A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  “Oh no no no.” The man cut her off, shaking his head.

  “Michael,” the woman said sharply.

  “No, it’s fine, I certainly understand. I’m sorry to bother you both.”

  “Wait, please. How much for a foot massage?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t mean to be rude, but as I’m sure you know, we can’t buy everything we want. I’m sure you know this.”

  The woman ignored him. “How much?”

  Jacqueline hadn’t thought about the cost. She said, “One euro for five minutes. That’s what I’ve been charging, but if you’d like—”

  “No, that’s fine. That perfectly fair,” she said. “How would you like me?”

  “What kind of massage do you do?” the man asked.

  “Oh,” Jacqueline said. “It’s a combination, you know, I don’t like to limit myself.”

  He took off his sunglasses, wiped the sweat from his nose, and looked at her.

  “Swedish,” she said. It was all she thought of.

  The man smirked as if he knew everything about her and Jacqueline began to tremble. Not because of him, but because he’d stolen the bearded man’s eyes—as dark as if they were devoid of irises. And they sparkled.

  Not the glint of charm or humor or lust.

  But of the other thing.

  “This okay?” The woman had leaned back on her elbows. Now she was pointing her red-painted toes at Jacqueline. “It’s all right,” she said. “Go on. Five minutes, one euro. Ignore him.” The woman laughed and rolled her eyes at the man, who shook his head and smiled at Jacqueline. He returned the sunglasses to his face. He was just a person on a beach. A holiday. There was no menace, no challenge. Jacqueline slid her skirt higher up her legs, walked her knees forward, and took the woman’s small feet into her hands and rested them on her bare thighs. She took the right foot so that the heel rested between her two palms. She pushed her thumbs along the pad of the heel, along the arch, and over the ball of the foot.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” the woman said, “wonderful,” and let her head fall back so that her long black hair hung clear of her neck and collected behind her on the red towel.

  “Look at the movie star,” the man said. The woman did look like something out of a magazine—enormous black sunglasses and black bikini, head thrown back, the skin drawn tight across her throat. Jacqueline wished she had her own sunglasses. She could not tell if the man was looking at her or if he was looking out to sea. She added sunglasses to her list of things she needed to start a new life. Her thumbs moved over the feet. They were smooth as a child’s.

  The woman made quiet sounds of pleasure. There was the sound of the surf and of the wind rushing past.

  “You have beautiful feet.”

  “You have great hands. My God, where did you learn to do this?”

  “Oh, in New York,” she said. She glanced over at the man, who was now lying on his back, his head turned away from them, breathing as if he were asleep. “A massage school,” she added.

  She’d learned from Saifa, who had been laying her feet in Jacqueline’s lap since they were children. And it was never the other way around. In the early morning after dancing on the couch together, sitting on the terrace watching the dark towering clouds come in over the ocean, Jacqueline held her sister’s feet and pressed her thumbs along the same lines, squeezed, held Saifa’s heels in her palms like warm teacups, squeezed her toes and cracked the joints. And when she’d become pregnant, idiot girl, every night talking about the places they’d live together, all the lives they’d lead. In Manhattan and Paris, Los Angeles, and most of all Papeete, where their father had once been the guest of an American businessman.

  “No place in the world as pretty as Tahiti. It wouldn’t be possible. God couldn’t do better. He must have made it last,” he said. “It was the work of a master.”

  “Unlike this place,” her mother said. “Unlike this place, the work of an amateur, the work of a child with a crayon.”

  “You will go to hell for that,” he said.

  He kissed his wife on the forehead and she did not say what was obvious to all of them but her father.

  Imagining this woman’s feet her sister’s, Jacqueline had lost track of time. Now the man seemed to be asleep. The woman had eased down onto her back, her arms out at her sides, palms upturned. Five minutes must have passed, but she was not certain, so she continued, focusing on the bodies in front of her. How could they lie there like that, as if in their own beds, the doors locked?

