Chapter 5
On Monday morning, it rained again. James opened the blinds to a trembling sea.
I stayed in bed, enjoying the heavy warmth of the blanket, while he showered.
To my pleasure, Silver remained beside me, licking herself with devout concentration.
When I reached to touch her, she batted me away.
Then, five minutes later, she approached, her fur matted and dark with saliva.
“I’m not touching you after that,” I said.
James entered the room with a towel around his waist. Steam poured from the en suite door. He leaned in to kiss me, his cheeks slick and clean-shaven. “Bathroom’s all yours.”
“I don’t understand morning showers,” I said. “You just get dirty throughout the day anyway.”
“It wakes me up. More of a mental thing than cleanliness.”
“But you’re already awake. You’ve already gotten up.”
James reached a hand toward me. “Okay, don’t if you don’t want to, I won’t evangelize you. But will you come have breakfast with me?”
I was annoyed that, by not caring whether he was right or wrong, James had won the conversation.
While I considered whether to get up, Silver marched across the duvet and rubbed her head beneath his outstretched palm.
Her freshly licked fur was as shiny as the back of a spoon.
James scooped her up and disappeared with her into the hallway.
I made a face. I would shower every morning, too, if only I could do it in bed.
—
By noon, the sky had cleared. James suggested we go to the beach for a swim. I tugged the sleeves of my sweater. “But it’s freezing.”
“The water’s warmer than it seems,” he said. “We’ll take Silver, too.”
“What? Into the sea?” I looked at Silver, who seemed content to be dry.
James nodded, fiddling with the espresso machine. Next to its dark steel, his shaven jaw looked unusually pale. “We’re still good to see the Hartleys later, right?”
The Hartleys were family friends. James grew up with their daughter, Isabelle. Every time he visited Holme, they went out for drinks together. I didn’t realize growing up required spending so much time with other people’s parents.
Silver crawled into her cat backpack, which was much roomier now without the pee pads.
Whether she was preparing for the swim or trying to evade it was unclear, but there was a distant, dreamy expression in her eyes.
With her face behind the curved plastic, she looked like an astronaut, or a baby alien.
“You do know how to swim, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, no. I’m not good, I never learned to swim properly.”
“Did you not take lessons as a kid?”
“People didn’t do stuff like that where I grew up.
” Probably they did, only I didn’t. My first and only encounter with a swimming pool was the pool party at the end of the sixth grade.
While my classmates did cannonballs and played mermaids, I sat at the edge of the deep end and swung my legs in the water.
Beneath the surface, my calves looked pale and papery, detached from my knees.
Air bubbles formed on them and disappeared randomly.
I was waiting for a particularly big bubble to pop when somebody shoved me in.
“I promise you won’t drown,” James said. “I used to lifeguard in the summer.”
“How many lives did you save?”
“Absolutely none.”
“You’re telling me to trust a lifeguard with zero saves.”
“It’s not me, it’s Holme,” James said as he put on his shoes. “People are born swimming here. They were very boring summers.”
“I’ll drown,” I said, “and you’ll have the time of your life.”
“You’d do that for me?”
Silver meowed before I could think of a clever response.
“Look, Katie,” James said, pointing. “She really wants to go. Are you going to say no to that face?”
Silver turned, flashing me her wonderful face.
—
The beach was just a two-minute walk away, the ocean rocking slowly like a wooden horse.
James led us past the patches of dune grass to a craggy area near the water.
“This is where I was sitting when I found Silver,” he said.
At her name, Silver poked her head out the bag.
“I’m sorry.” James leaned down. “When you found me.”
Before I could say anything, Silver sprang out of her backpack and began to run, her body accordioning across the shore.
Startled, I leapt to my feet. James said my name, but I was already sprinting.
As soon as she noticed, Silver ran faster, emitting little high-pitched trills as if laughing.
Sand jumped from her feet. I’d started a game that I’d obviously lose.
James called at me to stop, but I couldn’t.
She was getting away, my legs couldn’t move fast enough, and then I was on the ground, my face in the sand and my mouth hot and wet.
I looked behind me and saw I’d tripped over nothing.
When I stood, Silver was already in the ocean, wading gracefully.
