Authors: Connie Falconeri
The tears kept coming. The baby moose leaned in closer to its mother. The mother remained
perfectly still. Maddie honestly felt like the mother was wordlessly warning her young
progeny, “See! See how unhappy they are.”
Maddie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A small car was driving too fast around
the curve, and she opened her eyes and stepped slowly away from the edge of the road.
When she looked back into the woods, the two moose were gone. She decided to walk
back into town rather than run.
Hank almost forgot to set his valve properly. If he made another mistake like that,
he was going to tell his supervisor he was too distracted to work. In the world of
deep-sea diving, the man who knew his limits was the man who kept his job. Whenever
someone saw another diver behaving erratically or even seeming a little tired, the
entire team weighed in. The group decided.
On the one hand, it was a really solitary profession. There he was, at that moment,
very much alone in the freezing, murky depths. On the other hand, he was inextricably
woven into a team of people at all times. The gear, the oxygen . . . the surface team.
Everyone else had to be trusted with his life through every step of preparation, through
the work itself, and through proper withdrawal.
His team had been called out to do a preliminary inspection job for a wind turbine
company. The US was way behind the leaders in this particular alternative energy solution.
Countries like Denmark and the UK had been putting both human and financial resources
into offshore wind power for over a decade. The US had yet to cut through the political,
environmental, and aesthetic quagmire.
Hank settled into the tasks at hand, measuring the proposed area, providing geological
samples of the ocean floor where the future base’s construction units would be installed.
His breathing and the strange noises of the deep mingled and worked their usual magic.
He had to focus too hard to think about anything else. Being in the deep like this
forced Hank to clear his mind of the little splinters of things and deal methodically
and carefully with the whole.
He felt useful. Which was good.
He felt terribly alone. Which was fine.
At the end of his shift, Hank drove back to Blake in silence. Oftentimes after a long
day in the sea, the radio grated on his nerves. It sounded too loud or too tinny.
It sounded fake. And he craved real.
Or so he thought.
Hank pulled into the gathering darkness at nine o’clock on Saturday night. He could
see the lights coming from Maddie’s window. More accurately, he could see the tiny
perimeter of light that escaped through the closed curtains and closed horizontal
blinds that Maddie had firmly shut across the window. He sat in the silent truck for
a few minutes, staring up at the second floor of his mother’s house.
He knew Maddie didn’t have any music or earbuds or anything to distract her, so she
must have heard his truck pull in. What was he waiting for? For her to run breathless
down the stairs, flinging the front door open and falling into his waiting arms?
He let his head hang forward. He told himself it was a matter of stretching the sore
muscles at the back of his neck and shoulders, but it was really shame. He knew Maddie
was right. He could pretend that he needed the extra hours at work or that he wanted
to help out a colleague, but the fact was obvious. Hank couldn’t stand being around
Madison Post. She was too alive, too receptive. She was always “on.”
He was off.
Lifting his head and reaching across the seat to grab his backpack, Hank resigned
himself to having to keep his distance from anyone who expected him to thrive like
that. He was keeping it together. That was enough for now.
After he opened the car door and shut it, he felt her simmering behind him. He didn’t
turn around.
“I want the coleslaw.”
Hank turned on his heel and faced her. She was in those demonic pajama bottoms with
the waist that folded down and the ribbed white tank top that left that mesmerizing
inch of skin visible above her waistband.
She tugged on the tank top to cover the skin. “Did you hear me? Your mom made that
coleslaw for me.”
He stared at her. Obviously, this had nothing to do with coleslaw.
“And don’t stand there and try to make this about something other than the coleslaw.”
“I’ll be right back.” Hank’s voice was raspy from little use.
She folded her arms and shook her head in irritation.
He kept walking. On the third wooden step leading up to his door, he stopped. Hank
rested the palm of his hand against the gray paint of the clapboard garage. It was
like being dragged across a bed of nails on his stomach, but he could do this. He
turned back to face her. “Do you want to come hang out? Watch a movie or something?”