  She no longer wanted the feet in her lap. She imagined driving her thumbs hard into the arch. Instead she laid them on the sand as if they were valuable.

  “Over already?”

  “Yes,” Jacqueline said.

  “Maybe I should buy another five minutes.”

  Without moving, the man said, “Maybe not, dear,” saying dear as if it were a joke, as if he’d never use such a word to mean his wife. The woman lowered her sunglasses and rolled her eyes at Jacqueline.

  As if they both shared in the joke, as if they both knew what men were like, but only Jacqueline knew what men were like.

  “My dear,” her father said to all three of them. “My dear, my dears.” And he meant it always. He was incapable of sarcasm.

  “It’s a euro, please.”

  Jacqueline had lost her energy. She hadn’t charged enough. She had no more patience for charm, for her lie, for kneeling. The man raised himself up just enough to reach back and push a hand into the pocket of a white canvas bag.

  “What’s that accent?” he asked with a coin in his hand. “Jamaica?”

  “She speaks English perfectly. Better than you, Michael, I’m sure.”

  “I’m talking about her accent,” he said. “Not her English.”

  “Just give her the money.”

  Jacqueline sat on her heels. She was still. She could feel everything falling from her. The weight drawing her face down, deadening her eyes.

  Jacqueline put her hand out and when she felt the coin in her palm, she closed her fist and stood up. The blood drained back down into her calves, into her feet. She was no longer cut at the knees.

  “So what’s the accent?”

  “Liberia,” she said.

  The woman rested her head on her long black hair, on her wide red towel, and sighed. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “Maybe we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Liberia,” the man repeated. He nodded as if he suddenly knew her. “Take care of yourself,” he said in a new voice, which was to mean something solemn and sympathetic.

  Jacqueline nodded and walked away from them down to the water. With her back to the beach, she slipped the coin into her bra and felt it pressed solidly against the top of her breast.

  She broke at the waist and washed her hands in the sea.

  SHE BUILT A MATTRESS OUT OF GARBAGE.

  The cardboard she took from a stack behind a grocery. She came out in the cold early morning when nothing moved but the stray dogs and the sea and the wind. Mostly, she took what was left. The cardboard, for example—two collapsed cases of Delica bathroom tissue. She stole a plastic bag from a city garbage can.

  It’s hardly stealing. It’s meaningless.

  In the darkness, she worked the wide metal trash bins in the alleys behind the main road. She didn’t touch the food. The rotting fruit, the molding bread, the souring milk. She filled the bag with the cleanest, driest trash. She crushed it down and added more. She stole another. Wide, strong, transparent green the color of dying grass.

  God sees everything. Everything.

  In the early morning, when the sun lit up her cave so that not a corner was in darkness, she tore the boxes open. She spread the first on the stone floor. Each packed full, she tied the two bags together, mouth to mouth in six knots, and molded the trash to cover the length of the cardboard. The second piece went on top.

  The next day while she was working, she collected the thin plastic grocery bags that swir
led around the beach like ghosts.

  Later, along the perimeter of each piece of cardboard she pierced holes with a pointed stone. She rolled the plastic bags into cord, threaded the holes and bound the mattress together.

  She tried a pillow of trash, but the sound kept her awake. Always crackling in her ears and in half-sleep, it spoke to her. There were voices enough, so she filled a doubled bag with sand, put it under her head, and slept without pain.

  Most mornings, she woke when the cave filled with light. She dressed. She climbed down. She could have done it blindfolded.

  I’d like to see you try, her mother said.

  Jacqueline squatted behind the rock. She used paper only when she shit. And when she shit, she dug a hole first. As deep as her elbow.

  You were nothing if not clean. Everything wrapped up neat for you, her mother said. Nothing left behind.

  Her mother was changing.

  Sometimes there was acid in her voice.

  THE DARKEST MORNINGS, after the moon had gone and there was no sound on the promenade, when the only noise was blowing wind and breaking waves, she slid out of the cave and crawled down the stone.

