THE VIEW

I WAS STRANGLED TO DEATH by a man who makes his living mixing concrete. A life-long companion turned sour.

This same man was contracted to build a community swimming pool for the children who live in the next town. Through a series of triumphs, he was able to sneak my corpse into the pool’s foundation. Weeks later, the construction finished, the chlorine-scented water was poured in. Yes, I can smell it. Even in death. I can also hear and see (the survival of my senses a mystery best left for poets, pseudo-scientists, and Catholics).

I don’t hate the man who murdered me. I despised him in life, that’s true, but in death I’ve lost the ambition. My energy has waned considerably. I enjoy the small things now. In a way, it’s like being retired—only when the world stops do we properly enjoy a golden sunset, the fiery bloom of flora along a forest path, the tingling smell of a storm.

For me it’s the children. Hearing them laugh. Breathing in their innocence. I look up at a liquid blue sky and watch them swim.

They float above me, all limbs and wild hair, cloudy eyes and silly dances. I feel a thrill when a child leaps from the world beyond, shatters the turquoise ether into mercurial fragments, then sinks toward me, knees-to-chin, a vertical chain of bubbles tethering them to life.

My dead heart warms to see teenagers hold hands beneath the surface, pale feet caressing. Clandestine lovers hidden by a liquid heaven.

Rarely am I forced to endure a drowning. When I do I close my eyes.

So yes, the man who took my life was evil, and hateful.

But he gave me a gift, a most peaceful ending:

I lie in a bed made of stars and spend my days watching angels fly.

ROW

PART ONE – THE INVITATION

JESSIE’S A FIGHTER.

She proudly refers to herself as hypercompetitive and, as a teenager, was often labeled by her basketball coach as being “fierce” at both ends of the court.

She isn’t unusually tall, or strong. Athletic, yes; but not freakishly so.

But Jessie has the one thing all great athletes have: a fire in the belly. An internal drive to succeed that’s near impossible to extinguish. A fire to be—if not the best—then one of the best. To perform at the highest level. If she falls short, if she fails, she’ll know—know deep in her heart, where the flames burn furnace-hot—that she’s given it her all.

That she never quit.

That she competed.

When nine years old, Jessie made the decision to challenge every kid in her neighborhood to a race, running from the bottom of her driveway to Mrs. Stinton’s mailbox (about a hundred feet if one took the time to measure). She wanted to prove she was the fastest kid—boy or girl—of all the children living on her block, a tidy square of middle-class homes in the New Jersey suburb of Greenwood.

And for one bright, humid July afternoon, she was. Against girls who were taller, older; against boys (including eleven-year-old Timmy Dobson, who she’d had a crush on all summer), she’d won. That summer afternoon, Jessie ran as if chased by demons, as if it were lava beneath her sneakers instead of a hundred feet of cracked pavement. She ran until her heart pounded, her lungs burned, her legs ached.

Until she’d beat them all.

In high school, Jessie sprouted to a gangly 5’9” and, as a sophomore, made the varsity basketball and track teams, awarded All-State in both sports. A few months after her acceptance into Rutgers University, she was informed she was too short to play basketball, too slow to compete in track. Desperate for something to fuel her competitive nature, Jessie discovered a new sport, a new passion in which to immerse herself.

Jessie learned to row.

Her boat wasn’t the fastest, and she wasn’t anywhere near the best rower on the team, but she held her own. She loved the feeling of pulling as one, the rhythm created when all eight crewmates worked together, gliding down the Raritan River at high speed, competing with other schools at the collegiate level. After her freshman year, Jessie’s love for rowing went from being a passion to an obsession, albeit a healthy one. Rowing got her in the best shape of her life (despite having to adjust to the bulky new muscles developed in parts of her body that were, traditionally, lean) and an awkward summer tan, bronze skin emphasizing the pale patches of the team uniform sunglasses and tank top, something she was keen on evening out. But the sunshine and exercise made her dark eyes dance with a vibrant energy, and her sun-bleached blonde hair smell like a mountain river.

Jessie stayed near school for the summer, moving into an apartment off campus she’d been talked into leasing with two other girls: Annie, one of her teammates, and her dorm roommate Blake, the first student she’d met in her new, pseudo-adult world.

Blake was a funny, whip-smart young woman who quickly became not only Jessie’s best friend, but the sister she’d never had.

Right up to the day she died.

“YOU GUYS ARE GONNA LOVE it.”

They’d been on the road over an hour, Jessie in the backseat with Blake, both of them on their phones, scrolling—Jessie through images on her crew team’s social media page, Blake the university’s job postings.

“Find anything?” Jessie asks.

Blake shakes her head, blows out a frustrated breath. “If I don’t find something the week we get back, I’m screwed.”

Jessie nods. She knows she’s fortunate to have a stipend from her parents, one that covers her rent and groceries, at least. But Blake is on her own. Beautiful and confident, most people assume Blake to be just another pampered, well-to-do college coed, when nothing could be further from the truth.

When Blake was sixteen, her parents were killed in a Los Angeles earthquake while away visiting family. Having had the terrible misfortune of being present for The Big One, the hotel they’d stayed at partially collapsed in the middle of the night, burying them beneath tons of concrete and steel. Blake once confided that she was sure her parents never knew what happened, that they never woke to the horror of the world disappearing beneath their feet, the walls falling away like a magic trick. Jessie doubted this was the case but left her friend with whatever small comfort she could find in the face of unfathomable tragedy. In Jessie’s mind, Blake’s mom and dad likely woke once the building started to shake, felt gravity pull them down, screamed while the floor cracked and gave way, devouring them like a mouth.

“I’ll help you look,” Jessie says. “I’ll need to get something, too. Unless I want to eat ramen every night and have no social life.”

“You guys okay back there?”

Both girls look up from their phones. “Fine,” Blake says cheerfully. “Thanks again for this.”

The driver, Brad, nods and smiles into the rearview mirror. Jessie catches the reflection of his grin, a shining row of too-white teeth. “No problem,” he says. “You guys will dig the place, I promise.”

Jessie stares at the back of Brad’s black-haired head for a moment, then shifts her eyes to the ballcap in the passenger seat. Tom.

It had been Tom who first approached them at the bar. His baseball cap turned backward in standard frat-boy fashion, his smile easy, relaxed by whatever alcohol he’d been putting down that evening. He wore Levi’s and a weathered flannel over a white tee-shirt. Jessie recalls wondering if all boys that age dressed the same way because they’d seen it in movies, or if it was just the “I don’t give a shit” comfort they wore like a badge of honor; a badge most young women didn’t have the luxury to own.

“You guys mind if me and my buddy join you?” he’d said, with just enough charm to keep himself in the game a few precious moments longer while Jessie and Blake eyed one another for an unspoken vote of ‘yay’ or ‘nay’.

Due more to Jessie’s recent breakup with her high school sweetheart, and Blake being easily bored, they’d agreed. Tom’s friend, Brad (who’d sauntered over, as if on cue), wore an intriguing combination of beige slacks and black T-shirt that showed off his obviously regular gym visits. Despite herself, Jessie couldn’t help staring at the cords of muscle in his arms, the taut chest, the dark hair and darker eyes.