When It Breaks

“Il y avait d’autres dieux, plus mystérieux et plus louches, plus insidieux et masqués, difficiles à identifier.” Romain Gary

She’s so soft, so very hurt. But what erupts from Elinor’s mouth when she unties the black garbage bag – stored for months at her ex-boyfriend’s – is rage.

“The bastard. These aren’t my clothes.”

I hover by the open door like a shadow. Quentin, the hapless friend who delivered this unlaundered package of emotional acid, sits opposite her. Elinor’s eyes blaze as I knock: summer-forest green.

Mixed with her bras and swimsuits and boots, a pair of tiny khaki pantaloons and a white chemise – not hers. So the other woman is petite. Size 6?

Choked, I say, “I’ll get the car. Back in fifteen,” wishing I could fly over the neighbourhood instead of carefully rolling my feet over slippery cobbles. Thunder rolls overhead in waves.

When I return, she’s quiet. Quentin rises, tall and bald, a gentle nod that entrusts her to me.

She props her feet out the car window, purple toenails catching raindrops. We drive into a sky grinning lightning. I’ve promised her the sea.

“Faster,” she pleads, when I’m already at 140, weaving north toward the shore. She wants to feel something: rain, speed, danger – anything.

An hour earlier, at a crowded party, she told me they’d been getting so close, almost codependent, until one day he told her couldn’t love her. It was over. Normally composed, in control, she stumbles. I hear the crack in her voice, the orb of her aching heart.

“We’ll throw those clothes in the sea,” I tell her. “Right now. Cast them away.”

I screech to a halt, give her a little thrill. We tumble out, barefoot.

The three a.m. sky suspends a vast canvas for some divine composer wielding an invisible baton, summoning zig-zag bursts in the bellies of stunned clouds. Our feet pad over sand to the shoreline. Silent fishermen – five of them – hum under rods and mats. Veering past their lines we reach a pair of plastic chairs, remove shirts and shoes, wade in.

“Is this safe?”

Of course not. The sea is the worst place in a lightning storm.
She takes a few steps and drops beneath the surface, rising with tangled, dripping hair. We fling the pantaloons and chemise to the foam and the ragged waves drag them back to us, again and again. I cradle her body under the tempest. Her eyes are unmoving, darkly wet.

Rain thickens to a roar. Back in the car, drenched, she looks up at me.

“I enjoyed that so much. Thank you.”