"Tell it again!" one of the account reps called. She was twenty-four or twenty-five, a pretty girl with a nose ring named Kaylee who sat in the pod nearest his office. "Tell the pond!"
"Tell the pond," others said. "The pond, the pond."
And Derek looked at Talia, and Talia rolled her eyes at him fondly and nodded, go on, and he told it.
I am going to set down what he said as closely as I can remember it, because it matters, and because I had heard it before. I had heard it at the holiday party the year before, from the far end of the buffet table. I had heard it through the wall of the third-floor break room. I had seen it on Channel 10 the week it happened, in the segment they run on Thursday evenings called "Everyday Buckeyes," with the swelling piano music under it, and I had read it on the brass plaque that hangs, to this day, in the lobby display case next to the elevators, between the company's United Way award and a framed photograph of the founder shaking hands with a congressman. The story did not change much each time. It just got smoother.
"Two Januaries ago," Derek said. "The ice storm. You all remember — the one where they closed the schools for four days and the whole city was a skating rink. I was coming in to work on 71, early, because I had a call with Indianapolis at eight and I'm an idiot. And at the Polaris exit, this little silver Corolla in front of me just — goes. Hits the ice on the ramp, spins out, goes right over the guardrail where it ends, down the embankment, and into the retention pond there by the hotel. Nose first. And the water's black, and there's ice on top of it, and the car is going down."
The room had gone quiet. Even people who had heard it before had gone quiet. He was good at this.
"And I didn't think," Derek said. "That's the thing. People ask me, how did you decide, and I didn't decide. I just pulled over and I was out of the car and down that bank and in the water. And it was — I can't even tell you how cold. Your body just stops. And I got to the window, and she was in there, and the water was up to her chin." He looked at Talia. His voice dropped, and roughened, and I believe that the roughness was real. I believed it then, too. "And I got her out. I don't really remember how. I just remember holding her head up out of the water on that bank, and the sirens coming, and thinking, I don't even know this woman's name, and I'm not letting go of her."
Talia was crying a little, smiling, wiping under her eyes with the side of her finger so as not to smear her mascara.