by Rose, M. J.
By then my hair was curling around my face and both of us were wet from the damp air. It was a warm moisture that smelled of the ocean and enveloped us in its humidity. The atmosphere thickened, smoothing out the edges of the horizon and the houses on the other side of the beach, blurring everything, as if we were looking through a nearly opaque piece of sea glass.
There were occasional raindrops but we didn’t pay any attention to them. We were too preoccupied collecting the shells that the waves were bringing us like gifts.
Altogether we gathered two dozen of them. Perfectly formed, each slightly different, all creamy pink and golden with their erect nipples on top.
“Listen,” Gideon said, after we’d gathered them together in a pile, and held one up to my ear.
I heard the unmistakable roar of the ocean inside the chamber. The same sound inside that was coming at me from the sea. I smiled.
I kept listening.
And then I heard something else murmured underneath the roar of the ocean. I wasn’t sure that it was actually there, more likely I was imagining it. And that I was made me even more upset than if I had been hearing it. A shell cannot whisper a man’s name. But my imagination could. And the name it was whispering wasn’t fair.
“What is it?”
I lowered the shell quickly. “It’s disconcerting that you seem to know so much about how I’m feeling. What’s the deal? How do you do it?”
“Would you prefer if I noticed, but didn’t say anything?”
“That’s not the point. It’s the fact that you do notice. I want to know how you do.”
“I’m not a mind reader. You just have a very expressive face. When something bothers you, your eyes go from that crazy topaz color to a duller brown. Your mouth purses slightly. A line appears in your forehead. Your face gives you away.”
My fingers made circles on the smooth surface of the shell I was still holding onto. The one that could speak. Ridiculous, I thought. I hadn’t heard a thing. I picked it up to my ear again and listened. The sea’s bellow echoed in my ear and if I paid attention, there was the name again, like an undercurrent.
I worked at keeping my face emotionless and still while I listened and then I put the shell away in my jacket pocket.
“Did you listen to them when you were a kid? I thought they were magic,” Gideon said.
“I thought my father had put the sound in them.”
“My father and I would take them home and look each one up in a huge book he had and he’d help me learn their Latin names.”
“What are these called?” I asked.
“You keep doing that. You did it in the car. Whenever the conversation might become more personal about either of us, you redirect it.”
“Do I?”
““You don’t want to even get close to talking about me. Do you?” he asked.
“No, that’s not it… that has nothing to do with it, it’s that…”
“Of course it does. It’s a clever ruse. If we talk about me then we might wind up talking about you. And that’s what you are trying to avoid.”
“But you don’t need to know anything about me. I’m supposed to write stories for you.”
“But we’re not talking about the story now. You know, we were in the car for an hour and a half - two people driving with nothing else to do and you never managed to answer a single question I had.” He’d started walking again and I kept pace. It was good to concentrate on how my feet submerged into the wet sand and how the water washed over my toes. Even though the ocean was cold, the temperature was tolerable, not freezing; you could tell summer was coming.
“Why is that?” he asked when I’d thought he’d abandoned this line of questioning and was glad about it.
“Why do you need to know anything about me?”
“Because I’m curious.”
“You’d be very disappointed.”
“You can’t keep deflecting interest with sarcasm,” he said with a definite sarcastic tone of his own.
“I can if I want to.” Even to my own ears, this sounded childish.
“But why do you want to?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“Damn you’re good at this,” he said, laughing
It was the sound of his laugh, combined with the sound of the waves crashing and what I’d heard in the shell, that gave me my first idea of what the beach scenario might be. But now that I had the idea, I was going to have to explain it to him.
It was one thing to write a story line down, another to suggest it in a brief sentence over the phone, but to actually talk it out in person in situ as it were, was daunting.
“What if…” I began. Beside me, I felt a shift in Gideon’s attention. He focused, turning slightly so that he could see more of me as we walked.
“What if….” I started again. “What if in the story, a woman is walking on the beach and she hears a man laughing. A man she’s met before but hasn’t seen in a long time and doesn’t know well. She’s even slightly surprised that she remembers the sound of his laughing. She looks around. But doesn’t see him anywhere.”
He nodded. We walked a few more feet while I tried to look ahead in my mind - as if a movie were playing - to see the next scene of the story. “She’s alone. Lying on a towel. Half awake, half asleep. The sun had been out, but the clouds have rolled in and it’s dark. When she hears the laugh, she’s not sure if it is a real sound. It could have been the sudden disappearance of the sun that woke her up. She might have been dreaming the laugh.”
I stopped talking for a moment, seeing more of the mirage of the woman up ahead, lying on her towel. A light blue towel. The color the sky would have been if the storm hadn’t rolled in.
“What happens next?” he asked.
His words broke the membrane of the daydream. I lost the sense of where the story had been headed. “I don’t know. This isn’t how I work. I didn’t think… you would. What I normally do is work by myself at home writing it.”
