Black Flies

I used to read Ambrosio’s journals.

He knew. Expected it, even.

They always told me surprisingly little, and I don’t think it’s because I knew him well—I wanted to. He could write and write, tell little stories, but he wouldn’t say much. Sometimes, he’d scribble cute little poems for me in the margins. He stopped journaling a while ago, around the same time he substituted morning smokes for morning surfs. He almost lit his hair on fire doing that.

“I didn’t save you for that,” I’d said.

Ambrosio’s lips had quirked up, the beginnings of a smile playing across his face. “What makes you think you saved me?”

I thought about that when I woke up this morning, rising before the sun. Thought about the ways he would quiet my mind, make me feel new. My skin itched where his had touched it. He couldn’t have left a more obvious mark if he’d been covered in paint. Despite the humidity, I felt a chill without him next to me. My heart felt heavy, but I could never explain to him why. Not yet.

Shortly after waking, I searched the cabinets for something to eat, wincing when they banged against one another or when my footsteps landed too heavily on the tile. But Ambrosio remained asleep. I went through can after can, settled on some canned peaches. I thought about the coming spring, about how I’d have to pollinate the plants in the garden with little swabs to make sure we didn’t have to always live off canned food. I didn’t want canned food for dinner, though.

A breeze invited itself in through the still-open window over the table. The fog hadn’t lifted overnight, but I could see a good distance out to sea. Despite the slight breeze, the ocean was calmer than it had been in a while. It definitely didn’t look like a red flag kind of day, and I'd lived by the beach for long enough to be able to tell.

On a whim, I grabbed the fishing pole and the tackle box from beside the door and set out just as the sun rose. Ambrosio would be getting up soon. We were early risers, the two of us.

I walked out onto the beach, not pausing to take in the sunrise until my sandals reached wet sand. And what a sunrise it was. I silently prayed for Ambrosio to wake before it was over.

The air around me blushed pink like the edges of the rose I’d given Ambrosio. In the center of it all, the sun a was small disc that hovered over dull blue clouds, clouds that were blurry and indistinct, merging with the pink above and around. It felt surreal.

After a deep inhale of the brackish, humid air, I went back to the house to find the battered motorized dinghy and gave it a dose of the same gas I’d poured over the body less than twenty-four hours ago. It didn’t feel like that. But time got all crunched when you didn’t need to measure it anymore.

A wooden rosary necklace sat in the bottom of the boat, left by the boat’s previous owner. It was stained dark with water. I held it in my palm and pull my hand back, ready to throw it into the sea, but it felt odd, like throwing away a photograph of a smiling stranger. I slipped it on over my neck instead. I’ll do something with it later.

After loading the fishing pole and the tackle box into the dinghy, I took the frayed rope and dragged the boat out to the beach, startling a cluster of sandpipers. I always thought they were funny birds, like mottled brown-gray seagulls on stilts. The birds eyed me as they strutted off, but they didn’t care to fly quite yet.

My feet sunk into the soft sand as I stepped into the water, little white flecks of shell crunching under my shoes, foam tickling at my ankles. When the water reached my knees, I pushed off and hopped into the boat, which rocked back and forth even as it bobbed up and down in the waves. I had to catch the fishing pole before it flew from the dinghy. The lure acted as a pendulum, swinging around and almost causing the hook to lodge itself in my face.

The motor whirred to life and brought me out a little further—

“Matthew!” I heard a shout echo from the shore and stalled the motor.

“Amor!” I had to squint to see Ambrosio through the fog. He jumped up and down, arms above his head. “Wait for me!”

