by Merry Jones
“Which makes my fucking point, Susan,” Jen smirked. “Because if Elle’s brain wanted to resurrect someone to comfort her, it wouldn’t choose that bastard Charlie.”
For a moment, nobody said anything.
“So you guys believe in an afterlife?” Susan asked.
“Don’t you?” Becky’s eyes widened.
“I think life is here and now. And that’s it.” Susan leaned back against the wall.
“I don’t frickin’ know,” Jen shook her head. “Maybe there’s something, like a soul or a spirit that lives on after we die.”
I thought of Claudia crashing onto concrete. Of Greta’s dead, mangled face. Had they seen a loved one as they were dying? Had someone guided them across the line? Had their souls survived? Were they still here, watching us? I looked around, didn’t see them, but sunk lower into the bubbles. Heard Charlie whisper that we’d be together forever, that we were soul mates.
“Living on after we die?” Susan considered it. She finished her wine. “I don’t know, you guys. To me, dead is dead. But I got to admit, it must be sweet to think otherwise.”
We sat silently for another moment. After a while, Susan picked up the empty bottle and stood. She asked if I was ready to get out of the tub.
I nodded. My skin was puckered, and the water had cooled, giving me a chill. I stepped out into a towel, wondering again why Charlie had been dressed for tennis.
I dozed on the terrace all afternoon, dazed and sore, my mind hazy and unsettled. I’d forgotten about my plans with Alain. When I woke up and limped into the suite, though, Susan told me that they’d talked when he’d come by to check on Jen.
“He’s coming by at eight. But don’t get dressed up. You’re not going out. He’ll just cook at his place.”
She said that Alain had been with patients all day, hadn’t heard about my accident until she’d told him. And that he’d looked in on me while I’d slept.
He had? Had I been sleeping that soundly? And, oh God, had I been drooling? Or snoring?
“He seemed very concerned. It’s obvious that he likes you, Elle. And it’s very thoughtful of him, taking you to his place.”
Jen had wandered in, carrying a box of crackers. Munching, she lowered herself onto a chair. “Whose place?”
“Alain’s. Elle’s having dinner with him.” Susan poured a diet soda.
“Alain?” Jen stopped chewing. “As in my doctor, Alain? That Alain?”
“The very one,” Susan nodded.
“You’re fucking kidding me.” Jen turned to me, blanching. “You’re seriously dating my surgeon?”
I began to explain, but Susan interrupted. “You knew they’d seen each other—”
“Fuck I did. I thought they had coffee or something—”
“Well, why shouldn’t she date him?” Susan took out some avocados and a knife.
“Why? Are you serious?”
“What’s your problem, Jen?” I asked.
“My problem? Okay. My problem, Elle, is that you are like a sister to me, and that he’s my damn doctor. My relationship with him is personal and private.”
“But he’s your doctor, not your date,” Susan sliced avocado.
“Mine is the only relationship that any of us should be having with him.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Really? Dinner at his place?” She went on. “I arranged this whole trip for you, and in gratitude, out of all the available guys down here, you have to pick my doctor? I mean, shit—are you fucking kidding me?”
My face was burning, but I didn’t understand her anger. I kept silent, refusing to be bullied. Or to apologize.
But Susan wasn’t silent. “What’s wrong with you?” She stopped slicing, waved her knife at Jen. “First of all, if you keep eating junk food like that, you’ll need another tummy tuck.”
“I can’t help it if I’m hungry.” She looked at her belly.
“And, secondly, leave Elle alone. It’s not personal between you. You’re Dr. Du Bois’s patient, not his squeeze. And Elle’s single.”
“Yes, she is. But he’s not. Dr. Du Bois is married.”
Susan raised an eyebrow, turned to me, the knife dangling from her fingers. “Did you know that?”
“Both of you. Stop.” I took a breath, tried to not to cough. “I’m just having dinner with him.”
“While his wife, what? Eats alone?” Susan frowned. She was sensitive to the idea of husbands having dinner with single women. I tried to picture her portly husband, Tim, at a candlelit dinner with a woman other than Susan. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to.
