The Safekeep(36)

Eva’s attention snapped back to her. She was half turned in her seat and now faced Isabel. “Yes,” she said. “All of them.”

Isabel had not meant it flippantly. She’d not meant to insult. She wanted to say as much, but Eva continued: “We were just the three of us, me and my parents, so it’s… not a lot to begin with. And they both, well, you know. Yours are gone, too, so, you know what…” She took a shuddering breath, kept it in. Pressed her lips closed.

The table went quiet. Eventually Eva said, “Oh, let’s not talk about death! It’s sad and boring. Let’s have more drinks, shall I get more drinks? Shall I—”

More drinks were had. Food was ordered, food arrived. Sausages, fries. Evening closed in slowly: the rain unrelenting, the bar crowding up. Isabel’s swimsuit was still wet under her dress. Her thighs rubbed together sticky, tacky. Eva’s forearm was a line of heat, a hand’s width away from hers, leaned on the tabletop. The conversation took another nostalgic turn, despite Eva’s request not to talk of it: Hendrik was now telling a story of their mother. About the time Hendrik fell into the canal, and their mother, refusing to wait for help, went into the water herself, in skirts and everything. She fished him out, and the two had to walk back home drenched to the bone. She was a tall woman, elbows and knees like sharp corners, and her clothes clung to her like a dog whose true size was revealed from below the pomp of its coat: all skin and bones. She walked Hendrik back home, and he shook, cold and miserable, and Mother kept her hand on his shoulder the whole time. When people looked at them, two drowned miseries, Mother would shake Hendrik and say, Nose ahead. She meant: Don’t mind others. Only look ahead.

Eva was listening with a soft look. On the table, her hand was tight around her glass. “An impressive lady,” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

Eva let go of the glass. Placed her hand flat on the table. “She loved rabbits? I noticed, around the house, all the—”

“Hares,” Hendrik corrected.

“Hares,” Eva agreed.

A moment for everyone to sip their drink. The bar was playing some local radio, sad music, the kind that rose and whined. Eva said, “My cousin got a hare once. A terrible idea, of course, to keep a hare inside a house. She wanted one so badly, and then on her birthday my uncle just… showed up with one of those, those reed cages and—a hare. A living hare. Everyone was screaming, the children loved it. The poor hare—we chased it around. It jumped around from room to room, into the garden, scared for its life. Gosh. Got up on the table somehow. Smashed a few plates. Our best china. We thought it was hilariously funny at the time, but… Poor thing.”

“What,” Isabel asked. “What happened to it?”

Eva gave her a sidelong look. “They released it,” she said. “After a few days. They couldn’t keep it.” She put a nail to the groove of the wood—a chip in the varnish—poked at it. “It’s not a thing to keep.”

The room heated up. The fire, the people. Hendrik lolled sleepily against the backrest. Sebastian yawned. Isabel said, “We should head back.”

“Oh, I can’t,” Hendrik said, dramatic, head loose on his neck. “I’m too tired. Too full.”

“I can drive,” Isabel said, but wasn’t sure she could: she was muddled and heavy-eyed, unwell in her own body. The rain was coming down still, and the day was turning dark, and she wasn’t sure of the way home.

“Let’s stay here. Let’s stay here, they have rooms, don’t they? It’ll be a vacation. What do you think? Come on, let’s do it. Let’s ask, who knows, they might have rooms, let’s—”

“Oh,” Eva said, “I’m not sure that’s a—”

“I’ll just ask, what’s wrong with asking? I’ll ask, I’ll ask,” Hendrik said, and no longer seemed tired: pushed Sebastian out the booth ahead of him, left to ask someone about rooms.

“We don’t have anything with us,” Eva said, quiet. She seemed uncomfortable. “Clothes or…” She looked out the conservatory into the gardens, the downpour, the frown of the stormy evening making it look later in the night than it was.

There were rooms available. Hendrik booked them in without asking first, carried the news back to the table with triumph. Two sets of keys on leather rings.

“Two rooms?” Isabel asked, a little thinly, and Hendrik babbled in reply: “Hmm, yes, they said both have a shower, God, I could kill for a shower right now, I feel like I’ve been sitting in a shallow pool all evening, and it’s—”

The rooms were identical: heavily carpeted, two beds pushed widely apart, green sheets, a wardrobe, a bathroom. Good nights were lost in a hubbub of tired excitement, and then the doors were closed. They were alone. The overhead lights were off; only the bedside lamps were on, a green-glass glow to an already green room.

It’d been two days since her dinner with Johan. Two days since Eva first took her mouth in a kiss. Two days and they’ve been running in short sprints at each other, starting, stopping, toward and away. Catching slatted-fenced glimpses of each other.

The room had the effect of a glass bauble—quiet, voices coming through the walls muffled and indecipherable. Eva stood with her back to her, hands at her waist, head down. She’d put her hair up once it had dried, and it bared the stretch of her neck.