lighter, more at peace. Or maybe it was the possibility of death coming soon.
His watch could always be fast, couldn’t it? The windows were covered in snow. The drift had blown over the car and buried even more of it. Wisps of snow travelled on the wind, like sand blowing over a dune.
Then he heard the scraping noise behind them, the grumble of an engine.
She was sleeping when the plow came, not that it would have changed anything if she had been awake. He saw the flash of white light against the glass. He had seen it rise up and over their shoulders, casting their figures black like shadow puppets. There hadn’t been any time to react. But she had made a sound, a whimper, a cringe and then the impact of metal against metal, jarring, tossing his head around like a toy, a doll with its head about to snap. Except his didn’t snap. And there was glass all around them, flying like diamonds, flying like the snow outside. And she was flying away like an angel, her arms out like a bird’s wings trying to catch her fall as she crashed through the glass and soared out of the car. Something about it all fluttering around him reminded him of Christmas, reminded him of ornaments on a tree, red and white, and sparkling and shining. The metal twisted around metal.