Please see the author’s note at the end for insight into this story!
If you’ve spent any amount of time living in our three dimensions, you’ll have noticed some memories manifest as though they occurred seconds ago, untainted by the degradation of re-remembering what happened. For example, I recalled these details crisply: I met Amarantha in December, during a mild winter one could only find near the sea. She had shoulder-length hair that curled up at the ends, her laugh lines, brown eyes, freckled skin, the sharp collarbone that drew my eye to her smooth neck, a small mole midway to her jawline. She was aloof, a breath of wind, always unready and disheveled, the type of person with one shoulder exposed because her sweater was too big.
Many years have passed since our tryst, but it was all frozen in my head. Actually, the memory was so vivid it felt like it was still happening.
I drove up to a hotel on the coast, built into a cliffside, taking advantage of gloomy weather and discounted rooms to get a taste of luxury. I checked in and received a warm welcome, the kind you only get at very nice hotels, and went up to my room. The key operated as expected, but when I opened the heavy door, I found a woman in a towel brushing her teeth. She stood watching TV. Or she was before I barged in, before we stared at each other in surprise. Toothpaste dripped out of her mouth. My jaw hung open like some gasping fish before I hurried back down the hall and back to the lobby.
They upgraded me to a large, ocean-facing suite for the mishap.
Once I’d settled in, I made it down to the restaurant and treated myself to an expensive chocolate chip waffle adorned with whipped butter and warm syrup. There was a whole pitcher of coffee, and a window view to boot. Down, down below waves crashed on a semi-private beach. White lawn chairs, empty, waited for interlopers willing to brave the windy weather. My thoughts drifted to the woman I had surprised. The look was priceless. A pure candid moment of shock. I wondered if she’d remember my expression forever. I wondered if she would remember my face or if it would disappear into the sea of faces we see in the span of our lives.
“Ahem,” someone cleared their throat as I was lost in thought. I turned from the window and was surprised, yet again, to find the woman from earlier. This time with clothes on, one shoulder showing. “Did you work out the room problem or should I expect another break-in?” She wasn’t angry about it. She had a smile on. She was bantering.
I had a choice, then. To engage or come up with some droll response.
Her energy was playful, open to whatever, encouraging me to be cheeky. Or maybe I was feeling lucky for having an upgraded room. I couldn’t deny my desire to see what was under her towel, her figure but a tantalizing glimpse in my mind.
I never claimed to be anything more than human, after all.
“Well, I broke in to invite you for breakfast. You were the tenth door I’d tried and figured you might be the one,” I replied. “Care to sit?”
She laughed and then sat, making me feel unnaturally giddy. An amazing energy built up inside me from the sheer flattery of a beautiful stranger sitting down for breakfast. I entered this mental stance where I was more myself than usual, capable of channeling my excitement into jokes, questions, and conversation as though I never had walls up in my life.
“What brings you down here during the most beautiful time of the year?” she asked.
“The good deals. Rooms are much cheaper right now.”
“Really?” she said like she didn’t believe me.
“Well, I guess I came to mix things up. To get away for the heck of it. Winter finally makes things feel slow around here. All the tourists are gone. People are ready for holidays at home. They don’t think about how stunning the ocean and beaches are this time of year.”
“I do like the way cold sand feels on my feet.” She sipped her coffee, taken with sugar and cream. She added, “And the empty beaches makes me think I could get away with anything.”
I chuckled. “Like…digging out a cave and living inside?”
“Or riding the tide on a giant floaty.”
“You could surf naked,” I suggested.
She scoffed at that. “Or gather every seashell on the beach and write a message to space.”
I laughed and said, “I’d ask the space station how the food is. Always wondered that. What about you? What would you say?”
“I would say, ‘toss me a life ring.’”
That one took me aback like I’d tasted hot sauce in my maple syrup.
“What do you need saving from?”
That was a dangerous question. The kind that would break the thin ice between us, shattering the boundary between mysterious strangers and whatever else was on the other side.
She looked at me, deliberating whether to say what was on her mind or not. Her finger traced her bottom lip. She hadn’t meant to be so vulnerable, she was caught up in the moment like I was.
I filled the silence, “A life ring…that makes me think of something.” I took a sip of coffee to give me time to think. “I applied to go to Mars when, oh I forget the name, some European space company was offering to take a number of civilians and train them to be astronauts. I did it as part of a dare. But I actually wanted to be chosen for it.”
