The Heart Key

The mud was everywhere. Between my toes, up my ankles, caked on the hem of my shorts. I kicked at a chunk of it and watched it fly.

"This smells like a barn that lost a fight," I said. "Enrique, I swear. Buffalo dung. On our anniversary trip."

He set the theodolite case down on a dry patch of grass, careful with it, the way he was careful with everything. He is thirty-one and still treated that case like it held a baby.

"It's a wallow, Trixie. Wallows have dung. That's sort of the deal."

"I know what a wallow is. I married a surveyor. I've absorbed these facts against my will."

He laughed. Big laugh, big shoulders, big everything. That's how we got the nickname stuff started back when we met, at the bonding certification course in Fortaleza. He was there for the cartography credits. I was there because notary work in Ceará apparently requires learning about surety bonds, which nobody tells you. He sat behind me. He was so tall his knees bumped my chair the whole first day.

"Sorry about the smell," he said now. "The animals are mostly quiet at night. You'll like that part."

The buffalo lowed somewhere out in the dark, like they were arguing with him. There were six or seven of them, hulking shapes near the brush, and they did not care one bit about our anniversary.

I am twenty-nine and I had never once imagined my life would involve standing in a muddy hole in Icapuí at nine at night. Three years of marriage to this man and here I was. To be fair, he had proposed on a beach just down the coast from here. So the place had history. Good history, mostly.

"Open the case," I said. "Show me the thing you drove four hours to show me."

"You'll make fun of it."

"Obviously."

He flipped the latches. Inside, nestled next to the instrument, was a cloth roll, and in the cloth roll was a key. Old brass, dark with age. The bow of it, the part you hold, was shaped like a heart.

"Okay," I said. "That's actually pretty."

"It's a skeleton key. The old station up the hill has a logbook cabinet. Abandoned since before I was born. My grandfather helped survey that coast. This was in his things. It still works, I checked it two summers ago."

I reached for it. My fingers brushed his, and I don't know, something small moved in my chest. We hadn't touched much on this trip. Car ride, hotel, work talk. He'd been so focused on the station, on his grandfather, on the angles and the marks he wanted to record.

"When was the last time you checked it?" I asked.

"June. Two summers ago."

"Two years."

"Time goes fast."

It does. That was sort of the whole problem, and I hadn't figured out how to say it yet.

I turned the key over in my hand. The heart bow was worn smooth. Somebody's thumb had done that, over years.

"Your grandfather kept a logbook in a locked cabinet at an abandoned station."

"He was thorough."

"He was paranoid, you mean."

"Both. It runs in the family. You married into it."

I handed it back and our fingers touched again, longer this time, and I saw him notice. He looked at me. He has these dark eyes and when he actually looks, it's a lot. It used to be a lot all the time. Lately it was mostly a lot at dinner, quickly, between phone checks.

"Trixie," he said. "What's going on with you? You've been quiet since Fortaleza."

And there it was. The opening. I could do the polite thing. Or the true thing.

"I'm bored," I said. "Okay? I'm bored. We work, we eat, we watch shows, we sleep. We're good at it. We're really good at being boring. I kick mud in Ceará and I still feel like I'm at my desk. Something's flat and I can't find the edge of it."

He didn't laugh. He didn't get defensive either. He crouched and picked up the key cloth and rolled it slowly, thinking.

"Stay here tonight," he said. "Not the hotel. Here. Right here."

"In the dung wallow."

"Next to the dung wallow. Look up."

I looked up. I won't pretend I hadn't noticed the sky, but I hadn't really looked. No town lights for kilometers. Stars stacked on stars, thick and stupid with brightness, the way they only get when you drive far enough from everything.

"Oh," I said.

"Blanket's in the truck. We'll see the station at dawn. The stars can have us tonight."

"The stars can have us," I repeated. "You've been saving that line."

"Since the drive. It landed better out loud."

I laughed and that helped too. I kicked off my sandals, because they were ruined anyway, and sat on the edge of the wallow where the ground firmed up into dry grass. He got the blanket from the truck, spread it, and then did something that made my whole body pay attention.

He sat behind me. His chest came flush against my back and his legs framed mine, and that was it, that was the size of him arriving all at once. Enrique is a head taller than me and built like the doorframes I have to duck under are the problem, not him. When he wraps around me I disappear. I love disappearing.

"Better?" he asked, near my ear.

"Shut up. Yes. Obviously yes!"

His arms came around my middle. His hands settled over mine, resting on my stomach, and his hands are enormous. My fingers looked like doll hands next to his, and no, don't write to me about that comparison, it's just hands, it's just true. I turned my palms up and he laced our fingers together and I felt that small thing in my chest move again, bigger this time.

"When did we stop doing this?" I asked.

"Doing what?"

"Sitting. Outside. Touching like you mean it."

"We've been touching."

"We've been bumping into each other in a kitchen, Enrique. That's different and you know it."

He was quiet a second. His breath moved my hair.

"I know it," he said. "I got buried in the station project. In my grandfather stuff. I kept thinking, once this trip is done, we'll be back to normal."

"I don't want normal. Normal is the flat thing."

He pressed his mouth to the side of my neck. Just a kiss, soft, and then another one lower, and my skin lit up like somebody