The Seventh Wave, Episode 31

Episode 31

It is necessary to begin with the small details. To start again from the beginning, to rebuild the jigsaw of the real, to reassemble the difficult puzzle of their lost (and now perhaps regained) love, with one of the billion shattered pieces at a time.

There is the question of the arch of her back. This is the curve he loves most. It seems to him like the bridge of human desire, the bridge across which all things are possible. They are still not sleeping together on account of her insomnia, and his unconscious flailings and kicks, but when she wakes up in the morning in the other bed she comes to him and asks him to stroke her back and scratch it a little too and she responds to his touch with shudders of joy, and arches like a cat. One morning during these caresses the house itself shakes for a moment, as if the power of her feelings can make it shudder too.

“What was that,” she asks.

“Maybe a small earthquake,” he says. “They aren’t frequent here but sometimes you feel them. Or maybe it’s just the old house, settling.” He doesn’t tell her what he fears: that the foundations are weak and growing weaker as the high tides continue their implacable, destructive work. He reassures himself that the expensive repairs that have been done will hold. Maybe the day will come when more expensive structural restoration will be needed. All the houses on this strand require such attention. They all go on standing. Everything will be fine.