Her smile returned. “Why? Did you want to leave everything behind?”
“I don’t know…part of it was the daring of it. Just by applying I was taking on the possibility of leaving. Really, I wanted to up-end my life’s expectations. If I had been chosen, then my whole life would have been different. It would have felt so precious I think. Every day would have been numbered until I was thrown into space at ungodly speeds. But, obviously, I never left. And life went on like normal.” I shrugged.
She appreciated the honesty. “That’s what the life ring is for, to save me from a normal life.” She lifted the coffee to her lips and sipped.
We finished our breakfast and agreed to walk on the beach together. I changed into some linen pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I grabbed two beach towels from the concierge and waited, impatiently.
Amarantha emerged from the elevator wearing a short beach robe over a swimsuit. As if anyone would swim in the cold ocean. Her hair was put up into a short ponytail and bounced as she walked toward me. Her feet were already bare.
“Shall we?” I said.
I felt trepidation crawl back into me. After a successful, incredible, and surprisingly profound first conversation, I couldn’t determine the boundaries of our shared space. Were we going to banter? To walk in silence? Could I attempt to touch her hand or her lower back? There was this interminable wall of her intent versus mine. The delicate dance when two people have made a new connection together, and have decided to walk its spindle-thin bridge.
Looking back, I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on it. How often do you look back and realize that you should have lived it in your body instead of your mind?
Truth be told, I was afraid that I was going to meet my match in terms of energy and conversational skills. That I was going to burn out on re-entry.
Graceful quiet accompanied us as we crossed a road, she barefoot, myself sandaled, then we took a flight of wooden stairs down to the beach. The wood was softened by sand and sea air, its texture more like wool than wood grain. In my hyperactive, hypersensitive state of mind, details like this have helped me keep the memories crisp.
The last step to the beach itself was a tall concrete one, about three feet tall. Wanting to test our unmapped waters, I took Amarantha’s hand and counted down from three, and told her to jump. We landed on our feet, sand poofing out around our toes. I grinned at her and she at me. Thus, the boundary of casual touch gained solid form.
We took a left to head down the beach. A chilly wind blew, giving movement to the ocean and tousling my hair. I wished I’d brought a hat. Amarantha’s legs showed goosebumps and she wrapped her arms around herself. It was chillier than either of us expected, something we joked about. We walked for some time, enjoying the beach, pausing to look at whatever caught our eye. The rare and fragile sand dollars. A shiny shell. A sand crab making a mad dash to its next hole. Those little birds with stick-like feet.
We reached rocky cliffs that jutted out to the water, making a sort of fortified wall. With the high tide, we could not go around it without getting wet. Neither of us wanted to do that, so we found a little half-cove that shielded us from the wind. I lay down the towels and we sat, close enough to touch, and watched the swell come and go. A few brave surfers in black wetsuits bobbed up and down, waiting for a productive set of waves. A man babbled to himself, wandering across the beach, looking like he’d washed up from a shipwreck. A runner and her dog reached the cliffs and turned around. An old couple folded chairs out at the very edge of dry sand and gathered blankets around themselves.
Besides these few points of human contact, the beach seemed secluded, like we’d found a private globe to view the universe and yet be unseen.
Amarantha hugged her knees and set her head on them, closing her eyes. I watched her and then closed mine, too. Seagulls called like metronomes, keeping the ocean’s ebb and flow on time. In our little cove, all sounds echoed, intensifying that feeling of security like we were shielded by the static of living things.
I relaxed. My nerves calmed down.
What was I trying to prove to this beautiful woman? If I hadn’t walked into her hotel room, how would I be any different? Why should I pretend to be more this or that, creating a facade?
Be yourself, bravely so, I told myself.
When I opened my eyes, Amarantha was looking out toward the sea, but it was clear she had been watching me. I leaned back onto an elbow and stretched out my legs.
“What were you listening to?” I asked.
“My thoughts. The ocean. I was trying to secure this space in my mind.”
“It’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” She paused, then leaned in a bit. “I was also trying to understand something.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why I sat down with you at breakfast. I want to say I was feeling…playful. Daring, I guess. When we’re young, we’re told to fear people we don’t know, taught to imagine strangers as people with dark secrets.”
I smiled at that, but didn’t try to prod or pick apart her intentions.
