The Water Keeper(86)
“I looked at him like he’d lost his ever-loving mind. I said, ‘Love?’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll never love again.’ He sat back, shrugged, sipped, and said, ‘You can choose that if you want, or you can realize that we are all just broken, and sometimes no matter how hard we try and no matter what we do, people just don’t love us back.’ He scooted closer, his breath on my face. ‘And when they don’t, we have a choice. We can hold on to that, let it fester and live out of that puss-filled bitterness, or . . .’ He tapped the pad of paper. ‘We can learn to love again.’
“He sipped some more wine and poked me hard in the chest. ‘Every heart is made to pour out. But sometimes we’re wounded and what we pour has soured and turned to poison. You get to choose. Poison or antidote? Life or death? You choose. So what’s it gonna be, David Bishop?’”
Summer gave a little start, followed by a low moaning sound of which it seemed she was not entirely conscious.
I shrugged. “I guess maybe that was my moment. Maybe that’s when I came to. When I saw more than just my own pain. Maybe I saw his too. The fact that I was hurting had hurt him. Deeply. Somewhere in there it struck me that love is what we’re made to do. It is the thing our hearts are made to pour. I would later learn it was his own wound surfacing when he told me, ‘We don’t love because people love us back. We love because we can. Because we were made to. Because it’s all we have. Because, at the end of the day, evil can take everything save one thing: your love. And when you come to realize that, that the only thing you really control in this life is your love, you’ll see, maybe for the first time, that we’re all just lost.’
“He leaned in and whispered, ‘Apollumi. And the needs of the apollumi outweigh the needs of the ninety-nine. So . . .’ He tapped the pad again. ‘Tell me who you love.’”
Chapter 40
I stared down at the water. Remembering.
“I used to come here every day. And I’d write. I didn’t know anything about writing. I just knew that when I did, it was like letting pressure out of the cooker. I’d dig the pen into the paper, scarring it more than marking it, but pretty soon I’m remembering the beautiful and not the painful. And I’m wanting to look into those memories where we shared laughter and hope and tenderness, so I wrote them down. Pretty soon I’m talking through the mouths of these characters I created.”
Summer stiffened and her head tilted. “The older mentor I named Fingers, modeled after Bones.” Summer’s jaw dropped open, but I kept talking. “The younger I gave my name. Because I didn’t want it anymore. Because I thought maybe I could rewrite the life he lived. Bones gave me a leave of absence from my government job. He came down once a month to check on me, and every time he found me writing. I took a job tending bar”—I pointed—“down there. An oceanfront watering hole. Lots of singles. Looking for love in all the wrong places.
“I’d been sober and writing a year when this woman, this lady who didn’t really fit in, sat at my bar and studied me. She wasn’t like the usual customer. This lady held power somewhere else and she was just here alone, letting her mind unwind. I’d cleaned my bar and nobody was ordering, so I was sitting down there with a pencil and pad, continuing my story, and she says to me, ‘What’re you writing?’ And I thought about her question.
“When I answered, I said, ‘The me I wish I was.’
“She looked curious and asked, ‘Who do you wish you were?’
“I said, ‘Not broken.’
“She smiled, nodded, slid closer, lit a cigarette, and eyed the paper. ‘Tell me about him?’ I tapped my pencil and glanced at my words. A love I once knew. She held out a hand. ‘May I?’ Maybe the most dangerous question I’d ever been asked. But I figured, what do I have to lose? So I slid her the pad. She read a few minutes and lit another cigarette. ‘You got any more of this?’
“I answered honestly. ‘Sixty-seven more pads.’
“She smiled. ‘You let me see those?’
“I couldn’t tell if she was hitting on me or just passing time, but I said, ‘I’ll be here tomorrow. If you are, you can see them.’ So tomorrow rolled around, I went for a long swim in the ocean, and she was sitting at the bar when we opened. I set the mountain of pads in front of her, and she sat and read and sipped coffee and smoked cigarettes until two the next morning.
“When she closed the last pad, she took off her glasses, wiped her eyes, and stared at me. She said, ‘You know who I am?’ I shook my head. Had no idea. She placed one hand on the mound of paper. ‘Will you let me publish this?’
“That struck me as strange. ‘Why?’ I asked.
“She stamped out a cigarette. ‘Because I’ve been publishing books for thirty-eight years, and I have yet to come across one that will heal broken hearts like this.’
“I poured myself some club soda and sipped. ‘You really believe that?’
“She nodded once. ‘I do.’
“So we talked an hour while she tried to convince me. I took her number. She said she’d be down here a week. I could call anytime. Before she flew out, she swung by the bar. I was sitting there writing. I handed her a plastic grocery bag stuffed with all my notebooks. I raised a finger. ‘Nobody but you ever knows me. We don’t use my real name, don’t put my face on the cover, and I’m never doing a single interview. I am a ghost.’