“His wife’s an invalid.” I spoke softly, managing more words than I had all day. “They don’t have much of a marriage anymore. Besides, I’ll be here only a few days. It’s no big deal.” Why did I have to explain?
“That’s not the point,” Jen fumed behind her nose splint. “The point is that you’re overstepping. The man is my doctor. My turf. You’re trespassing on my territory.”
Really? Jen was claiming Alain as her personal property?
Susan and I both blinked at her.
“Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. We’re friends, but we each have separate lives and our own individual relationships in our own separate worlds. Norm is in mine. And so is Dr. Du Bois. You don’t just fucking step into someone’s world and start dating people there.”
I blinked. She was declaring Alain a citizen of her personal planet? “I wasn’t aware of this rule, Jen. Or of your deed to Alain’s person.” I coughed.
“Good God, stop it, both of you.” Susan used her mom tone. She came into the living room, plopped onto an easy chair, and pushed hair out of her eyes. “You know what? Ever since we got here, all we do is bicker.”
“Not true,” Jen said. “I’ve been too miserable to bicker.”
“See? You’re even bickering about bickering.”
She was right.
“This was supposed to be fun.” Jen pouted. Or I thought she did. It was hard to see behind the splint. “But Dr. Du Bois—or should I say Elle’s beau—failed to tell me how much pain I’d be in. Or how many complications I could get.”
I didn’t comment. Didn’t mention that Jen’s problems weren’t the only ones we’d encountered.
But Susan did. “Oh, cut the pity party, Jen. Get over yourself. Elle nearly drowned today. Two women next door died. I’ve had to do a month’s work in three days. Becky’s fallen for some gigolo con artist. But you don’t notice any of this. All you do is moan about your tender tummy and poor purple boobs, which, by the way, you asked for.”
She finished with bluster, as if resting her case.
Jen’s mouth opened. “My boobs are purple?” She looked down, opened her robe to check.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed.
Jen glared at me. “What. You think that’s funny? How would you like purple boobs?” She considered her question, let out a giggle.
“Maybe you’ll start a trend,” Susan remarked. “Green. Mauve. Chartreuse.”
We were laughing, all three of us. Nothing we’d said had been funny enough to merit real hearty laughter, but we laughed heartily anyway, and our laughter made us laugh more and harder. It mounted until we were roaring, shedding tears, holding our sides, releasing pent-up tension. Laughing irritated my chest, so my laughter was mixed with coughing fits. Jen’s with moans. But never mind, we kept laughing, expelling whatever ills we’d been holding in.
Our trip wasn’t going well. But even with our nerves frayed, our bodies sore, our patience strained, and our moods sour, we were in harmony again, reunited. Old friends.
When Sergeant Perez knocked, we were still laughing. Jen held her sore stomach, repeating, “I can’t laugh. It hurts. Oh, shit, stop. I can’t laugh. My stitches. Stop.”
I was alternately laughing and hacking.
Susan answered the door, wiping tears. “Oh, Sergeant Perez,” she said. For some reason, his presence struck her funny. She burs
t into another round of belly laughs, which reignited Jen and me. “Please,” she chortled, “come in.” She snorted, breaking up again.
Sergeant Perez stepped into the suite, standing stiffly at attention, regarding each of us sternly. His glares seemed cartoonish, made us laugh harder. What was wrong with us? Why couldn’t we stop?
“I’m glad to see you are enjoying yourselves.” His tone contradicted his words.
“Sorry, Sergeant,” Susan bit her lip, struggling to make herself stop. “We were just discussing our love lives.” She straightened up, attempting to adopt a professional demeanor.
His gaze traveled from one to the other of us.
“What can we do for you?” Smoothing her hair, she realized she was still clutching the avocado knife and tossed it onto the kitchenette counter, wiped her hand on her pants.
I composed myself, taking deep slow breaths.
Jen moaned and hugged herself, cradling her aggravated wounds.
