Chapter Text
He gets sick, sort of, and it doesn’t go away. First he sleeps all the time, and then he can’t sleep at all. He gets distractible, can’t pay attention, barely writes. He goes through pots and pots of coffee a day, and barely writes a page. The words he doesn’t write, can’t write, haunt him and skitter along the inside of his skull. Write, Lavi, he tells himself, just write, the words are right there. But he can’t write, and he gets sicker and sicker and the city gets louder and louder. He has to leave.
He talks to his editor, explains that he’s going away for his health, and assures her he has a new idea for a novel. He does not have a new idea for a novel. It is a lie. He has no ideas, no idea what to do with himself, no idea what to write, not even much of an idea of what he hopes to accomplish by going away. Fresh air is what he needs, fresh air and to get away from the constant noise of the city. In the summer of 1954, Lavi Bookman leaves for the far-away seaside.
"It’s a bit rustic,“ the landlord says. His voice is tinny and distant over the telephone. This call will not be a cheap one, but that’s why Lavi is calling from his office. They’ll pick up the fee. "There’s no electricity and no running water. Good fireplace, though, and it’s not far from town. You can see the ocean from the kitchen window.”
"It sounds perfect," Lavi says mostly honestly.
He packs enough clothes, books, paper, and ink for a month. When a month is up, he can decide if he wants to stay longer or come back to the city. The trip is long and dull, train after bus after train after bus. The city gives way to shale rock faces, and then to pine forests. The pine forests get denser and the towns get thinner, until the busses stop and he has to hire a very confused taxi driver.
"It’ll not be cheap getting out to that island,” the driver says, trying to dissuade Lavi.
He shrugs. “I don’t have a car. I’ll make it worth it, I promise.”
"At least you don’t have to take a ferry anymore. They put a bridge in about twenty-five years ago. People still call it the new bridge.“
The ride is three silent hours over twisting, hilly, winter-ravaged roads, and the cost is indeed exorbitant. After a few wrong turns down unmarked dirt roads, they find the house. Lavi pays the driver twice what he charges, and hefts his suitcases up the few stairs to the red-painted door. The door sticks even after he gets it unlocked, but a little shoving gets it open. The sun hasn’t set yet, and the air smells like pine and salt. He drags his suitcases into the main bedroom, and falls onto the bed. For an activity composed primarily of sitting, traveling is exhausting.
The house is tiny, only a few rooms, and what isn’t made of wood is made of windows. Huge picture windows look out from the central living area, late afternoon sunlight streaming in over the floor and furniture. A small path leads down to the beach, hidden under high tide at the moment. The light blazes off the water, almost too bright for him to look at. If his mind wanders, he could almost believe he could walk across the path of shifting, glittering light and water.
He unpacks his typewriter and sets it up on a small table looking out over the water. Everything else can wait. This is what he came out here to do: to write, to be alone with his thoughts and to put them on paper.
He stares at the pristine, blank page. It stares back. Lavi is losing a stare down with a piece of flattened tree pulp. He cannot write. He will never have another salient idea, and he will never write again. This is the end of his career.
"We are not finished here,” he says to the typewriter. It is resolutely silent. Damn its silence.
It’s too late to try walking into town, and anyway he’s too tired to even think of it. Lavi makes dinner out of some bread and cheese he’d stashed in a bag in case of sudden hunger. The sunset over the water is blinding, so many shades of fuschia it strains his good eye. He watches it shift lower and lower in the sky, until it leaves him and his tiny house in darkness. He lights a candle and wanders back to his room, only knocking into walls twice. He undresses in the near dark and blows the candle out from under the blankets. The island breathes around him, the sea sighing with every wave, the trees whispering secrets to each other in the wind. For the first time in months, he sleeps without trouble.
The light wakes him, cool and astonishingly clear, a delicate yellow on the white of his bedsheets. When he checks his watch, it is a quarter to four. He does not mind, and watches the light in fascination. Lavi has not seen a proper sunrise in years upon years; in the city the sky just shifts from gray to lighter gray, but the colors of the light here are like a painter’s palette.
He finds half a bag of coffee, and takes a chance at boiling it over the fire in the grate. It comes out fiercely bitter and strong, with enough grounds to leave him rinsing his mouth for minutes after drinking it, but it does its job.
The walk into town for groceries isn’t as long as he had feared, although the road is narrow and winding and the mosquitoes are thick as fog. He comes home with food and about eighty-seven mosquito bites. Lunch is apples and bread and staring down at his typewriter and its damnably blank paper. After two hours, the view of the water is too tempting. The tide is low and the sand looks soft and warm, even with seaweed strewn about the tide line.