She tightened her crossed arms and lifted her shoulders, folding herself in, away
from him.
“Or not?” he asked.
He waited for her to answer.
“Are you trying to be normal?”
“I guess I am.”
They stood looking at each other for a while longer.
“All right. I think I would like that.” Maddie pulled the front door of Janet’s house
closed behind her and walked barefoot across the gravel driveway.
Hank had turned back, continuing slowly up the steps. “Doesn’t that hurt the bottoms
of your feet?” he asked, without looking back.
“No. My feet are shot. Running. Rowing. Skiing. My toes are a mess. I’ll probably
have arthritis by the time I’m twenty-five.”
Hank slipped his key into the lock and opened the door, letting Maddie pass in before
he did. He reached behind her and flipped on all the overhead lights at once. It was
really bright, especially after the darkness outside.
“Sorry, that’s a bit harsh.” He flipped down two of the light switches and the areas
in the two far corners of the room fell back into shadow. “I’m going to go change
and put my work stuff away. I’ll be right back. Grab yourself a beer in the fridge
if you want.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
When Hank came out of his bedroom ten minutes later, Maddie was holding a cold beer
and leaning over his drafting table. She had turned the two corner lights back on
and was taking her time nosing around all his stuff.
“Find anything good?”
“Shit!” she grabbed the beer bottle a split second before it slipped out of her hand
and spilled all over his blueprints. “You are so effing quiet. Have you always been
like that or is it a military thing?”
He shrugged. “I guess a little of both. You definitely learn how to make yourself
scarce with parents like mine used to be . . . or when someone’s trying to shoot you.”
She relaxed her hips back against the edge of the tilted work table and held the beer
casually with one hand. “You’ve been shot?”
“No. I’ve been shot
at
.” He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out another beer. He popped the top
off with the opener Maddie had left on the countertop, then returned the metal device
to the drawer where it was supposed to be.
“Sorry I didn’t put the bottle opener back. I figured I was probably going to use
it again fairly soon.”
“No problem. Just habit. A place for everything, and all that.”
She took a long, satisfying pull off the beer bottle. Hank stared at the curve of
her neck and the rise and fall of her throat. When she finished the sip, she smiled
at him. “So, what movies do you have?”
He came around from the kitchen island and walked over to the big sofa.
“Have a seat?” He gestured to the blue-denim slipcovered sofa, then went over to the
television and grabbed a remote.
He settled in on the sofa a few feet away from her and swung his feet up onto the
big square ottoman that doubled as a coffee table. He reached forward and opened his
iPad, made a few swipes across the screen with his fingers, then passed the tablet
into her hands. “Here are the movies.”
She looked down at his spreadsheet with about six hundred movies listed in alphabetical
order. “Oh my god. This is like the little box of three-by-five notecards in
When Harry Met Sally
. You are such a girl.”
He looked down at his very un-girl-like self, then raised an eyebrow and took a sip
of beer without breaking eye contact.
“Let’s watch
Troy
. I haven’t seen that in ages.”
“Cool.” He got up and opened one of the cabinets beneath the television to retrieve
a black notebook filled with DVDs.
Maddie smiled at his totally meticulous level of organization and decided not to dwell
on it. She let her eyes meander around his place. The ceiling beams were exposed and
painted a bright, cheerful white. A retro fan—kind of aeronautical brushed metal,
maybe 1940s or ’50s—spun way up at the pitch of the roof. There were a couple of skylights
over the kitchen and a couple over the seating area.
She looked at the large-scale photographs on either side of the flat-panel television.
The whole place was such a contrast to the old-but-good feeling that his mother’s
place exuded. Everything here was considered. Clean. Nothing without a purpose.
“Where’d you get those photographs? What are they?”
He was slipping the disk into the player and looked up to see where she was looking.
“Just water. I took them.” He went back to cueing up the movie.
She stared at the abstract blues and grays of the pair of photographs. He had taken
care with the framing, the wide, black trim painted to a shiny perfection.
