Lost Together

I.

I looked out at the long horizon, a thin line where the blue sky meets blue ocean. On cloudless days like these, staring at that nearly invisible divide, a certain kind of vertigo set in, and I'd have to sit down in the sand to steady myself.

I've been here nearly a month. Or we, rather. I should say we. I can see Jordan's slim form far down the beach, checking our makeshift nets, made from long strips of knotted cloth, and hooks bent out of sharpened paperclips, hair bobbins, sewing needle,s and other bits of slim metal we'd been able to scrape up. The cloth was beginning to rot, though, in the harsh sea water and before long it would be useless. I was worried about what we'd do after it finally fell apart completely. Beyond her, right before the beach curves around and out of sight, is the last big piece of wreckage. We've already salvaged most of the plane for shelter and tools, bashing sheets of metal into shapes with rocks and the few meagre implements we had: a hammer with a splintered handle, a fire axe, a few other pieces. We wasted nothing. We couldn't afford to.

Jordan is fantastically tan. I should be helping her, instead of sitting here, eyes turning between watching the dizzying horizon and her trim figure in her salvaged bikini haul up our nets and ropes, pulling off the few fish that they snagged. I had to sit in the shade most of the time. She had that great skin that only seemed to turn a more glorious shade of bronze, while I turned pink and then red in an hour. The single bottle of sunscreen we had ran out in the first week, and since then I'd been delegated to working in the shade, inside the patch of jungle that grew on the heart of our tropical paradise, while she did all the jobs that required facing the relentless south pacific sun.

Not that I minded, really. I've always been pretty handy. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's fun, but it's an engaging challenge to build a life out of what you can find. I'd been able to build a nice shelter around a shallow cave. The "cave" was really more of an indent in a rock formation, but it was enough for a single person to curl up in. Two, if you don't mind a little bit of yoga and limb knotting. That's what Jordan and I had to do the first few days to get away from the sudden warm showers that creep up on you like a jungle predator. I'm probably a horrible person for saying this, but considering the carnage, death and fear we'd crawled out of, curling up tightly with a beautiful woman while the rain pattered around us, feeling her breath on your shoulder and hearing the chattering of her teeth so intimately in your ear—it was a welcome interim.

She'd been the stewardess on our cramped little plane. She'd announced the safety features, she'd handed out juice boxes and granola bars, she told us to buckle our seats and she'd screamed with the rest of us as our engine blew out and we ended up here. It was one of her first rides, she told me later. Been on the job for less than two weeks. I asked her if she'd ever go back to it once we got off this island and she didn't answer me, the dark sentiment hanging between us summarized in a single word: if.

I was just a lowly sales rep, working for a company I'd dropped out of college to join, and on a big trip out of the country to sell tractors to farmers in the Philippines. I'd had a suitcase full of contracts and a huge smile on my face when I boarded the plane to head back, and now it seemed so long ago and so pointless. My suitcase washed up with a few others, but I didn't recognize it at first. We joyfully opened it, like each before, more precious to us than Christmas presents and the excitement being a nearly-tangible air between us. It was all I could do to laugh and laugh as I pulled out fistfuls of the hard-earned and now nearly useless paperwork. Nearly useless. The paper made great kindling. We didn't waste a thing.

The plane wasn't crowded, but a body or two still joined us on the beach, shark-ravaged and water-logged. We tried throwing them back to the sea, but the waves were strong, and they always made their way back. Once we had enough firewood to spare, we gave them a proper cremation, and kept their ashes and wallets safe. Hopefully they'll be discovered one day, even if it's too late for us to present them to their families. Hopefully we'll be discovered some day, and give our families something to bury.

It's a horrible thought. A horrible, self-defeating thought, but it permeates every action, every conversation. How could it not? We plan and build and fish for the long term, but the math is against us. This island is tiny. Too small to support any big mammals in the course of nature. We had fish. We had a few edible herbs and plants. We had a few fruits we could eat without giving us a terrible amount of stomach pain and a few more fruits we thought we might be able to adjust to, given time. We could survive for now, maybe even for a long time, but time is longer than we can usually comprehend at the moment. But we could survive for now, and that kept us busy.