Lavi sees no other footprints in the sand. He must be well and truly alone here. He does not mind. The quiet is a good change from the rush and incessant rumble of the city. He rolls up the cuffs of his slacks and leaves his sweater and shoes on a rock where the sand and water won’t get them. The dry sand tickles between his toes and blue mussel shells crunch when he steps on them.
The water gets him while he’s not paying attention; he stands too close to it, and an ambitious wave sweeps over his feet. The cold is so sharp and sudden as to be painful, and he lets out an undignified yelp. How could water be so cold on such a hot, bright day? He scurries back to the safety of the dry rocks and buries his toes in the warm sand.
Watching the water, he tries to describe it to himself. What words would he use to tell someone who had never seen the sea what it’s like? Which would he use to portray it in a book? The water is not precisely blue or green, more a dark teal, and nearly opaque with salt. The sand is a delicate, soft brown, occasionally flecked with the blue of crushed mussel shells. The rocks above the tide line are rough pink granite, the ones below are stained black and brown, white barnacles collecting in heaps and growths. The ocean swishes inexorably closer.
He is alone, but blissfully so. It has been hours since he spoke to another human being. Most of the time Lavi considers himself fairly chatty, but resting his voice is much more pleasant than he would have expected. He can order his words more slowly and carefully now. Now there is no rush to slap down whatever comes into his head; he can rest and let his mind rest, let his words rest.
So it’s when he turns around to look for the trail back to the house that he gets the shock of his life. A ghost is standing on the rocks near the tree line, dressed in white from top to toe. Even his hair is white, matching the sling cradling his left arm to his chest and the bandages covering almost half his face. The ghost startles a little when Lavi yelps and stumbles back, swearing.
"Holy shit, how long have you been–“
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten–”
They speak at the same time, and then fall silent, each gesturing for the other to speak. Finally, Lavi decides to break the silence.
"Are you a ghost?“
The possible ghost glances around. "Me? No, no I’m quite alive.” His words are more confident than his tone. “I’m just… I suppose my clothes are unconventional, yes.”
"I didn’t know anyone else lived around here.“ The landlord hadn’t mentioned any neighbors, although Lavi also hadn’t asked about them.
"I’m taking care of my uncle’s house for the summer.” The not-ghost definitely-alive-flesh-and-blood boy gestures awkwardly at himself. “Recovering from… an accident.”
"I’m sorry to hear that,“ Lavi says automatically.
"Thank you.” The boy smiles, and it almost reaches his pale grey eyes. His gaze never quite focuses on anything, as if he can’t believe it’s all real and present. “Are you here on vacation, or are you my uncle’s new neighbor?”
"Just vacationing. I may stay the whole summer here, though. It’s restful.“ He does not mention the bone-deep exhaustion, or the cruel fever-like dreams that follow him.
"Summer isn’t long here.” The boy carefully lowers himself to sit on the rock, flinching when his arm shifts in the sling. Lavi does not know if he should help. “But I think it’s the more beautiful for it.”
"I realized I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Lavi Bookman.“ He sits, and holds out his hand.
"Allen Walker,” the boy says. His good hand, when it touches Lavi’s, is desperately cold despite having been on the sun-baked rock a moment before. “It’s good to meet you; it gets lonely out here sometimes.”
"Do you live alone?“ He can’t imagine that Allen does everything by himself with one arm and one eye out of commission–or so he assumes; the extent of Allen’s injuries is unclear under the bandages.
"Oh no, I have a dog, Tim. He’s around here somewhere.”
It’s not the answer Lavi expected. Does he cook and clean and do everything with just one arm? At least it’s his left arm that’s in the sling, he could never operate with only his non-dominant hand. “Would you like to come over for dinner sometime?” Lavi hears his own voice ask.
Allen’s mouth drops open in surprise. “I–that’s very generous of you,” he says. “I should warn you, I eat a lot.”
"And I should warn you that I’m not a very practiced cook, so you may not want to eat much.“
Allen laughs, and at that moment Lavi starts to feel a story scratching at his brain. He only sees a little of it, just patches, like the ground under heavy winter snowfall: a graveyard, a little ghost perched on a headstone, a ragdoll, bare feet worn bloody by ceaseless wandering. He’ll have to dig it out by writing, but he knows how to do that. This is the feeling he missed, the feeling of needing to tell a story for its own sake, not just to publish something and collect the royalties. This is what he went away to find.
"I have to go,” Lavi says, lurching to his feet. He needs his paper and pen, now, or he’ll start writing in blood. He can’t let this one slip away, not after so long, not when it could be so good. Writing isn’t his job, it’s a compulsion, an obsession. He would do it for free, but supporting himself doing other things would cut into his time to write. He had to go now.
"Dinner on Wednesday?“ Allen calls after him, faintly bemused.
"Yes, yes, of course, perfect,” Lavi says, already working on opening lines.