“Ready, Sara? We’ve got to move. We have a lot to do.”
I could feel his feverish energy, the way every fiber in his body vibrated and actually produced heat. His shirt was covered in sweat despite the cold, and he gave off a metallic smell. I needed to make him take his meds with some food. This was to be my task for the day.
“Have some of this delicious oatmeal,” I said, making a motion toward the chair next to me.
He dismissed my gesture.
“Come on, we need to go.”
I didn’t ask where to; I knew there was no point. I just had to tag along until he’d come to the end of the manic ride and crash. Only then would I be able to come up with a sensible plan.
* * *
I remembered a time back in Kenya, only a few days after we had fallen in love so precipitously. We had gone to the coast and were wallowing on the reef at low tide in what felt like a tepid broth brimming with aquatic life. Tiny creatures were crawling around the rock pools while bright-green seaweed tickled our ankles and swayed in slow motion like mermaids’ hair. Teo placed two fingers on my lips and gently pried my mouth open. He then leaned closer to me and, as I waited for him to kiss me, spat in my mouth. I drew back, shocked.
“What…?”
He laughed.
“I just put a spell on you.”
“How?”
“Now you won’t be able to fall in love with anybody else but me. Apollo did that to Cassandra.”
I laughed, delighted.
Years later, I checked the myth of Apollo and Cassandra and it turned out that Teo had it completely wrong. Apollo’s spitting in her mouth was actually a curse he’d put on her, a terrible revenge after she had rejected him: Cassandra’s prophecies were never again to be believed. At the time I loved the idea that Teo had somehow bound me to him with a lover’s maleficence, using the power of an ancient god. I had no idea then that this latch between us would last this long, to the effect that even though our lives had gone in opposite directions, we still seemed unable to let go of each other. Maybe his action had worked its way in me as a curse, after all.
* * *
“Are those colored lenses you’re wearing disposables?” I asked Teo once back in the car.
He ignored my question.
“How long have you been wearing them?”
He shrugged and looked away.
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t sleep in them—it’s not good for your eyes. I’ve heard horror stories about people who wear lenses for too long.”
“Stop talking about my eyes. It’s fine. I like them like this.”
“I just want your real eyes back.”
He didn’t answer and rolled down the window.
“It’s hot in here.”
“Please, I miss your old self.”
“Stop saying that. I haven’t changed. I’m always the same person.”
Suddenly I felt something stealing my breath and choking me, as if I was about to break into tears.
“No, you’re not.” I said. “Come back.”
* * *
We parked the car on the side of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, an enormous steel arch spanning the deep fissure that cut through the plateau. Teo looked down from the cantilever jutting out on the side of the bridge. The river was flowing at the bottom of the gorge like a silver ribbon, some six hundred feet below us.
We walked on the trail along the rim of the gorge. It was very quiet save for the sudden gusts of wind and the sound of our footsteps on the rocky terrain. The snow was mostly gone by now, the sun having melted most of it, and the air was redolent of dry rocks and wild sage. Teo was way ahead of me, restlessly jumping here and there, picking up pebbles and stones. I wasn’t sure whether he was singing or talking to himself. After a while I caught up with him.
“Teo…”
He turned around with a jerk.
“Are you happy to be here?” he asked me, and then he added with an almost pleading tone, “I need you to be on my side.”
“Teo, this is not about being on your side or against you. I’m just concerned about the—”
“It’s incredibly important for me to be here with you. Because I know you understand this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
“Okay,” he said, gathering momentum and making a sweeping gesture across the flat horizon, “millions of years ago, this was an ocean. We are walking on fossil shells, on what once was a reef. Can you believe that? This landlocked desert is a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree change from Kenya, and yet it is the same.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“What I’m saying is, this isn’t a coincidence, as you can see. In a way you and I are back where we started out. From reef to reef.”
He was exhausting me. I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer.
I sat on a rock. “Please sit here. Let’s just be silent for a moment. Okay?” I said.
He sat next to me. I could smell something mineral in his breath. He was quiet for about thirty seconds and then started again.
“Most people don’t know that the coral reef is not a rock, not a plant, but a creature made up of millions of tiny living organisms that attach themselves to the skeletons of the dead ones. They grow, die and keep repeating the cycle over time. Basically the Great Barrier Reef is an animal about one and a half times the size of Britain. I should say it ‘was’ an animal, because it’s dying. The reef in Kenya is dying as well—I went back to see it three years ago and I didn’t recognize it: it’s bleached and barren. No more coral, no fish, no algae. What’s left is only the skeleton.”
He stood up and stomped on the ground.
“This one, of course, died millions of years ago. But it was alive once.”
Through his fractured discourse and agitation, I could see flashes of something coherent, urgent, even. Sparks of his old self came and went, like spurts of an intermittent bulb shining microseconds of light. It was painful to see it blink on and off.
I bent my head down.
“Teo…what exactly happened in France?”
“Nothing happened in France.”
“I spoke to Daphne. She said you attacked someone with a knife.”