Sergeant Perez stepped into the center of the room, eyeing my bandaged leg. “I have heard about your injury, señora. I would like to hear the details.”
The details? Was the hotel afraid I’d sue them? “It’s okay. I’ll be fine—” I began to cough.
“Please, señora.”
“It’s hard for me to talk.” My throat and chest were raw from laughing.
“Maybe I can help,” Susan said. She reviewed the event, told him that I’d been boogie boarding. That a witness said someone’s board had crashed into my head and that I’d been pulled under the water, probably unconscious. Somehow, I must have cut my leg on a shell or metal fragment in the water.
“Is this accurate, señora?” He watched me.
“I don’t remember being hit. I remember the wave picking me up, then something pulling me down under the water. I thought it was an undertow.” I stopped to cough. “And someone grabbed me. Someone with long hair.” I left out the part about Charlie.
Sergeant Perez frowned, took a seat on an easy chair. “I will be frank, señora. This story troubles me for a number of reasons. First, while it’s possible that you were hit on the head and knocked out in a collision, what happened to the man who bumped into you? No one saw him after the incident. Was he also hurt? Knocked off his board? We don’t know. Because witnesses never saw him emerge from the water. Even the person who claims she saw the accident lost sight of him.”
Odd. But so what?
“We have only her word that the collision occurred, or if it did, that it was an accident.”
“I don’t understand,” Susan said. “What are you implying?”
“Let me finish, señora. It’s not just the collision that I question; it’s the wound to your friend’s leg. You see, the ocean here is pristine. The bottom is not cluttered with sharp objects. The seashells and stones are rounded by the water, not razor sharp. If you were to scrape yourself on one, the wound would be just that: a scrape. Not likely to require thirteen stitches.”
Wait, he knew how many I’d had? He’d talked to the doctor?
“So, what are you saying?” Jen asked. “That what happened wasn’t an accident?”
“Yes, Sergeant. Please explain,” Susan stepped over, put a hand on my shoulder.
“Señora,” he leaned forward, “two women have died in close proximity to you. You are a witness in both cases. You were present at the death of the first woman and you discovered the body of the second. In both cases, you possess critical, possibly incriminating information.”
I did? “But I’ve told you everything. I don’t have any other information.”
“Someone may think you know more than you do, señora. But whether you do or not, I am concerned that you have come close to death yourself, nearly drowning in calm water and sustaining a serious wound. A wound that the doctor who treated you believed was caused not by a shell but by a knife.”
A knife?
I sunk in murky water, disoriented. Seaweed—or was it hair?—swirled around me, swept across my face. Something entangled my legs, held onto them. My lungs burned and raged, and I fought someone. Maybe Melanie as she wrestled to rescue me. I didn’t remember getting hit on the head or cut or knocked out. I remembered Charlie.
“You think Elle’s in danger?” Susan pressed him. “How are you going to protect her?”
“I cannot offer a bodyguard, señora.” He turned to me. “But it would be wise for you not to go anywhere alone. And to inform me of anything else you remember. Anyone who seems odd to you.”
Really? That would be a long list. But I thought of Luis, standing on the beach, watching them revive me.
Sergeant Perez urged all of us, especially me, to be cautious and to keep in touch. Susan walked him to the door. After he’d gone, we looked at each other in silence. The air had changed, felt heavier. Our laughter had not only stopped, but been pulverized.
After a minute or two, Susan went back into the kitchenette. “Well, no point sitting around,” she said. “Nothing ever came of that.”
A moment later, I heard her knife, emphatically striking the cutting board, dicing an offending onion or some unrepentant cilantro.
Alain made fish. Turbot with a sauce of mango and orange juice, onions, peppers, honey, and garlic. We had rice and beans. We had wine. We ate poolside at sunset at his white stucco villa-style home near a golf course. The house had a red tiled roof, arched rounded windows, and an inner courtyard with a fountain. It felt open and light, decorated in festive reds, blues, greens, and yellows. I assumed the tones would look brighter to a normal person; to me, they were softly muted.
I wondered if his wife had designed it, if she swam in the pool.
