by Liska Jacobs
“Would you mind if we didn’t eat here?” I say after he leaves.
Rafa looks surprised.
“I’m just not very hungry.” He sees me eyeing the maître d’.
“Whatever you like,” he says, folding his menu. “But this is the best restaurant on the island.”
“Have you been to Two Harbors?” I’m thinking of the plain burger from the village’s only grill, how it was dry and stuck in your throat but the lettuce was fresh and the beer was very cold.
“God, no. Hicksville,” he says. “Why would I go there?”
“Where are your friends tonight?” I ask him, and ignore the flash in his eye.
He leans over the table, taking my hand. “At the Casino for the jazz show.”
“And you’re skipping it?”
He shrugs, taking his menu back up. “You are too.”
I think about Charly back at the villa, probably getting ready with Jane. Charly putting on Bowie or Talking Heads, how she’ll curl her hair and then give up, blow-drying it straight at the last minute. How Jared is probably whiskey drunk by now, telling Robby not to worry, he’d always give him a job, saying, One day you’ll make as much as me, while Tom, dressed in an easy-money suit, snickers from the other side of the room. And poor Robby, just sitting there growing darker and darker.
“Do your friends know you, I mean really know you?” I ask Rafa because the carpet seems to be lunging up at me. I might be holding the edge of the table. “I mean do your friends like you?”
“What a question! Are you all right? You don’t seem yourself.” He looks concerned now. I can tell this isn’t going the way he’d like it to.
“This is the first time I’ve seen these people in a long time.”
“How long?” He waves an approaching waiter away.
“More than five years.” I’m bunching the table linen between my knuckles.
He must have given the maître d’ a look because he’s back now, bending over as if he might eat right off the table.
“Sorry, Gus, not tonight,” Rafa says, handing him the menus, and Gus, pink-faced but polite, pulls out my chair when I get up.
Outside, night’s come on quickly. It’s still warm, though. The humidity on the rise. Rafa takes me to the same quickie mart where Robby and Jared bought a handle of whiskey and Tom loaded up on hot dogs and hamburgers. It’s even the same cashier. I think she recognizes me because she sort of half smiles—impressed with my stamina, I guess.
Rafa buys two bottles of wine and asks if I like sardines. When I don’t answer he buys them anyway, along with crackers, sparkling water, lemons, and two candles. They’re pine-tree scented, the candles, I can smell them even though they’re at the bottom of the bag. He takes me to his friend’s yacht. I can barely see it in the moonlight, large and looming, ghostly but beautiful.
On board he turns on some white lights and music. When he comes up from the kitchen he has two glasses of red wine. He lights the candles and sits beside me.
“Is this better?” he asks. “We can eat later.”
I can barely see his eyes. I tell myself that’s fine, one day you’ll forget what color they are anyway. When he puts his hand between my legs, I feel the callus on his palm that I’d forgotten was there. I shut my eyes and let him work his way up, up—right on up till a moan works its way out of me.
I whimper into his mouth when I come.
“Me encanta tu panocha,” he tells me, and smiles. “Do you feel better now?” I can see his teeth in the candlelight. I catch the scent of pines. It’s strong and slightly nauseating.
“So what have you got?” When I blink at him he says, “You’re high as a kite, what’s in your purse?”
I pull out the plastic bag of coke, which he says isn’t much, but he starts to rack lines on the cockpit table with a credit card.
And then we’re talking about something—possibly everything. He keeps trying to put my head in his lap, and finally I say, “Susanna isn’t my real name.”
He laughs, his mouth open so wide I can see gold fillings. “I know,” he says. “You don’t come off as the kind of girl who takes care of her grandparents.”
This strikes me as cruel. I remember when my father got sick—I was there for him even though he hadn’t really been there for me. I can still recall his hospital room in New Mexico, how it smelled of bleach and everything had that plastic taste you get when someone you love is dying. How I was there for almost three weeks, how my brothers showed up for a weekend, bringing bagels that sat in a brown paper bag turning to rocks.