“I don’t expect you to actually write the story here. That would be too much pressure on you. I don’t imagine many artists can create while being watched. But I want you to talk it out with me. So I can comment. So I can push you in the direction that I think she’d like. I’m sure if you relax, we’ll do fine.”
“I’m relaxed,” I said, an angry edge to my voice that was like the foam on the ridge of the waves.
But that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to scream at him over the roar of the water and tell him that we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. That this was too uncomfortable for me. That I didn’t want this big a challenge. I didn’t want to ride ocean swells, just glide, moving slowlt ahead on a smooth mirror lake. I practiced telling him all that in my head, testing out exactly what words I’d use to beg off.
Meanwhile, we walked.
Meanwhile, he was quiet.
Gideon was often quiet. Long slow silences that matched the languid pace of his walk. He must have studied that walk, I thought. To be provocative. To flaunt the length of his legs. To show off the thoroughbred body.
I took a big gulp of the ocean-soaked air and expelled it. I was ready to tell him this wasn’t going to work. I knew what words I was going to use. And then I had an image of going back to my loft. Of the drafting table with my collage – the one that was about Cole whether I wanted to admit it or not – staring at me. Knowing if I gave up Gideon’s job, what was going on with Cole was going to consume me. The nights would last longer than the days which would last forever. And then conversely, perversely, the show would also come too soon.
Waiting would be worse with nothing to do.
And then there was the money. Gideon would be paying me seven hundred dollars for the first two stories - that was guaranteed - and then if those went well there would be three more. More than two thousand dollars.
I couldn’t freak out now. That was a lot of money to turn down over some feelings I couldn’t work out. I only needed to remind myself
that I had done more complicated things in my life and had been far more embarrassed than Gideon could possibly make me.
Looking back at the ocean, I started again, picking up where I’d left off.
“She looks for the man. But doesn’t see him. There are no other people anywhere on the beach, either up ahead or behind her. Just the ocean and the sand and a dozen shells scattered around. And then mixed in with the laughter she hears her name being called. It’s coming from far away. Her name almost overpowered by the sound of the waves.”
Damn. It was painful. Like stepping on stones. Knowing that as bad as it is, you have to take it if you want to get where you have to go.
I turned to Gideon. “So, if that’s a good start, then I’ll work on it tonight.”
“I’m not clear where it leads.”
“I’ll work that out and send it to you tomorrow or the next day. We should go, it looks like its going to rain.”
“The storm’s still awhile away.”
“I need some time to figure out what else happens.”
“Improvise. Pretend it’s a collage. Pick another object, throw it into the story.” He was playing with the sand, shaping it into a rounded mound. The action of his fingers smoothing the grains was mesmerizing. “If you don’t share this part of the process with me, this won’t work. I have to be involved. Otherwise it’s a complete cheat.”
“Except it’s not working. It’s too difficult.”
He shook his head and his hair, that was damp now from the fog, fell in his eyes. He pushed it back, “No. It’s not hard for you at all. You’re doing it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been watching you, listening to you. Your voice was calm, so were the muscles in your face. Your eyes were shining. Your imagination was totally engaged. You were building the story. Easily. Then something in your brain interrupted and told you that you should be self-conscious. That you can’t talk this out. All the musculature on your face changed. Your eyes went dull. I watched it happen. But you’re wrong to let that thing in your head interrupt you. You can do it, Marlowe.”
He drew lines on the mound. His fingers were so facile, so certain of how to move. He didn’t wait for me to answer. “You aren’t exactly what you seem. Like the way you look at me, up from under your eyelashes. When I first saw you do that I thought you were flirting. But that’s not it. You’re hiding. Or at least part of you is. Then there’s this other part of you that’s fighting back. That’s out there, fearlessly, mixing up all those outrageous images you put together in those boxes.”
The only thing I wanted to do less than make up a story in front of him was hear him talk about me and get involved answering his questions. I stood up. He followed suit. Looking down I saw what he’d been making – a sand sculpture of one of the shells we’d found. I had an urge to walk though it, and at the same time, I wanted to figure out how to pick it up and preserve it.
“What happens next?” he asked as we continued walking.
“She picks up all of the shells. Gathers them in her sweater. Brings them back to her towel. Washes them off in the water and is amazed at their opalescent color. Like Tiffany glass. Or something painted by Monet. Pinks, yellows, fading into each other.”
Even though I wasn’t looking at him, in my peripheral vision he nodded.
“She holds one up to her ear.”
I wasn’t sure what was coming next. Turning to face the ocean, I felt the sea salt wind blow on my face, shut my eyes and let my mind go blank. Forgetting about Gideon and the job, I absorbed the sounds of the ocean. I took the shell from my pocket and held it up to my ear.
What I heard was too clear. It was impossible. Not a name this time but whole words. Strung together. With meaning.
“First she hears the waves,” I said, my eyes still closed. “And then she hears something else. A man’s voice. In her ear, coming from the shell. It’s the voice that was laughing. The voice that was whispering her name. It’s inside the shell.”
