Tying Water

“People come, people go.” 

Santo took the poster from the lady’s hands. Every raindrop bleached the letters into bullet wounds of ink. 

She smiled. “Are you interested?”

Santo shook his head. 

Then she peered closer. “Are you from here?”

Before she could catch his eye, Santo pulled Pancho away. The day carried itself everywhere. There was a time he loved the rain. Now, a robust grayness infected every puddle, watch, and spotlight. Water seeped into his socks with every step. A neon billboard stopped him. 

“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

Then a red fish swam into the swarm and turned into a heart. 

“Salmon bagel sandwich, please,” Santo said, drenching the counter. 

“Whoa! Whoa! Hey, I thought you were dead?” Luca nearly hopped over the counter. “When did you get back?”

 “When did you get back?”

“Like an hour ago?” 

Luca gripped a few of Santo’s ribs. “You’re a stick!” 

“There were several financial expenses along the way… and back.”

“Well, you’re back?” Luca said, wiping his forehead. Santo didn’t know what to say either. He focused on Luca’s cheeks. They were sunken and pale. 

“Don’t be weird. Bring it in,” Luca finally said, trying to hug him. 

“I’m all wet.” 

“Doesn’t matter to me.” 

This is my best friend, Santo reminded himself, returning the embrace. “What am I doing?” Santo hugged tighter. It was like clinging to a stick of iron. “It’s great to see you.” 

“You said salmon? No chicken parm?”

“Trying something new.”

“Cut?”

“Yes, please.”

“Came back on a gorgeous day!”

The rain berated the window, harder than before. “Yeah! Just how I left it.” 

Luca, appalled, nearly added his finger to the order. “You left him outside!”

“He needs a shower.” 

“Let him in!”

“He doesn’t do well in tight spaces —”

Luca pointed the knife. “All customers are welcome in this establishment.” 

The wind chimes rang, and four clicking hooves strutted in. “How’s my big Pancho-wancho!” 

“He talked about you every night?”

“Really? Is that so!” 

Head high, ears pinned, Pancho stood. He might just be hungry, Santo hoped. “Can you make it two?” 

“With pleasure,” Luca began prepping the order. He glanced twice at Santo. “You’re starting to look like your mom — how is she?”

 “I just got back.” 

“You haven’t seen them?”

“You’re the first.” 

Luca bent over. “Did you keep in touch?”

“Of course. Here and there, but you know I wanted this…this… —”

“You’re venturing alone. Nah, that was smart.”

“You think so?” For a moment, a blob of brown emerged outside. 

“That’s what you always talked about.” 

“Yeah…” Pancho began pacing in place as Luca diced two slabs of salmon. “How have things been?”

“Normal. Money comes, money goes. The neighborhood is really liking avocados, which is a real pain in the ass.” 

“Not cheap?” 

“That, and they are hard to come by. I should’ve had you pick some up.”

“Pancho would’ve eaten them all up.” 

“How old is he?

The air had thickened. “I… don’t know. He’s always just been there… always will.” 

“Nothing lasts forever — I had Pablo, you know,” Luca started reminiscing, “The sweetest fur ball — we all did shrooms together.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“We took him to parties, had dinners — he even saw me pull Lindsey Steffan. Remember her?”

“Of course.” The lights were blazing. Santo reached into his pocket and cupped a capsule.

“Man, that little guy lived… then one morning he was dead. So be it. Things come and go,” Luca stated, cutting up two avocados.

Luca caught Santo rubbing his chest. “You alright?” 

“The rain,” Santo forced a cough, successfully swallowing. “I feel like I skipped a decade.” 

“In a way you did.”

“What’s with the people in Lincoln Square?”

Luca raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure you saw them before?”

“Yeah… but here too?”

“Santo! Did you bunker up in the mountains?”

“This is just a phase, right?”

“I hope not. People seem much more… accepting… loving.”

“They don’t love.”

“You sure you want to say that?”

“Positive.”

“Guess who is on the municipal board?” 

“Who?”

“Both your Dad and Matt.”

“Motherfucker,” Santo whispered. “Since when?”

“The past two years. You really should see them.”

“I will.” 

“And I know they will love to see you,” Luca teased. 

“Funny. I would have to see it.” 

“Your pops and mom let you go off without a phone to call on. That’s love.” 

“I never was off. People come back — I am back.” 

“But you will want more. I bet you can’t wait to hop back on Pancho and stroll off to the next frontier.”

“And in that I will have more experience — more lived life… to share with my family.” 