“Not many women give me a fake name, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a fake phone number.” He looks deeply impressed by this. “So I thought I’d come find you, find out your real name.” He regards me for a moment with a sardonic expression and then raps his knuckles on the table. “So what is it? What’s your name?”
“Does it matter?”
He considers this for a moment. “No, I guess not.” His hand goes up to my head again, fingertips pulling my face toward his crotch. They’re saying, Come here, Come here.
I toss my head back and look across the bay, toward the Casino. I wonder if they’re all there now. It’s the first time I’ve missed them. I want to ask Rafa if he misses his friends, but when I turn back there’s a cutting look about him. A slight sneer catches the upper part of his lip.
“What if I named you?” he asks.
“No, don’t do that.” I start to stand, but he catches me.
He holds me in place, tapping his lip with his thumb at each name—that too-pink tongue darting out to touch the tip.
“Michelle, Dorothy, Katie, Danielle.”
I’m shaking my head. The coke is very bitter. I can taste it in the back of my throat.
“How about Lacy—I had a cocker spaniel named Lacy. A real bitch with bite.”
“I think I want to go home,” I say, standing up.
Rafa stands too, puts his arms around me. “Where’s home, Mama?”
I shake him off. He catches my arm and I almost stumble on the gangplank.
“What about my turn?” he says lightly.
“Sorry, you’ll have to take care of yourself.”
“Is that so?” he says, but I’m already on the dock. He reaches out and I slap at his hand so he loses balance. He knocks his glass of wine off the galley table, and it crashes to the deck.
“Shit,” he says, serious for the first time tonight. “Do you know how much this deck cost? You can go, whatever your name is.” He waves me away as if I am dismissed.
I find his distress hilarious. I laugh at him until his face turns red. He moves as if to come after me, so I jet.
“Ha, ha,” he calls. “Look at you, running. Run, Susanna, run.”
25
I’m suddenly very thirsty. I could die of it. I wander along the waterfront, toward the shops and crowds.
Someone out on the water is lighting sparklers, I can see them shoot up green and yellow, bright and sharp in the darkness. There’s laughter too, and shouting, and the smell of the sea and the chaparral coming down from the mountains. The walk back seems to take much longer. I stop at a candy shop, filled with tired kids and exhausted parents, everyone red-eyed and drooping.
In the bathroom I put my mouth right on the faucet. I drink like I’m in grade school, gulping it down. When I’ve had my fill, I look up, into the mirror. My makeup is smeared, the eyeliner over my right eye has wilted, and my left looks like I tried to wash it off completely.
It’s terrible business being a girl. I remember when Mother first took me to the salon for an appointment. Up until then I hadn’t been a customer. I used to help sweep piles of hair with a tiny broom they got just for me, and arrange the gossip magazines by who I thought was prettiest on the cover. For the longest time they had me convinced Cindy Crawford was a real-life princess. The salon owner would take me to pick out the candy we’d have for the kids who were getting their first haircut. I chose Tootsie Po
ps and sometimes gummy bears.
Before my first appointment the women at Mother’s salon loved to play with my hair, styling it on slow days, when they would share avocado sandwiches, their pedometer clicks, newly discovered beauty tips. Add baby powder and it won’t burn your scalp.
It was like having a whole army of mothers.
I remember Connie, who liked to give me giant beauty-pageant updos. Connie, divorced, had crazy black hair and lipsticks always the wrong shade, and a great gulping laugh, one that made the whole room tense. Wait—the woman with the big laugh wasn’t divorced. She had an out-of-work husband at home with her kid, and at night after dinner, with the baby asleep, they’d crack open a bottle of vodka and sip until it was empty. Her breath would still be heavy with alcohol the next morning, filling the salon as she sat blowing out her blond curls before the salon opened.
Connie was the newly divorced one, I think. Just discovering pedometers and Jazzercise, only just developing her alcohol habit, hands all twitchy, so Mother never let her cut my hair. I remember seeing her slip once: an earlobe dark and gushing.
