higher up my chest but it's me moving, not the water. Wading out with elbows lifted up in line with my ears like a beach tourist who's determined to go all the way in this time but delays the inevitable with a goofy, off-balance jig.
So cold it's clear I won't get far if I go out much deeper. More than five minutes spent up to your neck in this and it's all over.
I've got some time.
An attempt at a breaststroke at first but my arms won't go out that wide, so I make my way with a kind of tadpole wriggle instead, throwing my shoulders forward and kicking legs joined at the knees. Making enough noise that I can't hear whether I'm holding my breath or not, and I'm glad for this because I know such a faltering sound would only panic me more than I already am. But greater than fear there is an idea of purpose, a grim duty that must be tended to.
The cramps start no more than twenty feet out. Glance back toward shore and I can still make out the detailed shape of the trees, the cracked trunks and nubbed crookedness of the branches. Nose kept an inch above the water. Wriggle out some more.
Then a sound I didn't notice before, an echo of the same disturbance of the water that I'm making myself. Someone swimming beside and slightly behind me. The rippling waves of our bodies meeting with tiny slaps in the space between us.
A face that cuts through the surface and stops the same time I do. And at first I see it as my own, although I realize in the same instant that it looks nothing like me aside from the blue skin and ice-crusted hair. A man with little strength left pulling catches of air through a frozen grimace. Then it becomes who it's supposed to be. My client. Working to tread water no more than an arm's length away, but going down in half-inch increments even as I recognize who he is.
He doesn't say anything, although it's unlikely he could even if he tried. I know this because I try myself but without results. We are left to watch each other without any gesture of forgiveness or horror or rescue. The fact of our situation so plain, there's no point even acknowledging it. We've brought ourselves out here and we can't stay afloat for much more than a dozen seconds longer and following that we'll both drown.
But Tripp decides not to wait that long. The bobbing of his head caused by whatever movement is keeping him up abruptly stops and yet for a moment he stays exactly where he is. Eyes open on mine but he's not seeing me anymore, they're just frozen that way. The grimace turned to an empty show of yellow bone. Sits like this above the waterline as though his skull were made of Styrofoam.
And then he goes down all at once.
Maybe my own head goes under because my body exhausts itself at the same time he decides to give up. Maybe I go down just to watch him go.
The darkness enfolding him in the time it takes me to focus on where he is only a couple of feet below. And once he's gone it all goes with him--there's no water or cold, up or down, me or him. A dream that ends not with waking but the revelation of what it is to be nothing at all.
It's the crushing pain in my chest that brings me back. Overcoat thrown off onto the stones that glow mottled blue in the dawn light. Shoes still tied to my feet and pants held stiff down my legs, crisp with ice. Sitting up, clutching at my neck and the top of my arms. First time I've ever had a heart attack for an alarm clock.
After a while the pain drains away on its own, though, or most of it, a weight still wrapped around my ribs like a lead vest. The lake licking up to my ankles over the blistered sand. There's no sign of Tripp or anyone else except for a whiff of burning spruce that floats downwind from Helen Arthurs's chimney. No prints left on the pebbly shore, although I don't really bother to look. Nothing in my head but the idea that I have to get up now or I never will.
I pick my coat up and throw it over my shoulders, arms too stiff to find the holes. Make my way into the still darkened trees following the drifting smell of smoke as much as the trail itself.
chapter 49
The following morning comes after eighteen hours of dreamless sleep. If the front desk phone rang through the night I didn't hear it, and the one in my room has been silent since I pulled its cord out of the wall and tossed it in the closet. The floor littered with folded notes from the concierge, white lilies on the hardwood floor.
There's a swelling ache I recognize as hunger, a migraine from the long denials of thirst. Scuffing along the walls, pulling on clothes as the chill requires them. I'm aware of how the movement of my body is the only thing that disturbs the perfect quiet of the room. In the air, a trace of my sweat.
Though it's with you at every moment, it's always something of a surprise to discover that you can be at once alive and alone.
I've come to say good-bye.''
Doug Pittle turns from where he stands four rungs up a stepladder replacing a book the size of a small suitcase on the top shelf of one of the stacks. A leather-bound
''Didn't know you were still in town,'' he says, squinting eyes still swollen from sleep.
''It's a hard place to leave.''
''You're telling me.''
Pittle could have been a tall man. At least his standing above me on the ladder doesn't look wrong so long as I keep my eyes chest high. With his rich voice and beard and considered movements--he would make a better tall man than I do. It's fate, it's dumb luck, it's all in the genes. Nothing to do but blame your parents.
''So have you spoken to Tripp since the trial?'' he says.
''No, I haven't, as a matter of fact.''
''Well, that makes two of us. I've been trying to hunt him down for an interview, but he seems to have disappeared.''
''I'm sure he just wants to be alone.''
Pittle heaves the textbook cradled in his fingers onto the shelf and climbs down to lean against the ladder's base. And without looking at him I realize that he knows who I am. Has known for a while probably, having done his homework--''Crane Girl Drowns in Fireweed Lake'' found in an early
The two of us stand there for a while, our eyes scanning the gold lettering along the uniform spines of the texts on the shelf next to us.
''You've ordered these rather sensibly,'' I say. ''Is it the Dewey Decimal System or the Doug Pittle Method that puts science on top, followed by black magic and ending with your old, everyday psychotic murderers?''
''That would be me. Actually, taken together this whole stack is the most popular in the joint.''
We nod together at this but keep our eyes on the titles, the space where we stand too small for eye contact between parting men who have known each other for only a short time.
''Listen, Doug, I'm sorry about the interview. I know I promised, but I can't do it right now.''
''Don't worry about it,'' he says, picking up
''Hey, sure. And look me up if you ever get down to Toronto. I'm serious. Drinks on me.''
''Absolutely. Sounds good.''
We look at each other directly now and there's an understanding that no such calls will be made. And not because we wouldn't want to or that, in the weeks and months ahead, the idea won't occur to us, but because we simply won't. Doug Pittle will stay here with the newspaper that's always four or five days late with the news and with the library that nobody seems to use. He won't get down to the city because he's made his own place and
