FROM THE DESK OF ELISE SASINI, AN EXCERPT FROM THE MANUSCRIPT THE SHROUDED CITY:
He calls himself Calamity.
The word is derived from the ancient Latin term ‘kadamitas’, meaning loss or defeat, and later, more recognizably, ‘calamitas’, meaning disaster, damage, or great misfortune. The word took a winding route through medieval French — ‘calamité’ — to finally settle in the crowded bed of fifteenth century English as ‘calamity’.
When I first met Cal, I was taken aback by the implication of such a name. Of course, knowing the only clear facts about his history available to the public, I thought I knew what it referred to, but I was still surprised.
Did he name himself? If so, why would he choose a name that called back to a disaster that took the lives of over three thousand people?
Knowing him as I do now, with the intimacy and constant, pleasant surprise of a mate, I am no longer reminded of the grim events his moniker immortalizes. Like everything else in his life, Calamity was forced upon him. When I hear it, I am reminded that he is a man who has grown into his own agency, despite the world attempting to take it at every turn.
He is Calamity. He is a force of nature more powerful and vast than our government would comfortably admit. He is all-consuming. He is an act of godly wrath made flesh, and by some miracle, he has chosen to be kind to us.
He is Calamity. He is mine.
Over the next few weeks,they settled into life together. It was no small task, considering Cal had never lived in a home before, let alone alongside another person. Routines had to be established, habits reorganized, and questions answered. Cal learned to use the stove — though he mostly preferred the greasy takeout the rare times he actually ate — and Elise got used to his constant coming and going.
Though she’d hinted at the conversation several times, testing the waters, Cal refused to let her out of their deal, so Elise stuck to her plan.
Cal held strictly to the terms she’d foolishly agreed to, but, after a sleepless night of internal debate and recrimination, she decided that there was no harm in letting him think they were still exchanging favors if he wanted to. For her part, there was no deal to speak of.
When he drifted into the apartment after long stretches of what he called his vigil, Elise did the job he expected of her: she listened to him tell his story, asked questions at the appropriate times or when things needed to be clarified, and wrote. He didn’t need to know that she had no plans to publish the manuscript. As far as she was concerned, it was a way to get to know him and a handy excuse to keep him near. That was all it needed to be.
The more she learned, the more certain of her feelings she became. What began as a plan to find the truth behind the man in the fog became a carefully constructed artifice covering up a campaign of warlike affection.
Cal was taciturn and abrupt. He didn’t like not knowing how to navigate a situation, and some days she only saw him in snatches, or as a low-hanging mist curling around her ankles. Elise discovered that, when he felt particularly grouchy or confined, he preferred to dematerialize. She didn’t mind it, though the habit had finally forced her to unpack her boxes, lest the cardboard absorb any more moisture and simply dissolve onto her floor.
He wasn’t an easygoing man, but the more time they spent together, and the more of his story he laid bare before her, Elise knew she’d made the right choice. Beneath the angry, confused man was a being aching with loneliness. What began as a consuming need to know his story quickly morphed into a different kind of desire and a possessiveness that took her breath away.
Elise knew she was probably headed for heartbreak. Courting a man who didn’t even realize what was happening was a disaster in the making. She had no assurances that he would not be completely happy to up and leave her as soon as he thought their exchange was complete, but she firmly pushed that thought aside.
Their time together was distraction enough. It was easy to forget about the tenuous ground they stood on when her days and nights were filled with Cal. They watched feeds together, though he was mostly bemused by them. They went on long, winding walks together, swapping stories about their lives in the city. They ate and drank together. She taught him the joys of a hot bath and he showed her gorgeous, hidden alcoves in the rough coast. They lay together in the cool, black sand under the Marin side of the Golden Gate and they danced slowly in her kitchen when a slow song came on the Met.
The look of intense concentration and amazement he wore when he stroked her skin, the sounds he made when she set aside her tablet to straddle his lap and kiss him breathless, the expression of confused delight he wore when she asked to braid his hair — all of it gave her that delicious swooping sensation in her stomach that the thrill of chasing a story gave her. Loving on Cal was a greater high than any undercover work or corruption scandal or cold case.
Elise knew she had to be careful with him. She was ever-conscious of his inexperience and of how very fragile he could be. Perhaps she was even more aware of it because he didn’t seem to realize what dangers could await him if he got in too deep with an arrangement like the one he thought they had. Protectiveness thrummed through her every time they discovered some new, heartbreaking thing he had been deprived of.
So she handled him with the utmost delicacy and did her best to navigate the thorny brambles of his past, all the while pretending like she needed to write his story down.
That part was no hardship either, really. The words flowed out of her even when he wasn’t lingering in her home, inspecting gadgets or curling up behind her on the couch. Cal’s story was an incredible one. It was perhaps the most interesting and moving thing she’d ever heard, let alone written.
It was a shame that no one would ever see it, but Elise didn’t mourn too much. Instead, she took the opportunity to step back from professionalism. She wrote not just the stories Cal relayed to her, but her impressions of him, her admiration for him, and about the cliff’s edge of her feelings she could feel creeping closer every day.
It was a beautiful, raw book chronicling their time together. It was, at its heart, a love letter to Cal himself.
* * *
FROM THE DESK OF ELISE SASINI, TEXTS RECEIVED FEBRUARY 15th 2045:
MOM - 12:15 PM: ur coming 2 dinner tonight, right??? We haven’t seen u in weeks!!! I MISS MY DAUGHTER
ELISE - 12:17 PM: Will there be cake? I demand tribute for the gift of my presence, mother
MOM - 12:17 PM: My love for u is better than cake!!!!!
ELISE - 12:18 PM: False.
MOM - 12:18 PM: I can’t believe I raised u