by Ronald Malfi
“And what about Nick? Is he handsome and like a child without sin, too?”
“Nicholas,” Isabella said.
“Is he?” Emma pressed.
Isabella lowered her camera. She looked at Nick with her own eyes. Black ice. Said, “Nicholas, too, is a child. A very handsome child. But there is a part of him that has been forced to grow up too soon. I wonder, Nicholas, is that the soldier part of you? Or is it something deeper?”
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Don’t you?”
“No. I’ve never seen that part of me before. The part you’re talking about.”
“Yes,” Isabella said, bringing the camera back up to her face. “The part you have never seen is that very part that makes you blind to such a thing. Interesting, yes?”
“Take the picture,” he told her. “I’m sure the picture will tell all.”
Isabella snapped the photograph.
“I love the way she talks,” Emma marveled. To Isabella, she said, “There is such poetry in your speech.”
“I find speaking English very pleasing.”
“And you have a wonderful accent, too,” Emma went on.
“Gracias.”
“I know a little Spanish,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t say it in front of you, though, but I know some. I would have to be really drunk to try and speak my crippled Spanish in front of you, though. I would be embarrassed, it’s so poor.”
“There is no embarrassment here,” Isabella assured her.
“Really,” Emma said, shaking her head. “I won’t do it. It would be like an insult to you.”
“So then one more picture?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And we will make it a fine picture. Nicholas, kiss your wife.”
“Then you won’t see our faces,” he said.
“Don’t be so sour,” Isabella warned. “Are you always so sour? Kiss your beautiful, childish, sinless wife. Kiss her and I will take the picture.”
He turned and kissed Emma. It seemed a long time before the flash went off.
“So beautiful,” Isabella said after the picture was taken.
“Good luck with your houses,” Emma said.
“I hope they’re not totally destroyed,” Nick interrupted.
“At least this time,” added Isabella, “no one was killed.”
After lunch, they went down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. A few couples, roughly their own age, frolicked in the water. Occasionally, children took to their feet, pumping up and down the beach, leaving five-toed divots in the sand. The day had brightened yet there was still a charcoal thread of threatening clouds sweeping across the horizon, and the sea was still slate-gray and rough. Where an outcrop of auburn stone snaked tongue-like into the water, great heaving whitecaps burst upon it and foamed in a thick flow toward the shore. Quite visible, too, was the dark strip of space at the crest of the horizon as the Earth rotated and turned the sea to face the emptiness of infinity. When Emma went into the water, Nick remained on the beach. He watched her swim for some time, sleek and white, and there were a few times when he could not see her head rising from the waves. He sat up straighter to search for her. Just when his concern began to mount, she always reappeared, her cropped dark hair, darker when wet, slicked back from her face. Once, she waved to him. He nodded in response. When she came from the water and walked up the beach, he watched her until something panged within him, forcing him to turn away. Did she notice? He didn’t think so. Toweling off, her shadow peeled away from her and stretched out toward the sea.
“It’s cold but it feels good.”
“It looks cold,” he said.
“Why do you hate the water?”
“I don’t hate the water.”
“You should come in.”
“I’d rather watch you.”
“You always say that,” she said.
“It’s the truth.”
Toweling her hair, her arms, her long legs, she said, “You don’t like her very much, do you?”
“Who?” he said. “Your little Spanish photographer?”
“I thought she might be someone you’d like.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I just thought it.”
“You’re trying to fix me up?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t been in the mood.”
“It’s something you need to be in the mood for?”
Nick said nothing.
Emma spread out the towel on the sand and sat in the center of it, drawing her legs up under each other. She turned to look at him briefly. He could see salt from the ocean crystallizing in her hair, her eyelashes, her eyebrows. Her mouth was very small; her lips still just barely exceeded the width of her nostrils. Tight, compact. When she smiled she hardly ever showed her teeth. There was something so beautifully self-conscious about that, and he found he could not stop thinking about it as he watched her now. Beside her on the sand were her poetry books. She picked them up, shuffled through them as she would a deck of cards before selecting one. Flipping through the pages, she said, “Would you like me to read some to you?”
“That’s all right.”
“You’re sure? It’s Byron.”
“Not right now.”
“You like Byron…”
“I think I’m going to go for a walk,” he said, getting up and dusting the sand from his legs.
“Oh? Should I come?”
“It’s all right. I’m just going to find a bathroom, really.”
“Oh,” she said, dejected, turning back to her poetry book. He couldn’t stop looking at her small, small mouth. “All right.”