Luca opened the oven. “But it will be endless. Amazon, this desert, that mountain, this city, eventually you either see it all and have nothing left to do,” the timer rang, “or like my little Pablo, you run in a ball — hungry to get to everywhere but never really getting it.” Luca shrugged. “What can you do?” 

“There’s always something to do.” Finally, she materialized, annoyingly smirking through the rain. 

Luca laughed, closing the oven before fully turning, “Jesus, Santo, are you —”

“Thank you, Luca,” Santo replied, taking the two sandwiches. 

Luca backed off, holding his gaze until the two walked out. As they passed the front, Santo gave one sandwich to Pablo and the other to her. 

“You knew things had changed.” she gargled between bites. Santo helped her mount Pancho. 

“You have brown hair, now.”

“Ugh. Why don’t you like blondes?”

“Blondes aren’t real.”

Daniela chortled, her teeth eclipsing the Neon billboards behind. “Take this in,” she pointed, “You’re back.”

The three sailed through the river of boots and umbrellas. Santo thought of lilypads. The people floated up and down the sidewalk as though waiting to be jumped on. Or really, Santo fixated, they were clouds sent to fog everything up. 

“These are our people,” instigated Daniela.

“Your.”

“And there’s not one for you,” she snickered. 

“There’s always someone.” His pocket was empty. 

“So that’s why we are back.”

Santo tugged the reins, and the billboards of fish and hearts fell further behind. 

The bricks cracked under Pancho’s trot. By now, every street corner was practically flooded. Aside from the necessary traffic lights, the suggested grey was now an overshaded lead. The townhouses stretched up and out like a baby reaching for its binky. The buildings wanted to be magnificent. They guessed at what big was, but the marble was rigid. Any roof lumped itself into the next. For all one knew, this was designed by one architect with a brown crayon and printing paper. 

Santo dropped his head. “It really is everywhere.”

Daniela nearly fell off, spitefully laughing, “1464 days! We did all of that — looking for only you know what — when we could have just stayed here and seen everything all at once!” 

The nausea shook Santo into silence. 

“Europe, Asia — even the Congo! Same! Same! Same!” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You overthought it, Santo. It’s okay. Drop it and be happy you live in this time.”

 Santo saw one difference. After passing one more glorified cardboard box, they came to an even greater one that maybe could have been claimed as a tent. Pancho licked away the rain from his lips, happily bobbing his head. A woman was lying on her living room floor. Her slender figure appeared too light to be touching the floor. A barrier repelled her from truly resting. Even her mane of bourbon hair was disconnected from her head. 

“Good luck,” whispered Daniele, “I’ll be watching.” 

The woman already opened the door by the time Santo dismounted. There was fresh black nail polish on her hands. The socks she wore were new. And she stood, like a guard daring their inmate to steal. The fact that she held that pose made her perfect in all the wrong ways. 

“You like my dress?”

“I thought they were pajamas.” 

“Hi, Pancho,” she waved. Pancho raced up and bowed his chest into her. “Aw — he’s grown strong,” she gave a few pats. “You… you look how you would.”

“Can we come inside?”

“Why not? Just take your shoes off,” she replied, leaving the doorway. 

For however warm the lamps lit the living room, the floor felt like ice. She handed them towels. It took one waft and the sweet vestige had Santo walking by a river, looking at a painting, eating ice cream on a corner, with his arm being held throughout. Then he was at the base of a maple tree. Leaning back, looking at the peaks afar, seeing if he could make out the curvature of the earth. 

She came back with a cake and coffee. “You don’t have to sit on the floor.”

“Hm?” Santo discovered himself seated with Pancho as a back rest. Daniela crossed her legs, biting her lip on the sofa. “Y-yeah, it’s just — I’m getting used to being back.”

She offered a fork, which Santo took only to fiddle with, wondering where her family was at. She sat down next to Daniela, the two breaking into a laugh.

“Are you that scared?” asked Daniela.

“Terrified.”

“Of what?” The woman was confused. 

“Do you really need those pills, Santo?”

“That… I might get sick – the rain, the travel — I mean, I’m not sick. But if I were to get sick, it’s like the worst. Especially after everything! A cold, a flu, I would need to go to the doctor or the hospital — I haven’t been to a clinic in years. Money too! It just would really be inconvenient — I don’t trust the doctors, too — well you know. I just feel like cattle — naked cattle. Right, Pancho? I see how you feel but at least I saddle you up, take you out before —” 

“Why haven’t you looked at me?” She interrupted with a fork full of frosting.

The day’s first warmth rushed his cheeks and exited through one deep breath. One short breath and Santo shifted his head. “I’m looking, Olivia.”

