Chapter 34
JOEL
Carmen was silent on their walk. After the searing bare bulbs of the bar, it had taken Joel a moment to be able to see the fine lines of tree branches and how the path curved ahead of them.
The only source of light was the stars and the faint citrine glow of the occasional house window, muted by curtains.
Most of the island appeared asleep, though in the distance there was the whistle and pop of fireworks.
He was desperate for their hotel bed. A part of him thought that if they could only make it there before Carmen began talking, if they could slip their tired bodies beneath its clean white sheets, all could be avoided.
That in the morning, the charge snapping between them would have burned out and they could get dressed, raise their champagne flutes beneath the reception’s tent, and then, the next day, board a ferry, a train, and another train that would take them safely back to New York.
If they could just go to sleep, the morning would come, and everything would be simple again.
They approached the marsh where they would turn right, the water black as oil.
Though he could not see them, he heard the guttural croak of a frog, an owl softly hooting.
A group of owls is called a parliament, he wanted to share, but did not.
He thought of the person with the knife, and how he should have tried to say something to Shay in the bar, but it felt impossible to go back now.
He had to trust that she had read his note and would not be alone.
“Did you bring me here to prove something?” Carmen asked.
“What do you mean?” He looked at her, but she would not meet his eyes. She sounded so tired. One of her dress straps had fallen off her shoulder, as if in defeat.
“To her? Or to yourself?”
“I brought you here because I wanted you here.”
She stopped walking, pressing her hands together in the position of prayer. “So do you not know? On top of everything else, am I going to have to explain this to you?”
The hotel was still another ten minutes away on foot. But if they ran, he told himself, it would take less time. He wanted to run. “Let’s just get back—”
“You never really talked about her, so I didn’t—I never would have thought, but Jesus, is it obvious when you look at her. I couldn’t quite see it at the party, but now I feel so incredibly stupid, for everything I thought we—”
“You’re not stupid.”
She laughed so loudly that the owl quieted, poised for flight. Joel tucked his chin against his chest, bowing as if a great wind were battering his body.
“She’s getting married tomorrow,” he said.
Carmen wrapped her arms so that she was hugging herself, her hands cradling her rib cage. “That doesn’t really matter.”
“She’s not, I’m not—” The words were choked from him. “I’m here with you, and I want you here, I want you—”
“Well, I don’t want to be here anymore.”
He brought his hands to the nape of his neck. His skin was warm. He felt furious, suddenly desperate to win the argument, even when he knew he had no right to victory. As if perhaps that would prove something. “It was years ago. There’s nothing—there anymore.”
Carmen began to walk again, her pace brisk and purposeful, and he had no choice but to follow.
There was a motion in the branches above them, the chatter of a squirrel.
It felt like the whole island was listening to them, and he thought maybe he hated it here.
He missed the harsh, cacophonous indifference of New York.
“Carmen, please.”
She tugged her strap back onto her shoulder and said nothing for several minutes, her sandals padding against the road with the steady gait of someone about to break into a sprint. She too wanted to run—he could sense it. He said her name again.
“I’m not doing this,” she said. Her voice was nearly a yell.
“Doing what? Talking to me?”
“Convincing my boyfriend that he’s in love with someone else. That’s not my fucking job, so please, don’t make me keep doing it.”
“Well, Jesus, what would you have had me do?” His voice was as loud as her own. “I’m trying to get on with my life, to find someone else, to get married and have kids and everything else you’re supposed to do, and we’re good together, you and I, and I know—”
“And you think that’s fair for me?”
“I want to be with you.”
“Well, I don’t want to be with you. All right?”
“Carmen—”
“Listen to me: I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
He felt something give in his chest, like a crag of sand breaking loose from a dune.
Now he saw her not as a position in an argument, a physical embodiment of a truth he wanted to deny and bury, but as Carmen.
The girl who kissed his bicep while they waited for their first train.
The one who sang a song to the kettle as it boiled water and had swallowed a glass marble as a child just because it was so beautiful, because she wanted to keep it forever.
And she was right: he could not ask this of her, to continue to protect him from himself in the way she had for the past two days, and the six months before that.
To give him the gift of denial when he could offer her so little in return.
Before them, the hotel windows were patterned with light and darkness. He could not remember which one belonged to them.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
For a moment, her eyes had the glossy sheen of tears, and he realized that he had never seen her cry, not even on stage.
At the beginning of this trip, he’d wondered what shades of Carmen he’d experience during all these hours together, and he had never once considered that he’d see her cry.
But then she blinked, and the tears were gone, and he realized with a deep sadness that he never would.
“I’ll take the ferry tomorrow,” she said.
“I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.”
She nodded, and he let her walk away from him.