Джош Малерман - A House at the Bottom of a Lake

Another dumb joke. Who would bring up a meal deal while surrounded by everything that was so much the opposite of a meal deal?

But James smiled. Then he pulled out two sandwiches wrapped in foil, two bottles of water, and two bags of plain chips. He handed Amelia hers. Then he rose, carefully, and got back on the bench.

“You got a problem with your hose?” James asked her.

Amelia laughed with her mouth full and coughed from it.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she said, then swallowed. “And yes, I do have a problem with my hose. I totally forgot to buy a new one when I was in your store.”

“It’s not my store.”

James wished he hadn’t said it that way. He hadn’t decided yet if he wanted to tell Amelia that his dad owned the place. Did she already know?

“What’s wrong with the hose?” he asked her.

“It’s got holes in it.”

“Are you sure it isn’t the clamp?”

“What’s a clamp?”

A bird flew low to the water, many feet away. James looked at Amelia’s legs.

“The clamp that holds two hoses together. Is it two hoses?”

“It is, yeah.”

“Probably the clamp, then.” He took a bite of his sandwich. The bird rose high up again. Amelia’s skin looked so clean to him, so soft. “Did you see an actual hole in one of the hoses?”

“I think so.”

“Then it might not be the clamp. I can fix it either way.”

“You can?”

“Sure. Or I’ll show you how and you can do it. It’s simple, if you think about it. Fixing stuff. There are only so many parts to a thing, you know? So you just start figuring out which part is the broken part.”

“Okay.”

An eagle flew above them. Flew to the shoreline. Settled at the top of a tree.

“Oh man,” James said, setting his lunch on top of the cooler. “I bet we can see it up close.”

Even from as far as they were, Amelia thought she could make out a nest in the treetop. A big wicker basket harboring the bird.

“Let’s do it.”

James was already turning around.

“You ready?” he called to her.

“Ready.”

They paddled toward the trees, quickly. The eagle remained in the nest. It seemed to be watching them approach. When they were close enough, James pushed his oar against the water and the canoe turned slightly, gliding to a partial stop near the shoreline.

James turned to Amelia and placed a finger over his lips.

But Amelia had to say something.

“Holy shit, ” she whispered. “I’ve never seen one… so close !”

This was good, James thought. An eagle could be as exciting as a speedboat.

“It’s incredible,” he said.

Amelia wished she had brought a camera. Then she decided it was okay that she didn’t have one. She could bring one next time. Then she realized she was already thinking of next time.

They studied the bird for a long time. Eventually it flew away, hunting, and Amelia followed its path, its trajectory, until something far beneath it caught her eye.

“What’s that?” she asked.

James looked, expecting to see another bird.

“What’s what?”

“That.” Amelia pointed it out with an oar.

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s… a little bridge, maybe?”

James held a hand over his eyes and squinted where she was pointing.

“I don’t remember any bridge out here. And I still don’t see what you mean.”

“You see that dark evergreen there?”

“Which one?”

“It’s tall. Taller than the—”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Okay, now go down to its base and to the left like… one… two… three trees.”

James did. He saw it.

“Oh wow. I have no idea. Oh wait. I do know what that is.”

“What?”

“It’s like a tiny stretch of road. Concrete. I think it’s for whoever maintains the lakes. Like a service drive.”

“Ah.”

James smiled.

“You wanna check it out, don’t you?”

Amelia shrugged. She didn’t want to say no to anything. Not today.

“Yeah, I mean. Why not?”

“Yeah,” James said. “Okay. So do I.”

They paddled toward the concrete patch of road almost buried in the trees at the shoreline.

“What did you do on some of your other first dates?” James called over his shoulder.

“What?”

“What were some of your other first dates like?”

“Nothing like this,” she called. “Movies. Dinner.”

Good, James thought.

“The movies is a bad first date,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Even if the movie is good.”

“Yeah.”

Amelia considered saying something clever like, You can learn a lot about somebody by sitting in the dark with them for two hours. But she didn’t say it because she didn’t really believe it.

“I had one date,” she said, paddling, steering, “where this guy took me to his parents’ ranch in Obega.”

“That sounds all right.”

“His parents were there.”

“Wow. You met his parents on the first date?”

“Yep. I did.”

James laughed. Amelia laughed. They were free about their laughter but there was something anxious about it, too.

“You see that tangle of brush just below the concrete?” she asked.

“I do, yeah.”

“What is it hiding?”

They were close enough now to see there was a tunnel under the concrete. The colors red and neon green, black and orange popped out at them.

Graffiti. A lot of it. Strange phrases that read like nonsense to them but must have meant something to someone else.

“Punks,” Amelia said and then wished she hadn’t. That was something her mom would’ve said. Why did it sound funny before it came out? Didn’t she know what funny was?

“What?”

She wasn’t going to repeat it.

“Closer,” she said instead. “Let’s get closer.”

“Yep.”

The water was darker along the shoreline, shadowed by the trees. Amelia wondered if it was deeper here, if the water that ran through the tunnel went really deep.

“I had the worst first date ever,” James said, still paddling.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I asked a girl to go bowling and she said yes and my plan was to invite some friends, make a night of it. But nobody could go, nobody said yes, and so I ended up going bowling with a girl I really didn’t know at all.”

“You’re pretty good at that.”

James looked over his shoulder. Amelia smiled.

“Well, I don’t ask a lot of girls out, if that’s what you mean.”

“I just meant that you’re pretty good at hanging out with somebody you don’t know.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

Amelia smiled. James wanted to kiss her.

“Thanks,” he said. And he meant it. “So we went bowling and the girl was nice but also really shy and so I had a hard time talking to her. I asked her about things, but it wasn’t easy. Then it was her turn to bowl and she was walking up the lane and she slipped and fell and broke her arm.”

“Whoa!”

“At the elbow.”

“Oh man.”

“Yeah. It was terrible.”

They were close enough to the tunnel to see someone had painted a bloated, veined penis with googly eyes.

“Punks,” James said, and Amelia wished she had repeated it.

They were as close as they could go without entering the tunnel. So they stopped rowing. They drifted. They stared into the tunnel.

“Hey,” James said. “That might be another lake on the other side there.”

Amelia saw what he meant.

“And you’ve never been over there?”

“No. I don’t think the canoe would even fit through there.”

Amelia had a vision of the two of them stuck inside the tunnel. A bloated, veiny penis with googly eyes rising from the water.