Page 23 of The Deepest Lake

Rose sits upright, gasping in the dark, no idea where she is, only where she was: in the water. The deep, black water. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t touch bottom. Something was pulling her down. Glimmer of the moon receding, overhead. Body cold. Esophagus aching. Lungs filling until the pressure became unbearable, and yet she couldn’t scream.

She grips the scratchy woven blanket. The mattress under her back is thin. She hears drumming and drunken, happy shouts somewhere far away. Outside the cabin, on the beach. Lake Atitlán. In Guatemala. She’s actually here.

At home, she would turn on the bedside lamp, go to the kitchen, flood the entire house with lights. Wish the recurring nightmare away, as she has for the past three months.

But here, she’s in a rustic cabin with a sleeping roommate. And there’s another problem. Her tongue is dry and sticky. A yeasty smell emanates from her pores. She licks her parched lips and only feels woozier.

“Chicago,” comes a woman’s voice from across the dark room. “Water bottle is where you left it, next to your pants.”

Rose reaches down, toward the floor next to her twin bed. In search of the plastic bottle, her fingers brush against damp cloth. Wet. Her capris are soaking wet. Next to them is the soft mound of her shawl, damp at the edges.

Oh shit. The party. Way too much wine. At some point, sparklers were handed out. Anyone who hadn’t yet slipped off her shoes finally took them off.

The next hour evaporated. Then it was midnight. Ana Sofía, Chef Hans and a few other staff members herded the thirty-some party attendees down to the dock, where two water taxis had arrived to take them back to their cabins. The party had to shut down so they could all get up and meet for workshop in the morning, but not before a noisy argument erupted.

The spark came from Rose’s disagreement not with Ana Sofía or Hans but a third member of the staff—a huge woman, tall and wide, arms folded over her chest, like a bar bouncer.

Barbara. That was her name.

It’s too late for tuk-tuks, Barbara insisted, and you’re not walking back. Everyone’s going by boat.

Rose refused. The night sky was a threatening, spiky shimmer. An excess of stars. All those pinpricks of light, doubled in the mirrored surface of the lake, were messing with her head. She wanted nothing to do with boarding any boat. She wanted nothing to do with this horrible lake at night. Then something happened: a misstep, a wobble, and Rose fell off the pier and into the shallows. Only her bottom half got wet.

Now, Rose finds the bottle of water, sucks down as much as she can tolerate, remembering only light bulb flashes of what came next. Barbara, barking orders. Other women, the participants, trying to be helpful.

Another flash: Pippa tugging at her waistband, one foot lifted, trying to step out of her Thai pants with the adorable elephants. Rose’s own pants were wet and she was going to be walking the road, whereas Pippa was only going for a five-minute boat ride, therefore Rose needed them more, according to Pippa. Drinkers’ logic.

Rose remembers Pippa talking about her underwear, in her plummy English accent. They’re so pretty. But who sees them? My husband insists on keeping the lights off, such a waste.

Until someone—Barbara again, bellowing—stopped Pippa from undressing.

Dear Pippa. Even when the search for Jules’s body was at its most intense and Rose was at her most sleep-deprived, anxious worst, no friend had been that outrageously kind. No one had offered to pull off his or her pants on the spot and hand them to Rose, saying, This might cheer you up for thirty seconds. Good for a laugh.

“Chicago,” the voice says again. “You going to be okay?”

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.”

“Gonna be sick?”

“No, I just really have to pee.”

“Flashlight’s at the top of the ladder, where we left it.”

From outside the cabin comes a relentless bongo rhythm.

“Did I wake you?” Rose says, remembering now who that voice belongs to. It’s her third roommate, K.

“I was already up. Damn drumming.”

“It’s making my head pound,” Rose agrees.

Her head would be pounding even without the drums, of course. The shame floods her now. Both what she did—drank too much, didn’t keep track, didn’t eat enough somehow even though she had been starving, didn’t keep alternating with water no matter how often Pippa reminded her. Then the fuss she made, refusing the boat ride. Then: whatever came next.

The larger shame, the paralyzing shame, is that she can’t remember. Bad enough when it was Ambien, and only days after Jules went missing—a justifiable loss of sanity. This time it was simple alcohol. At a party. She was actually enjoying herself, sort of. That realization leads to another, more complicated sort of shame.

Some part of her brain must have kept functioning, though, no matter how much she drank. Her shawl may be damp, but she didn’t leave it behind. Rose can feel it now, the weight of it over her shoulders, trying not to weave as she turns away from the departing water taxi, one hand reaching for the staircase rail, the other patting herself—does she have everything she came with?

Her eyes widen in the dark, a spike of panic forcing her to sit upright. She reaches for the floor again. Her bag. The one she’d taken to the pizzeria, filled not only with her various writing supplies and retreat printouts, but also the notebook stuffed with culled information about Eva, her staff, Guatemalan crime, Jules’s messages. She’d meant to leave all that back at the cabin, but she’d never come back to the cabin before proceeding to the party.

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