Castle of Water: A Novel(46)
*
Then morning came. And with it, the type of hangover only medical-grade ethanol can produce and the sort of awkward regret only highly imprudent sex can bring. Granted, there was that warm moment of half-conscious bliss, when the sun poured its honey through the latticework of palm fronds and four sets of eyelashes first began to flutter. But the memories of the previous night were not far behind it.
“Merde, putain!” Sophie tore herself away from Barry’s embrace and leapt to her feet, only to catch them in the panties that were still down around one ankle (it was her only pair and she seldom wore them, but she had slipped them on just for the occasion). Her frantic attempt at escape had the exact opposite result, as she lost her balance and fell directly back on top of the nude, half-awake, and severely hungover Barry, who could barely see thanks to the pair of dried-out contact lenses he’d neglected to take out the night before.
“Ow, what the hell are you doing?”
Sophie pushed herself off of him and executed a backward crab crawl to the other end of the shelter. “Non, non, non, c’est pas possible. This can’t be happening.”
“What can’t … God, I think I’m going to be sick.”
Barry lunged for the door at the same moment Sophie sprang to recover her tattered black panties, which had somehow traveled from her ankle to Barry’s chest. Their heads knocked together with a cartoonishly wooden, bowling alley sound.
“Jesus Christ!” Barry yelled, rolling in agony, his headache now that much more splitting. And he would have continued to do so for several more minutes had his riled guts not suddenly taken priority. On all fours and naked as a jaybird, he scurried across the palm mat and out of the shelter, heaving and gagging all the way.
“Real f*cking romantic,” Sophie shouted back, her own head in her arms, rocking as if to comfort herself.
The heaves passed and Barry ducked back inside, wiping his mouth and collapsing beside her.
“Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” Sophie’s eyes smoldered with the same desperate mix of anger and fear he remembered seeing in them just after the crash.
“I know neither of us planned this, but—”
“Of course neither of us planned this, Barry! Do you know what could happen?”
“Well, I mean, I’m not that acquainted with standard dating protocol for island castaways, but technically we’re both single and—”
“I could get pregnant, connard.”
By that point, Barry had been called connard enough times to have figured out it translated roughly to “*,” with rough connotations of “idiot” as well. But the implications of coupling on a desert island had not fully occurred to him. He did, however, recall from a similar scare some years before with his ex-girlfriend Ashley that the much-coveted negative result on the home pregnancy test was vaguely contingent on the menstrual cycle. And he suddenly felt that pang of terror once again.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
Sophie swallowed hard and rubbed her face with the heels of her hands. “Both of us did it, not just you. And I think it will be okay. I just had my period last week.”
Barry exhaled a long, relieved hiss of a sigh. “Look, you don’t have to worry. It won’t happen again.”
Then, Sophie began to cry. She hid her face, but her shoulders shuddered in small, rhythmic, birdlike shakes.
“Sophie, I’m sorry, really, but I swear, it won’t—”
“Tu es vraiment bête, Barry! Putain!”
“What? What?” Barry was desperately confused.
“I want it to happen again, you f*cking *.” And at this point she was sobbing. Relentlessly sobbing. “I haven’t had a reason to live since the plane went down, and last night, for the first time, I felt like I did again. It was wonderful. Putain de merde!”
Before Sophie could say anything more, Barry had put his arms around her and was stroking her hair. She, in turn, wrapped her arms around him, and they held on tightly to each other until the tears subsided.
It was 9:43 A.M. local time, July 16, 2002. An asteroid the size of a soccer field had just narrowly missed earth. A burned love letter had caused one of the biggest wildfires in Colorado history. AK-47s were crackling across Afghanistan, the United States’ soccer team had recently defeated Portugal 3 to 2, and Barry Bleecker and Sophie Ducel came to the unsettling realization that as absurd as it sounded, they were actually in love.
On a goddamn desert island, no less.
*
Several hours of joyous, exhausting, and nerve-racking conversation ensued as the two castaways struggled to make sense of an emotion that seemed ghastly out of place given their current predicament. Indeed, the idea that love—or at least something that felt an awful lot like it—could exist between them sounded totally preposterous. But there was no denying it. Sophie stuttered and fumbled over explanations of why it had taken her so long to realize it, and Barry stammered and struggled over why it had taken him so long to do something about it. Implications were discussed, agreements were made, and precautions deemed necessary were promised to be taken—after all, if what had happened the night before was to be repeated, extreme care would be required by both of them. The whole beautifully clumsy affair ended with a surprisingly tender hug, a round of apologies and pledges, and, at last, an admission that they both needed a little time alone to consider what had transpired.