On the beach I rose and felt huge. The Russian children from the hostel saw me emerge and ran back inside. The world had tried to kill me but there were explosions within my chest and I’d won. I had reached shore and would soon be inside the car, heat heaving. I would change clothes and be new.
Driving back to the hotel I knew that Erin was just a human in this world — her foibles weren’t worth being angry about. She couldn’t control herself if she wanted to, and all I could do, as someone who was capable of survival in any circumstances, was to have charity for Erin. Like a rat, she would mate with whomever or whatever she shared a cage. I had no anger anymore. I wanted to embrace her, to forgive her, to stroke her like a pet.
I came home to Erin and wanted to celebrate. I entered her room as she was waking up and slithering to the bathroom to vomit. I watched her lower her head below the toilet’s rim, heard the sound of water being poured into water. I needed contact. I wanted her to see me alive. I wanted to eat her vomit — anything to put my mouth on hers.
“You awake?” I asked.
She was kneeling in front of the toilet.
“Not for long. Can you excuse me for a second?” she said, closing the door slowly.
“Sorry,” I said, and went back to my own room.
I watched Sky News at the bar and drank two drinks I’d never had before, both with whisky, which I’d always loathed but now felt was the only appropriate drink for someone like myself, someone who could save his own life. It was late in the afternoon when I checked on Erin again, sliding the doors and finding her dressed and looking almost normal.
“You’re up.”
“I am. I feel good.”
“I just heard you in the bathroom.”
“Yeah, but that was the last one. I’m empty. I feel good. I want to drive somewhere,” she said.
We drove.
We had the windows open and everything smelled wet, every blade of grass promising blooms. The roadsides were fenced and the sheep stayed clear. We got out three or four times by the coast, walking on wet brown paths to look down to the gray sea far below, past the hillside sheep and small white homes.
The rain came. The wind was strong and the air was scratched in straight lines, sky to earth. We got out once, at Moonen Bay, to walk on the shore of a small beach of large round stones, and were soaked in minutes. She spoke.
“Thanks for being good, Tom.”
I nodded. I shook, drenched. She knew nothing.
As the day went dark we found ourselves near the top of the island. I was driving and Erin was looking at the map. She had found a lighthouse she wanted to see before it got too dark.
At Loch Mor we walked down a spongy hill to a valley. The sun was dropping then dropped, leaving a sky of frilly reds. The moon appeared too soon. The valley sloped around a teardrop-shaped lake, pink with the bizarre fuchsia bursts of the late-coming sunset. Violet heather bruised the green weedy ground as we jumped down. This was a place conceived in a burst of emotion by a melancholy boy.
I grabbed Erin around the waist and picked her up, throwing her over my shoulder. Look at this place! I wanted to say, but I chose to be mute, to punish her, perhaps. I put her down and she jogged away from me.
I caught up with her as she leaned against a rock wall, facing the teardrop lake. My eyes focused on a broken white rock cleaved with moss. Does the rock cleave, allowing the moss, or does the moss cleave the rock? She put her chin on my chest.
“This is nice,” she said.
“Where’s the lighthouse?” I asked.
“It must be beyond that.”
She was pointing to a huge outcropping, forty feet high, the shape of an anvil turned on its side. We followed a path as it swung down and to the right, sloping into the valley. The lighthouse couldn’t be seen. When the path leveled out we walked to a cliff — a drop of eighty feet to a rocky beach and a malevolent surf. The moon now was high enough to reflect on the lake in a nickly shimmer.
Where we expected the path to end and the ocean to begin, the path instead continued, down, through another smallish valley, at the end of which was the lighthouse, on what seemed to be the very blue-black edge of this world. Erin gasped. The lighthouse was not alone and small, but huge, and surrounded by a cluster of dark buildings. It looked like a penitentiary complex, with fences and guard towers.
“Let’s go down,” I said.
“You can go,” she said. “I’ll watch you from here.”
“I won’t go alone. But I really want to see it.”
“Sorry,” she said. “That’s too Witch Mountain for me.”
We turned and the wind swept into the valley, its motives suspect. We pushed against it and walked up the hill, toward the car. Erin’s jacket had no zipper or buttons; she held it closed with her hand. I pointed to a cluster of sheep far to our right. In the dark wind they looked ghostly, conspiring. They knew about the one we killed.
“Let’s run,” Erin said.
We did, up the path, and reached a small supply shed and rested. I was hot with my own exertion, and out of the wind it was much warmer. Erin had her back and head against the building, heaving. The sign on the shed, now just above our heads, said BEWARE WINCH OVERHEAD WHILST IN USE.
I leaned into Erin. I held her very close, and then kissed her hair.
“Sorry,” she said, speaking into my chest.
“For what?”
“The lighthouse was my idea.”
“Don’t say sorry.”
“I am, though. I’m sorry in general,” she said.
Her face was red and rough; she looked so cold. I leaned into her again, and rubbed her back with my searching hands. The cold and her thighs had aroused me, and I was dizzy with the wind.
“Turn around,” I said.
She faced the shed, her back to me. I opened my coat and wrapped it around her, my arms joined at her stomach.
“Warmer?” I asked.
“Yes.” She did a quick shake to indicate her coziness, pushing herself into me. I was already hard. I assume she noticed, because she stopped moving.
I brought my mouth down to her ear and licked the top. She made no sound. I tightened my grip around her stomach and pulled her closer, throbbing against her. All was soaring, my head gone like buckshot. She reached around and rubbed my lower back, while I took her whole ear into my mouth and breathed hotly into it. She bent her knees and turned to face me.
“No,” I said, turning her around again. I pulled her pants down and then my own.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m so…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“What?” she breathed.
“I just want…” I was feeling around between her legs, searching for moisture. I plunged my finger in.
“Ah! That hurt.”
“Sorry,” I said.
I moved myself between her legs, passing just under her. It was warm, dry. I needed—
“Wait,” she said.
“I can’t,” I said. I found my way in and pushed. My cheek pressed into the back of her neck, her smooth hair in my mouth. I lunged further. She spread her feet, her hand above her, palm flat against the shed. I stepped back, hands on her hips and found my way fully inside. I felt huge within; it was so close, everything was. Her skin, exposed, was cold.
I opened my eyes and looked around and there were three sheep, not twenty feet away, staring, motionless. The wind scraped at the two of us, very small in the valley. The sheep did not move.