One blink and she leaned over, hair pinned back, in a white lab coat. She caressed his face, smirking as strands of hair fell over her eye. There was nothing else to be. There was nothing else he had to see again. Before him, all of Earth jumped out through one bright brown iris. Entropy had stopped. Reality was in order. This was the singularity destined for man. 

They kissed. They pressed. Then a terror struck Santo still, dropping him to the ground.

“Is she here?” Olivia asked. 

A vase crashed to the ground, sending Pancho on hooves and Olivia off the couch. Daniela moved to the floor, looking down as Santo clung to the floor, guessing for his heart.

“You see this, right? ‘Cause I am.”

Beyond her shoulder, droves of figures leaped from ledges, bridges, and cliffs. One stopped and waved to Santo. For years he set out to find that shadow, but no one cast it. Everyone had been infected one way or another. It even got to her. 

“I need Colectivo,” Santo demanded as his brain tore itself, lobe from lobe. 

Olivia remained beside Pancho, petting him gently and poking at a dragonfly. Santo tacked up the saddle and got ready to leave. 

“So it’s just that?” 

“Yeah, Olivia, it just is.” 

“We found the cure. It is over now.” 

“They found the illness. And it’s only going to get worse.” 

Olivia let the dragonfly whizz off. “I don’t see it.”

“You’re unable to. So… I will show you.”

Santo went in for a kiss. Olivia looked away. She allowed a hug. Santo then learned the first symptom. 

“Olivia!” 

Daniela held Santo tight. “You never even met me. You never will.”  

Sprung from the ground was a marble-blue capsule. The wind blew, and the sun dazzled over it, making the pill shine like the perfect water droplet. Pancho pressed his face into Santo's shoulder. Daniela walked up the hill with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. 

“I let the cashier keep the change. He seemed rather nice.”

“How so?”

“He really made sure I didn’t drop the bottle — look, we have this cute bag now.” 

“It’s a plastic bag.” 

“A plastic bag, yes, but also someone’s shirt or blanket that was recycled, and we now get to carry.”

Santo broke the bread, a piece for all three of them and an extra. 

“She’s gone, you know.”

“No, she’s not.” 

“Her face was all over inside.”

“That’s just me thinking.”

“No, she’s front-page news — advocating for the ban of Colectivo. You are going to be an outlaw soon.” 

Santo took a big swig of wine. “This is by far her most dangerous experiment.”

“On the contrary. The suicides have stopped. Crimes are on the decline. Even drinking is down — I could tell from the prices.” 

“The suicides can pause but the people are still dying. That cashier, for example. Did he hand you the bottle?”

“I mean, no —”

“He just made sure it didn’t fall over, crack, and cause a mess.”

“I guess but —”

“When you gave him the money, how did he react?”

“He shrugged.”

“He didn’t care. He doesn’t know how to… but we do. Okay, yes, the bleeding has stopped, but how far can a prescription of indifference go before people overdose on apathy?”

Daniela took a drink herself. “What matters is people are not dying.”

“Is that the same as being alive? Should everyone be ghosts then?”

“Obviously not —”

“They can’t even be that! You have to live first! If we just pass through people — like a cashier or a janitor or a doorman —”

“A drug addict —”

“Yes, to avoid faith — taking a leap you do not understand, knowing it can and probably will hurt. You rust. You freeze. Life stops. We become death.”

Daniela poured a cup for Pancho. “And your looney-pill was any better.”

“It wasn’t ready — and it’s not the answer! But we didn’t understand — or go far enough.” 

“How far can a human — can you go to stop this disease?” 

Santo placed two hands on the ground. His knuckles whitened, gripping the soil. Closing his eyes, he felt for rabbits burrowing beyond the pasture, worms squirming miles deep, the tectonic plates clashing and banging one another like brothers in a backyard. Reality echoed before concentrating itself into one finite flower. Santo cupped the blue bulb as it liquidated into his palms. He tried to wrap his mind around it — grasping what it was that could be the cure. But it was like tying water. 

The soil rose as the grass grew out of wood. Dragonflies circled him while the tantalizing sphere turned turquoise. The gap between mind and reality compressed as close as the sliver between pages. Santo stayed between the chapters, looking at Olivia and then Daniela, gazing with convictions of care. A smile fought its way to his face. There was still a cure. There was still evidence. 

Santo ingested the will that had driven him this far. Nothing had ever been more refreshing. The rug of reality pulled from underneath as his mind went further than ever before. However he knew he would come back because that is the law of reality. The law he abided by. The law he will set out to achieve.