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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v099) (the October 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Symbols Manifest” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

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Love Eternal

J.E. Harris

    Outside the picture window in Joe and Lanie’s breakfast nook, the sun shimmered on the lake water. Inside, on the other side of the glass, the couple sat across from each other, gazing at the view.
    Town regulations prohibited the use of motor boats and jet skis before 11 a.m., so the water was still undisturbed. Patches of wind roughed up sections of the water in a random pattern, first this way, then that, then disappearing altogether, then gusting heavily.
    “Flukey,” Joe said, watching.
    “Like us,” she answered.
    “You think?”
    “A little.”
    “I never thought of myself as flukey. I’ve always thought of myself as way too predictable.” His voice was bitter.
    “You aren’t cursed.” She knew what he was saying. When they’d met, he’d warned her: “I have a three year curse. Every relationship I’ve been ever been in has lasted three years. No more, no less.”
    His warning didn’t scare her. They delighted in each other’s company, living close to the water, swimming, windsurfing, skating, waterskiing. Splashing, tumbling, laughing – those were the words that would best describe the last three years. She had loved every minute, and she still did.
    “We aren’t cursed,” she said. “We have love eternal.”
    Joe slouched in his chair.
    “Sure.”
    “Men forget.”
    “Women....” He heard the tone of his voice and stopped. Better not to argue.
    The sky was a white mixture of clouds and daylight. The lilac hedges Lanie had planted to form a boundary from the neighboring yards on either side were in full bloom, and the scent drifted in through their open window.
    “Let’s go for a swim.”
    “It’s May. The water’s still cold.”
    “Brisk,” she said. “It’s not a polar bear swim. Think of Katharine Hepburn.”
    “I don’t think we underestimate the pleasure of suffering.”
    “Not suffering. Fun.”
    They changed into their suits in their bedroom, side by side. She saw him not seeing her nudity as she changed. But still, he accompanied her, and they made their way out to the front porch, down the steps, and across the grass.
    The shoreline was rough with rocks the size of mollusks with sharp edges. Wading in, they didn’t touch each other, didn’t help each other across the rough section. They walked instead of swimming until the water touched their chins.
    Her feet left the ground before his, and the chilly water on her face sent a little shock through her system.
    When she resurfaced, Joe lay floating on his back. His pale belly, rising above the water, revolted her. In an instant, despite her own argument that the three year curse didn’t exist, Lanie felt the love, which she had believed to be eternal, vanish.

#

    A year later, Lanie looked back on that day without missing Joe, but still a little puzzled. So odd, she thought, the way the love had simply vanished in an instant, as though it had never existed at all.
    The mystery of it all, not any sense of longing or regret, called her back to the little cottage where she’d spent three years of her life. The sun was setting when she got into her car, so by the time she turned right onto Lake Shore Road, the darkness of night had settled around the cottages.
    Warm light poured from the windows of the home they’d shared together. Joe had installed solar lights along the stone path that led to the front door, so even at night the beds of newly planted purple and yellow pansies flanking the walkway made the scene look like a Thomas Kincaide painting.
    Enchanting, she thought, and then she saw through the curtainless window the long, red hair, the bare woman’s back, the passionate lovemaking between Joe and his new love.
    Watching them, Lanie imagined that like her, the redhead had listened to Joe’s story about the three year curse and believed it was a story Joe told himself. The electricity of her love and passion for Joe would have been a far more vivid counterargument to his tale of woe. She was not cursed, she would have thought. She would be the one to break his supposed curse.
    Even when their relationship had ended, Lanie hadn’t believed in the three year curse, because the love had left her, not him. But now, looking at the redhead without a trace of jealousy, without a trace of envy, she remembered that Joe had never said he would fall out of love with her.
    Women always left him, just as she had done. After three years, just like her.
    Joe believed in the three year curse, but he also believed in eternal love. With each new woman, he gave his heart and soul.
    Lanie pitied him. She had never believed in eternal love, so she didn’t miss having it. She got in her car and drove away without regret, and she never looked back.

#

    “Do you know the when I first saw you?”
    “A year ago,” the redhead answered. “The day you went swimming with your last three year curse.”
    “Do you think we’re cursed?”
    “I know we’re not,” she answered. “We have love eternal.”
    Joe looked into the blue eyes and knew it was true the same way he’d known it was true with Lanie, the same way he’d known it was true with Nancy, the same way he’d known it was true with Rebecca, the same way....

#

    She was happy to be the female, the memory-keeper, the one who slipped out through Lanie’s skin a year ago to rejoin the millions of her female kin in the water before sliding in through the skin of her new host, the redhead. She remembered the other hosts – Nancy, Rebecca, the others. She knew them better than Joe did; she missed them sometimes, probably more than he did. For a time, she had been each of them.
    She knew that in two years, she and Joe would go for a swim. She would slip out through the skin of the redhead, reunite with her waterborne kin, and then slide in through the skin of a new host, proving to Joe once again that he was fated to a three year curse. A few days later, after the old host had her epiphany and left him, and despite his better judgment, Joe would see her in the body of her new host and find her irresistible.
    And when his host, Joe, died, they would rejoin. Like so many times over so many millenniums, they would once again become a single being, both male and female, making their way through the groundwater, into the rivulets and streams, arriving at last at a suitable freshwater lake.
    They would lay their eggs, divide into male and female, and seek a new pair of hosts, continuing the cycle of love eternal.

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