The Miracle

“Hey,” he called out after some silence.

“Hello …” he called again, swiping a giant hand through the water. He’d run a frothy bath. The bubbles formed hills and mountains, obscuring the parts of his body that he did not like to see: the fleshy bits and hairs waving in the milkiness that made him seem an easygoing, lifeless person.

“What are you doing?” the man yelled again. “Answer me.” But there was no answer.

He found her sitting criss-cross on the bed, studying the Hindu painting and eating a bowl of green grapes.

“What are you doing?” she said, “You’re all wet.”

On his head a cap of iridescent foam, and water rolling down his belly. More tiny, creamy bubbles tangled in his chest and pubic hair, and little piles of it too, where he had stepped, like pats of snow.

“I had to come check on you,” he said, “you weren’t answering. What if you had choked on something? Or disappeared?”

They went their separate ways—he back into the tub, she into her memory.

She’d seen an image of a dead person lying on a pillow, and thought he looked like an ex-boyfriend who had promised he would never die, at least not in any serious way, and that moreover, his would be a new kind of death. Think of it this way, he told her: If you can still be moved by those spinning pollen things with delicate tentacles that sometimes pass your nose, carried by a spring breeze, then I can survive anything.

Was she still moved by those things, whatever they were? Spirits, seeds, who knows. She had to pay better attention or she would miss it, when it came.

There was a deep sigh from the other room.

The bath had cooled below the temperature of the man’s body, so he pulled the plug and started to drain it.

As the water went down, he thought about his enormous wealth. He could have anything he wanted, and he had: He donated his money, never spoiled himself, and treated his friends and family to a life of dignity.

Then he met the woman.

He’d met her years prior, and years later, he thought about her still. He’d met her in a past life, too, on a business trip. She was bright and sweet and believed in isolation and romance. He saw her again, in a café, and her smile seemed to have grown firmer, stronger and her eyes—as unbelievable as it sounds—moved further apart. But it was nothing: a chat in a hotel lobby, a still-or-sparkling-water affair, a shared ride in an elevator, and yet it swung with the force of an axe to the rest of his life. And whether he would use this weapon or not, whether he would keep cutting through to the other side, he couldn’t know. How absurd, he thought, to “discover” you’re in love. He could not have imagined there was still something more for him. It could have been anything else, it could have been group sex and macarons.

The last of the water sucked down the drain and for a moment he felt afraid. The weight of the earth was returned to him. His raw red skin slipped and squelched against the sides of the tub. He was solid again.

“Hello?” he called out again, more frantically now, “Are you still there?”

Her head was full of barefoot women carrying jugs of water on their heads, handing them off to a blue-skinned god. The god took the basins and poured them out. Liquid washed over the steps, trickling down to the other bearers, wetting their feet and disappearing into the earth. Her phone chimed and for a moment she was paralyzed with hope. A man from the ludicrous past had just reached out.

He came out in a tiny towel, still all wet.

When someone brushes your knee at a café, it’s better to look vague. In an elevator, keep your eyes on the tips of your shoes. The miracle is in the act of consuming something before it is dead. Even more miraculously, in enjoying it.

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Zans Brady Krohn lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her short stories have been published in The Paris Review, Muumuu House, Heavy Traffic, Forever Mag, and elsewhere. She edits the fiction column at Byline.