by Leesa Dean
“Go on,” Alison said.
The woman closed her eyes as David ran his tongue across her skin. Alison slapped him on the bum. “Bad boy,” she said.
Bad boy and bad girl. “Careful,” David had warned when Alison took a second shot. She had a tendency to drink too fast, too much, until her memory became a maze to untangle the next morning. She couldn’t quite remember getting back to the hotel. What time had they gone to bed? David would know. She stretched a hand under the covers and reached for his arm.
It wasn’t David’s arm.
She opened her eyes. Beside her lay a stranger. She couldn’t see his face, but he had shoulder-length black hair. The Mayan tattoo on his left arm was so vivid it felt like she was looking through the door of a temple. Across his shoulder blades, tattooed in gothic letters, was the word Libertad.
She scanned the room, looking for clues. Tunnels of light punched through the driftwood walls, leaving striated patterns on the floor. There were no windows. A salt-stained surfboard leaned against the wall and a pair of shorts draped over the fin. Alison’s dress lay on the floor. She pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb the man. Her panties were missing but she didn’t care. She needed to get the hell out of there. Still, she paused in the doorway before leaving so she could look at the man’s face.
He was handsome.
THE DRIFTWOOD BUILDING was actually a hotel. It looked like it had been built by pirates. Dream catchers and mobiles dangled from cage-like balconies, and tiny seashells spelled out Posada la Palma over the entrance. On the roof, there was a sculpture of a man and woman walking on a plank. The woman wore a dress of torn bedsheets and the man’s suit jacket was a sun-bleached version of white. Between the two figures, a man with an eye patch stood holding a tangled blonde wig. I’m dreaming, Alison thought. This can’t be real. The man placed the wig on the woman’s skeletal head and draped the curls over her shoulders.
He looked down at Alison and held her gaze.
She turned and ran along the beach, past a fisherman who sat at the hull of his boat, repairing a damaged net. Alison avoided eye contact when she passed, her flimsy sandals twisting with each footfall. What had she done? She thought of the tattooed man, his hard jawline and muscular body. She ran until she reached a cliff. A narrow trail made switchbacks through prickly underbrush to the top. When she arrived there, she looked down. Plastic cups and beer bottles glittered in the sand—she recognized where the party had been the night before.
David was on the beach. Although he had his back to Alison, she could tell by his motions that he was trying to describe her to people. Some avoided him, startled by his sweeping gestures. Alison hid behind a boulder and watched him make his way down the beach, continuing to question people, unsteady as he walked. A colt, she thought, still finding his footing.
Once he was far enough away, Alison followed the trail down the cliff and went to where the party had been. A bucket of water propped open the back door. She entered the bar and was hit by the strong smell of bleach and half-smoked cigarettes. A woman mopped the floor while she listened to the radio, but there was no music, just a man speaking in Spanish. She sloshed the mop under a plastic chair where it collected cigarette butts in its dank fibres. Alison then remembered something—she’d sat in that chair the night before while David spoke to some woman from Alabama. Alison had been forced to converse with the boring husband, a finance lawyer and proud Republican. She’d ordered drinks whenever the waitress came by, hoping it would make the conversation more bearable. It didn’t.
It seemed to go on for a long time, David and that woman talking. Her laughter seemed fake, eager to please. Alison had drifted in and out of the conversation, offering curt responses to the husband’s banal questions. She’d looked past him to the woman with the blonde dreadlocks on the dance floor—the way she moved was both provocative and private. She looked the same later, on the beach, spinning her firelit chains.
“Estamos cerrados,” the woman with the mop said to Alison, motioning for her to leave. Alison looked around the bar one last time, hoping for clues, but she didn’t remember much else. Outside, she circled the building and stopped in front of a cluster of palm trees.
That man. He’d kissed her there.
She recalled his hand up her skirt, his unshaved chin rough on her neck. But why? Why had they been alone together?
She remembered telling him no.
“Sí,” he’d murmured, then kissed her again.
DUST ROSE IN dry gusts under Alison’s feet as she walked along the unpaved road connecting the beach to the village. She passed a row of shabby cantinas with handwritten menus, still closed that early in the morning. All she wanted to do was lie down. She coughed and spat into the dirt as if the action would somehow vindicate her. When she arrived at the hotel, David wasn’t there. Alison looked at herself in the mirror. Hair in tangles, smeared mascara. Filthy. She licked a finger and rubbed under her eyes until the smudges dissolved. There was a cold half-cup of coffee on the counter. Alison took it and drank it, walking toward the unmade bed to sit down. A dark bruise had formed above her knee. She pulled up the hem of her dress and put pressure on the mark. It only hurt a little. She took off her dress and sat naked, investigating her body. Another bruise appeared further up her leg, and Alison noticed a red, circular mark on her thigh.
Teeth.
Alison searched for long pyjamas to hide the marks but of course all she had were shorts. They were in Mexico. Her head hurt and she felt nauseated. She lay down on the bed and thought about what to tell David. Everything she came up with sounded like a lie, but the truth was not an option.
