Abby Geni - The Lightkeepers

Once they were inside I adjusted the focus, skimming frantically across the windows. The upper story was as lightless as a black hole, nothing there but the whirling and flickering of the bats. Biting my lip, I waited. One minute passed. Two minutes. Then something pale darted across my lens.

Mick and Forest had stationed themselves in the moonlit hollow of the living room. I sat up straighter. It was more difficult now to keep an eye on them. Since they were framed in the window, the slightest shift from side to side could remove either of them entirely from my field of vision. And they were moving fast. I watched them kiss hungrily, almost angrily. Mick was unbuttoning Forest’s shirt.

I began taking pictures. Because it was tricky to catch a glimpse, I wanted to keep what I caught. The sound of the shutter echoed around the room like gunfire. I snapped Forest’s marble rib cage, bare to the navel. I snapped another wild kiss, Mick’s hands flying upward in a blurred, avid surge. I snapped Forest tearing off his own scarf and flinging it aside. Soon they were both unclothed. The window cut off their bodies at the waist. Still, it was easy enough to follow what was going on. Forest swiveled so his back touched Mick’s belly. Two moon-pale torsos moved in concert. Mick wrapped his arms around Forest’s chest, and I marveled anew at Forest’s slimness, not an ounce of fat on him. At first their dance was tentative, graceful. Mick buried his cheek in Forest’s shoulder. Forest’s head rocked back. I heard the cry he gave, a moan that would ordinarily have passed for the rowdy wind or the rumble of the elephant seals. He threw out a hand, bracing himself against the wall.

I lowered the camera for a moment. The sensation was an odd one. For the first time in a long while, I was remembering desire. The spark of hunger. The pull of lust. That part of myself. But the memory was faint, distorted, as though from a dream. Once upon a time, I had experienced these things. But that had been another life. I remembered it now the way a ghost might. All mind, no body.

After a while, the inevitable happened: Mick and Forest tumbled onto the floor and vanished. I waited, my heart hammering. Perhaps their lovemaking would not last long. Perhaps they would reappear. The wind picked up. The sea roared in the distance. Mick and Forest stayed out of my sight.

I sat back on the mattress, brushing my hair out of my face. So many things made sense to me now. The more I considered the matter, the clearer it became.

To start with, there was the issue of cohabitation. The cabin now had six people and only five bedrooms. Charlene, as the lowest member on the totem pole, lodged in a bedroom that was quite literally a former closet. (Her bed took up the entire floor, and the decorations on the walls were racks of coat hooks.) In the past, Andrew and Lucy had shared a room. Until now, however, I had never understood why Mick and Forest had also chosen to share. It would have been a great deal more practical for Forest to bunk with Galen — his fellow shark addict, on his same schedule.

Other questions were now answered, too. Forest’s reserved nature. His impenetrable demeanor. His stillness and silence. In his presence, I’d always had the feeling that he was keeping himself under tight control. Now I understood why. He was hiding a key facet of his personality, the core of his nature. By the same token, Mick’s lack of romantic interest in me no longer felt like an insult.

I flicked through the pictures I had just taken. Mick smiling as Forest nuzzled his throat. Forest laughing in the wake of a hearty kiss. Their arms tangled, fingers entwined.

For the first time, my conscience pricked me. Obviously, both men had put a premium on secrecy. They shared a room, after all; they could easily have engaged in their romantic adventures there. But the cabin was ancient and creaky. I shuddered, remembering the many times I had been an unwilling audience to Lucy and Andrew’s trysts. Mick and Forest, it seemed, regularly risked injury and illness to keep their relationship hidden from prying eyes.

I considered deleting the snapshots. But the photographer in me would not allow that. They were a chronicle, and any chronicle was sacrosanct. A few of them were quite beautiful, too — I had been able to catch the energy of those fiery embraces, the motion of two bodies swaying together. I would hide the camera under my bed. From now on, I would not use it publicly, just in case.

Eventually I realized how tired I was. It was nearly one in the morning. I lay down. I wondered how often Mick and Forest had made these late-night journeys during my time on the islands. I wondered how they managed to behave so normally the next day. Rising at their usual hour. Greeting each other casually, like friends, like colleagues. Showering one another’s sweat off their skin.

AT DAWN, I awoke with a frightened jolt. I had been dreaming about Andrew. This often happened; it was a nightmare I could not seem to escape. Sometimes I had to relive the rape — breath on my neck, weight on my belly. Sometimes I saw the ghost again, glimmering in the corner of my room. Sometimes Andrew was bloodied and battered in these dreams. Half-dead in the darkness above me. His head bashed in. Dripping fluids and brain matter onto my pillow.

This time, though, I shook off the nightmare fairly quickly. I was doing mental calculations. On the night in question — the worst night, the night everything had changed — I knew exactly where everyone in the cabin had been. I had considered it many times. Galen: drunk and incapable. Charlene: lost in music, headphones on. Lucy: asleep. Mick and Forest: out on the grounds.

Until today, I had thought those two were whale-watching by moonlight. It was a silly explanation, but it was the only one I’d been able to come up with. Now, of course, I knew the truth. My mouth was dry. I sat up in bed, shoving the blanket away. Outside the window, the fog was so thick that I could not see the ocean. It had been two months since Andrew had assaulted me. On that night, Mick and Forest had slipped away to the coast guard house to make love.

Huddled on the mattress, I gave a whimper. Mick was my friend. He was a true friend, maybe the first I’d ever had. If he had known what was happening, he would have stopped it. He would have protected me.

I could not be sure of the others. I could not be sure of any of them. No one had been a witness to my assault, of course. But even if they had, I did not know how they might have reacted. They were biologists. Cold. Impassive. Uninvolved. If Forest had been in the cabin that night, I could imagine him putting a pillow over his head to block out the noise. If Charlene had caught the creak of bedsprings, she might not have thought it was her place to interfere. Galen might not have leapt into action either. He might have analyzed the situation, head cocked, listening. He might have studied my rape as he would observe the struggle of a lost seal pup.

Lucy was a wild card. She disliked me, and she had loved Andrew. Her mind was a dark morass. I could not begin to parse her motivations, let alone predict what she might have done if she had woken in the night to the sound of muffled cries above her, her boyfriend’s heavy breathing, the clang of my headboard.

But I knew about Mick. He would have fought for me. He would have saved me.

For the first time, I wondered if Andrew had been aware of this too. He might have made a similar calculation, tallying up the location of each biologist, weighing the risk. He had chosen a time when he would not be overheard. He had waited for footsteps on the porch, the murmur of Mick and Forest’s voices. In his quest for romance and release, Mick had left me vulnerable. He had left me all alone.