by Trevor Eve
She said.
And realised that she had never watched the film with anyone before and now it had reached her; because she had viewed it through the eyes of someone else, she had experienced someone else’s shock; she started to cry and all the pain that had never come out seemed to come in one torrent of tears. In the presence of Ever: the only person who had sat and watched the film with her.
Even though she was unaware that he had at moments been forced to close his eyes, unprepared to be an audience to the degradation. He didn’t want to carry those images in his head forever. Not in his head.
Afterwards he did not know what to do but sit and be a witness to this pain, this realised pain. She spoke through her sobs.
‘Do you think I was good? Should I have gone on to great things?’
Ever was white, at least he felt white, pallid, the blood had gone from him.
He got up to leave.
‘Please don’t go, my sweet.’
‘I’ll get you some tissues.’
He returned with a box from his bedroom, giving himself at least some oxygen to breathe, out of the airless confine of the screening room.
And to receive some different images on his retinas.
*
They sat and he wanted to hold her but felt that a physical action, even one of tenderness, would have no place, having seen what he had just seen.
He would have killed for her. He would have done that. He could understand what had been done. It made sense to him, but then that was the concern: his understanding.
She went through the process of a gentle blowing of the nose and a careful mopping of the eyes. He thought of the waterproof mascara on the shopping channel and wondered if that was what she was wearing.
There was no run.
After a time, she composed herself: they left to go and sit in the garden, catching something positive and natural from the sun.
The sun was a good idea, her idea, it has life and brilliance and health and warmth. All the things missing in those fifteen minutes.
Ever was still fixed on the resulting aftermath.
That revenge was taken. That murder happened after that. And maiming.
It worried him that he condoned that aftermath.
‘Why show me that?’
‘I don’t know. No one has ever watched it with me.’
She was scraping, with her thumbnail, some candle wax off the white marble table. Removing the red dried spill, cleaning and cleansing.
Ever thought the wax shape resembled India or Africa. They always to him looked like they had run out of energy as they thinned towards their southern tail, run out of spill.
‘Just bad things happen, things that shouldn’t.’
Said Lomita.
‘Did you feel better when what happened to them happened? To those people?’
‘Yes, I did. But eventually it was worse, because I had joined them. And then you are finished. Polluted.’
‘Would you mind if I had a drink?’
Said Ever.
‘I will join you. Martinis?’
‘In or out?’
‘Out, I think, don’t you?’
Said Lomita.
Ever knew what was coming next.
‘I’ll give you fifteen minutes.’
The length of the 8 mm agony. He was shaking as he waited; he wanted to ask for a diazepam to calm down.
It had been a day.
My God, if you are listening, what a day.
WELL, DID YOU EVER?
That was never going to leave him. He had never seen that one before. Did it mean what he thought it meant, were those his final words to his son? The fifteen minutes he was glad of, but he didn’t need to change, he was already at his sartorial peak.
Armani outlet and a shirt. It gets no better than that for Ever. The truth, here, was a one-sided affair. Lomita had revealed her truth but Ever was incapable of revealing his truth. The imbalance provided yet another area for guilt to build, to persecute and prosecute his mind.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ever was swimming in the ocean alone.
He swam alone, there was no one else to swim with, he floated in the water watching the whales with their leap of child-joy out of the water. The triggerfish and the skipjacks swimming around him, right by his feet, happy at his being there, and as happy as he could be, being there.
He kept his eyes open while swimming, knowing the redness would stay with him but he needed an awareness of jellyfish which sometimes bred in the Sea of Cortez, and this was the time for the Portuguese man-of-war, from whose sting it would be a relief to be released into death. He watched for the purple strands that drift in the water without any apparent purpose other than to cause intense pain. He heeded Pedro’s advice to the letter. The pelicans in their radar-like flight, feet off the ocean surface; the ospreys with their talons ready to scoop the catch. The falcons and hawks circling for movement on the ground, ready for their dive.
The beach was always deserted and the blue took over his world, the blue and the sand. The pink and grey of the shells interrupted his walk across every step of the spread of beige, the only time the colour has a true majesty.
Beige – on a beach.
He walked tentatively around the old rusted shipwreck, half buried in the sand, fearing the snag of metal on his feet, and climbed the twenty-four steps to return him to the house.
An art deco house, that from the beach belied its depth and size. The curved terrace with seven circular columns supporting the roof overhang, protecting the glass of the doors, that opened into the house, from the sun. The floor inside was of marble and the curved multi-layered ceiling rose to a central dome that outside continued its journey skywards in the shape of a lighthouse, atop of which was perched an osprey; Ever’s constant companion with its high-pitched whistle that would greet him on his return. Inside the house dropped a large art-deco chandelier-type light from the interior of the fifteen feet of rising column.
He never liked to wash the salt off his body after he’d been bathed by the ocean and put on his recently acquired grey T-shirt and navy shorts and his flip-flops, ready for his journey into town. He left his bedroom and stared, as he had grown accustomed to doing in the last few days, at the paintings that surrounded him. Some were in his bedroom and some in the guest house and the screening room.
