Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm

Author:Kate Wilhelm
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-09T00:23:10+00:00

13

After Abby finished the last page of the novel on Saturday afternoon, she sat at her desk gazing out the window for a long time. Finally she nodded and drew in a breath; the best thing he had ever written. The ending had left her reluctant to reenter the world of the concrete, the real world. She wanted to stay with the novel longer, think about it, feel whatever it was she was feeling for a very long time. Peace, she thought in wonder; she was filled with a sense of peace she had not felt in many months.

Almost reverently she reached across the desk and rested her hand on the mahogany box; she knew she was thanking him, thanking God or fate or whatever it was that had granted him enough time to finish his work, finally to find the peace he had looked for.

She did not stir until Spook made a low noise in her throat and lifted her head, her ears twitching, her signal that Brice had come home. At lunch Abby had told him that she was finally through responding to the sympathy notes, and he had breathed a sigh of relief. And, she had added, she would finish the novel and have it ready to send to Christina on Monday. He had gone out on some mysterious errands of his own.

She went down to greet him.

“Done?” he asked, hanging up his jacket.

“Done.”

“Great. Happy ending?”

She hesitated. “I think so.”

“Oh, God, more ambiguity. Never mind. I’ll wait for the movie.” They had argued once about one of Jud’s novels, which Brice said was such a mixture of fact and fantasy that he couldn’t follow what was really happening, couldn’t tell what was real.

“It’s all real,” she had said, amused. “Sometimes you use metaphors to express what can’t be said outright, but that doesn’t mean the metaphors aren’t real. You bypass the rational mind and go straight to the symbolic.”

He had clamped his hands over his ears in mock horror. “English lit lecture time. Spare me. I damn near flunked it.”

“And you should have flunked it, you illiterate hulk.”

Now he reached in the pocket of his jacket and drew out an envelope. “Guess what?” I give.

“Tonight we’re going out on the town. Dinner reservations at Willie’s, show at the Hult Center. David Copperfield, magic show. They had seven seats left. I snagged a couple.” It was a fun night, an excellent dinner followed by laughter and marvels. Brice looked so smug, he made her think of a doctor who, after many vain attempts, finally found the right medication for a difficult patient. And she had needed desperately to laugh, to relax.

Her dreams that night were filled with illusions, with magic. She reached for Felicia’s hand, and Felicia turned into a stranger. She was in a house of mirrors where she could see Brice but could not get to him; she bumped into herself again and again. She was swimming to the cabin that kept receding farther and farther out of reach, and there was something in the water with her, something dreadful, fearful, invisible.

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