I wondered where she was.
Alain poured wine, asked about my leg, my lungs.
“I’m fine,” I told him, but my voice was raspy.
He frowned. “Can we be honest, Elle?”
Uh-oh. I stopped chewing. People asked that question only when they had something awful to say. It was their way of preparing you for something unspeakable. What would he say? Oh God, had another woman died? Or was his wife coming home?
“Of course,” I forced a smile, braced myself.
He paused, his eyes riveted on mine. “Elle, I think that what happened to you today wasn’t an accident.” Another pause. “I think you were attacked.”
Oh. Was that all? Relieved, I looked at my half-eaten fish, put down my fork, began to reassure him. “Alain, really, I’m—” I began, but he interrupted.
“I talked to the doctor who stitched you up. He has no doubt that the gash in your leg was made by a knife and deliberately inflicted.” Alain reached across the table, put his hand on mine. “In fact, he’s convinced that whoever cut you would have killed you if you hadn’t fought so hard. He thinks you probably diverted the knife, might even have kicked it out of the attacker’s hand.”
Again, I saw murky water swirling. Seaweed. And Charlie reaching for me.
Alain was still talking. “Especially, after what happened to Claudia and Greta. You were connected to both of their deaths. What happened to you can’t be a coincidence.”
He was still holding my hand.
“But if someone wanted to kill me, why didn’t they just drown me? Why use a knife?”
Alain’s voice was soft, patient. “You very nearly did drown. But you resisted your attacker harder than expected. Maybe the knife was a backup plan. Either way, you were nearly killed. And I believe you’re still in danger.”
He sounded exactly like Sergeant Perez.
I thanked him, promised I’d be careful. His grip on my hand tightened.
“This week has been a nightmare, Elle. Two women who were close to me are dead. You’ve been attacked. Honestly, I couldn’t stand it if—” He stopped in the middle. Cleared his throat. “We haven’t known each other long. But you’re already important to me. I care about you.” He released my hand, took a gulp of wine.
His skin glowed in the candlelight; his eyes reflected the fl
ames. I remembered the urgent pressure of his lips.
“Sorry,” he picked up his fork. “I shouldn’t have said that last bit.”
“It’s all right, Alain. Really.” My voice had turned husky. Wait. If my voice had been raspy and turned husky, did that mean the rasp had turned to husk? What was husk? Why was I avoiding the situation by drifting into wordplay?
Alain watched me, waiting, wary.
I made myself stay in the moment. I concentrated, looked at Alain, his fiery eyes. “I care about you, too.” I felt myself flush. It wasn’t a lie, but I wasn’t sure it was quite the truth. It depended on what “care” meant. It could mean a lot of things. I cared about tons of people. My students, for example. Each one of them—I missed them, wondered if little Ellen was still writing her Es backward. If Steve and Nicky were giving the substitute a hard time.
“You don’t have to say that. It’s not tit for tat.” He drank the rest of his wine. Refilled it. Topped off my glass. Looked at me. Sighed. “I’ve interrupted our dinner. And I’ve alarmed you. But I had to speak up and warn you.”
For a moment we were silent, looking at each other.
“Elle, please. Let’s eat.”
I wasn’t hungry any more, but Alain began eating so I did, too. The flavors were sweet and tangy, peppery, intriguing, but I didn’t care. I was thinking about danger, about nearly being killed. About being the third woman to die.
“Trouble is I blame myself. I should have seen it coming.” Alain swallowed a mouthful of rice.
“How could you? You didn’t know I’d even be in the water.”
His eyebrows furrowed, confused. “Sorry. I meant Greta.”
Oh. Greta. His patient whose face had been cut to fringe. The one he’d had an affair with, whom I’d heard him kissing the night she’d died. The glow around Alain dimmed. Something behind him moved in the shadows, rustling a bush. Maybe a raccoon?
Alain didn’t seem to notice it. “I shouldn’t have let her stay alone. She was a suicide risk.”
The night had darkened; the only light came from four spindly candles. Alain’s face reflected golden flickers.