I replied, “When I closed my eyes, I was listening to the waves. It’s why I chose this hotel. The sound is comforting to me in a way that can’t be replicated. It’s like you can feel the ocean moving through the ground here.” I paused. “I admit that I was also trying to…gain some perspective on you. I feel excited to know you, but I don’t want that feeling to overwhelm me. I don’t want to create a false version of myself.”
She shrugged. “It’s natural to want to seem perfect. But I didn’t sit down at breakfast with you because you’re perfect. It was that line. It was so funny to me. I thought, that was original. Let’s see where this goes.”
I chuckled. “I don’t know what came over me.”
She copied my leaned-back position, and suddenly our personal orbits were overlapping. My heart quickened. I looked at her eyes, her nose, noticed the odd freckle, a small pimple, and her smirk. We looked away at the same time, feeling the intensity of the intimacy. Her hand played with the sand between us. I moved mine a bit closer to the edge of the towel.
“Why would ask the sky for a life ring? Do you need saving from a normal life?” I asked, “Also, when you said that, I felt it in my soul.”
She made a thoughtful sound, glanced at her hand. Her expression became heavy, serious.
What boundary had I walked up to and pressed up against?
She clicked her tongue. “Like you said, it’s the predictability of it. It’s knowing, in general, how life will go. Or wanting it to go in an imaginable way.”
“Talking about human nature, again?”
She sighed. “I can’t get away from thoughts like that.”
“What is it you get hung up on?”
“I don’t want to sound like I’m some hopeless French philosopher…I don’t want, for example, the desire to have food and comfort and safety at all times, to drive me away from the possibility of life changing. I think it keeps people away from truth. I want danger, you know? I want risk. I want to be afraid of everything I do, so that I’m not, you know, going through the motions. Like everyone else is.”
I tilted my head and questioned, “Everyone?”
“Sorry, not everyone everyone. The general sense. The not me.”
I nodded. “Ah, I see. The other.”
“Yes!” She said. “It seems to me there are two kinds of people in this world: there are the living and the dead.”
“How do you mean?”
She lets out a long breath. It smelled like sweet coffee. “That’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you,” she said with a wink. And in that instant, her boundary became more firm. We were on a roll and I touched on something delicate.
I wanted to show her she could trust me.
I reached my hand across to hers, gently, and squeezed it.
“I’d love to hear that story. Doesn’t matter how long it is.”
We locked eyes and my breath caught. A sort of strange time dilation occurred, where an eternity passed between us, or everything froze, or matter ceased to vibrate at the atomic level. The surf stilled mid-crash. Seagull calls ceased mid-squawk. It was a moment of pure kinetic energy between two people who felt connected. A complex, layered interaction that could resolve in a hundred different ways, a thousand, but ended in one.
We kissed. Deeply. For another eternity, time and space yet unmoved.
This was one memory that would never lose its luster.
And when we pulled away, I felt a buzzing in my head and heart and gut.
I wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if that would ruin it.
She spoke first, “Never kissed a stranger before.” She sounded as out of breath as I was. She was still close enough to kiss. I resisted the urge to do so. I knew it was a special moment. I didn’t want to cheapen it.
From the outside, this would have seemed like a love story in bloom. A meeting of strangers turning into something more, a story that ended when the couple moved in together or had a child.
Those things never came to be. That’s how it was for us. Some people didn’t want to feel locked in. Some people shouldn’t be. Their light would be dimmed for it. Amarantha was one of those people.
Back in my room, a draft of cool sea air roused me from my afternoon slumber. I inhaled a breath and sat up, adjusting to my surroundings. I must have fallen asleep. The sun was low on the horizon, casting a brilliant, fiery glow into the room. In my upgraded suite the bed was so big it could have slept ten people. Amarantha was nowhere to be seen. The draft came again, tossing the curtains up, making shadows dance. I briefly caught a human shape outside the window. I rubbed my eyes and watched.
The wind blew the curtains wide so I could see the balcony. And there Amarantha was.
Standing on the other side of the balcony rails.
I gasped. My heart dropped in my chest. I wanted to shout, yet startling her was also the last thing to do. Calmly, I slipped out of bed and went to the french doors open to the large balcony. I cleared my throat softly.
“Hi,” she replied. She glanced at me and smiled, then turned back to the ocean. She reminded me of a cat who’d found a satisfying perch. If only that perch wasn’t seven stories high.
“Uh…enjoying the breeze?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going to stand close to you.”