  Like a rat, her mother said.

  She moved carefully around the point. There in the shadow of the great outcropping, there where she’d spent her first night, she slid her skirt from around her waist and dropped it in the sand. Her underwear too. Tank top and bra. She collected it all in her arms and stood still, and when she was sure, she moved out of the shadow and climbed the steps. She pushed the stiff silver button and the shower kicked to life. She crouched naked on her heels and washed the clothes, draping them dripping over the wall, piece by piece. Then she rose and stepped onto the metal grate. Twice, she’d done this and in those two dark mornings, naked beneath the water, beneath the soft glow of the streetlight, before the wide, empty orange street, before a skulking cat, she felt as if she were breaking open. That first instant when the water covered her, it was as if something cracked and fell from her skin, from her eyes. It was more than salt and grime. She wanted to stay longer. She always wanted to stay longer.

  She collected her wet clothes and walked naked over the rocks, keeping low, careful not to slip, and eventually found her way back up the wall and into her cave. She brushed the sand from her feet and swung them inside. She laid the clothes out flat, wrapped herself in the blanket, and slept.

  THE LEAST EXPENSIVE hat she could find was a white cotton visor with an adjustable Velcro band. HELLAS it said in light blue lettering. Four euros at a small market a few minutes up the road. It gave her the look of a tourist, she thought. A real souvenir.

  When she began her day, she wore the visor low over her eyes. She walked the beach every morning. She was careful. She approached only the people on towels close to the water. She carried no sign, no evidence of her work. She maintained the same story, the same disposition—bright-eyed student, scratching out an island vacation before returning to school in the fall. The visor softened her, she thought. It hid her eyes, made her look earnest and enthusiastic. Like Saifa.

  In the morning: HELLAS. She kept it white. Washed it in the sea. Let it bleach in the sun.

  She rubbed their feet, their shoulders, their hands. Three euros one day. Two. Once, six. Some days nothing at all. She began by dragging up and down the sand from morning until sunset. But she soon saw that the only ones who called her over called after lunch, when they were groggy and at home in their pockets of sand, trusting of her—a well-spoken student, a charming accent.

  Now she was an earner. Enough to buy a hat.

  SHE CAME EVERY DAY at noon to a small gyro stand. The man was big with a scar across his forehead. He was neat, unsmiling, suspicious. But his apron was as clean as his restaurant. A counter, three stools, a takeaway window to the street. When he opened, he hung a red, white, and blue clock outside the shop. Pepsi. She marked time by the rotating soda bottles.

  “Good afternoon.” When she spoke to anyone she stood straight, was formal, smiled.

  He nodded.

  “Pork or lamb?”

  “Pork today.” She alternated. Pork, lamb, pork, lamb.

  “French fries?”

  “Of course.”

  “Drink?”

  “Water.”

  He sliced the meat from the skewer and spread it on the griddle. She loved the way he snatched the hot bread from the grill, pulling it into the air, turning toward her as it crossed the space from hot station to cold and landed in front of them on a plastic cutting board beneath the counter. He went left to right, spread the sauce, the lettuce, the tomatoes.

  “Onions?”

  “Please.”

  He slid the bread onto wax paper and carried it back to the grill, where he added the meat and rolled. He turned the paper into a cone and filled the opening with French fries.

  She ate at the counter. Every day at the same time. Pork, lamb, pork, lamb. They didn’t speak otherwise. The man stood at the window watching the street, waiting for customers who came, stood outside, and took their food to go. No one ate at the counter but Jacqueline.

  When she was finished she placed her coins on the countertop.

  “Okay?”

  “Best in the world.”

  The man would smile. Satisfied, proud, but not surprised.

  She could have bought chocolate bars for less. Bags of chips. But what else did she have to spend her money on?

  In this way, she was rich.

  SIX NIGHTS, she’s been here.