WHEN ALISON WOKE up, the clock beside the bed flashed red numbers that were supposed to mean something. There was an arm around her. It was David’s arm.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Alison closed her eyes. She didn’t answer the question. How could she? I passed out, she imagined saying. The bartender put me in a room.
“Are you hurt?” David asked.
I went into the wrong hotel room and fell asleep. I was so tired I didn’t notice.
“Did someone do something to you?”
No, she wanted to say. The words wouldn’t come.
“Do we need to call the police? Come on, Ali, talk to me.”
“No,” she finally said.
David began to pace the room. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before. “Where were you?” he asked.
None of it made sense. If she’d kissed another man, if she’d been able to leave with him, it meant David was not there. Had he gone somewhere with the woman from Alabama? No. He wouldn’t have.
“I shouldn’t have left you,” David said.
“I don’t understand. Where did you go?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. Nothing.”
David remained silent, thinking about his response before speaking. Alison studied his face. The crow’s feet were deep and there was a smattering of grey at his temples. He was getting old. They both were.
“I ran out of cigarettes,” he said. “You were talking with Kathy and George, so I came to get another pack—”
“Kathy and George?”
“You know, the couple from Alabama.”
“You left me with those two?”
“Hey, you said you wanted to stay.”
“I’m sorry,” Alison said, “I’m trying to figure this out. So, you went to get cigarettes and left me with Kathy and George.”
“Just tell me where you were, Alison.”
“How long did you leave me?”
“It was a mistake,” he said.
The bed had been unmade when she returned. His scent was all over the sheets. She imagined him the night before, taking off his shoes and lying down, not thinking about her at all.
“You came back here and went to sleep, didn’t you?”
David looked away. “I was drunk. Not as bad as you but . .
. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
They were both quiet. David fidgeted with his watch and Alison looked out the window. In the backyard, birds with long, oily tail feathers hopped through the garden. A hotel chambermaid hung damp sheets on a clothesline. In the distance, Alison heard a pickup truck idling by the town square. “Pochutla!” The driver yelled. “Pochutla!”
“Just tell me where you were,” David pleaded. “I was so worried.”
“Nowhere,” Alison responded. “I fell asleep somewhere, woke up, and came right back.”
It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either.
ALISON CLOSED HER eyes and tried to ignore David’s presence. He said her name once, but she lay still, pretending to be asleep. Eventually, he took his cigarettes and left. As she lay there, images from her life collapsed into a tight stream—there was David at twenty-three, a newscaster at the radio station where she’d volunteered in high school. He was five years older and had big dreams of running his own station one day. Alison had been young, unsure of herself, but certain about David. They’d fallen in love too quickly.
Over the years, despite their best intentions, they’d become less interesting people. David kept reporting on the weather, on minor traffic jams, playing whatever hits people requested. Alison moved from job to job, first as a secretary and then as an executive assistant. They talked about moving once or twice. “We could go somewhere with better opportunities,” David said. Once, he came home with a job posting for a station in Austin. “The music scene there,” he told Alison. “It’s out of this world!”
Alison wanted to leave, but when she tried to imagine herself being American—Texan specifically—she couldn’t stop laughing. In the end, David didn’t apply for the job.
As she got older, Alison wondered what it might be like to be with someone else. She’d only ever been with David. Occasionally, she flirted with other men. David was a flirt, too. “You should dance with her,” she’d said a few times at parties, pointing to women she knew he found attractive. They teased each other, knowing neither would act on their desires.
Until now. What had she done with that man? She couldn’t remember anything past the kiss.
It wasn’t fair. She wanted to remember everything.
DAVID WAS BACK at the hotel before long. Alison heard the Velcro of his sandals, his bare feet on the tiles. Soon, she sensed him beside the bed. To move would be to initiate conversation and she wasn’t ready to talk. The blankets had shifted, leaving one of her legs exposed. Only then did she remember the bite mark. She felt his fingers brush against it, circling the contour of the raised skin.
David slammed the door on his way out. Through the screen, Alison watched him take fast drags of a cigarette. The noxious odour drifted into the room and made her stomach turn. She knew him so well, but not well enough to know what to say. She pushed back the covers and slowly brought herself to a sitting position. She felt weak and out of sorts, but nonetheless stood to walk to the bathroom. There, she took off her clothes and stepped into the shower. Water trickled in a weak stream and she soaked a washcloth so she could scrub her body. Clean water ran into the cloth and dirty water spiralled down the drain. She moved a hand between her legs, washing once, then again. Had they at least used a condom?
She stayed in the shower for a long time and considered what she could tell David. Eventually, she turned off the water and stepped onto the shower mat. There was a mirror on the wall. She looked at herself, really looked for the first time in a long time, and wondered why the man had chosen her the night before. Did he think she was pretty? She turned to the side and touched her breasts. They were sore. Had the man squeezed them? Put them in his mouth?
“What happened last night?”