“No, no, it’s all right. I’ll come back over.” She crossed back to the balcony with ease, not giving me any time to help her, though I felt my stomach drop.
She smiled sheepishly and ducked back inside, her bathrobe fluttering behind her, like curtains in a breeze.
I was disquieted and unsure of what I witnessed. Was she considering suicide? Was she looking for cheap thrills? Was the sex that bad? She seemed…well, not like she wanted to end her own life. But how many people do you hear say, “They were fine. They were happy,” after their loved ones did?
I received no explanation. She went on like normal. I tried to do the same, but I couldn’t shake my circling thoughts, my heavy concern for what I saw like a weight on me.
“Dinner?” she asked around eight pm, after a long bout of awkward small talk. I nodded. She went to her room to get ready. I took a cold shower to shake myself out of my thoughts.
We met at the seafood place thirty minutes later. I felt ready to ask her about the balcony. She’d thrown on a tight dress and brushed her hair. She looked lovely. She looked ready to conquer a thousand hearts.
“You look handsome,” she said, appraising me with a gentle look.
“And you look wonderful,” I replied, still reserved. Typically, I’d have buried the experience that made me so reserved and moved on from it. But I was feeling brave around Amarantha. It was like the rules I usually followed during romantic encounters didn’t apply. I didn’t need safety. I didn’t want safety.
We sat and ordered cocktails. When mine arrived, I swirled it around and around.
“Why were you on that ledge?” I asked in one breath. The waiter came at that moment to take our food orders and stopped her from answering. We ordered the catch of the day. When he’d gone, I added, “It didn’t look like you were out there on a whim.”
“It was on purpose.” Her ever-present smile was nowhere to be found. It was like I’d caught her doing something bad. But I didn’t want it to feel that way. I took her hand and led with my feelings.
“I don’t mean to be weird, but I was scared. I was sleeping and when I woke, you looked about to jump. Or maybe that was my imagination?”
She squeezed my hand in kind.
“That story I said I might tell you? Well, it has to do with me standing on that ledge. Everything to do with it, actually. I’m fine with telling you, but I don’t our fun to get ruined. I don’t want it to be interrupted.”
“It’s already been interrupted.”
Our fling was delicate, predicated on knowing enough but not too much. Catching her on the ledge had laid part of her bare. I didn’t which part, though.
“Well, then there’s nothing to do except…jump,” she joked. I rolled my eyes. We could still have fun. We could work through this and get back to ourselves. I hoped. She let out a breath and her face twisted into thoughtful frustration. “Let’s eat, then I’ll tell you. Deal?”
“Fine by me.”
Two fish dishes and a dessert later, we ordered another round of cocktails. Amarantha stared into her coupe glass, thinking. The Manhattan looked like deep, red water in the restaurant’s tasteful low light.
She took a sharp breath in, and exhaled her story:
“I once lived in a place by the ocean.”
It doesn’t matter which ocean it was. You don’t need to know that.
I will tell you it was a cold ocean on a cold coast, where the water never warmed enough to be pleasant for long periods of swimming. That’s where I’m from: a cold, stormy place where waves foam at the mouth and rage like a rabid animal. It was terrifying to watch those waves crash, to hear them pound the cliffs below the house at night. I often dreamt that a wave larger than anyone had ever seen would strike the cliffs and swallow me and the house whole.
I had an avid imagination as a child. I gave myself night terrors. The dark really was too much for me.
The fear left me when the sun rose, but then I was left with my loneliness. It had as much power over me as my nighttime fear did. Fear in the night, loneliness in the day. Left to my own devices by parents who worked, who worked hard for me, I had little to distract me from that cycle of sleeping fear and waking isolation. There was the nanny for half-days during the week. Eventually, I had a sibling. But they were far too young to console my loneliness. After a while, I grew used to how my life was. It grew used to me. And as a child, I had no way of knowing things could ever be different.
I’ll keep the many years of fear and growing up, of change and experience out of this. All you need to know is that things…compounded. As I grew more aware of myself, of the world, of the separate worlds inside the people around me, I became increasingly detached. Like I was lacking something that made me feel…real. Through it all, school and puberty and that raging sea, I became this person who parroted what they were supposed to do. Who went through the motions. Who never realized their life was in her own hands. I was a creature of habit who dreamed of being one of chaos.
That all changed on my eighteenth birthday.
