A House at the Bottom of a Lake

20

They built the raft, a sturdy nine-by-six rectangle of uneven logs, held together with enough twine to form a second layer, a blanket of rope. They found their wood at the forested borders on shore. They dragged heavy timber through mud and overgrowth, carried them in tandem upon their shoulders, singing the song of the seven dwarfs. They cut one tree down. One. Because James believed the raft needed that one strong middle piece, so that if all else failed, if the rope somehow untied itself and all else drifted away, they’d still have that one solid trunk to hang on to, to rebuild around, to call home. They spent hours working, treading above the house, their bare feet close to the roof, almost close enough to stand on it. They took turns, exhausting themselves, laughing about it, debating it, happy to be making it, a place they could sleep, close to the house, so close that it was almost like owning it or maybe just like owning the house outright after all.

When they were finished, when the last knot was tied, Amelia secured one end of independent rope to the jutting end of the center log and James went under, swimming the rope around the home’s short chimney, tucking it under the brick ridge at its zenith. It felt great, he told Amelia when he broke the surface again, sending ripples toward the canoe (toward the raft, too), felt like they had done yard work, or built an extension, or, at the very least, had added.

“An addition to the house,” Amelia said, laying a mattress pad and a blanket on the uneven logs.

James secured the canoe to the rope that held the raft to the house.

Then they sat on the edge of their raft and let their bare feet and ankles dangle in the water.

Amelia kissed him. She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him until he leaned back, until he was lying down. She crawled upon him and kept kissing him and then James kissed her in return, running his hands over her shoulders, her lower back, her legs. The sun baked them from above as she straddled him. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. James was breathing hard, tracing their shape beneath her bathing suit, squeezing them, kissing her neck. Amelia reached behind her back and untied the top, letting it slip past her shoulders, letting it fall to the logs that supported them. James kissed her breasts, tasted the lake water, wondered if every moment with Amelia would forever come coupled with the taste of the third lake.

They slid closer to the edge of the raft, James’s hands upon her ass now, trying to roll her over, wanting so badly to get on top of her, to spread her legs apart, to feel the strength of her thighs against his body. He kissed her neck and shoulders and arms and eyelids and everything that showed. Amelia moaned in response and James finally did get her to lie down, on her back, and he bent at the waist to kiss her side, her thigh, to bite her. With his head toward the house, he looked over the edge of the raft, through the surface of the water, where the sun struck the roof, and he saw a single eye, looking back up at him, somebody crouched upon the roof of the house.

“Oh fuck!” James said, shoving himself toward the middle of the raft, away from the edge, away from Amelia, away from the water.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Amelia was up quick and on her knees now, crawling to the raft’s edge. She saw the eye flitter, then vanish.

She stared. James crawled beside her and stared with her. Their shoulders touched but rather than feeling safe for being so close, they both leaned away from the contact.

Darkness below. Nothing on the roof.

Then a plop three feet from the raft and both screamed as a fish leapt out and sank quickly back into the water.

“Jesus!” James yelled.

There was a pause between them. As the water settled.

Then they both started laughing.

James had a hand on his naked chest and was alternately laughing and breathing hard, the way people do when they’re not scared anymore, but some of the fright remains.

“Jesus,” Amelia said. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Well, I really thought I saw something for a second there.”

“So did I. I saw a fish eye.”

“So did I.”

They laughed again. Amelia didn’t make to cover her breasts and James couldn’t stop looking at her. Didn’t want to stop looking at her. They got on their bellies, side by side, their faces suspended over the edge of the raft. The sun was hot on their backs and their reflections were dark and rippling.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that happened,” Amelia said, speaking to James’s warped reflection. James understood what she meant.

How close had they been?

Amelia breathed deep.

“You think we should do it in there?”

James stared at her dark reflection. Her eyes sparkled for a beat, then went black again.

“In the house?”

“Yes. Why not? It’s special to us.”

Special to us. This was true, but James could hardly believe they were talking about it at all, let alone the where of it.

“Our first time,” he said. It would be the first time for either of them. “In the house.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her.

“That’s possible, right?” he asked. “I mean… underwater… people can do that?”

“I think so.”

Both seventeen. Both virgins. But both saying yes.

“Yes. Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Yes.”

They didn’t do it that day. Instead, they swam, they explored, they made adjustments to the raft, they ate lunch, they ate dinner, and they slept, for the first time, floating upon the third lake, in the darkness, listening to the crickets and frogs, a small symphony of life, crying out from the shoreline at the base of the mountains. They heard fish break the surface, plop back into the water. They thought of the oscillating eye they’d each seen down close to the roof. They watched the moonlight and were mesmerized by the patterns it made. There were hypnotic patterns in everything out there. The sounds, the smells, the sights. And the feelings, too, of holding each other, under a thin blanket, drifting.

But not from the house.

Drifting to sleep.

Tethered to the house.

Tied.

“I love you, Amelia,” James whispered. But Amelia was already asleep. Already floating, in the middle of the third lake.