Page 17 of Kill Your Darlings

June

i

Wendy walked out along one of these rocks, found an outcropping on which she could perch, and stared out at the water, so

still that it might as well be glass.

There was no sign of Alex Deighton.

She wasn’t particularly surprised. Despite his claim that from April through November he swam at Blood Stone every morning

at dawn, she had doubted that was completely true. He was a known exaggerator, the subject of the hyperbole usually himself.

He liked to tell stories about the varying literary figures he’d rubbed shoulders with over the years, about his stint in

Hollywood (“I could have made a lot of money there, but I missed my blue-collar roots too much”), and about the massive popularity

of his one novel in France (“they revere authors there, you know”). But lately he’d been spewing tales of his early-morning

cold-water swims at the quarry, cornering Wendy at Marcia’s annual Easter party to tell her all about how the solitary, bracing

dips had changed his life.

“You go alone?” Wendy said.

“Most of the time. It’s why I go so early, to avoid the amateurs. You should come join me sometime. I know your husband wouldn’t

get much from it, but you might see the magic.”

“Maybe I will,” Wendy said.

“Just a warning that if you do come, you should know that I occasionally swim au naturel .”

Anyone else, Wendy thought, would make that statement as a joke, or a genuine warning that nudity was involved, but somehow

Alex’s intonation implied that his seventy-year-old body in the ice-cold water might be a selling point.

“I can ensure you, Alex, that if I come and join you in a swim, I will be wearing my suit.”

That night, back at home with Thom, she told him about her conversation with Alex.

“God, that’s disgusting. I wish he’d drown there.” They were sitting in the living room, Wendy sipping mineral water, Thom

with a tall scotch.

“You’re not the only one who wishes he’d drown,” Wendy said.

“No, I don’t think I am. It infuriates me that someone so unliked goes through life full of the belief that people idolize

him. It seems fundamentally wrong. Meanwhile, I go through life believing that every person I interact with walks away hoping

to never see me again.” After a pause, Thom said, “That’s your cue, dear, to tell me how well liked I am.”

“Sorry, I was daydreaming.”

It was during his second nightcap that Thom monologued about whether anyone in the world would be sad to see Alex die. “No

one in the English department, that’s for sure. Tammy hates him. He has no kids. His parents are dead. Maybe Midge at the

Hare would miss him, but, seriously, who else? Lives would improve. Mine would, for sure.”

He finished his drink but stayed seated for a moment, staring into the middle distance as though seeing the life that could

be his if Alex weren’t in it.

Ever since then, Wendy had been imagining an Alex-free world as well. The thought kept expanding in her mind the way that

poems used to, beginning their lives as tiny sparks then blossoming into fully-formed works of art, for better or for worse.

Her coming to the quarry was the first step. She needed to find out certain things. First of all, did Alex really swim at

dawn? Second, was he truly alone? Third, could she rise early in the morning, go swimming herself, and get back without Thom

knowing anything about it?

About that third part, she was fairly sure.

Thom, she knew, had difficulties falling asleep, in spite of, or because of, the increasing number of scotches he drank immediately before bedtime, but in the morning hours, he was a deep sleeper.

He’d been known to sleep right through piercing alarms and Samsa’s howling meows at feeding time, twisted up into a sarcophagus of sheets from a night of trying to get comfortable, his face pressed into a pillow.

Most mornings when he’d finally emerge from the bedroom Wendy had been up for hours, bundling Jason off to school, taking a two-mile walk, sometimes grocery shopping.

There was no reason to suspect that Thom, or Jason, either, out of school now and beginning to sleep in himself, would notice, or care, that she left the house in the early-morning hours.

She waited twenty minutes on the quarry’s edge, the sun rising above the tree line and illuminating the sheet of mist that

lay just on top of the water. No sign of Alex. She was fine with that because she’d told herself already that if Alex were

actually here, she would need to quickly establish some form of intimacy, at the very least tell him that he should not tell

other people that she’d decided to join him on his swims. Despite his big mouth, she thought that the prospect of a sexual

union would mean he’d abide by her words. Besides, he already had something to hold over her head, that time less than a year

ago when he’d spotted her coming out of the Shoreview Motel.