I turned eighteen the same day I graduated high school. I was supposed to be enjoying myself. I was supposed to be considering the vast horizon of my life and perceiving it to be the greatest gift of all. All I saw was an unending game of playing human. Of playing at doing all these things we’re supposed to do.
I ended up with a plate of lemon cake at the cliff. I hated lemon cake, but I never got the courage to tell my mom the truth. I thought I was supposed to like it. Around me were my family’s friends. My semi-friends. My sister’s friends. All of them doing what one does at a party. Going through the motions.
There was a railing around our lawn, marking the barrier between the cliffs and the grass. Between death and soft, green, safety. Feeling very brave and very alone, I went to the railing’s ledge, but I couldn’t see straight down because there was a lip of rock, an overhang I suppose. I set my cake down and crossed over.
I was curious. I’d never dared to do such a thing; the waves, you know, always terrified me. I felt such a weight, the horrible weight of an imitated, unreal life. Its mass, its heaviness on my shoulders compelled me forward until my toes wiggled over the cliff edge. I swayed there, looking down, the wind gusting, my hat flying away. Oh, how my breath pounded. Oh, how I was screaming at myself to stop, to get away, but I was seized by a thrill.
Below me, jagged rocks. Roiling ocean. White and blue and black barnacles and deep green seaweed. Salt tinted the air with its brine. I took a breath and spread out my arms—like this—and tossed my head back. Oh, I felt like jumping. I felt like making that day my last. And I lifted my left foot to do so, to dance into empty air and fall…
There was something I learned about at school, this thing called the philosopher’s stone. It was something all these nascent, proto-scientists searched for. They tried insane things to get it. They desired that philosopher’s stone above all because it would end all desires. It provided unlimited energy, wealth, granted eternal life and knowledge. Freedom. Whatever you wanted. And I thought that if only they had found it, then I would have a way out of my loneliness. But no matter what they did, they could not harness the material they needed. What they required was a few grams of divinity, but where can you extract that from? From empty air? From a prayer? From miracles? There are miracles every day, but we can’t turn them into an ounce powder. If they could have stolen the spark that started the human heart while it grew, or nabbed the thing that made us feel like we had a soul, then maybe they would have succeeded.
So there I was, my leg lifted, my momentum about to shift forward and carry me away when I considered this philosopher’s stone. How I wished my avid imagination could conjure one into existence and give me what I so desperately wanted: to feel free from my fear and loneliness.
But I had no philosopher stone. I only had me, my fear, and that feeling of an ocean between myself and everyone around me. I couldn’t rely on a fantasy to save me. If I wanted to live, then I needed something real. Possibly, that’s the point of the philosopher’s stone. It can’t be made. It can only be found. If I was looking for a cure to my loneliness and fear, it had to be somewhere.
One cure was right in front of me: death. A certain end. That would outright end my reality.
But was there another way?
If my pain could end one way, it could end another. That’s one thing the alchemists proved, that things might be done in a thousand different ways to achieve the right result. And it only had to work once.
I stared down into the waves. I looked hard at them, knowing they would always be that violent way. There would always be death as an option. But there was life, too. There was change. There had to be. Why else have this huge fucking world and all these people?
I stepped back from the ledge.
I went back to the party without anyone knowing a thing. That made me laugh. I almost killed myself and no one noticed. I laughed like I was crazy. And that night, I packed my bags and hit the road. I didn’t always know what to do or how to do something, but I left that damned coast behind me. I chose to look for a cure…
“…And that’s why I was out on that ledge.”
My drink had gone untouched, was now watered down from the melted ice. She drained the cherry from her manhattan. I had the feeling I should have been clapping. I also had the feeling that she’d had this story rehearsed, that she’d told it before. I wanted it to be my moment. Our moment. Just ours. To share it with other people across the world seemed wrong. I wanted it to feel wrong.
I reminded myself of the nature of this thing we had.
I chided myself for being so selfish, so jealous.
I chanced, “So you were on our balcony…to remind yourself why you left?”
“No. To remind myself that I am the philosopher’s stone.”
“Is that what you realized back then?”
“Not at first. Mostly it was realizing that nothing, not even feelings, not even loneliness lasts forever.”
I agreed. “And when we’re young, having the whole world as our oyster feels more like a death sentence than a blessing. Like we’ll never be enough for it all.”
“That’s right. And so, every once in awhile, I put myself back at that cliff, ten toes hanging off that dark rock.”
