The Pisces
Page 23

When I left Claire, I blocked Garrett in my phone. I also deleted the Tinder app. Then I went to Whole Foods and bought myself an expensive array of ingredients: a cod fillet, little clams, good olive oil, a bottle of white wine, black truffles, shallots, chanterelles. I finally bought Dominic the ingredients for his turkey, pea, and zucchini dish. Even though I’m not a great cook, we were going to have a little feast.
First I stewed up his mess. I loved watching him eat, how absorbed in it and unselfconscious he was, gobbling quickly and getting right to the point. I loved the sounds he made with his black lips and pink tongue, all sloppy and smacking, totally engrossed in his meal. Occasionally he would stop midbowl, still chewing, and glance at me sideways for a moment as if to say, What are you looking at? I’m just eating. We all do it, you know.
Then I cooked the fillet and clams in the wine and oil, browning the mushrooms and shallots to a crisp. It was delicious. I drank the rest of the wine and sat down with my Sappho.
Sappho’s gaps are not intentional negative space, and I do not propose we read them as such. The words are gone and they are never coming back, I typed. We can try to fill the gaps with biographical knowledge, but this will not replicate the music. Guessing at gaps cannot simulate music. Nor can the silence of the gaps simulate the missing music either. But the silence comes closer.
Had Claire somehow helped me find a new direction, a new legitimacy to my thesis? At least I was admitting that my own idea had been bullshit—that you couldn’t read something as intentional if it had never been intentional, even through a perverted academic lens. Yet one crux of my thesis remained: there should be no attempt made to fill in the gaps with biography or bullshit narrative. So what to do with them then—the discomfort of not knowing? How to savor what was there without guessing at what wasn’t? I was drunk but the question seemed good. The writing seemed good.
Around midnight, somehow, I found myself back out again on the rocks. It was chilly and I didn’t bring a sweater. I looked around, and then, feeling embarrassed, I stopped. It was obvious Theo wasn’t there, but I kept imagining that he was—or that he was deeper in the waves, farther out, watching me looking for him, laughing. I pretended to myself that I had come out to the rocks simply because I had wanted to be near the ocean. But I was disappointed.
I turned to go home.
“Lucy,” said a voice.
It was Theo. Had he been hiding behind a rock? This kid was confusing. When I felt him watching me from far away, maybe was he watching me from much closer? He sort of bobbed a few feet away.
“You’re back,” I said cheerfully, but casual. I did not ask where he had been.
“I’m back,” he said. “How have the dates been treating you?”
“Disgusting,” I said.
“Ah, too bad.”
“Each its own little death.”
“Funny,” he said. “You’re like a little death.”
“What?” I asked.
“You are. You’re…gloomy yet charming. I like it.”
“Well, no one has said that before.”
“You’re gently death-ish. You know about death, you’re aware of it, and most people aren’t anymore. But you’re not a killer. You’re a soft darkness.”
A soft darkness.
“Yeah, I’m aware of death,” I said. I was thinking about the doughnut incident. “In high school I wore black lipstick and black nail polish.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s not manufactured. You have it in you.”
“What about you? What’s your story?” I asked.
“Oh God, I hate my story,” said Theo.
“I bet you have a great story.”
“What do you want to know, exactly?” he asked. He was treading water a little faster now. I caught a glint of his wet suit under the waves.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Around here,” he said.
“So cryptic,” I said. “Are you aware of death?”
Asking that, I felt kind of creepy in a good way. He had a lot of power in not revealing too much of himself. Just that lack of willingness to disclose—that’s all it took for me to perceive rejection. So this gave me a little edge. Also, his observation about me and death could have been a bit scary if he wasn’t so matter-of-fact. I mean, he was a stranger, male, and likely stronger than me. He could easily pull me off a rock into the water and drown me. But I trusted him completely—at least in terms of my physical safety. And now that he had complimented me about my proximity to death and I had owned it, and thrown it right back at him, I felt cool. We had both decided now that death was my territory. I was the Professor of Death. Much more than a middle-aged woman who was beginning to get serious crushy feelings for a young stranger in the water.
“I know about death,” he said.
“Have you ever seen someone die?” I asked. “Like up close and one-on-one?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have watched a number of people die.”
“Scary, right? The dying process. I don’t feel scared about death but dying freaks me the fuck out.”
“I’m not scared of dying,” he said.
“You’re not?”
Now he was the professor and I was the pussy.
“I would say I’m less scared of dying than I am of life.”
Actually, I maybe agreed with him.
“I think I’m equally scared of both,” I said.
This was the truth. It felt good to say it.
“What is it about dying that scares you the most? Are you afraid of having regrets?”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s literally the physical process. Like, the suffocation. I’m so scared to be suffocating and panicking. I get panicked even when I go to the dentist. I am not good with discomfort. So I think I’m more scared of the discomfort—my own fear around it—than anything else.”
“It might be scary for a moment,” he said. “Maybe for a few minutes. But then, from what I’ve seen, you are very free.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s the fear before the freedom that I’m scared of. If I could just go to sleep—just like that, go to sleep and never wake up—I would do that anytime. I would do it tonight. But I’m scared to be conscious while it’s happening.”
“I had that feeling about you. That you would be happy to just go to sleep.”
“Why? Because I’m so boring?”
“Not at all,” he said. “The opposite. But I can feel you’ve suffered.”
He was so dramatic.
“Yeah, well, life is the dumbest,” I said, standing up.
“I’ve suffered too,” he said. “I’ve been sick.”
This piqued my interest.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I have stomach problems, terrible stomach cramps. Problems with my bowel. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
The word bowel made me giggle.
“What kind of problems?” I said. “Like you can’t go or you go too much?”
“Both,” he said. “It depends on the day.”
“I’m sorry I’m laughing. I know it’s not funny. But it’s weird talking about this with a stranger.”
“We all do it, you know.”
“I know. Have you ever accidentally gone in your wet suit?”