Pedro, the caretaker, had spent the last days putting the paintings in position. A position decided by the curator of his father’s final exhibition. Ever. The Wave graced the wall opposite the ocean-facing glass and WELL, DID YOU EVER? asked its perpetual question, hanging by the counter that curved as a separation between the living area and the kitchen. From the four expanses of glass, all the beauty of the ocean was revealed, as if on a series of cinema screens; two of the glass expanses could be slid back to introduce the breeze into the house and carry the ozone and soft smell of the sea.
He walked to the car, closing behind him the front doors, cast in concrete, with the indentation of the handles providing a smile and the two glass portholes – the eyes – completing the image of a smiling face. He walked through the first courtyard which housed the outdoor kitchen and fireplace and agave and cactus and aloe vera and the elephant tree with its dying-looking bark, all its health lying like a lie beneath the surface. A duplicitous tree.
All were shielded from the wind by the circular walls that encased the house, allowing the bougainvillea the protection to bloom in stillness.
In the outer courtyard was the guest house and the parking, as was tradition in Baja, reserved exclusively for the residents’ cars. The screening room was housed in an oval building on the left and then, through another set of gates to the further courtyard, was the caretaker’s casita. In effect the property was protected by three sets of gates. At the final gate was, a practical inclusion this time, a cattlegrid, to prevent the horned Criollo cows from meandering as slowly as they could onto the property, and eating bushes that looked to be dead
– the forbs – before continuing their aimless trek.
This was the magnificence that was Casa Lomita.
He was on his way to see Lomita, who was in the newly built hospital in San José del Cabo behind the gathering of food stalls that were known under the collective title of the Mercado. Ever climbed into the Toyota F J Cruiser, sand-coloured and sand-covered, and left the area through the gates to the outside, the perimeter of the property dipping down onto the dust road, checking left and right before the drop and the two mile trip that led to the newly paved road.
The fifteen-mile journey to the edge of the town lay ahead: he played Lana Del Rey and found ‘The Blackest Day’ to be a repeat that he didn’t acknowledge as repetition but as necessity. The necessity of comfort with the lyrical clarification of his destiny. Deep, dark, and getting harder.
The mimosas, the ironwood and the cacti living for hundreds of years, placed the relevance of his short history into perspective. The same cacti would see generations pass from their same position without a change of opinion or condition during their life. A constancy of which the human has no comprehension. We, who wander, change and spill our lives in front of ourselves like vomit. It had been a long journey, literally, the events that unfolded; but now he was dealing with a deep and new sadness. He drove off the paved road into the newly developed outskirts of San José funded by Mr Navarro, the Corona Beer owner, over the newly constructed bridge, took a left turn to the Hotel Zoneria and then up along to the start of the Golden Corridor with the five-star deluxe hotels in the monolithic style of contemporary Mexican architecture.
He was on his own again, and Lana seemed to agree.
The hospital appeared on the right. New and modest in comparison to the hotels, although a comfort to the potential guests with its clean presence. It was at least there. Access to healthcare is an important American tourist consideration.
He sat by the bed, he was now truly the doctor attending the patient, he could not hold back the tears. Lomita had contracted pneumocystis pneumonia, PCP. She was critically ill.
It was critical. He was critical of her being critical: the word had started to lose meaning.
Manita was allowed to be a constant presence by her bedside but Lomita had expressly given Ever visiting hours, hence his solitary journey; she found the emotion of seeing him too much and he had to be limited. The prognosis was not good, but she was content to be in Mexico, the country that had offered her salvation through her difficult years and now ultimately was responsible for the taking of her life. She had physically wasted away so much, her long journey from Los Angeles way down south had done her no good, it was necessary, but it had not helped her condition.
*
Their journey down had taken place five days earlier and had taken them three days.
It should under normal circumstances have been a pleasure. Manita and Ever shared the driving. They had crossed the border at Tecate, east of Tijuana, a much gentler border to cross, no hassle, it takes you through the wine country and it’s a four-hour drive to San Quintín on the Pacific coast. Ever was the only one who needed to fill in a visa document – there were no lines – it took minutes. Manita travelled on a Mexican passport and Lomita had Mexican residency. Their first stop, at the Jardines Hotel, at the end of a long dirt road, gave them a feeling of being able to breathe new air. It was quiet, being nearly midnight, with few people around. Lomita started to wake on their arrival and witnessed the beautiful driveway lined with palm trees that took them to the main building, where they were met by Carlos, who went to get Esmerelda from her bed: they were the owners and knew Lomita well.
They were escorted to the basic casitas but on their way passed the bar; it was Lomita who asked Carlos if he could make one of his margaritas and maybe prepare some food. She turned to Manita to assess her response and fell to the ground. She had fainted, passed out: out cold. Was this the heart condition, or just sheer exhaustion? Two hours after the tablets had been consumed, just before they reached Tecate, she had said her heart was getting better. Ever looked at her, fragile as the skin that surrounded her, picked her up in his arms, her head fell back and he whispered softly that it was going to be all right and no one was going to leave her. They took her straight to lie down, sensing the fever in her as she fell restlessly into a sleep.
