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And, this time, Leo just smirked at me. “Happy Christmas.”
“I could point out that men who live in boats because they’re too frightened about who they could become if they didn’t probably shouldn’t throw stones. But I don’t want to”—I put up the most sarcastic air quotes I could manage—“‘hurt your feelings,’ so I’ll refrain.”
“Firstly, it’s very cunning the way you used claiming not to say something as an excuse to say it.”
“I’m a dick like that.”
“Secondly, you’re not going to hurt my feelings with something I already know.”
Not in my experience. In fact, what you already knew usually had the capacity to cause the most damage. “Oh, come on,” I said instead. “You don’t really think that’s a possibility, do you? That you’ll wake up one day and this new self that you’ve put all this work into will just dissolve.”
“Well, probably not. But going from having everything to not even having freedom would mess with anybody’s head.” Leo looked around as if reassuring himself the world he’d created was exactly where he’d left it: everything neat and necessary and in its place. “This is good. When I’m ready—wait.” He’d turned the paper over. “Is this supposed to be me?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I’m sure I don’t look—is this how I look?”
Another shrug. “You can keep it if you like.”
“Thank you.”
He seemed unnecessarily wonder-struck. It was only a sketch—Leo, sleeping as he had been that first morning I woke beside him, with his face all light and shadow, a mystery partially unveiled. But it was the first time I had drawn someone since Edwin. He, I had drawn so much—especially at the beginning of our relationship—that, even now, I could have painted him from memory alone. Those dark, secretive eyes of his. His steady handswith their careful fingers. That, too, had not been art. It had been love. Wanting to show him how beautiful he was, which I’d never truly managed.39
“No wonder you’re so standoffish the rest of the time,” said Leo.
The past was clinging to me like cobwebs. And the present was full of someone trying to understand me. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He shuffled through the pages. “If you see even the ordinary bits of the world like this.”
“I don’t think there’s much in the world that’s ordinary,” I admitted, flustered in spite of myself. And then—to distract us both—I gestured senselessly to the window. “Look. It’s snowing.”
Because it was. In thick flakes that spiralled down from the ink-black sky, as lazy as drones at midsummer. As a distraction tactic, though, it was more successful than I had anticipated, because Leo jumped up and ran to peer through a different window. “Shit.”
“Problem?”
“Only if it settles. And only if it settles in a significant way.”
“What counts as significant?”
“About six inches.”
I offered the inevitable response. “Speak for yourself.”
“No”—he glanced back at me, mildly amused despite his best efforts not to be—“but snow distributed unevenly on the roof can make the whole boat list. And when it melts, you’ve got the water runoff, which can get in the hull or the engine.”
“So what you’re telling me,” I said, “is that we’re currently taking part in a very slow and containable disaster movie?”
He laughed. “I just have to keep an eye on things. And the stove being lit will help.”
“And if the boat starts going down, I just step off it?”
“Well, you can play your violin for a while first, if you like. Or have an affair with a lively ne’er-do-well from third class.”
“Pass,” I said.
Easing out from behind the dinette, I returned to the sofa and stretched out my leg. Perhaps picking up on something I had no idea I was communicating, Leo turned off the LEDs, leaving just the glow from the stove to light the interior of the boat. This offered me an almost unimpeded view of the river and the sky, two dark reflections of each other, glossy with moonlight, and between them the flurrying snow. Tiny dancers, with their lace skirts flying, spinning as freely as dandelion seeds upon the soft winds of the night.
Leo, meanwhile, took the pierogi plates to the sink and washed them up. The advantage of having a sprained ankle was that it disqualified you from helping with the chores. Unusually, however, I felt guilty about it. And when he was done, he came and folded himself onto the floor with his back to the sofa. If I’d been a better person, I’d have made space for him next to me, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t. I kind of liked him this way, nearby—close to my hands—but not in my space. I stroked my fingers through his still loose hair, and he tilted his head back with a soft sound of pleasure.
