Open Water by Caleb Nelson (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

do was hold each other in the darkness. Now, you have opened the box and left it unguarded in the night. You have both placed faith in the other that you will wake up intact. You have acted on a feeling. You are in a memory of the present. You are tumbling through a fever dream, surfacing only to plunge once more.

12

You would like to talk about the suppressions.

You are walking along Battersea Bridge. Leaning over the edge, the water choppy, the phone line clear, the words urgent, the language flimsy and insufficient, the feelings honest. You’re standing on Battersea Bridge, watching the water ripple, and you wonder what caused the first ripple in this situation. She’s at the airport, waiting for her flight to Dublin, asking the same question, re­­tracing to the first night you met. She’s trying to understand what passed between you that night, and simultaneously understanding that she cannot comprehend. She’s thinking about your drunken excursion, from central to ­south-­east London. More immediately, the ­five-­day stretch in which you have barely left each other, in which nothing really happened but two friends sharing a bed and knowing an intimacy some never will. That is to ask, what is a joint? What is a fracture? What is a break?

‘We’re going round in circles at this point.’

‘OK, well shit, lay it on me,’ she says.

‘We both know that something has happened in the past few days, something we can’t ignore.’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘But that’s the point. It would’ve been easier if we’d slept with each other. What happened was, I dunno. A bit more real.’

Her breath is thick as the silence down the line.

‘So what do we do now?’

‘I am running from this.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I can’t do this. There’s too many factors, there’s too much on the line. You’re my friend. You’re one of my closest. And my ex? Samuel would have a field day with this. Nah, this is too complex.’

‘What about you? What do you want to do?’

‘I have to go catch my plane.’

The next day, you can barely hear her on the phone over the clatter of cups in the café. You take refuge on the street, pacing in the small patch in front of the shop. Brick Lane is quiet, even for a weekday. You’re wearing a ­T-­shirt because spring is showing flashes of summer, cloudless blue, orange corona high in the sky. You’re laughing and joking, and it’s easier to do this, to open a box and close it quick, seal it with sharp quips, that is, ­until –

‘I cannot wait to break this dry patch, you know.’

‘Uh-­huh.’

‘Hoping you break yours soon too.’

‘Oh. Erm.’ She sniffs. ‘Yeah, it’s a little late for that.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I, er, yeah. I broke mine already.’

‘But you only went back yesterday?’

‘Yeah. It happened yesterday.’

‘Oh. OK.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah,’ you lie. ‘I’m OK.’

‘This is weird.’

‘It is.’

‘But it’s not like I owe you anything. We’re just friends.’

‘You don’t. We are.’

‘I think I should go.’

‘OK.’ And she hesitates for a moment before signing off and hanging up.

You stand for some time, an unmoving car ploughed into from behind.

The same day, you leave an ­Uber – the walk from the station to your friend’s house was too far in the darkness that fell quick and full. You have taken two or three steps. Your friend’s house is in sight. You could throw a stone and it would shatter the window. You’re thinking of an evening with a glass of wine, a record spinning in the background. You’re thinking of good food and better company. You’re in a memory of something yet to happen, when they stop you, like a moving vehicle edged off the road. They tell you there has been a spate of robberies in the area. They say many residents describe a man fitting your description. They ask where you are going and where you have come from. They say you appeared out of nowhere. Like magic, almost. They don’t hear your protests. They don’t hear your voice. They don’t hear you. They don’t see you. They see someone, but that person is not you. They would like to see what is in your bag. Your possessions are scattered across the ground in front of you. They say they are just doing their jobs. They say you are free to go now.

You make it halfway up the path to the door. You are hollowed out, like it was not just your bag they emptied. You are no longer in control of your limbs. You don’t know how long you’ve been standing in front of the door when your friend calls, asking where you are. You tell them something has come up, that you won’t be able to make it. You call an Uber and go home.

You tell no one about that incident, like you told no one about the time they stopped you, hard. Your friend was driving, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gesticulating as he preached. You remember talking about having faith and God and beauty and that which cannot be explained. You remember speaking of religion and power and Blackness. You remember making a joke which prised open his serious features, laughter rumbling from his chest. You don’t remember the contents of the joke, but you’re sure, like much of your humour, it was quick, sharp, rooted in all you can explain and all you cannot. You remember the silence was heavy with all that was not said, all that goes unsaid. The moment stretched and held, and you knew both of you wanted to say you were scared and heavy, but reticence was a song you both knew by heart. Instead, you said you were hungry. He pulled over and that’s when you heard a ­screech-­squeal-­scream of tyre.

Second time this week. Don’t you get tired?

Drowned by ­screech-­squeal-­scream of get out of the car get out of the car get out of the car. They ordered you to the ground for symbolic purposes. Playing dead. You let out a skinny whimper sharp as a butter