She turned around to find David standing in the doorway, shoulders tensed. Alison grabbed a towel and tightened it around her body. She walked past him and looked for something to wear, something that would look nice, but all her clothes seemed boring. Some of her dresses were garish, with sailboats and tropical flowers. When had she become that kind of person?
“I asked you a question,” David said.
She looked at him, standing there with his arms crossed.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, rooting through her suitcase. “You’re the one who screwed up.”
“Tell me what you did last night!”
“You left me,” Alison said, turning to face him. “That’s what happened. I bet you didn’t even come back here. You probably brought that woman from Alabama somewhere and fucked her.”
David raised his hand and slapped her. Not hard, but just enough to make a point. She touched her face where his hand had struck. She could feel the heat of the mark. Emotions divided David’s body into hemispheres; his face showed remorse but his body still looked primed with anger.
“Ali. God. I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t meant what she said, but still, there was something satisfying about lashing out. She’d always been a good wife, never raised her voice. Yelling felt good, even if she was being unreasonable. At first, when she saw him standing in the doorway, she’d considered telling the truth. She could tell David she was sorry.
No, she thought. Let’s try something different. She went back into the bathroom and locked the door. She sat with her back against the cold tiles and pulled sections of her hair—an old habit. “Don’t,” David said whenever he caught her. “It’s self-destructive.” Outside, the pickup truck idled through town again. Alison heard the driver call “Pochutla! Pochutla!” The next morning, she and David would be in that truck, heading to the airport, heading home.
The trip had been David’s idea. “We’ll take a week off,” he’d said. “Get away from it all.” Alison agreed only because she’d been in shock, and in that state, agreeing was easier than disagreeing. For years, they’d tried for a child. She’d never expected it would take so long to get pregnant. She definitely didn’t expect it to end the way it did.
“Lots of women miscarry in the first three months,” David had told her, thinking it was a good thing to say. It was not.
He knocked at the bathroom door. “Ali, I’m sorry. Okay? Open the door.”
It was their last day in Mazunte. At home, she knew they’d settle back into their old routines. Eventually, David would want to try for another child. But Alison didn’t want to try again. The process, the possibilities—it was all too painful.
“You must be starving,” David said, voice losing energy. “We should get some dinner.”
The idea of walking through the village made her nervous and excited. Would she run into the man? Would he say something? Probably not. But he might look at her a certain way. Alison knew that David would push the incident from his thoughts until it no longer existed. She, on the other hand, would be applying mascara or walking the dog years later and she’d catch herself thinking about that man in the driftwood hotel, trying to recall something, anything at all.
THEY WENT FOR dinner in a restaurant near their hotel. Alison ate everything on her plate. She was starting to feel stronger, less nauseated. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” David told the owner, a man named Alejandro who’d been very kind to them.
“Qué triste,” Alejandro said, shaking hands with both of them. After dinner, they walked from the village to the beach, passing houses where families grilled meat over charcoal pits. Stray dogs lingered nearby, skin tight over their washboard ribs. Along the shore, tiny shells and creatures left stranded by the tide were strewn across the wet sand. Luminous haze from distant ships cast white shadows over the wrinkled sea. Ahead, Alison saw the bar where they’d been, but the front door was closed and locked.
“Let’s walk a bit further,” Alison said, pointing to the cliff.
David followed Alison to the end of the beach where the trail started. The tide was high. Water churned through slick black rocks before it was taken back to sea. As soon as they reached the top of the cliff, the driftwood hotel became visi
ble. David stopped walking and stared, perplexed by its strangeness. Alison continued on the trail and David followed until they reached the hotel’s entrance, lit by a dim lantern. At night, the dream catchers looked like spiderwebs. David ran his hand along one of the gnarled driftwood beams, while Alison tapped a finger against a seashell mobile and listened to the haunting echo.
“Buenas noches,” a voice said from behind.
Alison spun around. The man with the eye patch was standing there, smoking a cigar. He looked at David and Alison with a bemused expression before casting his gaze to the flotsam sculptures above. Bright spotlights made their white clothes radiate, and the halogen glow illuminated the spaces between their bony fingers. From that angle, the figures looked like they were dancing along the plank instead of walking to their death.
“They’re beautiful,” Alison said.
The man took a haul of his cigar and exhaled through his teeth. “It is my son who makes this art,” he said. Alison felt her cheeks turn pink at the mention of his son.
“Juan Riviera,” he continued. “He is famous.”
His name—Juan. Now she remembered. He’d repeated it three times in the bedroom, an incantation. She looked away. David noticed the change in Alison. He was reminded of a date early in their relationship, a sudden flush, a coy smile across the table. It wasn’t until later that he realized it was for the waiter, not him.
“We have to go,” David said to the man. He took Alison’s arm and led her away from the strange hotel. Once they were far enough down the beach, he stopped and faced Alison.
“You were here last night,” he stated.
Alison nodded.
His face showed disappointment and relief. He let go of her arm and walked ahead by himself. As the distance between them grew, Alison thought of her lover and his bedroom, the light bursting through the walls as she gathered her clothes in the morning.