  This morning she is shaken awake by a brutal dream she can’t remember. The sky is purple, paling in the east, a few stars still hanging on before the sunlight washes them away. She is struck by a terrible loneliness. It comes in the form of heavy exhaustion, of a sadness so deep she can feel it in her spine. She is debilitated. She goes out only to squat behind the rock. She does not put on her visor. She does not go to the beach. She stays at the back of the cave. She turns the mattress on its side to block the sun. One of her knots has come undone. She does not retie it.

  Now there is time to think of things other than survival. It is the curse of luxury.

  She has food and water and shelter. She has lined one side of the cave with flat stones to serve as shelves. Pedestals. The tube of Fresh Mint ChapStick she found in the sand stands upright like a bullet next to her toothbrush. There’s a neat stack of paper napkins she keeps beneath a small smooth rock. Her sandals side by side on their own stone. There’s a paper cup into which she deposits the money she brings home. Today it holds a single coin. She should go out, but she has no appetite. Hunger is no longer the burden. It is time. It is the new absence of need. The instinct is to protect yourself. To build and organize, to form your days, to apply patterns and repeat them. And she has done all of this without intention. She has built a home without meaning to. And now she wants to know what happens next.

  She does not have the capacity to kill herself.

  Let’s be honest, her mother says. You haven’t the courage for that kind of thing. No matter what you feel. It’s not in you, my love.

  She believes her mother is right.

  And she does not have the capacity to live the rest of her life in a cave caressing the dirty feet of tourists.

  Yes, but what then? There is no answer. What answer could there be? There is no one left. Even Ghankay has gone, which seems impossible. Even in her cave, so far away, it seems impossible.

  London, her mother offers. Helen.

  But Jacqueline ignores her. She bites into her bottom lip.

  “Why doesn’t he say I,” she’d asked her father. “Why does he say President Taylor when he means I?”

  They were watching him on television.

  “Some people believe,” President Taylor was saying, “that President Taylor is the problem.”

  Her father reached over and patted her knee. When the speech was over, she asked the same question again. It was not without accusation, not without anger. Later, she listened t
o the BBC as the UN unsealed Taylor’s indictment: murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, terrorism, looting, the unlawful recruitment of child soldiers under the age of fifteen, the murder and kidnapping of UN peacekeepers in the performance of their duties.

  Her father looked at her and smiled a cold smile, a smile that meant, What I’m about to say is the last we’ll speak of it, what I’m about to say is the final word. He said, “That’s Ghankay. Exceptional men have exceptional habits, Jacqueline.”

  She would have pressed it, but her mother looked at her and she shut up.

  “This is what happens when, all your life, you live on a hill looking down on the poor,” Bernard had said, an arm around her shoulder. They were sitting side by side in the back of the Land Cruiser, sixty kilometers from the border of Sierra Leone.

  He didn’t know.

  She’d come alone. Walked from the house. Through the streets without seeing the present world, without hearing it. Her mind was full of sound. On the way no one bothered her. The streets empty. At the hotel they nearly didn’t let her in. Even her, but she looked up and the guards sighed. She passed through the gate. The pool terrace was jammed with journalists sitting on packed bags. It looked like Victoria Station during a strike. Tired-looking white people with their heads in their hands.

  She’d found Bernard sitting on the floor of his room, the door open, feet on his pack. When he looked up, it wasn’t with the right expression.

  Now in the Land Cruiser, safely away from Monrovia, he spoke.

  “Your parents are safe? Saifa?”

  She nodded. He would have left without her.

  “What’ll you do for money?”

  “Bank of America,” she said. “I told you.”

  But there was no account and no one was safe.

  She fell asleep. When she woke there was a group of LURD soldiers surrounding the truck. Boys. The one in a white NFL ON FOX T-shirt kept the barrel of his rifle pressed against her head.

  She was frightened, but still she thought, Pull it.

  “Answer them,” Bernard said. The driver and another man, both of them as white as Bernard, looked straight ahead.