The man looked off.
“She is not healed. But she is going to be good.”
Two
Sea
My watch reads 1:00 a.m. Our fifth night lost. The stars are so thick I can’t tell where some start and others end, as if a barrel of glowing salt just exploded in the heavens.
For now, I focus on a single star that sparkles so brilliantly, it’s like someone is signaling us. We see you. Wave. Do something and we’ll come get you. If only. We remain adrift with this magnificent panorama all around us. It has always been a mystery to me, Annabelle, how beauty and anguish can share the same moment.
I wish I were staring at these stars with you, from a beach someplace safely on land. I find myself thinking of the night we met. Remember? The Fourth of July? I was sweeping the floor of a pavilion in the municipal park. You approached in an orange blouse and white pants, your hair tied back in a ponytail, and asked where the fireworks were being launched.
“What fireworks?” I said. And at that instant the first of them boomed in the air （a red-and-white starburst, I remember distinctly）， and we both laughed as if you had made them appear just by asking. There were two chairs in the pavilion, and I set them beside one another, and we spent the next hour watching those fireworks like an old couple on their porch. Only when the explosions finished did we say our names.
I remember that hour as if I could walk inside it and touch its edges. The curiosity of attraction, the stolen glances, the voice in my head saying Who is this woman? What is she like? Why does she trust me this way? The possibilities of another person! Is there any anticipation on this Earth quite like that one? Is there anything lonelier than being without it?
You were educated and accomplished and tender and beautiful, and I confess, from the moment I saw you, I felt unworthy of your affection. I never finished high school. I had few career options. My clothes were dull and worn out, and my bony frame and straggly hair were hardly attractive. But I instantly loved you, and incredibly, in time, you loved me back. It was the happiest I have ever been and the happiest I imagine I ever will be. Still, I always sensed I would disappoint you in some future way. I lived with that silent fear for four years, Annabelle, right until the day you left me. It’s been nearly ten months now, and I know it makes no sense writing. But it nourishes me through these lost nights. You once said, “We all need to hold on to something, Benji.” Let me hold on to you, that first hour of you, the two of us staring at a colorful sky. Let me finish my story. Then I will let go of you and this world.
Four a.m. The others are asleep in contorted positions under the canopy. Some snore with gurgling noises; others, like Lambert, are as loud as a buzz saw. I’m surprised he doesn’t wake up the whole boat. Or raft. Geri keeps telling me to call it a raft. Boat. Raft. What difference does it make?
I fight sleep desperately. I am fatigued beyond measure, but when I sleep, I drift into dreams of the Galaxy sinking, and I am back in that cold, dark water.
I don’t know what happened, Annabelle. I swear I don’t. The impact was so sudden, I cannot even tell you the moment I was thrown into the sea. It was raining. I was by myself on the lower deck. My arms rested on the rail. My head was down. I heard a booming noise, and next thing I knew, I was hurtling toward the water.
I remember the splashing impact, the sudden bubbly quiet beneath the surface, the heavy roar when I came back up, everything cold and chaotic as my brain began to process and then scream at me, What the hell? You’re in the ocean!
The water was rough, and the rain drummed on my head. By the time I got my bearings, the Galaxy was a good fifty yards away. I saw dark smoke starting to billow out. I told myself I could still swim back to her, and part of me wanted to, because, even wrecked, she was something solid in the otherwise empty sea. Her decks remained lit, beckoning me. But I knew she was doomed. She began to list, as if lying down for a final sleep.
I tried to see if a lifeboat was being released, or if people were jumping off the sides, but the constant crashing of waves impaired my vision. I tried to swim, but where was I going? I remember things drifting past me, things that had been blown off the Galaxy just as I had, a couch, a cardboard box, even a baseball cap. Gasping for breath, I wiped the rain from my eyes and spotted a lime-green suitcase floating just a few feet away.
It was the hard-shell kind that apparently doesn’t sink, and I grabbed that suitcase and clung to it. Then I witnessed the Galaxy’s final moments. I saw her decks go dark. I saw eerie green bulbs light her frame. I watched her slowly drop, lower and lower, until she sank out of sight and a swooshing wave passed overhead, mopping the surface of her last remains.