Emma had always been a small woman, but without the coat she appeared whittled down to a pine needle’s width. Strangely, this didn’t make her seem weak. Imagine the coat falling away to reveal a single plutonium rod underneath.
The clothes, on the other hand, had nearly bonded with her skin. He tried to pull at the sleeves of her wool sweater, and they crumbled between his fingers. Her jeans were nothing more than long strips of denim that came off in faded blue ribbons when he tugged at them. Her socks couldn’t be slipped off her feet. They would have to come off when she stepped into the tub, so rotten they’d dissolve in the water.
He turned off the faucet. It was only when he leaned close, right up against her skin, that her smell overpowered the Brennivín coating his skin. She smelled so tart from dried sweat and a longtime lack of soap that Apollo’s eyes hurt when he leaned into her and picked her up.
“Ready for the water?” Apollo asked, but Emma didn’t answer. She stared at the bathroom mirror and, maybe for the first time in four months, saw her reflection. She couldn’t look away from it.
“Who is that?” she whispered.
He leaned over the tub and let her down. The water turned to a murky, almost greenish sludge seconds after she was immersed. Months of filth floated off her body. Apollo lifted the plunger and let the water drain, then refilled the tub. It took three refills before the water stopped turning dirty. Then Apollo found a cloth and a bar of soap and washed Emma’s body.
They were in the bathroom for two hours.
When they finished, Emma couldn’t really stand. It was as if the bath had also scraped away some armor she’d constructed, an exoskeleton. He carried her into the largest bedroom, what he assumed had been Jorgen’s bedroom, though the bed clearly hadn’t been slept in. No indent in the sheets or the pillows. Emma had been keeping the old man awake for a long time. Maybe he’d stopped coming into this room at all. This wasn’t the room where Apollo found the clean wardrobe. This meant he was wearing Kinder Garten’s clothes.
He pulled back the covers and laid Emma on the bed. There were two space heaters in this bedroom, neither one turned on, so the room felt chilly. He spun each one’s black dial. Late morning light curled in through two windows at the head of the bed and clarified just how gray, how bloodless, Emma’s skin had become. She looked like a body that had been dug out of the ice. Cleaning her up actually made Emma look worse. As a witch, she had been imperious; she walked in a blue cloud of power, a being for whom the trees parted and the woods whispered. The woman on the mattress now nearly got lost in the bedsheets. She should’ve been hooked up to an IV and put on bed rest for six weeks. She hadn’t spoken once since Apollo ran the bath. Emma appeared more lost than she’d been out in the forest. Had he done more harm than good by bringing her back?
Apollo pulled the covers over her and returned to the first floor. There were clothes in the suitcase—he’d brought a change for Emma and for Brian—and he thought maybe seeing the clothes would return her focus. He didn’t know what else to do. In the kitchen he found Jorgen’s body once more, but being alone with it again, he had to steady himself against the counter. This was when he felt the powerful cold throughout the house. He stepped into the hall. That damn front door had been open all night. He walked down the hall. The whole first floor felt frigid, the place gone as silent as a tomb. He shut the front door and turned off the porch light.
He dragged the suitcase up the stairs and unpacked nearly everything, even the mattock. He showed her the clothes he’d picked for her, but her eyes remained focused on the ceiling, unfocused, dazed.
Apollo checked the small zippered side pockets of the suitcase, the faint bulge suggesting something he’d overlooked. He found the packet of bendy straws and the bottle of massage oil. The last of the labor kit. Apollo took up the faintly yellow liquid and shook it, unscrewed the cap, and smelled. Pure almond oil. Emma had packed this suitcase over a year ago, so it was as though she’d packed this small gift for herself.
He pulled the covers away from Emma and poured a dollop of the almond oil into one hand. He moved to the bottom of the bed and brought two hands around Emma’s right foot. He squeezed her foot and rubbed the almond oil across the skin until it soaked in. The skin looked no richer or softer, no less gray. He poured more oil into his hand and rubbed it into the bottom of the same foot, pressing at the heel and running his thumb all the way up to the toes. When he finished with the first foot, he moved on to the other and continued upward across her legs and along her sides.
When he’d finished, she rolled onto her side, facing him, but still didn’t say a word. Apollo brought the blanket up to the bridge of her nose. Her hair had tightened into its curls as it dried. The two of them stayed in a moody silence for ten minutes or ten years.
“I should’ve believed you,” Apollo eventually said.
Two fingers appeared at the top of the sheet and pulled the fabric down below her chin. “I wouldn’t have believed you either,” she said. “If it had been the other way around.”
Apollo tapped her fingers gently. “We’re together now,” he said.
She nodded quietly, then locked her gaze with his as she pulled the bedsheets back for him to see her. Her skin shone like burnished brass now. She held the sheet open for him.
He hadn’t felt this nervous since he’d been fifteen. When he took off his clothes the scent of Brennivín filled the room, as if the odor had seeped through his clothes and into his skin. But in the moment it hardly mattered. He slipped in beside Emma, and she dropped the sheet around them both.
So long since they’d even kissed each other. He’d forgotten the goodness of her lips. The soft slope of her long, narrow throat. He climbed on top of her, and to his happy surprise, she wrestled him for the position. She laughed with him when her forehead bumped his chin. She humped against his thigh and climbed higher along him. They made love until they fucked. They fucked until they were spent.
When they finished, they came to rest with their heads near a window so the sunlight bathed both their faces. A comfortable silence, they lingered in it, this short reprieve.
Emma rested a hand on Apollo’s chest and patted it twice. She rose on an elbow and kissed his shoulder. He raised his left arm and brought his hand to her ribs, but before he could touch them, she grabbed his wrist. She turned his hand so she could see his ring finger.
“Did you make a wish with this?” she asked.
“I did. But I’m ashamed of it now.”
“Why don’t you wear it until you can put your real ring back on?”
Apollo lowered his hand. “I threw the ring into the East River.”
She clapped a hand to his chin and squeezed a little too tightly. “You’re going to have a real hard time finding it there.”
Apollo laughed. “You’d make me do it, too.”
She brought her nose to his rib cage, sniffing theatrically. “Smells like you’ve already been there.”