I smiled to myself and turned off the motor, listening to the waves lap against the side of the boat. Ambrosio rushed into the water, diving forward when he could no longer run. I lost him in a swell and held my breath, but he reappeared seconds later, lean arms heaving against the current. Though he never told me and he never wrote where he was from, I’d always known him as a child of the sea. I remembered catching him last time he was adrift, at a seafood restaurant that overlooked the bay on the northwestern end of the island. The water that day had been a deep shade of blue, interrupted by the occasional long low barge or cruise ship or yacht. I’d seen four or five dolphins through the window behind the bar before a man with tawny skin and a face like a renaissance statue—bad comparison; he’d had a more crooked-nosed and pockmarked and hard-jawed uneven beauty to him, something more human than art—settled next to me, making me acutely aware of my horrible sunburn and shitty reading glasses that I’d fixed with staples. I’d tried not to stare, but he’d caught me.

“Do you happen to know whose bike is out in front?” Ambrosio had asked.

“Which one?”

“The black one that sparkles when the light hits it right. With the leather on the handlebars.”

In the background, the TV was running off on some tangent over presidential elections a strange new pathogen that caused its victims to drop dead. I’d already known all about that.

“Mine,” I’d said, quietly. The words had tumbled out of my mouth after that. “I-I can give you a ride. If—if that’s not weird—I won’t make it weird, I promise, I—” Damn it, Matt, I’d thought, you’re going to get hit again if you keep this up. I still had the scar from the last time I'd stared too long.

“I’d love to,” He’d replied. I was floored.

Something tugged at the side of the dinghy and the memory melted away, leaving a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Ambrosio’s head broke the surface of the water shortly after, his dark hair sticking to his face in little rippled locks.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Went for a swim. Come closer.”

“Why?” I laughed, leaning closer, expecting something sweet. The rosary, forgotten until then, dangled between us.

“What’s this?” he asked, hanging onto the boat with one hand and taking the cross at the end of the rosary in the other. “You said you weren’t Catholic when I asked.”

“I’m not. I just...found it.”

“Is that lucky or unlucky?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay.” And before I knew what was happening, he pulled the necklace forward until I was leaning precariously over the edge. Then he grabbed my wrist and tugged me until I fell forward, almost flipping over myself into the waves.

I surfaced, coughing. Ambrosio guided my hand to the side of the boat and I wiped my eyes against my shoulder, trying to clear the burning water from them. It didn’t work.

“I didn’t know you swam!” he exclaimed. I gave him a playful shove and he laughed. I laughed, too. It seemed that, in spite of my best efforts, we were getting canned something for dinner.

We treaded water, riding the waves with the boat, the swells rising and sinking around us. Seagulls milled in circles above, wings twitching in the updrafts. I felt the current tugging beneath us, beckoning us back to shore. Not yet, I thought, kicking my legs as if it made a difference. We had time; these days, we had all the time we needed.

We watched the gulls, waiting for the next waves to carry us closer to shore. The rosary felt heavier than it should have against my chest. “Ambrosio?” I had to call his name so that it would drown out the water in my ears.

“Yes?” His hair was still slathered all over his face. I reached over and brushed it away, tucking it behind his ear.

“Can all souls be saved?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“The kind you ask when you’ve got all the time in the world to ask questions.”

He considered this. “Are you worried? All of the sudden?”

I said nothing. Another swell came and went and left us in another trough, blocking our view of the land. It felt like we were alone in the middle of the ocean. Ambrosio took the cross in his hand and slipped the beaded necklace over my neck, freeing me.

“Does it matter?” Palm flat, fingers splayed, he dropped the rosary. We watched it sink through the dusky water until the darkness swallowed it. “The Rapture has come and gone.”

He always talked like that. The Rapture, the plague, the pestilence. Not the end of life as we knew it, not a pandemic. As if making something divine, as if giving it a reason made it hurt any less. I used to talk to myself like that, say it was all for more. But Ambrosio couldn’t have known about that; he was probably just describing things as he always did, making them more beautiful than they actually were.

A gull cried overhead, impatient.

But Ambrosio wasn’t waiting for an answer, didn’t expect one.

And my “I think—” was drowned out in the next swell, the water easing over my shoulders and around my neck.

For me, yes. For them.