All she could come up with were memories of happier times. Look, she wanted to tell Adine, see when we were happy, see how happy we can be? Though what was wrong with happiness, she thought. Maybe what they needed was exactly that — a celebration and reminder. She settled on a story: their first kiss.
They’d gone to Budai Beach so Adine could show Debbie how erosion would have swallowed her Sand City. The night was moonless. They slipped out of their shoes and sat where the waves swished up onto the shore and withdrew fizzing into the lake. Adine’s leg brushed Debbie’s, retreated, then she reached over with her toes and playfully pinched Debbie’s calf, and Debbie yelped and Adine leaned down to press her lips to Debbie’s leg. When she came up her face was close. Neither of them said anything. Everything felt a little lost in the dark. Trembling, Debbie leaned in and — miracle! — Adine was doing the same. They kissed and Debbie thought, This is the most perfect kiss in the history of kisses. And after an instant or forever Adine pulled away and said, Fuggin finally, holy shet.
Debbie recalled a funny interpretation that had always batted mothlike around the fringes of this memory: When we first kissed, wrote Debbie, it was like two halves of the same strawberry pressed back together. Reading this over, her cheeks flushed. She could hear Adine’s laugh, a skewer that pricked and went sliding into her heart, pictured her puckering her lips and teasing, Don’t be shy, put my strawberry together. Don’t make fun of me! Debbie’d wail. You’re mean!
She dropped her pen. Here she was once again, performing herself in caricature. Always Debbie gushed and swooned, safely mawkish and too much, and Adine played the cruel realist, cutting her down with jokes. Though it felt good to make her laugh, and eventually Debbie would be laughing too. This dynamic preserved the illusion that they were still having fun — and it was, actually, fun. But also exhausting: fearing them corny Debbie buried her most heartfelt thoughts somewhere inaccessible even to herself. And Adine? She wondered if their theatrics had numbed Adine to her own heart entirely.
From the front door came a creaking sound.
Debbie sprung from the ledge. Adine?
It was only the apartment, its rickety walls spoke their own dialect of ticking and groans. Adine? echoed through the empty rooms. Debbie did this often, called her name, sometimes for no reason — it just came out, midsentence while reading or doing the dishes: Adine? And when Adine came harrumphing into the room, hands on hips, and Debbie would have to invent some excuse as to why she needed her. What was this instinct, akin to some nightmare-stricken child pawing for a parent in the dark: Adine, Adine, Adine?
But now she didn’t come. The letter lay unfinished and abandoned somewhere between thoughts. Fog choked E Street. Adine was out there somewhere in it, thinking spitefully of Debbie. But where? To whom might she flee? At Sam’s maybe — but the phone was dead, there was no way to call. The island suddenly seemed too huge, its streets sprawling in vast and terrifying catacombs within the mist.
Debbie tore out a page from her notebook, wrote a quick purposeful note: Not sure where you are. Worried. Heading out to find you. Sorry about last night. See you back here if you come home first. Love, Deb. This she taped to the TV, collected her jacket and keys, and with a glance over the apartment, taking everything in, realized that Adine might not be able to read it. But she’d left. She’d gone somewhere. She couldn’t have done it blind. So the note was a gesture of faith, thought Debbie, as she headed out into the city, making sure to leave the door unlocked.
CALUM HAS NO idea how long he’s been walking. The scene keeps repeating: the bridge is identical with the same beams and girders and lampposts and the smooth roadway split with the yellow dividing line, the horizon never gets any closer, there is no way to gauge how much distance he’s travelled and no change in light to suggest the progression of hours. Also each step feels part of a steady fluid motion that his body performs outside of itself, churning along the bridge so along the bridge his body walks, toward — toward what, toward nothing.
He remembers hearing a voice, the voice hasn’t returned. From which direction did it come and should he be seeking or escaping it, Calum doesn’t know, he doesn’t know which he is doing anyway. The silence out here is cottony, a river would make some watery whispering noise but whatever’s below doesn’t, it just hovers blackly beneath the mist and everything’s dampened and the only noise sometimes is the bird: and here is the bird, the fup-fup of its wings as it flies by and disappears, where does it go, Calum wonders. All he sees is the sky, and the bridge, so he walks.
The air smells of water. Nothing is getting closer: there is no nearing shore, just the endless bridge which slopes gently to an apex beyond which it seems to slope down, though Calum is perennially on the upslope, the apex always just beyond reach, he feels himself chasing a wave as it rolls steadily away.
It feels, Calum thinks, like being on some enormous treadmill. The girders and beams and lampposts he passes indicate momentum, yet they are the same, the same, the same. He seems to be a character, he thinks, in a piece of cheap amateur cinema with the scenery cranked around and around on an endlessly repeating scroll.
And if this is a film then Calum’s body is just an illusion, he thinks, a mirage fidgeting in and out of existence, and if the projector breaks or stops Calum will shudder for a moment and then fade and cease to even be. Like something dreamed and destroyed upon waking. And so to exist he must keep moving, toward the bridge’s peak, toward nothing, just on along the bridge and forever and ever on.
THE TRAY PUNCHED through the slot, a jeering tongue. Sam approached cautiously. Upon it was an applecore nibbled into an hourglass and already browning. He peered through the peephole. The armoire was empty.
You ate the apple Raven, said Sam, so I know you’re in there Raven.
He shifted his ear to the peephole, listened.
Outside a sprinkler spat arcs of water over the roominghouse lawn.
I can’t even let you out if I wanted to okay. I don’t even have the combination of this lock. There’s a way I guess of getting it open, a boy showed me how from your book. But I don’t know how. I don’t remember. I never knew.
Sam removed the applecore, pushed the tray in square with the door. From underground there was no sign of time’s machine starting up again. The floor didn’t judder or vibrate, the silence down there felt booming and hollow. And his third watch was still stopped. Now the end would be like a train barrelling headlong to a precipice, the tracks running out, and the whole thing hurtling over the edge.
You have to help us, said Sam. You have to okay. I’ve done all the work and —
From inside the armoire came the sound of a book opened in a windstorm, pages flapping madly. Sam peeked in. Something ragged and panicked fretted through the dim light: a bird. It bumped against the ceiling, flung itself against the door, settled. A few feathers puffed through the crack, drifted to the carpet.
I can’t let you out okay, said Sam, even if I wanted to.
The armoire shuddered with another collision, the bird squawked, hit the door again, beak and claws ticking.