He walked by himself down the beach, his shadow stretching further ahead of him as the day grew older. At one point, in the tall reeds, he urinated while staring up at the white dunes. Gray gulls burst from the reeds, taking flight. The whole day had turned old and gray. He watched the date palms sway in the cool summer breeze. Without much commitment, he thought of the white swans he would occasionally see in the fountains and pools in the hotel courtyard. He wondered where they went when they weren’t in the pools. Was there a special place for swans? At night, when the darkness came, was there someplace they all hid? Finishing up, turning around in the reeds, he wondered about the swans. Something solid struck his foot as he turned to head back to the beach. He looked and saw it was one of the whitewashed planks of wood discarded by the hotel, now many days ago—one of the planks he had painted a face on while Emma laughed and joked about it. That had been earlier in their trip, one of the first days, before the storm came. Before things changed. Looking at the whitewashed plank now, seeing it muddied by the storm, the caricature smeared and running and bled away, he imagined himself picking it up and splintering it down the middle over one knee. Closing his eyes, he envisioned it so well that it ignited phantom pain in his right knee. He could almost hear the satisfying crack of the wood…
Lieuten—
With the day growing long, he trekked back by way of the dunes to the beachfront. Many of the couples had returned to the hotel for supper; he saw less sunbathers and swimmers in attendance as he approached. The shadows of the great palms were pulled long and distorted down the length of the sand, too, reaching thirstily for the water. It was growing late. Getting closer, he could still see Emma, though, sprawled out on her towel, one of her poetry books propped in her lap. But she wasn’t reading. She was watching a woman who stood at the cusp of the water, her feet in the tidal foam. Son of a bitch. It was undoubtedly Isabella Rosales. He could tell her shape, and the presence her shape exuded. Stopping, Nick hung back and stood watching. He watched Isabella. He watched Emma watch Isabella. A few times Isabella looked in Emma’s direction, and even motioned at her; in response, though, Emma would quickly bow her head and feign involvement with her poetry. Nick watched Isabella wade further out into the water…out until the upper portion of her slim, muscular, brown thighs became sle
ek and wet. It was the skin of a seal pup. She stood just far enough in the water to where the waves broke, foaming white and thick and frothy all around her. Yet Isabella did not go in all the way, which, it suddenly dawned on Nick as he surveyed, was what he had been waiting for her to do. He wanted to see her wet. He wanted to see what would happen and how she would look as she found herself slowly overtaken by the sea. But she did not go in past her thighs. He watched. He spied. Still, more frequently, she would turn back to the beach and look at Emma. Once, Isabella motioned to his wife, who responded, rabbit-skittish, with a single wave: he saw the hand come up, the wrist twist, then fall back to her book. Yet at one point, surprising her husband, Emma set the book down and followed Isabella into the ocean. Both stood up to their thighs. Their skin tones completely opposite, they looked like negatives of each other. Would they actually cancel each other out? Would too much exposure to each other be enough to make them both completely disappear?
He walked down to the beach and sat crossed-legged on Emma’s towel. The women swam further out, both deep and wet now, their hair slicked back on their heads. They were both seal pups, he could see, bobbing and playing in the surf. The current strong, their dark little heads drifting gradually north and, after some time, he actually had to turn his head to continue watching them.
After a while, Isabella came out of the water. He watched her walk across the sand and began to think of ways to busy himself because he knew she was heading in his direction.
“Handsome Nicholas,” she said, standing above him and wringing out the wet length of her hair. She wore a two-piece bathing suit nearly the color of her flesh. The dual thrust of her nipples was proudly visible through the taut cups of fabric. There was nothing of imperfection about her body. He suddenly wanted to paint her. “Handsome, handsome Nicholas.”
“Hello.”
“You do not like the water?”
“Sometimes.”
“Not today?”
“Not today,” he said.
“You’re a brooder,” she told him.
“All right.”
“Brooder,” she said.
“How did your photo shoot go? Did you get all the pictures you wanted?”
“Oh, it went very nice. There were some very nice ruined houses.”
“Lovely.”
“You are sarcastic, yes?”
“Not me.”
“You are,” she said. “I can tell.”
“Just seems a morbid thing to take photos of, is all.”
“Why is that?”
He waved a hand at her. “Forget it.”
“You are an artist, just like me. You never paint morbid things?”
“I try not to.”
“Isn’t that a pity,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because so many morbid things happen in real life, and you do not feel they are important enough to document.”
“That’s some way to look at things.”
“It is only my way.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Do you hate me for last night, Nicholas?”
“No.”
“I think maybe you do.”
“Well you think wrong. Why would I hate you for last night? Nothing happened.”
“I was thinking that was why you hated me.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“You were having a good time and enjoying yourself for most of the night.”
“Sure.”
“You got funny near the end, though,” she informed him.
“Yeah, well, it happens,” he said. In truth, he didn’t know what the hell had happened to him last night. Something in his head, in his brain, had shifted. Briefly, he had forgotten where he was…who he was…
For lack of a more manly gesture, he retrieved a cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt. Lit it. Smoked.
Isabella knelt down on the edge of the towel, just two feet from him. He could see the heels of her feet breaded with sand. Her demitasse toes dug pits in the sand. Winding her hair behind her head, she shifted her eyes to where Emma still swam in the surf. “Your wife,” she said, “she is a timid swimmer.”
“She’s afraid to go too far out.”
“What’s to be afraid of?”
Tendrils of smoke drifted before his face from the tip of his cigarette. He said, “What the hell do the two of you have in common, anyway? What are you trying to pull?”