Before leaving, Wendy told herself that she needed to get into the water.

It was the supposed reason she’d come here, after all.

For a swim. And if Alex had been there, then she’d have had to get in anyway.

She shucked off her shorts and removed her hooded Rice sweatshirt.

Underneath she was in her black one-piece, cut high on the sides to show off what she felt was her best feature, her still-youthful-looking legs and hips.

She considered wading into the water down the sloping flat rock but decided instead to climb up onto a nearby boulder that jutted three feet out above the water’s surface.

She stood there for a moment, legs bent at the knee, staring into the deep water below her.

Steeling herself, she dove. The water was bracingly cold, but not bone-numbing, and she swam out to the middle and floated a while, staring up at what looked like a pair of crested flycatchers darting in the morning air.

She remembered someone telling her, maybe it was Alex, that the quarry was over a hundred feet deep, and an emptiness opened up inside her chest at the thought.

She breast-stroked to the edge and climbed out of the water.

ii

She returned the next morning, at six thirty this time. When she’d gotten back home the day before, she hadn’t been surprised

to find her husband deeply asleep, Jason still in his bedroom. She’d showered off the lake water, wrung out her suit, and

hung it in the laundry room, which Thom never went into, then she’d gotten dressed and gone downstairs to make coffee.

He’d never suspected she’d left the house at all.

Returning to the same ledge she’d swum from the day before, she spotted a swimmer on the far side performing what looked like

a sidestroke, leaving behind a small wake in the otherwise still water. She sat down on the rock and watched as he got closer.

Somehow she could tell it was a man—maybe it was the lack of a swim cap—and as he got closer she decided it was definitely

Alex; she could make out his close-cropped hair and the slack features of his face.

She stripped down to her suit and dove from the boulder she’d used the day before, coming up in a straight line toward Alex,

who was now in the middle of the quarry. He’d heard her splash into the water and now was paddling in place, having moved

his goggles up onto his forehead.

“Hello, stranger,” he said as she approached.

“Is that Alex?”

“It is. Kelly?” he said.

“No, it’s Wendy Graves. You invite all the ladies out here to swim with you?”

“Well, hello, Wendy. Kelly is ninety years old and the only other regular swimmer this early in the year. I’m pleased it’s

you and not her.”

“I thought I’d give it a try. You were right. It’s invigorating.”

They circled each other for a few minutes, chatting. Wendy had no intention of trying to drown Alex on this particular day.

She was still fact-finding, still even deciding if this was something she wanted to do, or something she felt she could get

away with.

“Not too cold for you?” Alex said. It was strange talking to what looked like a disembodied head bobbing on a misty surface,

although she could make out the shifting fleshy abstraction of his submerged body.

“No, I like it, but I don’t plan on staying in much longer.”

“Have you seen the log?” he said.

“What log?”

“It’s been here for years. Come with me.”

She followed him to the shadiest area, where an enormous log, the size of a telephone pole, bobbed gently. “The key is to

get on top of it and stay balanced. Here, hold it for me.”

Wendy, now beginning to shiver a little, wrapped her arm over the slippery, mossy surface as Alex clambered on top and straddled

it. She was happy to see he was wearing swim trunks. He placed his hands on the top of the log and stood up in one fluid movement,

his stringy body tensing with the effort to stay on top. He was upright for about three seconds, grinning down at her before

losing his footing and crashing back into the water.

“Your turn,” he said when his head reemerged.

“Maybe some other day, Alex,” Wendy said. “I’m cold and I’m going to get out now.”

“I can warm you up,” he said, propelling himself toward her, one of his hands sliding around the small of her back.

His face was alarmingly close, and Wendy somehow resisted the urge to push him off of her.

“What happens under the water doesn’t really happen, you know?

It’s another realm with different rules. ”

He slid his hand off her hip and took hold of her wrist. For a moment she thought he was performing some kind of underwater

dance move, then realized that he was placing her hand forcefully onto the rather unimpressive bulge in his swimming shorts.

Wendy squeezed, relatively hard, and watched Alex’s face flicker through several emotions. Lust, surprise, pain, fear.

“Is this what you had in mind?”

“Um.” He was moving his hips backward and she let go of him, then laughed.