Castle of Water: A Novel(45)
“No, I’m serious. I … I don’t understand.”
“Relax, it’s just one of the seabirds. I made a snare out of fishing line—my papi showed me how to catch birds in the Pyrenees—and fried it in some of your coconut oil.”
Barry didn’t know what to say.
“Putain, Barry, don’t just sit there and stare at it, eat!”
So he did. Drumstick first, followed by the breast, he sank his teeth into the most delicious thing he’d tasted in a long, long time. The skin crackled and dripped, the meat practically melted off the bone. And each chew, trailed by the most ecstatic of moans, took him that much closer to a place he seldom visited anymore except toward the coda of warm dreams, where the sweet tea still cooled in mason jars, and the church hymns still rose through a green haze of dragonflies, and the field corn still burst in a gold crown of tassels, stalks reaching high as an elephant’s eye. Oh, Christ, it was good.
“And you didn’t try your drink.”
Barry raised an eye from the bones he’d been gnawing and noticed the stainless-steel mug set neatly beside his banana-leaf plate. Pausing midchew, he hooked an index finger through the handle, brought it to his lips, took a sizable gulp, and immediately started choking.
“Barry, what’s wrong?”
Stunned yet again, he caught his breath and swallowed. “Sophie, that’s booze!”
“Well, yes, it was a little harder to get a beer than fried chicken, but I did my best.”
“What is it?”
“I left out some coconut water to ferment. It was still very weak, so I added alcohol to it.”
“But where did you get alcohol?”
Sophie let slide her most mischievous grin yet. “I squeezed out some of the disinfectant alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit. Be careful, it’s pretty strong.”
“I’ll be damned.” It was the first trace of alcohol he’d had in well over a year, and its heady taste was still tingling on his lips. He shook his head, smiling and bewildered. “Look, I’m not going to drink alone. You’ve got to join me. I insist.”
“You don’t need to ask twice.”
Sophie scooted over beside him and took a big, grimacing swig from the stainless-steel mug, one that also sent her into a fit of coughing. Barry chuckled as he took the mug from her and gave her a trio of playful slaps on the back. When her coughs subsided, he took his second pull of the concoction, this time savoring the drink for the elixir that it was—it seemed to go down smoother with each gulp. Taking turns, they passed the cup back and forth, letting an ancient alchemy once again work its magic. Barry tasted bourbon smuggled from a liquor cabinet and Budweiser sipped from a paternal can. Sophie tasted trou normand and a bloodred Bordeaux decanted into a glass. The sunlight sweetened; the universe warmed. A desolate rock at the edge of the earth suddenly became the bright center of the universe, and music pulsed from a set of cosmic pipes. Barry heard Skynnard and eating-club laughter; Sophie heard fado and a plush burst of strings. It was all coming back—all of it, with the lives they had lost seeping back in like the tide. Between rich bouts of laughter, Barry told Sophie about the first time he’d ever gotten drunk and how he’d puked all over a schnitzel stand at the Painesville Oktoberfest. Through a nest of giggles, Sophie described her first encounter with Portuguese ginjinha and how she’d gone roller-skating in her underwear through the middle of the Alfama. Old stories received fresh coats of paint, long-lost friendships were rekindled anew. With their alcoholic tolerance seriously compromised, it didn’t take long for the euphoria to peak and inhibitions to lower.
Which was precisely when Sophie remembered she still had one more gift for Barry.
“Close your eyes,” she commanded. “There’s something else.”
“Come on, just tell me.”
“Not on your life! Ferme les yeux.”
“They’re closed!”
“No, you’re peeking, putain!” she playfully scolded, her words taking on the first round edges of a drunken slur.
“Fine. My yeux are fermer.”
Sophie stumbled to her feet and fetched a bundle from the tent, wrapped neatly in Barry’s long-suffering shirt. She placed it ceremoniously in his lap.
“Open them.”
Barry blinked, examined the bundle, and spread apart the fabric. Inside were two carved wooden paintbrushes, one bigger and one smaller, and two of the old flare canisters, lids screwed on tight.
“Sophie, is this what I think it is?”
Sophie nodded. “I’m sorry there are only two colors, I could only make white paint from ground clamshells and black paint from charcoal. And I had to cut some of my own hair to make the brushes, so I’m not sure how well—”
She didn’t finish. Barry was kissing her before she ever had the chance, and before she knew it, she was kissing him back.
31
No lurid details are required to guess what followed on the eve of Barry’s thirty-sixth birthday. And it’s safe to say, after more than a year of desperate loneliness and grinding celibacy, no tawdry passages are needed to illuminate just how erotically charged such an encounter must have been. One juicy tidbit, however, does warrant mention: Up until that fateful night, orgasms for both Barry and Sophie had been infrequent, lackluster, and unconditionally solitary affairs, involving some awkward fumbling in the undergrowth and a sullen dose of overimagination (Barry tended to envision encounters with a diverse cast of Victoria’s Secret models; Sophie, a square-jawed Quebecois pop star she had pined for in her late teens named Roch Voisine). But that first night together, the climaxes both Barry and Sophie experienced—technically four seconds apart, but practically mutual—were more cathartic, powerful, and flat-out earth-shattering than either had ever known before. The pleasure they unloaded was transcendent; the emotion they released, indescribable. Sophie flooded the divot in Barry’s collarbone with tears, Barry quaked with an almost epileptic intensity, and then they plummeted together as one into the dark well of sleep, trembling their way toward the same bright dream.…