Wind blew spray up into my face. It was cold and so salty it stung a little. I took a deeper breath, hungry for the ionized air. To swallow some of the spray. Even to swallow the sound. To take it inside me and translate it into the story. To feel overpowered by the sound. To be in its thrall. If I could have gone into the water I would have. I wanted to feel the power of those waves tug at me, pull me out into the ocean, which was like a man insistent on getting closer, determined to get what he wants.
Gideon didn’t have to encourage me this time, I started up again on my own. “She hears the man’s voice say her name and thinks about how it sounds, as if he is talking to her though the waves. As if he were out in the water, submerged, but somehow able to speak to her.”
I almost turned to look at Gideon but suddenly realized I could only do this if I focused my attention on the ocean and the feel of the wind. If I could forget he was there I could find the story.
“He’s telling her that he wants her to lie down. Here on the sand. Close to the shore. He wants her to lay on her back. Near enough to the water so that she’s in contact with the spill of the waves. He tells her to shut her eyes.
“But she doesn’t understand where these commands are coming from. She looks around, thinking it’s crazy. It must be someone she knows playing some kind of trick on her. But the beach is still deserted. The man repeats the instructions, kindly but with determination. He uses her name and cajoles her to do it, entreats her to try, promises that he won’t hurt her, that he’ll be gentle, that it will be lovely. Seductively he pulls at her the way an undertow does. You think you can go a little farther, that the pull won’t overwhelm you. So you swim out that small distance more and suddenly you’re overtaken. Helpless. Have no power against the swirls of green blue. Like getting caught in a current, she knows that the smartest thing is not to fight or try to swim against him, but to do as he asks.”
I could see the rest of the story then. I knew where it was leading. But that was as far as I could go using words and phrases. I’d reached the limit of what I could say out loud.
“Don’t stop.”
“I can’t figure out the rest,” I lied.
He didn’t say anything. Why did I assume that meant he didn’t believe me? “Gideon, this is too difficult.”
“Why?”
“It’s too erotic,” I could barely hear my own voice, I was talking so softly.
He started to laugh, not like the seductive sound I’d heard inside my head but an insult that felt like the salt water stinging my face.
“No, Marlowe. I’m not making fun of you,” he said, again knowing what I was thinking. “What you said was funny. I hired you to write sexy stories for me and now you’re telling me that you’re too uncomfortable to tell me the story you’re making up for me because it’s exactly what I asked for.”
I got it and smiled. “Okay. Let me tell you what will happen. The voice that she hears in the shell is going to seduce her. She’s going to listen to it and–”
“No. Not that like. Please. Keep going. Tell the story.”
He spoke softly without ever taking his green and black eyes off me but I didn’t know what his concentrated glance was trying to say. I didn’t speak his language yet.
In another situation I might think that he was interested in me. But that wasn’t possible here. He was with someone. Had hired me to help him with that relationship.
I sat down on a weathered log and looked away from him, out to the water. He sat down beside me.
“It will get easier. You’ll get used to it.”
Shutting my eyes, I tried to see the woman on the beach whose story I’d been telling, but I could only see Gideon, the way he looked when he’d been encouraging me to continue.
I wished that he projected nervousness or anger or weakness. I wished he was unattractive and looked less like that nobleman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or that his eyes were not so eloquent. Or that his voice didn’t blow through me.
I’d learned about believing men the hard way. Cole telling he’d never make me ashamed. That nothing we were doing would ever humiliate me. Joshua telling me that he could accept my past if I only told him the truth. And then telling me he’d be home so soon.
I knew better.
Except I believed Gideon’s promise.
How was that possible?
Maybe going on wouldn’t be so bad. What was so terrible about what I was doing? I wasn’t showing him any of myself. It wasn’t me on the beach listening to the shells. It wasn’t my passion I was describing. I took another deep breath.
“The man’s voice is cajoling, soothing, and so she listens to it and does what he asks. Once she is lying down on the beach with her feet in the water up to her ankles, he whispers to her to take off her bathing suit. She’s not sure what he’s saying, so commingled are the sounds of the surf and the timbre of his voice. But she does it. Quickly, in one smooth movement. The cool air makes goosbumps on her skin but only for a second because she’s suddenly warm. As if the air around her has heated up. As if some one with hot breath had blown on her. It surrounds her and strokes her. She feels it on the back of her neck. On her cheeks. On her breasts. She luxuriates in it.
“And then the voice tells her to spread her legs apart. She doesn’t question his request but obeys. As she does, she hears a slow, soft moan. The sound of a wave brushing against the ocean floor. Of the wind blowing against a forest and moving thousands of limbs and leaves in unison. The sound of a man overcome when the woman he has been waiting to be with is suddenly within his grasp.
“‘Now, still, stay still,’ the voice commands and so she waits, continuing to listen to the surf commingled with his voice. The water inches up over her ankles, up her legs, higher to her thighs, her hips, soaking her and spilling over and down between her legs, wetting her more than she is already wet. Temperate water that smells invigorating and salty.