Jordan replaced the nets, standing on a big rock with bare feet, throwing them back as straight as she could. I enjoyed watching her move, watching her work in the sun, sea spray and sweat like shimmering pinpoints. She was pretty, she was my type. Her once-short auburn hair was starting to get long and shaggy, her hands were callused and her nails were ragged, just like mine, but she had certain strength in her muscles that made her graceful and strong and slim, amplified by the physical labour we endured every day. It's a different kind of look, a natural look, foreign to the bodies we shape on a treadmill or bike. It's a look I appreciate more and more every time I get a chance just to watch her.

I supposed I have to give myself a certain amount of credit as well. Going from a desk job to whatever this is wasn't an easy transition for me, but I'd lost the bad kind of weight and put on the good kind. It's a great feeling, I'll admit it. I was the type that never let my gym membership run out, but maybe went twice a year. Now that I have a taste of what it's like to be able to take my shirt off without feeling self-conscious and being able to feel a greater strength in my arms and hands, I wouldn't dream of going back. Confidence is one thing I've gained a great amount of through this ordeal, and if nothing else, I can die soundly knowing that.

I decided it was time to head back. Staring out at the sea becomes depressing after a very short while. Even with however many dozens or hundreds or thousands of miles of water in every direction, the pure blue on all sides can be suffocating. It was a gorgeous coffin, though, no argument there.

Jordan saw me walking up the beach, keeping mostly to the shade of the tree line, and she hopped off her rock to greet me. She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand and hopped gingerly over the hot sand.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," I said. "Anything good?"

She showed me the bucket with a couple of the common red fish we mostly catch inside. I didn't know what they were called. I barely knew anything about fishing. I knew they were edible, though, and had soft bones that were easy to pick out, and that's all I cared about.

"Not much," she said. "But enough for now."

We walked in silence down towards our little fish farm. It was really just a shallow tide pool that we'd augmented with stones and sand walls. We learned early on that fish don't keep well in this heat, and wasting food is about the worst thing we could do. We keep the fish in here, trapped and alive, until we need them, and it's easy to scoop them out with a bucket. As a bonus, they would even put on a little weight with the plankton or whatever they ate washed into the pool with the tide. It was somewhat satisfying to watch a tiny fish grow into a big one, a sense of accomplishment. I'm pretty goddamned tired of fish, but that aside, I'm pretty proud of what we've done.

Jordan emptied the bucket into our little farm and we watched the fish swim around in circles for a bit before heading back into the shade. The sun was peaking for the day and it was getting too hot even for her.

We didn't really talk much. The silence between us as we moved through the bush on a familiar path was a common theme. It's hard to talk to someone while in this situation. Once you run out of the important things, like what did you catch today and how our water supply is, the only things left are things from Back Home. Friends and family, hobbies and hopes; those were the painful things, and an empty silence like this was better than the awkward silence after those.

I already mentioned accomplishment, but I think I need to come back to it for a moment. The camp, as it came into view through the fronds and leaves, might be my greatest achievement. Not just here, but in my entire life. Everything else seems petty in comparison to building a large part of our survival out of almost nothing.

The entire thing was built up against the rock outcropping. The "cave" was more of a storage nook now, keeping mostly food in the dark and cool. I'd fashioned a pretty reasonable shelter out of scraps of sheet metal from the pieces of plane that washed up and a good amount of wood chopped down using my trusty fire axe. I'd had the foresight to be choosy about which trees I chopped up. I took the trees from all over, spreading out my picks as best I could, and of course didn't take any that grew things we could eat. The trees were mostly thin, the tropical variety with spongy flesh, but if you lash enough of them together with vines and fill the gaps with mud and gravel, you have a pretty decent wall. Enough walls topped with a metal roof and you have a house you can be proud of. Wind, rain and annoying tropical birds were no match for it. We even had shelves inside, lined with salvage and food, and almost-comfortable beds made of interwoven plant life and scrap fabric. I can't take credit for the beds, though. That was all Jordan.

