The Twilight Swimmer (27 page)

“Yes they are,” she answered. She angled the digital camera to get both his hands in the frame and snapped a photo. The sudden flash of light startled the Swimmer, despite the warning she had given him. He hopped backwards, toward the door.

“Did it hurt?” Brandi asked with genuine concern.

The Swimmer looked down at his hands, looking for the answer to her question. He turned them over to look at his palms, and was relieved to find no damage. “No pain,” he said, as she closed the distance between them and turned the camera to show him the display screen. On screen, the picture she had just taken.
              “You’ve seen photographs before?” she asked as he studied the image.

The Swimmer didn’t seem to hear her. He was too intrigued by the image of his hands, much smaller than his real hands but rich in detail and entirely convincing. He compared the image to his actual hands, and was delighted by the match.

“Your spirit isn’t trapped in the camera now, or anything. I’ve heard some people are concerned about that the first time they see a camera in action.”

“Again,” said the Swimmer with laughter in his voice. “More pictures.”

She continued with his hands, photographing them from every angle she could think of. The backs, where blood coursed through raised veins just below the pale surface of his skin. The palms, no longer emitting blue light but still magical in their strange combination of delicacy and strength. The fingers, long and slender. And the discolored webbing, its thinness like the wings of a butterfly.

She moved up his arms, photographing the sinews of his wrists as they disappeared in the muscle of his forearms. His elbows, both bent and straightened, the pale skin sliding over the bone as he followed her directions and altered his pose again and again. The divided bulge of his triceps. The long bicep muscle, made short as he brought his hand to his round, striated shoulder. The bridge of his clavicle in the shadow of his long, graceful neck.

She did not photograph his face. Not yet.

She motioned for him to remain still while she moved behind him and took numerous photographs, from the waistline of his wet jeans where the small of his back stood out like dual mountain ranges running up into the rolling hills of his of his back. Every breath he drew caused the muscles of his back to rise and fall, rise and fall. She asked him to raise his arms, to roll his shoulders, to lean forward so his spine rose up from the broad mass of muscle like a breaching sea creature. Every photo she took brought a new metaphor to mind, and she freely mixed them.

“You’ve never seen your back,” she said when he could not resist turning to face her. “Look.”

She cycled through the photos she had taken, and the Swimmer was more delighted to see himself from these impossible vantage points than he was by the first images of his hands. He forgot his initial fear of the device and probed the surface of the screen, pressing it gently, surprised by the flatness that protected the roundness of his photographed form like a force field.

“Have you ever seen your face?” she asked.

“In glass. In water,” he answered.

“But never like this,” she added.

He lifted his chin and readied himself for her instructions. The tendons of his neck were taut, his jaw jutting proudly. In very little time, he had already intuited the need to look good for a portrait.

She snapped the first photo. He reflexively closed his eyes.

“No, keep your eyes open. I want a picture of them most of all.”

She snapped another photo. He flinched at the sudden flash, but managed to keep his eyes open. Encouraged, Brandi slowly moved forward, capturing his face in a progressively tighter frame. When she was close enough to fill the frame with nothing but his face, she moved to one side and took photos of his profile. She focused on the gills beneath his jaw line, patiently timing her shots to capture them both closed and open. He turned his head to look at her, his chin resting on his shoulder. His gaze was intense, and she felt her heart beginning to flutter again. She tried to ignore it and moved back into position in front of him, framing even tighter shots of his face. His mouth. His nose. And his eyes, his staring eyes, so large on her screen that she felt him staring at her through the camera.

“You’re doing great,” she said. “You’re a very patient model.”

“I like the pictures,” he said, softly.

“I like them too,” she answered.

One last photo, of a single eye, and she lowered the camera. She was standing very close to him, as close as he had stood outside the cabin door while she fumbled with the handle. Once again, she could feel the heat of his body. Despite that heat, she shivered.

“You’re cold.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let me show you your face.”

She looked down at the camera and cycled through the photos to find the beginning of the face sequence. She could sense him inching closer, but tried not to notice. She could feel his hands on her hips. She could feel his breath on her forehead as he leaned down.

She raised her mouth to meet his. There was no need for his air this time, no need for him to enclose her mouth. This time, there were only his lips, lightly pressed against hers. She closed her eyes and relaxed in his arms as he wrapped them around her, drawing her into his embrace. She felt his fingers through the wet material of her dress, ten points of warmth that sought her body through the cold fabric.

She had thought about this kiss too many times to count, for too many hours. She had lain awake in bed, counting the cracks in her bedroom ceiling, unable to purge her anticipation of this very moment. She had tried to analyze away her desire for this, for his lips on hers, by imagining that he would be awkward and boylike, or forceful and aggressive. How could a man from the water know how to kiss a girl? Would he taste like seawater, his tongue pickled by a lifetime of salt? Even worse, would kissing him taste like kissing a slab of cod fresh from the trawlers in the bay? She had smelled fishermen enough to know that she could never fail to notice the smell long enough for an intimate moment like this one. But as she stood there in the Swimmer’s arms, none of her fears were realized. His kiss was not the kiss of a clumsy boy in a darkly lit basement. It was the kiss of a man, and it came with no trace of the briny sea. It was a kiss that sent her blood racing through her veins, a kiss that raised every tiny hair on her arms, a kiss that turned the floor of the cabin to air beneath her feet.