I feel terrible I can’t remember any of them as individuals. They’ve congealed into one cautionary tale: a pile of yielding flesh, worn-out and softened by age and freckles and everything nice bubbled down into one big glob. Those sweet nobodies, probably blow-drying someone’s hair right now, or checking a perm, the sour chemical smell filling up the room like cat piss.
But, my first appointment.
The salon is near the country club, but none of that business crosses over. They drive right past, windows rolled up, A/C blasting because it’s one of those smoggy, foggy days when you know you probably shouldn’t breathe a lot. Mother only works at the salon part-time, blowing out hair, doing nails, helping with shampoos. My father wishes she wouldn’t. My wife, working in a strip mall, he mutters. Reminding us again that we are descendants from Scottish kings—From Vikings, he says. And Mother corrects him, her lip curling: Nothing but horse thieves and rapists. My father would rather have made the money, but an out-of-work lawyer has little choice.
The girls at the salon hug and kiss me, leaving behind lipstick smears and the smell of cheap perfume that I’ve always liked—like new plastic Barbie dolls or the candle aisle in the grocery store. My appointment is with their new aesthetician, a sassy man named Luca. I can still remember him so clearly: a stocky guy in a tight T-shirt and distressed jeans, his hair slicked back so it shines like black linoleum.
And there’s Mother telling him how she’d like my eyebrows to look. She probably holds up a picture of Michelle Pfeiffer or Jamie Lee Curtis or some other celebrity she admires. And Luca takes me into the back, a quiet room that smells like vanilla. He has me lie down while he babbles on and on about what a pretty girl I am, how much he loves Mother—whom he does not call Cynthia, but Cindy.
Cindy is the cat’s cream. You’re so, so lucky to have a mama like that. Uh-hmm.
And he touches my face with gloved fingers, pinching and pulling and rubbing lotions into my skin. Baby girl’s gonna glow.
I imagine he’s right, my ten-year-old face is on fire. There’s astringent and mask and some instrument that blows steam right onto my face so hot that I’m scared to breathe in.
When he’s done my eyes are watering and he’s saying One more thing, baby girl. He dusts my eyebrows with his fingertips, which feels real nice. Then comes the hot wax, which is warm and feels good too. Then he pulls the wax off. The first one is very quick and I barely have time to gasp. It’s the second one that gets stuck and he has to pull twice. That one fucking hurts. Then he does the same thing to my pubic hair.
Pain is beauty, Mother said, chuckling, when I complained afterward, handing me a present. It is a haul of makeup. More than you could ever need, especially at ten. Liquids for eye swelling; blush to enhance bloom; expensive lipsticks; lip gloss, dewy and thick; brow liner, lip liner, eyeliner; shadows and shimmers and shades of various colors.
That was when everything changed, I think, eyeing myself in the mirror. The Connies of the salon stopped kissing you soon after, and started to look at you sideways. Your father stopped hugging and tickling you. Your brothers looked away when you walked into a room, but their friends looked you up and down. And once you realized that walking this way, or tilting your head that way, got you things, you started to do it all the time. You learned to use your mother’s present of brushes and makeup to get whatever you wanted. But with the perks came the catch—the guys in the liquor store follow you outside, want to know why you’re in a rush; the barista thinks you owe him something and tries to get you alone in the back; the mechanic makes a show of watching you walk, Ay, Mami. You are a young, too-pretty girl in a bright, big world. One that can hurt.
And here I am, years later, coked-up and alone in a bathroom that smells like sugar and spice, a framed picture of a cupcake over the toilet, makeup dripping off me, eyes red, skin blotchy. It looks old—no, that isn’t quite right, it looks aged. I feel it too: my back hurts from sleeping on the boat, my feet ache from these shoes. There’s a rasp in my chest from the cool, damp air.
This stranger has aged.