We'd fashioned a large water reservoir out of more metal, positioned under a small break in the foliage overhead. It leaked quite a bit, but fresh water was one of our smaller concerns. We had sudden rain storms all the time, and our reservoir, plus the water bottles and jugs that washed up and the upturned sun-hardened husks from one of the fruits that grew here, we had enough water to last us days and days if we needed it. I learned a thing or two in the boy scouts too, and, much to Jordan's delight, I was able to use a scrap-metal pot, a tarp, and a fire to get fresh water from sea water. I hoped we wouldn't often have to come to that, but it was a nice option to have, safely stored in the back of my head.

Fire was the other thing I feel I can be proud of. It seems like such a simple thing, but making the right tools isn't an easy task. We had a nearly empty box of waterproof matches which sustained us through the first couple of days. After that, it was the old fashioned way. Twirling a stick between your hands against a flat piece of wood looks easy in the movies, but after the first dozen blisters, it can be frustrating. I showed Jordan, after much trial and error, and now we were both pros at it. We were pros at a lot of new things.

Jordan sat down in the shade, in a makeshift seat dug out of the sand. She plucked at a loose thread along the seam of her green-and-blue bikini, and then thought better of it. We didn't have the luxury of wasting anything, clothing included. We had an okay supply of t-shirts and shorts, but I made the decision that we should save them, in case we're here when the weather gets worse through the fall and winter. I didn't know what to expect then, but rain, rain and more rain seemed like a reasonable expectation. It was too hot anyway, for anything more than the borrowed bathing suits we wore now. Clothing actually worried me more than most things. I have to be honest, I wouldn't be at all sad about having to watch Jordan work naked, but even a well-bronzed girl like her is going to burn in all the wrong places if we're reduced to that. I'm sure we could fashion some reasonable protection out of bark and leaves or something, but it still worried me.

"Are you doing okay?" I asked her, sitting in my own dug-out sand chair beside her.

"Yeah, just fine," she said. And then she added, after a moment, "You?"

"Can't complain," I said. "Can't complain."

She sometimes cried at night. I tried my best to pretend I don't hear it, but she's not stupid. In a small hut, sound travels. She's strong though, strong on the outside. She doesn't smile, not like her bright white smile on the plane, wearing her impractical uniform and uncomfortable shoes. She doesn't smile, but she doesn't complain either. Neither of us do. It's one of those luxuries we've given up.

She stretched her long, smooth legs, toes pointing gracefully out at the horizon, which was just barely peeking at us through the dense trees. One of the luxuries we continued to enjoy was an old fashioned shaving kit, with the straight razor, the sharpening stone, the strop and everything. It even had instructions printed on the inside of the tin case it came in, to educate us poor modern Neanderthals. No shaving cream, unfortunately, but with a sharp enough blade and plenty of warm water, we didn't need it. You might think it's a waste of time, shaving out here, and maybe it is, but time is one thing we had a lot of to spare. It was a lot of trouble getting the razor sharp enough to use, so I didn't bother shaving often. I actually was starting to like the cast-away stubble I sported these days. Jordan made more liberal use of the kit, exemplified now by her flawless tan legs, and she picked it up in no time. It's not a vanity thing, I don't think. It's just one of those ways she kept herself grounded as still a member of a civilized race, even in an uncivilized place. I understand that and don't discourage it, far beyond my own desire to watch her stay smooth.

I felt a twitch in my shorts, seeing Jordan yawn and stretch out all the right muscles, her small breasts jiggling in a way that made me decide it would be a good time to take a walk. I had to pee anyway, so it was a good excuse. Under different circumstances, I might have made a good effort to ask her out. Like I said, even before we found ourselves in this situation, she was everything I liked physically. Through our short and often strained and homesick conversations, she was everything I found I liked otherwise: she was in college, she could play the piano and the guitar and was learning to sing, she spoke Spanish and a little French, and she had a desire to travel the world. The stewardess job was a dream for her. The money was great for a college student, it was seasonal enough so that she could work and go to school uninterrupted, and it filled that desire to see how deep and wide our planet got.