“You okay?” James caught up to me, a little breathless. Blood trickled down my chin. He pinched my bottom lip. “You tore your mouth.” A few yards away, children dropped their buckets and stared. My hand flew to cover my eye, probably even redder now.
“You really don’t need to worry about Silver,” James said. “She’s from here.”
I was unconvinced. Silver’s head looked tiny in the water. Wasn’t she afraid? I tucked my lip between my teeth and sucked at the blood until it slowed, then undressed and approached the sea.
Small stones pressed into the soles of my feet.
The water pulled at my legs, drawing me deeper until no ground remained to stand on.
For a moment I forgot about Silver, marveling at the feeling.
Without thinking, I began to swim, like the knowledge was already in my bones but needed the right setting to come alive.
My whole body numbed except my face, which burned like it had been cut all over.
James splashed beside me, grinning. “You lied,” he said.
“You’re great at swimming.” Our limbs knocked beneath the surface.
I felt proud of myself. For a moment I considered telling him about Lou.
I could ask to move in with him after our trip.
Stay for a while, maybe forever. The sun hit James’s face, making it glow with the cartoonish brilliance of a treasure chest with the lid off.
Looking at him felt dangerous, as if my current happiness would be paid for by a future misery. I let the moment pass.
Silver swam to me. Her nose looked darker and smaller when wet, a piece of dissolving candy.
Every few strokes, she turned her head back, as if to confirm that I still followed.
We swam until the water grew still and black.
From a distance, close to shore, James called for us.
Silver didn’t seem to hear him, or if she did, she didn’t care.
I let myself forget about him and followed the movement of Silver’s tail, swirling like a rope being pulled into the dark.
At last, satisfied with our progress, Silver stopped swimming and began to tread water instead.
I felt a momentary panic—losing its previous momentum, my body began to flail—but I mimicked her movements, the hook of her wrist and occasional gentle kick of the hind leg.
To my amazement, it worked. There we hovered, going nowhere.
A great peace washed over me. Silver drifted close, ears flat, eyes narrowed in rapture.
“You really did come from the sea, didn’t you,” I said.
I thought I heard her purring, but it might have been the waves.
—
We returned to the house for a shower. The tranquil bliss that had overtaken Silver in the ocean transformed at once into mania, and she galloped thunderously through the halls.
James said she was experiencing endorphins.
I was reluctant to leave her, but in this state she was completely indifferent to our presence.
“It was cute, you two in the ocean,” said James. “Even made me a little jealous.”
“Don’t take it personally,” I said, feeling a little smug. “Cats are just like that. Fickle.”
“Touché,” James said. “By the end of this trip, she’ll have forgotten me entirely.”
We headed to the restaurant in the late afternoon.
The morning’s rain had given way to a brilliant white sun.
American flags waved from half-shut windows.
Some houses had already put up Halloween decorations.
The unlit jack-o’-lanterns and hanging ghosts looked out of place so close to the sea, like they were tourists who’d accidentally boarded the wrong flight.
The host led us next to a window with a sea view.
Wooden beams arched overhead, big enough to hang from.
On the tables, unlit candlesticks rose from empty wine bottles, sprouts of dried wax like enoki mushrooms crawling down the lips.
The place carried the same blithe attitude as James’s house, decorated by people who seemed to believe that nothing was more elegant than the slightly unfinished.
I was disturbed to see that a salad went for twenty-three dollars. While I scanned the rest of the menu, James ordered a bottle of white wine for the table.
The waiter asked if we’d like anything to start with.
“What do you think?” James asked me. “You can’t go wrong here.”
The waiter, who had been exclusively addressing James until now, turned to face me. His mouth twitched; I knew it was because of my eye. Feeling awkward, I chose the cheapest thing: fresh oysters.
“How many?” asked the waiter.
“What?”
“How many oysters?”
I looked at the menu and noticed the small ea next to the price. “One?”
“Half a dozen,” James said. Then, after the waiter left: “I didn’t know you liked oysters.”
I admitted I hadn’t tried them before. I only knew that Lou loved them because they were supposed to make you horny.
“This’ll be fun,” James said. “You either love them or you hate them.”
I suspected then that I would probably hate them.