Isabella laughed. “Pull.” The word was funny to her. “Pull-pull-pull.” Still laughing, she let her head come back slightly on her neck and ran a hand down her throat. Her skin was very brown, almost black, and still wet from the sea. When she laughed, her teeth were very white. In broad daylight, the unity of her features still managed to maintain a sense of the obscure, like hidden secrets suddenly shouted from a penthouse window in a desolate city.
“Forget it,” he muttered.
“Do you think I am a bad influence on your wife, Nicholas?”
“I don’t know what to think. You might just be a bad influence on me.”
“You are such a man,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “here we go with that again.”
“Oh, don’t be so bitter!” She frowned, but playfully. “You’ve got something rotten and bitter deep within you. Soon, you will be like those ruined houses I saw today. All broken and caved in and looking like no god has ever loved them.”
“I’m like that.”
“And this could be true.”
“Sure it is,” he said. “Sure it is.”
“It seems you ask me the same question I can ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“What do you and your wife have in common, Nicholas? Seems a very bitter honeymoon to me.”
“You’re just trying to provoke me.”
“Am I? Because you seem offended. There must be something there, all right, if it is in danger of being provoked. Yes?”
“Yes. No. Whatever.”
“Boo,” she said. Then, “We talked about the Chinese divers, Emma and I.”
“How exciting.”
“You’re sarcastic, but I think so. I think it is very exciting. What do you think it looked like, Nicholas, as all those Chinese divers drowned at the same time?”
“Probably a lot of flailing arms,” he said. “Probably a lot of screaming and shouting in a language I don’t understand.” He frowned. “How the hell should I know?”
“There were seventeen of them.”
“Yes, I heard.”
“That,” she said, “is a lot of flailing arms.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a lot of screaming in a language you don’t understand.”
“I suppose.”
“They probably grabbed at each other, tried to brave the current through the power of unity. And failed.”
“That’s cheerful.”
Isabella frowned. “Do you not like me?”
“I like you fine.”
Then she smiled just as easily. Yet her lips looked predatory. They were full, dark, mocha lips. “Sometimes,” she said, “I fill up a bathtub with water and hold my head underneath until I think I am about to black out. I see how long I can hold my head under water, and I try to experience what it is like to almost die, almost drown. I see how far along I can get, Nicholas, and how close to dying I can bring myself without actually doing it. I wait for some great change, or for something insurmountable and unimaginable to overtake me. But it is just water and it is just my head, and so far nothing has happened.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“Of course,” she said, yawning. “Of course it is. Isn’t it?”
Emma had come from the water and was heading toward them. Wet, pale, she looked cold from the water. She had her arms folded about her small chest.
“Now I feel like a complete intruder,” Isabella said, standing. Coltish legs peppered in sand, the contrast against her black skin would have made an amazing pain
ting. Nick could not pull his eyes away.
“It’s all right,” Emma said.
“No—no. Forgive me, both of you.”
“Really,” Emma said, but she had already taken Isabella’s place at the foot of the towel. “Will we see you again?”
“Whenever you wish,” Isabella said. Her eyes were on Nick as she said it. “I am like a ghost, floating around…”
“Adios,” Emma called.
“Adios,” answered Isabella, pronouncing the d with a th sound as she proceeded to walk off. Both Nick and Emma watched her head back down toward the sea. At one point, just before crossing back into the surf, Isabella removed the top portion of her bathing suit and let it drop to the sand. Whether accidentally or not, she half-turned her body so that they could both view the taunting brown swell of her right breast. Pulling her hair up off the nape of her neck with both hands, she retreated back into the ocean—comfortably, willingly, surrendering—as if it were the only place of welcome on the planet.
“She is very strange,” Emma commented.
“She’s a righteous bitch,” he said.
“You don’t really think that,” she said.
“Oh? Why do you think so?”
“Because,” she said, “your eyes—the way you look at her—betray you.”
So I am betrayed once again, he thought.
Saying nothing, Emma spread out on the towel, took up one of her poetry books, and began to read.
That evening, alone, he worked on the mural. Very unlike him, he found himself spending too much time painting and repainting the faces of the people in the mural. What had originated as indiscriminate, expressionless figures had somehow transformed into the faces and expressions of actual people. He painted these faces without purpose. It was as though they were destined to be born, despite his personal involvement, and nothing was going to hinder the process. The fact that he was painting them, was their creator, was incidental. So he painted them and let them be, he merely the conduit of some greater purpose of which he had no value in contradicting. Only once did he become consumed in the manipulation of features, specific features, on one of the characters, and this was because, somehow, perhaps unconsciously, the figure, once completed, bore a frightening resemblance to young Myles Granger. It wasn’t until he had completed the face and backed away to view it from afar did he realize what he had done. Looking at it, seeing it, chilled him. Worse: he had commissioned the portrait of Myles Granger to stand directly beneath what he had initially intended to be a wide outcropping of glossy, volcanic stone, but what, from this same vantage, projected to be the undisputed outline of a steel-bodied military tank, its single cannon still hot and smoking.