Hank fiddled with a couple more knobs, then walked over to the front door and flipped
all the overhead lights off. “Too dark?”
Maddie slipped deeper into the enormous sofa. “No! This is perfect! No wonder you
don’t ever want to go to the movies.” The opening menu was already up on the screen.
“This is better than any movie theater.”
“Thanks. You ready for another beer before I sit back down?”
She looked over the back of the sofa. “Sure. I’d love one.” Maddie heard the pop of
the next beer and let the vision of a naked, sated Brad Pitt fill her field of vision
as the movie began playing.
Hank returned to the sofa and set her second beer on the small trunk that served as
a side table next to his side of the couch.
“Ooh, I love this part!” Maddie cried as Achilles went flying through the air and
slayed his opponent.
Hank looked at her profile in the bright glow of the screen. He marveled at the way
Maddie felt everything so completely, how she let the world and all of her experiences
and reactions explode like that. Why would anyone do that?
She shook her head and took the last sip of her first beer, setting the empty bottle
on the floor to her left. “I’ll take that other beer now . . .” She extended her hand
to him without taking her eyes from the screen. He put the cold glass against the
palm of her hand without letting his skin touch hers.
“Here you go.” Thankfully, she wasn’t trying to be suggestive or teasing with a scrape
of her fingers across his.
“Thanks,” she replied vaguely, her attention entirely focused on the movie.
She didn’t rattle away like his mother always did, but he could see by the slight
nods and turns of her head that Maddie was utterly engaged. Every ten or fifteen minutes
she would say something harsh, when something exceeded her patience. “Oh, come on!
That is so unrealistic!”
Hank laughed.
“What?” She turned to face him. “It is. They didn’t have that technology until at
least two hundred years later. That’s like . . . Google-able. Never mind.”
He stared at her with renewed interest. “What do you know about the technological
advances of antiquity?”
She shrugged. “I’m a classics major.”
He laughed. “You’re a what?”
She kept her eyes on the screen. “I. Am. A. Classics. Major.”
He shook his head.
“Pause the movie, please,” she said, sounding like she was at the end of her rope.
“What?”
“You heard me. Pause the movie.”
He leaned forward and hit the “Pause” button on one of the myriad remotes.
“What did I say?”
“You shook your head in that doleful way that made it perfectly clear you think a
classics major is some stupid, useless—”
“You are so defensive. Of course I don’t think that. Epictetus, remember?”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “I always feel like you’re making fun of
me.”
“Why?”
“Because a lot of the time you are. And my brothers always make me feel sort of . . .
frivolous. And I don’t like it.” She kept staring at him.
“Well,” he moved his beer back and forth at the neck of the bottle, “I’m not those
guys. I think it’s cool.”
“Oh.” Maddie looked down at her lap. “Sorry. I guess I am a little defensive.”
He held up the remote. “May I?”
Maddie smiled. “Yes. Please.”
He pushed the button, and the roar of a crowded Trojan street scene filled the room.
They watched the rest of the movie in friendly comfort. When the final credits began
to roll, Maddie yawned and stood up. She bent down to pick up the two empty beer bottles
she’d set next to the sofa. Hank had to look away before he got caught staring at
her round backside. He walked over to the kitchen and then to the door to turn the
lights back on.
Maddie put her two empties into the sink. “Thanks, Hank. That was great.” She walked
to where he was standing by the door. She yawned again, then rubbed her upper arms
where they had begun to chill. “May I give you a quick kiss good-night before I leave
or will that make you uncomfortable?”
He didn’t know whether he loved or hated her practicality. He’d given her every reason
to be cautious, so he couldn’t very well turn around and accuse her of being cautious.
“Sure.”
She kept her arms folded in front of her chest and leaned forward on the balls of
her feet. Leaning into his neck, she rested her barely parted lips against the smooth,
warm skin just above the hem of his T-shirt’s collar. She took a deep inhale, then
began to pull away. She dipped in for a quick follow-up peck.