26
I buy some banana saltwater taffy and walk back along the boardwalk, chomping and throwing the wrappers into the sand. There’s a large group all done up in their best, smoking cigarettes and shuffling in the courtyard of the Casino. It’s poorly lit, with Art Deco lamps and tea lights in the trees, but I can make out Robby leaning over the rail, staring out at the harbor. He’s in a sport coat, and with his hair curling and wild, he looks exactly how he did ten years ago.
“Hey, sailor.” He turns, his face knit with such concern that I falter.
I give him my best smile, but I must look bad, because it doesn’t change him at all. The crease between his brows is like a canyon now. I lean over the railing just to get away from that sullen pout. The moored boats shift and move with the swells.
He turns back toward the water and we stay that way. An ex-married couple standing in dim moonlight, watching anchored boats slap against each other like lovers.
“How was dinner?” he says finally, putting out his cigarette.
I shrug. “We never ate.”
He shakes his head and takes out another cigarette.
“I don’t mean it like that,” I say, even though that’s exactly what I meant.
I might be breaking his heart, but I can’t help it. I remember once he wanted to move to Buenos Aires. We’ll drink maté in the morning and swim in the Rio de la Plata where the fresh and salt water mix. My first thought had been, No, it’s either fresh or salty. One beats out the other. They can’t coexist.
He offers me a cigarette. “No, thanks. I could use a drink, though.” I motion to the Casino. “How’s the party? Am I underdressed?”
“It’s all right. Buddy Guy didn’t make it, though, had a bronchial infection. Might have been the last time to see him too, the guy’s in his eighties,” he says, depressed. “Soon it’ll just be Kenny G shit.”
The cocaine has loosened its grip, and the nervous energy that was caught up in my head has moved to my chest. I take his cigarette. The smoke is steadying, heavy, the kind of inhale you want every time. I take another, but this one’s sharper and it burns.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asks. I can’t see his eyes; the lamp above us has sputtered and gone out. “Your hands are shaking.”
I pass the cigarette back. “I wish I was hungry. The idea of a burger sounds fantastic. But I don’t think I could stomach it.”
His shadowed head nods. “Wait here.” He hands me back the cigarette. I watch until the crowd’s swallowed him up. My legs feel very heavy. They’d like to lie down right here and fall asleep. Or maybe they’ve got narcolepsy—can that happen to just your limbs? Because my arms are just as tired now.
The cigarette is almost done so I rub it out on a pile of rocks and plop on the ground. Everyone outside is drunk, their faces half in
shadow. A girl in a short lace dress stands directly beneath one of the Art Deco lamps as if it were a spotlight, her dress so tight I can see the lines of her Spanx. She turns and flashes a smile at me. From here her face looks plastic—inflated upper lip, sculpted chin and cheeks—almost grotesque. Whoever she’s with is offstage, just outside the light. I can make out his loafers, hairy big hands gesturing. He must look over too, because she’s smiling at me again, this time with her whole body. I smile too.
When she comes over she seems very tall, but then she helps me up and she’s normal size. Short, even, and wearing steep stilettos.
“Hi,” she says. “You look like hell.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I say.
“Marisol,” she says. “We met this afternoon.”
I struggle to see her more clearly. Could this be the same girl from the Mexican restaurant? The smooth chestnut-skinned kid? Her hair has been curled and teased out; she’s wearing red lipstick and a push-up bra.
“Jesus, how old are you?”
She seems offended by this. Her bare shoulders pull back, thrusting her breasts at me. I can see a mole on the left one.
“Old enough,” she says, tossing her hair. A man comes up and puts his arm around her waist, which is tiny and firmer than a tree trunk.
“Hey, babe,” he says. He’s got a yachtie look about him—polo shirt, pleated khakis. I think I can see gray at his temples. “Ready to get outta here?” In his right ear is a small hoop earring.
I have an urge to punch him in the face. I want to take that earring and use it to scratch his eyes out. Marisol doesn’t feel this way. She picks up my purse from the ground and hands it to me. Then she kisses the guy right on the lips—a big wet smack.
“Just checking on my friend, I thought she’d passed out.”
When they walk away I can see his hand on her ass.