Ever was exhausted from the day and took a bottle of tequila from the bar to sit and watch the stars.
Manita bedded down next to Lomita, making sure she took all her medication, including another beta blocker in case it was the heart; it was impossible to get any coherence out of Lomita. She was in and out of feverish sleep.
Ever tried to get some kind of perspective on the turn their lives had taken in the last twelve hours. The stars in the heavens were in their same constellations but for him and for Lomita, their constellations were irreversibly altered. He drank the Don Julio añejo tequila and wondered what he had brought about in the placidity of these peoples’ lives. He was, had always been, a force of destruction, a breaker of comfort, a black hole in the middle of a white light. Why was Orion unperturbed by him? Because they had gone, the stars, a long time before all this happened, and they were now in a state of the past – non-existence. He felt his love for Lomita, sat with it like it was an animal, allowed it to comfort him; he prayed that she felt it too.
In the morning she was no better. The drive through the desert, the boulders and cerrito trees was overlooked: it seemed just more relentless beauty in the agony that was connected with the concern for Lomita, who lay on the back seat in a state of sleep and startled wakes.
They had to get to San Ignacio Springs on this day, a mile for every day of the year. A 365-mile journey, they could do the year in a day. But the feeling in the car was strange as Manita did not know what had happened, she was only concerned with the rapidly decreasing health of Lomita. Lomita who was in shock and decay, her immune system disintegrating by the minute, exacerbated by the intensity of what had taken place. The desert landscape and its simplicity, its basic function of primal reptile life and cacti and circling birds drove a confusion, an embarrassment, into Ever’s brain; he was now realising in his conscience the reality of what had been done.
The World Heritage Site of San Ignacio with its churches and endless religious artefacts became an annoying contrast to the position that Ever and his travelling companions were in. It was like hell driving through heaven.
The beauty and the incorruptibility shouted out loud.
He couldn’t wait for the neutrality of the open road. A cactus to breathe with, not a church, not a spectre of all that was good. They decided that they could not move Lomita and stayed in the car for the night, going out to get bottled water. She wanted no food; both he and Manita were content to grab a few hours’ sleep, carry on to Loreto and then move into a hotel on their night-time arrival. They had woken early to start their drive, stopping off at a roadside food stall for a breakfast burrito. Lomita only took in the water. Although wrapped up against the cold, the damp from the night air had in no way helped Lomita’s condition and Ever felt that a big mistake had been made in their decision.
They pulled into the roadside for a stop to urinate and whatever else. Manita carried Lomita out of the car for that purpose. There was nothing else in her but water.
They took a left turn out of San Ignacio heading to Santa Rosalía and continued the drive to Loreto down the coast of the Sea of Cortez.
It was difficult to take any of it in with Lomita in the back of the car appearing unmoving, in a state of catatonia. The radio, with its threat of connection to reality, was switched off. San Bruno and Punta Chivato were passed through and by. Eventually they arrived at Loreto.
A most beautiful town but with more churches: the reminder, the continual reminder. Ever was amazed he could consume diazepam and still drive with enough focus, it just kept the edge of panic from his brain.
They took two rooms at the Oasis Hotel on the beach, it was the perfect
place to get Lomita out of the car and into a room with an overhead fan. She could be cared for.
Ever needed to collapse and close down.
To save his mind; to conserve as much rational thought that he was finding an increasing struggle to summon.
*
The roads south of Loreto were rough.
The washing away from the rains had caused cracks and potholes, the journey slowed.
Then it slowed to a stop as they were pulled over at a military-style checkpoint.
On top of a jeep was a mounted machine gun behind which a masked man stood with intention while on the ground several other military personnel, similarly masked and also with intention, stood, rifles at the hip, in silence; there was one man doing the talking. He moved into view and stood beside the jeep.
‘Bájense del coche. Manos en la cabeza. Abran el maletero.’
His voice was far older than his face, almost an aged larynx growl: Ever did as he was told, he guessed, aided by gesticulations. He opened the trunk, just keeping the one hand on his head. His legs were shaking, he felt there was a line of sweat oozing from his crack. Manita was arguing, Ever wanted her to shut up. He was a shining beacon of guilt.
‘Ella no puede bajarse. Ella es muy vieja y tiene dolor del estómago. Mucho dolor.’
Pleaded Manita.
‘Déja la viejita. ¡Ahorita!’
The man said from a throat lined with gravel, followed by a hawk and a spit.
To Ever’s relief Manita finally calmed down and obeyed, leaving Lomita silent in the back of the Suburban.
The Mexican Federal Police were looking for drugs, fighting against the drug cartel takeover in the area.
Ever stood, a sweltering bag of nerves; Manita marble cool; they were waved on with another growl from the unmasked man, hinting a smile as he did so. Ever climbed back in and started up his lungs again along with the Suburban.
The cows and burros, the little donkeys, wandered onto the road and at every corner it was necessary to slow down and be prepared.