The Brink by Austin Bunn

looking for something they did not have.
    Once, after a dinner Saul had made for them, Mac asked him about his walkabout in the South Pacific. Mac was good at making other people’s stories interesting. Few people ever asked him about his work at the ad agency. If they did, he’d say, “It’s all just a matter of deciding where to put the puppy.” Mac hadn’t traveled much, and as Saul spoke, Haley finally understood why Saul liked him—it was the same reason she did. He was precisely where you left him.
    â€œSo wait, where was that amazing beach again?” Mac asked from the bathroom, the door open while he peed. Saul brought out the insouciant boy in him. Soon, the cigarettes would be released from their cryogenic hold in the freezer.
    â€œI’m telling you,” Saul called back. “You two will not want to come home.” He leveled his hand over the candle flame. “I almost didn’t.”
    â€œBut you did,” Haley said. “You did come back.”
    Saul sighed and looked out the window. He’d tied his hair back in a ponytail. His features were big and American, a face that belonged on a coin. “You’re right. And I’m still trying to figure out this whole slam.” She understood Saul had lost the plot. Snow made drifts on the windowsills. Saul would not be staying in Chicago for long.
    From the bedroom, Mac called out, “Hal, what happened to the goddamn atlas?” Because they still had an atlas. In fact, the whole Rand McNally set, spines unbroken, on the bookshelves next to the bed, Mac’s contribution to the nostalgia fetish of their times.
    She went to fill Saul’s wine glass, but he put his hand over the rim and stared at her. “Is everything okay?”
    She realized she had been avoiding eye contact with him, afraid of what he might draw out of her. It wasn’t that Saul was beautiful. It was that he was utterly alone and had made a strength of it somehow, and that threatened her. She’d run from the solitude of her twenties, the stir-fries she ate alone, the solo trips to museums, the nights she called college roommates to check in. Mac had ended the anxiety, but it came with a sense that she’d avoided some essential encounter with herself.
    â€œI’m fine. Why?” she said.
    â€œGood,” he said. “I wasn’t sure. I want you to like me, Haley.”
    Of course she liked him. He was Saul’s best friend. “It’s just that sometimes I feel bad for not having adventures,” she said. “Like you.”
    Saul just watched her. “I’m sleeping on your couch without a job,” he said. “Welcome to the adventure.”
    The following morning, Mac off to work, Haley sat next to Saul on the couch to explain the television remotes. Saul, logy from sleep and wrapped in a sheet, took her hand and pulled her into a kiss. He was going to ruin her.
    On the deck of their bungalow, Haley chewed her fingernails, nibbling away at the wedding lacquer. It was afternoon now and a busted upholstery of gray clouds rolled toward them at the horizon. The glassy lagoon stretched before her and water gently lapped the bamboo pilings underneath. From here, from the furthermost bungalow, Haley couldn’t see another soul. Mac had gone to an Internet café—of course, they’d left all their devices at home except for Mac’s phone, which had no bars, no network connection—to let their family know they were alive after the bombing, to look into the possibility of flights home, and she felt bereft. They’d paid for the remoteness, and now Haley desperately wanted others around.
    She wondered if it was possible to keep these disasters from becoming the story of their time here. A friend had been married on a cruise ship in New York Harbor in the summer of 2001. Every single one of her wedding photos had the Twin Towers in the background. They were divorced now,