“Hmm,” I replied, stalling. I swirled my cocktail and sipped it. It tasted flat and weak. I signaled the waiter over and ordered another round for both of us. I was looking at Amarantha differently, as though too much of her mystery had been peeled away.
She broke the silence. “I also do it to remind me never to become a parrot, to live life as I want to, not as other people want me to. To never live numb to life.”
I replied, “Do you…ever pay for that? Saying yes to everything? Or is it more like you change everything all the time so you never get used to it?”
“I try to change things up often. It’s like an itch that comes and goes. And I do pay for it. I still make bad choices. I don’t make them the same way other people do. Say I followed my parent’s plan for me: get a job, get married, have kids…I’d still have made mistakes then. But I’d have been a bit more bored. At least that’s what I imagine.”
I raised my eyebrows, “Your life is a bit more exciting than most.”
She laughed. “And filled with interesting people.” She raised her glass to me this time, “To the first person who didn’t call me crazy for my story.”
I raised mine and said, “To you, who stared death in the teeth and lived to tell about it.”
I awoke in the gray light of the moon, the curtains rustling from the light breeze. To my right, Amarantha breathed deeply, her shoulder exposed from her recent turning over. She wasn’t out there tempting fate again. I pulled the blanket back over her shoulder and she gave a satisfied hum. I settled onto my back and blinked. I closed my eyes. I cascaded into half-sleep.
I imagined her standing on a cliff with a dark ocean all around her. The ocean was alive. It was a mouth with white-capped teeth. A shark the size of an island. Its gullet was filled with black rock and barnacles, crushed shells, and a hat, tossing and turning as in a wind. In this half-dream, she jumped and death swallowed her. She was gone.
I opened my eyes again. There she was, beside me. I got up out of bed and ran my fingers through my hair. My face had scratchy stubble. The breeze drew a shiver from me, so I went to the window to close it. Outside was the balcony, awash in full moonlight. The kind that kept you awake or turned people into werewolves.
I wondered where Amarantha had grown up. It could have been anywhere. It could have been here, down the road. I knew of some cliffside homes nearby. God, to feel so alone at such a young age would be devastating. Seemed like she’d been avoided or ignored her whole life.
I left the window and opened the french doors to walk out onto the patio. I gripped the railing. I stared down out at the ocean, silver-azure in the night. It went on and on and on, an endless darkness beneath the night of the sky. A mirror. A reflection that might have revealed something eternal if you could become one with it. If only I was the moon, looking down at my reflection on the waters for thousands of years, then I might have understood something about eternity.
I put one leg over the railing. Then the other. Then I put my back to it and hung on for dear life.
I stared down those seven stories, at the ground. I stared hard.
I looked death in the face and said, actually aloud, “I could end it now. I could let go and fall and die. I won’t be jealous anymore. I won’t be bored or dissatisfied. I’ll be dead.”
To make my soul feel the real thing, I let go of one hand, then the other, keeping my weight on my heels.
I looked up at the moon, feeling the weight of life slip off of me, feeling so alive in that instant because I could lose my life right then. I felt everything I was and wanted to be and needed to be. I felt the wind kick up and…
I latched on to the railing, breathing hard.
I grinned at the moon, feeling like I’d snatched something from it, from thin air. I let out a thoughtless whoop, the joyous shout echoing off the hotel walls, my own fearless call coming back to me. I was tempted to do it again when someone opened their patio door and stormed out. They went to the railing and looked around, trying to find the source of a whoop at such a time of night. I hastily turned and pulled myself over the railing, and set my feet on sure ground a second later.
“Hey!”
I was breathing hard but I looked casual. The man was one floor up and two over. I gave him a wave.
“Nice night, isn’t it?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The…yell? Someone shouted.”
“Oh, I think it was someone down there, walking by.”
“Really?” He looked down, peered into the darkness. “Sounded close.”
I felt silly in the head. I felt a rush of inspiration.
“It was me! I stared death in the teeth! Good night!”
I rushed into the room and shut the door. I chuckled to myself. Turning, I found Amarantha sitting up, rubbing her eyes. “What were you doing out there?”
“Reminding myself that I was alive.”
She froze. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Wow. That’s a first.” She yawned and flicked on her bedside lamp. “I didn’t know I could make such an impression. How was it?”
