The Pisces
Page 57

I wanted to leave my suitcase at the foot of her stairs, sit down beside my sister, and tell her that I would stay for as long as she needed me. I wanted to put my arms around her and thank her for needing me, for being unafraid to share the same space. I wanted to thank her for asking, risking that rejection. But that magnet kept pulling me out. It was as though what was to come was already written and I was just fulfilling my part of the story. And so I held on to my suitcase firmly, and all I could say was, “I’ll come back. I promise, soon, I’ll be back.”
I walked down a few houses with my suitcase so she and Steve couldn’t see me. Then I turned around toward the beach. Was this my last walk? The wind was blowing and it was cold. Annika hadn’t told me how cold Venice could be before I got there, even in summer. It was something I had to figure out for myself.
With the wind blowing, the beach houses looked warm and inviting. From the outside they made it look so easy to be alive on Earth, to hunker down all cozy and warm. I wondered if it felt that way for the people inside them, like a relief to be out of the elements. Or did they quickly forget about the chill outside and take the warmth for granted?
I sat on the rocks waiting for Theo. As I looked at my suitcase again, it filled me with sadness. How was I going to get underwater and stay there? What did he mean when he said he would help me? It was crazy to go into it so blind, but I felt I had no choice. Also, didn’t everyone go in blind? No one knew what was going to happen next. I hoped that it would be peaceful. I was just looking for peace.
When Theo swam up to the rocks I saw there was a full moon hanging low over the ocean like a big fish egg. I didn’t notice it until he appeared, though I don’t know how I could have missed it. As he crawled up, tail slapping against the rocks, I felt that I was seeing him again for the first time. He looked like a surfer, or not a surfer, just a creature, maybe a fellow human, but more beautiful than anyone else and in that way not human like I was human. How much beauty was I projecting upon him, and how much was the moon? And if I was not projecting the beauty, and it was not the moon, how much of him was real beyond the beauty? I wondered if we were ever not projecting. We think we’ve grown or learned something, but maybe it’s always just a new projection. Were my incessant thoughts and feelings just a mechanism to escape the nothingness, or was the nothingness comprised of my thoughts and feelings themselves? Was there another way out besides out? It didn’t matter now.
He smiled at me and I felt like he was looking at me at the altar. I felt like I had more control of him than I’d ever had. Even though I was the one who was surrendering her life to join him, the sacrifice seemed to give me power. It was the dead-girl thing. The dead girl was always the one with power.
“I didn’t know if I would need a suitcase,” I said.
“You don’t,” he said. He had a rope with him.
“Will you take it with us anyway? So no one knows what happened?”
“I’ll take it under, yes.”
A shot of adrenaline surged through me. I felt scared.
“So how does this work?” I asked. “I’ve always heard that humans can’t drown themselves—that you need to attach a rock or something. Apparently the human body, however stupidly, always fights to live. What do we do? Do you tie me up with that rope and pull me under, to the bottom?”
“You will tie yourself up,” he said. “It is true that the human body does fight to the surface, sometimes even against your will.”
I noticed that he said “fight to the surface.” He did not say fight to live. Never once did he explicitly mention my death in this. He still wouldn’t. But he hadn’t contradicted me either when I said drown. I dipped my hand into the icy water. My fingers went numb almost immediately.
“I cannot help tie you,” he said. “I can only guide you down to the bottom. I will never fight you. I will never pull you under harder than you want to go. In the past, with the others, this is how I always did it. I need to feel you are there of your own will.”
“The others?” I asked.
I knew that there had been others on land. Alexis in the boathouse and who knew what else? But I hadn’t known any others had gone under. This made me hurt instantly. Then I felt stupid. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I didn’t want to think of it. He had such a want for me, a desperation that I go under. He had wanted so badly that it be my own want that brought me under, that was how vulnerable and powerless he was over his own feelings. His need was so big that he couldn’t own it. He needed it to be my need. But this didn’t mean I was the only one. I never considered that whoever came before me might also be under there. Now I shuddered.
Who was he? An incubus needing so many women to want him? Needing so many women to die for him? How many women? In my own desire to feel chosen by this beautiful creature, I had never thought to ask if others had gone before. It had seemed impossible that his need to be wanted by others was more ravenous than mine. Sexually, I had encountered that kind of need amongst the playboys and assholes. But theirs was purely a physical desire. They sought nothing from me but sex, especially not love. They didn’t want my life. It was me who forced it on them. Now here was a man who needed my love and my life. But my love and my life, and the lives of how many other women? I felt a stinging in my eyes. I was crying.
“The others?”
He looked away.
“How many are there, Theo?”
“Some,” he said.
“How many?” I demanded.
He looked down at his hands.
“How many bodies are under there?”
He paused for a moment. I could see he was trying to decide whether to lie or not.
“Just tell me the truth,” I said.
“Seventeen,” he said finally.
So he had a harem. Of what I was not sure. Maybe it was just their bones that were left, or whatever didn’t decay in the saltwater. I was not a scientist. But whether they were alive or dead, sand or flesh, I needed to maintain my singularity. What was I going to do now? Suddenly I thought of what Chickenhorse had said. Whatever it is you’re doing, you don’t have to do it.
But I did have to do it. What else would I do? I could not go back to Phoenix, languish in my apartment. There was nothing there for me. And every day I would have to face consciousness, cursing myself for not dissolving in the most beautiful of ways when I could have. Suddenly, though, this dissolve no longer seemed beautiful. It seemed all wrong. If I were to die for him, if I were to be dead—and I knew within myself that I was to be dead—I could not just be a dead girl among many. The dead girl among many is not worshipped. I wanted to be the lone dead girl or nothing at all.
“I fucking hate you,” I said coolly.
I was shocked that these words came out of me. Immediately I thought to correct them, but I didn’t.
“Lucy.”
I looked at him carefully. Did he really love me, or had it been just a game?
In a way it was both. It was a game he was playing with himself, a very serious game, in which I had occupied a crucial role. Theo had hoped that I could fill his emptiness, at least for a little while. Then, once he had me under the water—once my want for him was proven—he would have no need for me anymore. I would begin to dissolve in that emptiness and he would need someone else to fill it. This was a game I knew well. Like Claire, I too wanted a thousand cocks. Didn’t we all just want a thousand hard cocks attached to the bodies of boys who have died for us, still warm, to plug our infinite holes? It was a whole way of life, really, the pursuit of that satiety. And it felt like life or death for him too.