Page 82 of 56 Days
It’s the truth.
He traces a finger along her forearm, connecting her freckles with an invisible line.
“Except for the swimming bit,” she adds. “Because I woulddefinitelydrown.”
“I’d save you.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll save you the bother.”
“You don’t swim?”
“I prefer to think of myself as a very good sinker.”
He laughs.
“Idomiss the water, though,” she says. “Looking at it, that is. I could see it from my apartment in Cork. The harbor. Well, estuary. I don’t know, maybe they’re the same thing. Anyway, I didn’t realize how much I liked seeing it until I left. I feel a bit landlocked here.”
Another truth.
“I hate to break it to you, but we’re on the coast.”
She slaps his arm playfully. “We’re near ariver. I’m talking about seeing nothing but water all the way to the horizon. The beaches are well outside our two K.”
“There might be somewhere else, somewhere closer. Come on.” Oliver moves to get up. “Let’s go.”
Less than fifteen minutes’ walk from the bright greens of Merrion Square Park and thewashed-outreds of the Georgian townhouses that surround it sits an industrial, futuristic feast of silver, gray, and blue: Grand Canal Dock. Ciara has never been, and it’s not at all what she was expecting from the name.
A shimmering square of water stretches toward the sea, overlooked byglass-frontedboxes: apartment blocks and office buildings. Everything is smooth and new, and stone, steel, or glass. The open sea beyond the mouth of the Liffey is blocked from view by a row of buildings in the middle distance, but she can see the Poolbeg chimneys rising into the sky beyond, and there’s more than enough water here to soothe her soul.
“Thank you,” she says to Oliver. “This works.”
He grins. “This isn’t it.”
He leads her past the water and down a narrow street, a gap in theglass-and-steel boxes. They pass closed restaurants, a bank, and a slew of dark office doors, but there are pockets of normality here too: teenage boys in wetsuits diving gleefully into the water, a couple of skateboarders crisscrossing the smooth pavement of the main square, a couple emerging from a grocery shop with takeout coffees.
She has no idea where he’s taking her until finally, they emerge at the other end and she follows him across the road—
He’s brought her to the river, a stretch of it she’s never seen.
On her left, the delicate white curve of the Samuel Beckett Bridge rises into the sky like a bird in flight. Through its tension cables, she can see more familiar Dublin landmarks in the distance: Custom House, the tip of the Spire piercing the sky. Feet away from them is abright-orangediving bell, according to its signage. She wouldn’t have had a clue what it was otherwise.
She looks to Oliver, who is watching her look. “This is—”
“Stillnot it. But if you’ll just follow me...”
He pulls gently on the hand he’s holding and they both start to turn in the other direction, to the right, so they both see it at the same time.
A navy vessel is docked just feet away and on its deck, three people in full biohazard gear—overalls, gloves and boots, hoods fitted with plastic visors and respiratory masks—are using the spraying devices on their backs to hose down surfaces with what has to be disinfectant. Next to the ship is a large, long,sea-greentent surrounded by metal railings. Signs say it’s a Client Referral Testing Center and point to the Entrance This Way and warn Referrals Only, No Walk-Ins. The railings have black plastic tarps tied to the inside: makeshift privacy screens. A gangplank connecting the ship to the shore says it’s theLÉ Samuel Beckett.
They both stand, gaping at it, transfixed.
Since lockdown began, Ciara has been glued to the news. It’s on for the hour that Oliver is out running, so she watches it alone. They usually start with the numbers, and those are never good. But the numbers are never the worst part, partly because that’s all they are, because it’s too much to take in to match them to the scope of human suffering that they represent. It’s the details beyond the headlines, the sentences filled with words she knows but which, put together, don’t make any sense, that catch in her throat.
Like how a convention center in the middle of New York City had been turned into a 1,200-bedfield hospital with a potted plant next to every bed because it was supposed to have been hosting the World Floral Expo. Or how, when someone dies of this thing in an Irish hospital, they have to be left in the clothes they have on, fitted with a mask even though they’ve stopped breathing, and zipped inside not one buttwobody bags, neither of which will ever be opened again. And how a ship docked down in Cork is prepped to become a makeshift morgue if needs be.
But all of these things have been on the television, safely on the other side of the screen, at the start of evenings she and Oliver spend cuddled up on the couch watching TV shows that don’t know this is coming, hermetically sealed time capsules of Before, and being safe and well and kindaliking this. Walking out into the world and seeing them with her own eyes, right in front of her, is another thing entirely. She looks at the faceless bodies moving about in the biohazard gear and feels like what they’re washing away with that chemical spray is every good thing about today.
“I didn’t know this was here,” Oliver says. “If it wasn’t, you’d be able to see down as far as the port, to the mouth of the river, and a horizon of water, just like you said. Maybe if we walk down there a bit, we can—”