“I think I get it. The philosopher’s stone thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Staring death in the face isn’t about any one thing. It’s about everything you feel. The fear, the thrill, the closeness of death. It’s about realizing that you have everything you need already.”
Amarantha pulled up her legs. She looked at me over her knees. “Was it worth it?”
“I think so. I did let go of the railing…”
Her eyes went wide. ”You went all the way. Pretty brave for a first-timer. Come here.” I climbed into bed and we cuddled close, both of us feeling awake and alive. “I’m glad you didn’t fall. That would have left me with a horribly final memory of our time together.” Amarantha placed a hand on my chest, traced her fingers along my skin. My heart pounded still from the ledge. “You have everything you need,” she repeated, “that’s exactly what I realized. That there was nothing in the world or outside of me that I required to feel alive.”
There we were, at breakfast again. I looked longingly at the woman beside me. The smell of coffee and her perfume were sensations I noticed that morning. Like before I’d been half asleep from the mind games I was playing. You couldn’t notice as much when all you thought about was yourself, whether or not the person with you was thinking about you, whether you’d said the right things or not.
God, I felt so alive.
And all I’d had to do was stand on a ledge and risk my life.
But something made sense to me now.
Normally, I knew what I was going to do every day. Every moment of my life could be planned. Was planned. It made me half-asleep most of the time. It made me more like the living dead. But I didn’t have to be that way.
My mind raced with these thoughts, with this newfound wisdom.
Amarantha wore her hair tied up in a small crimson scarf. It revealed a mole on her neck, behind her ear. She blew the steam off her mug of coffee and took a close-eyed sip.
I leaned in and kissed her cheek, softly. It was a tender kiss. A kiss knowing that our goodbye was imminent. I was checking out that day. She, tomorrow. I was tempted to stay. I wanted to. But I didn’t know what that meant, or what she wanted.
There I was getting into my own head again.
I thought, Just live. Ask if she’d like you to stay. And don’t fear the answer.
She was looking at me with a one-sided grin, an amused expression that might have said, I have you, don’t I? Or maybe she thought, That was the sweetest kiss.
We spent the rest of that day talking of nothing. Doing the sort of nothing that everyone else does. But it felt different. It felt precious and rare.
We walked into town and ate, again, got ice cream, did the dumb tourist things because they were there. I bought a postcard and wrote my address on it, gave it to Amarantha so she could send me a note on her next trip, wherever that may be. It was my way of saying goodbye.
We stood at the end of the boardwalk, people around us casually fishing or sightseeing, the sea wind blowing and bringing this fresh, briny air to all who chose to breathe it in. There was also a hint of warm popcorn. Amarantha had a bag of it to share.
I had my arm around her, keeping her close, feeling the goosebumps on her. It was a beautiful moment to have someone beside me. It was an eternity of beauty. I thought of the balcony, of putting myself in danger. I thought of the ocean, that endless beast. I considered desire, equally as endless, and how I had everything I needed right inside my chest.
I asked, “Is there a way to stare death in the face, to remind yourself that you’re alive without standing on ledges?”
She laughed at that. “Want the reward without the risk?”
“No! Well, maybe. I also wonder if you would get used to hanging off dangerous heights.”
“Depends on the height.”
“True. It’s terrifying to think that you do this often and one day you might…” I dropped a handful of popcorn into the ocean below.
“You want to know what my secret is?”
I gave a short laugh and said, “Sure.”
“These days, I always keep at least one hand on the railing.”
A large wave crashed against the boardwalk’s pillars, sending water up all the way to where we stood. The cold seawater shocked us, drew cries from our mouths. The spray went upwards, upwards, upwards, becoming eternal mist upon the air. It looked eternal. It looked divine.
And all I had to do was reach out and snatch it out of thin air.
Author’s note:
The inspiration for this story came to me from a line that popped in my head: I met a woman in a mild December winter..
To me, it was obvious this story was meant to be a love story. But I needed to give it meat. I needed it to be more than that. So, it became a thought experiment. A way to explore the idea of what it meant to truly be alive. To ask the question: how do I really live?
My answer to that question? For now, I think I agree with both characters. I know that I have everything I need for a good life inside of me. I also know that life is long, and that things sometimes feel like they’ll go on forever (good and bad), but they won’t. Life is change, but often feels like it’s an endless stream of hard things. And then you die.
Anyway, how do you answer that question of really living life? Leave a comment! Let’s have a discussion.
And, please, share this story with those you think would like it.