I can understand it, every bit of it. She came from a small town, went to a small college and grew up with people with small ambitions. She made an effort to take advantage of the education she could get, and filled in the blanks herself. She was a modern, metropolitan girl stuck in a rural town. Stuck now on a rural island I guess, perhaps a step up still. But her desires still peek through the dark clouds of our situation, and she still sometimes talks with wonder in her voice about the things she wants to do and see, and I feel a pang in my heart when her eyes inevitably turn downwards, heavy with the burden we share.

Like I said, under different circumstances, I would have made a good effort to ask her out. Here— It doesn't seem like a smart thing to complicate the situation with sex. What kind of a relationship could flourish? I thought about it, thought about it a lot. Thought about almost nothing else, really. I had a lot of that spare time to fill with daydreams, and my social circle was limited these days, so I feel entirely unashamed. It's only natural, I thought. But it still doesn't seem like a good idea.

I picked up from Jordan that she has an on-again, off-again boyfriend, in the off-again stage when she left the airport. She didn't talk about him much, and nothing in a particularly flattering manner, so I wasn't burdened by that. I didn't have much of a social life to start with, even before the crash, in what were basically my prime years of college, and girlfriends were short-lived and far between.

I was in college for business and I hated it. I came from a big city and grew up with people with big ambitions, and after two years of studying with people with big mouths and big dollar signs in their eyes, it was too much. More accurately, it was too little, too shallow, too fake. When the opportunity arose to join a start-up company selling heavy equipment to developing countries, my interest piqued. When I learned it would involve face-to-face sales pitches in exotic locales, I was hooked. Business was done the old-fashioned way in a lot of these places. No video conferences, no flashy show rooms, just a lot of smiles and handshakes, exotic home cooked dinners and modest lodging. In three months I'd been to six countries on four continents, and I loved it. The only time I saw Jordan's big sea-green eyes shimmer with something that could be genuine joy was when I told her about the people I'd met, the places I'd gone to and the straw mattresses I'd slept on. That was the kind of life she envisioned, the thing she wanted, and on a deep level, we connected, we understood one another.

I wandered along a path to what could be generously be considered our bathroom. It was really just a deep, narrow slash in a rock base, a tiny finger of water creeping up from the water's edge, where the tide rushed in and out fast enough to suck barnacles from the stone, but it was one of the few godsends we had. I didn't have any particular complaint over digging latrines and doing things that way, but this was much neater, much nicer. We'd set up a tarp of fronds for modesty, which I walked around, and settled myself up against a tree. I stood upright like that for my upright business, and crouched down over the slash for my crouching down business. I rinsed myself off with sea water and wiped with a frond, watching the water in the finger get sucked rapidly away, and then heard the distinct rumble of thunder overhead. Like clockwork, almost, I thought, freakishly regular.

I slipped off my bathing trunks, my only article of clothing, and hung it up on a branch, walking out from beneath the canopy and waited with outstretched arms. The rain came sudden and stinging, warm and with drops the size of a finger. You have to work fast, as I did, rubbing hands all over to wash away the sweat and dirt of the day, because the rain rarely lasted long. There's nothing wrong with splashing around in the ocean, but this was nicer, much nicer. I quickly ran my hands through my hair, fingers tangled and then breaking free, sluicing water and bits of leaves and twigs out. As I stood there, open and exposed, soaked with this gorgeous pacific rain, my thoughts turned back unexpectedly to Jordan, and an image of her played out in my mind's eye; back at camp, her bathing suit maybe hanging on a branch like mine, bent over and running her own hands through her own wild hair, soaking up the water as fast as she could while it fell, hands that run up and down her wet and sun-kissed body, hands that linger for just long enough in choice areas. . . .

With the sky rumbling overhead and the warm torrent falling from the heavens, I knelt down to do my kneeling business, feeling liberated and free, my body rocked with ecstasy and more of myself being washed away by the water creeping up in the slash in the rock. As the clouds parted and the sky lightened again, I lay down in the damp grass with my back against a tree, letting the sun warm and dry me as I waited for all parts of me to calm down as much as the weather so suddenly did.