Open Water, Caleb Nelson [best summer books txt] 📗

together melodic samples to make a new song.

‘But ­wait – I didn’t see her?’

‘She was tall. Kinda tall.’

‘OK.’

‘Wearing all black. Braids under a beret. Real cool.’

‘Yeah, I’m getting nothing.’

‘The bar looks like this.’ You form an ­L-­shape with your arms. ‘I’m standing here,’ you say, indicating the crook of the L.

‘Hold on.’

‘Yes?’ you say, exasperated.

‘Will it help or hinder if I tell you I was steaming that evening and remember nothing, full stop?’

‘You’re useless.’

‘No, I’m just drunk. A lot. So what happens next?’

‘What do you mean?’

You’re both sitting in your living room, nursing cups of tea. The needle on the record player scratches softly at the plastic at the end of the vinyl, the rhythmic bump, bump, bump a meditative pulse.

‘You meet the love of your ­life –’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘ “I was at this party and I felt this, this presence, and when I looked over, there was this girl, no, this woman, who just took my breath away.” ’

‘Go away,’ you say, flopping back onto the sofa.

‘What if you never see her again?’

‘Then I’ll take a vow of celibacy and live in the mountains for the rest of my life. And the next.’

‘Dramatic.’

‘What would you do?’

He shrugs, and stands to flip the record. A firmer scratch, like nail against skin.

‘There’s something else,’ you say.

‘What?’

You gaze at the ceiling. ‘She’s seeing Samuel. He intro’d us.’

‘Huh?’

‘I only found out after we’d spoken. I don’t think they’ve been together long.’

‘Is that a definite thing?’

‘I mean, I think so, yeah. I saw them kissing in the corner of the bar.’

Freddie laughs and raises his hands.

‘Yeah, I’m not judging you, man. Nothing is straightforward. But yeah, you might ­wanna –’ He mimes scissors with his fingers.

How does one shake off desire? To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.

But even if this seed grows, even if the body lives, breathes, flourishes, there is no guarantee of reciprocation. Or that you’ll ever see them again. Hence, the campaign for summer crushes. Even if you leave each other on an unending night, even if you find your paths splitting ways, even if you find yourself falling asleep alone with but the memory of intimacy, it will be a shaft of summer creeping through the gap in your curtains. It will be a tomorrow in which the day will be long and the night equally so. It will be another sweatbox, or a barbecue with little food and more to drink. It will be another stranger grinning at you in the darkness, or looking at you across the garden. Touching your arm as you both laugh too hard at a drunken joke. Breathlessly falling through the door, gripping onto folds of flesh, or silently trying to locate the toilet in a home which isn’t your own. In the winter, more times, you don’t make it out of the house.

Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it’s better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?

3

You lost your grandma during the summer you were sure you could lose no more. You knew before you knew. It wasn’t thunder’s distant rumbling like a hungry stomach. It wasn’t the sky so grey you were worried the light would not shine again. It wasn’t the strain in your mother’s voice, asking you not to leave home before she got there. You just knew.

You return to a memory of a different time. Sitting behind the compound in Ghana, where embers of heat so late in the day make you sweat. As your grandma sits on a rickety wooden stool, chopping ingredients for a meal to be prepared, you’ll tell her that you met a stranger in a bar, and you knew before you knew. She will smile, and laugh to herself, keeping her amusement contained, encouraging you to go on. You’ll tell her how this woman was slight, but tall, carried herself well, not in a way as to intentionally intimidate or placate, but in a way that implied sureness. She had kindness on her features and didn’t mind when you hugged her.

What else? your grandma will ask.

Hmm. You’ll tell her that when you and the stranger introduced yourselves, you both played down the things you did, the things you loved. Your grandma will pause at this detail. Why? she’ll ask. You don’t know. Perhaps it was because you had both lost that year, and though you kept telling yourself you couldn’t lose any more, it continued to happen.

So? There’s no solace in the shade, your grandma will say.

I know, I know. I think both of us kinda negate that whole encounter. It was too brief. There was too much going on. It wasn’t the right time.

Your grandma will put down the knife, and say, It’s never the right time.

You’ll sigh and gaze towards a sky which shows no signs of darkening, and say, I guess there was something in the room that night, which I didn’t feel until I met her. Something which, looking back, I couldn’t ignore.

When you sow a seed, it will grow. Somehow, someway, it will grow.

Mmm. I agree. I just . . . I met this woman and she wasn’t a stranger. I knew we had met before. I knew we would meet again.

How did you know?

I just knew.

And in this place, a memory from a different time, you would like to believe your grandma will be satisfied with this. That she will give the same wry, contained smile and laugh to herself again.

4

You and the woman meet in a bar, two days before 2017 comes to a close. You suggested the location, but you are late. Only by a minute or two, but late. You apologize; she doesn’t seem to mind much. You embrace, and the conversation flows freely as you climb a set