But then a thought forced its way through the kiss and abruptly brought the rapturous moment an end. She pulled away from him, her heart racing, now, for a different reason.

“It’s almost dawn,” she said. “Sunrise.”

              The Swimmer stared at her for a long moment. He brushed her hair from her forehead and ran his hand along the length of her arm. Then he nodded, resigned. He looked at the window, the pane just now beginning to lighten as the night neared its end.

              Brandi slipped out of the kayak as quietly as she could, her bare feet heavy enough on the dock to make it creek. She looked up the backyard at her house, searching for some sign that her parents were awake and angrily awaiting her return. But the house was still dark and she saw no one stirring inside.

             
She turned back to the kayak for one last glance at the Swimmer. “When will I see you again—” she started to ask.

He had hauled the kayak through the channel at an amazing speed, pushed it gently against the dock, and raced off toward the safety of deeper water. The sun was now peeking over the horizon, and he had no time to spare. He was already gone.

              With a sigh that transformed into a yawn, Brandi walked across the grass and around the front of the house. If her father was waiting up for her, better to walk in the front door and blame her late night on Spider. She couldn’t hope to explain the condition of her dress, but thought he might let her sleep before demanding an explanation. If she was lucky, he would let her sleep first.

CHAPTER TEN

             
When Brandi finally woke, it was already past noon. If her parents had noticed the hour of her return, they had decided not to press the issue until she emerged from her room. That was motivation enough to stay in her room as long as possible. She kicked off her covers and slipped out of bed, stepped over her still-damp prom dress lying in a heap on the floor and sat down in front of her computer. She removed Kelly’s digital camera from the drawer she dumped it in last night, extracted the memory card and plugged it into her computer.

             
As the photo folder appeared on her desktop, Brandi drew a deep, nervous breath. What if she had imagined the entire night? What if she was as crazy as Kelly, and had fantasized all about the Swimmer? If he wasn’t real, the folder would be empty. No pictures. But wait, she thought, if he wasn’t real then her dress wouldn’t be lying wet on the floor, and she wouldn’t have Kelly’s camera in her hand. Even more, Spider was with her last night when the Swimmer arrived at her house. If she was hallucinating the Swimmer, Kelly and Spider were hallucinating him too.

             
Moments later, when she opened the photo folder, she found all the evidence she needed to be certain that the Swimmer was very real, and that their time together the previous night had played out exactly the way she remembered.

             
Dozens of photos, almost a hundred, every one of them featuring the Swimmer’s pale skin. Every detail of his arms and torso and neck and face, from every conceivable angle. The photos were more clinical than artistic, to Brandi’s disappointment. She found herself wondering why the Swimmer had permitted her to treat him so much like an object of study, like a curious microbe on a petri dish. But when she cycled through the images and arrived on the photos of his face, she found the answer. It was written in his eyes, his beautiful gray eyes. Even on the computer screen, they lost none of their potency. She felt as if he was in the room, staring at her with all the intensity of feeling he had shown her the night before. That was the reason he had done what she asked, so patient, so indulgent.

             
He would do anything for her.

             
“Who’s that?”

             
Brandi whirled around at the question, surprised and horrified to find Cody standing directly behind her. He had slipped into her room in absolute silence, still wearing his pajamas and carrying a half-eaten bologna sandwich. His hair was mussed and his face contorted in a confused expression as he stared over her shoulder at the computer screen.

             
Brandi quickly turned off the computer monitor. “You can’t come in here without knocking!” she snapped.

             
“Who is that person?” he asked, still staring at the black screen.

             
“Did you hear what I said, Cody? You can’t come in here without knocking. What if I was naked?”

             
“You’re not. He looks strange. The person in the pictures looks strange. Who is he?”

             
“None of your business. A friend.”

             
“Why does he look strange?”

             
“That’s not a very nice thing to say. And anyway, he doesn’t look strange. It’s just… It’s just makeup for a school project.”

             
“What kind of project?”

             
“A play. What do you care?”

             
“What kind of play?

             
Brandi reached out and took Cody by the shoulders. “Since when do you ask so many questions? You’re supposed to be my little brother who hardly ever talks, not my little brother who never shuts up.”

             
“Were you practicing the play last night?”

             
“I went to the dance last night.”

             
“I mean this morning.”

             
Brandi eyes him suspiciously. “Why would we be practicing the play this morning? When this morning? I just woke up.”

             
“I saw you. This morning,” said Cody as he took a bite of his sandwich. “Saw your friend, too. The dock.
By
the dock, I mean. He came out of the water, just for a second, then he went back in the water and he never came back out.”

             
“You must have had a dream,” said Brandi, as her heart began to race. “You have dreams almost every night I bet. Sometimes I’m in them, right? It was just a dream.”

             
“He looked just like that. Just like your friend.”

             
“So?”

             
“So how could I dream that if I never saw him before?”

             
Brandi had no answer for that.

             
“Looks like the pictures are from our cabin. When did you go there? I want to see him. When I can see him? I want to see the water man!”

             
Brandi hopped up from her chair and spun Cody around. She marched him across the room and gave him a firm shove out the door, slamming it behind him. Breathing fast now she ran back to her computer and took out the memory card. She tossed it in the wastebasket, but thought better of it and fished it back out. She tested the strength of the card, realized she could snap it in half. She was about to do just that when she realized she may never have another chance to photograph the Swimmer. She may never even see him again. She couldn’t afford to destroy the only evidence, other than her memory, that he really existed.