by John Horst
“Yes, yes.” He thought on that for a while. “It’s sad, there’s a sadness to it, isn’t there, Rebecca? Like a feeling that is too overpowering, that it is like Christmas morning, but then Christmas morning turns to Christmas afternoon and then, there’s sadness.” He kissed her hair. “That’s stupid. That’s not what it is.”
“No, no, Robert. I know what you’re saying. It’s like having the feeling and the feeling is so wonderful that, you are afraid that it doesn’t get any better, or that, having it is somehow so deliciously bad that you will be punished for your sin, your sin of happiness. That being this happy, no one has the right, no one deserves to be so happy, and something has got to give. It’s almost as if la petite mort, it would be better to just go on and die, and not recover from it, it…” She suddenly looked into his eyes, they both, now misty-eyed, overwhelmed, so much in love that it hurt. Their hearts, literally, ached.
She pulled him on top of her. “Oh, Robert Curtin, kill me again.”
Curtin watched the big ceiling fan blades turn the air over them. He looked about the opulent room. More opulence than he’d known in his life. He looked down at Rebecca resting her head on his chest. He needed to say it. He was an engineer, always planning, always considering all contingencies, leaving nothing undone, nothing left to surprise. “I’m not wealthy, Rebecca.”
She smiled and didn’t look up. “Then it’s a good thing I am.”
“How wealthy?”
“Enough.” She shifted and turned to face him. She threw a leg over him and smiled. “Not Carnegie wealthy, but enough.”
“Do you mind that I’m not?”
“Well, it depends on how well you perform in certain matters.” She grinned slyly. She seemed that her experiences over the last two days had transformed her. She was a woman now and she’d learned the things that made it such and was happy for them. She loved Robert Curtin and felt connected enough to talk about love making so freely.
“My mamma had no money when she met my daddy. She was a bandit, I told you. They’ve always been happy.”
“But he was the one with the money.”
She thought hard to counter his argument. “Well, my grandmother, she had the money, and my grandfather didn’t. So, there. And my grandmother, you’ll love her, she always told me, told us, marry for love, not money or station. She told Marta and me that very thing.” She looked on at Curtin who was staring at the ceiling again. “Oh, God, Robert. I wouldn’t treat you like a kept man. You must work. I can see that. But isn’t it nice to think that we can go and do things like this, do things that you would never do on an engineer’s income?”
“You talk like we will be together a long time.”
“We won’t?”
“I hope we will.” He became serious. “This is going so fast, Rebecca. I am a true engineer. I do nothing that is not guided by my brain, guided by logic. I’m not one to follow my heart.”
“Who says you must? Who says that any of this isn’t logical?” He thought about that and she was right.
“I would never imagine, have never imagined that someone like you would want someone like me.” He sat back and smiled. “I used to imagine what my wife would be like. I could even create her in my mind, and frankly, Rebecca, she didn’t look or act or smell anything like you.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“What was she supposed to be like?” She turned, fluffed up a pillow and sat upright, folded her arms over her breasts and waited for the description.
“Well, let’s see.” He rubbed his temples and looked on at the fan above their bed. “I always thought kind of frumpy, really. A big woman, big boned, not fat, at least not initially, but after five or six children…”
“That many?”
“Oh yes. We’d be Catholic, you know.” He looked on at Rebecca. “Is that okay to be Catholic?”
“Oh, yes. It’s fine.”
“Well, she’d have kind of muddy brown hair, but that would thin after a few years, turn grey. Eventually she’d be mostly bald.” She laughed out loud. “Except for her eyebrows, they’d have plenty of dark, black hair, well, eyebrow. It would grow straight across you know.” He waited for her to stop laughing, and turned to look at her a little seriously. “But she’d have nice big breasts.”
“Big as mine?” She blushed at her own wickedness.
“Oh, no. A lot bigger. But she’d have forty pounds on you. Big woman, big breasts. You’re more of a small woman with big breasts. All relative you know.” Curtin became serious. He looked at his darling girl. “We’ve done everything backward. I haven’t met your parents. We, we’ve done…that.”
“Does that matter so much?”
“Well certainly it does.”
She sat, resting her hand under her chin. “I didn’t think it would.”
He smiled. “No it doesn’t, really, I guess. I just feel I’ve cheated you.” He suddenly had a thought. He jumped from the bed, pulled her round so that her feet were resting on the floor. He looked at her. Kissed her quickly on the mouth and ran from the room. He was back in a moment. He dropped down on one knee, at her feet. He grabbed her hand and held it in his. “Rebecca, will you marry me? Please?”
With that he slid a cigar band on her finger.
She held her hand up, held it up to the light. “Well, at least it’s a Havana.” She looked back at the naked Robert Curtin, prostrate on the floor before her, kneeling at her naked feet. She pulled him up by the chin. “You know, the poor country people in Mexico, the ones who live way out from towns, way out from the church will often be together for nearly a year, will do that, for a year before ever getting officially married in the church. Sometimes, they’ll have a baptism and a wedding all in the same day when they come down for the annual festival.”
“Are you telling me we have to wait a year to get married, Rebecca?”
“No, just making a point. Just saying, it’s not so uncommon, just is in our part of the world. It’s okay by God in Mexico. It must be okay here, on a ship, in Nassau.” She smiled on at him. “There’s no sin in it. We love each other. I love you, Robert Curtin. I loved you the first moment I saw you.” She admired her cigar band ring. “Yes.”
Pedro del Calle slept fitfully through until evening. The battle with the shark had made him tired, exhausted. He slept and dreamed strange dreams. He dreamed of his one little battle in the Honduras. It was a debacle. It was all a debacle really. He hated it. He wanted, since childhood to be a marine, despite his parents’ wishes. They wanted him to go into law. Only the dull-witted made the military their career according to his father, and they were too dark for the US military. They were too Hispanic, too Catholic.
But he forged ahead, went to Annapolis and wasted the opportunity there, too. His father told him to at least stay with the navy. At least in the navy he had a chance at becoming an admiral. The Marine Corps did not appreciate Annapolis men. The marines were the red-headed stepchildren of the US military, They weren’t the army, and they weren’t the navy. They were not for gentlemen, his father would say. No Annapolis man was ever named the commandant of the Marine Corps.
His men and he essentially moved about, protecting US business interests throughout the Caribbean. Whenever the oil companies, or banks, or the sugar industry felt a pinch, whenever the bottom line might be affected, they sent in the marines. And then always too sparsely. And he was always the one they sent because he was one of them, they’d say. He knew the lingo, knew how they acted and thought, as if they were some other form of creatures, subhuman.
He and his men were often outnumbered, set out like a bit of meat on a stick, luring the wolves in so that the navy’s big guns could reduce them down. He was in exactly one skirmish, and that resulted in the deaths of three of his men. He hated it. The enemy was not much of an enemy either, though they did have real guns, real bullets. The fighting was very real.
So he dreamed of the battle again, how he
won the day and held one of his men and waited for him to bleed out all over his lap as he cradled the lad who just wanted the pain to go away. He stabbed him six times with morphine, enough to kill a horse, yet the lad lay there, crying and waiting to die. It was something Pedro thought about every day.
Then he had a very peculiar dream. He was no longer in battle but now swimming in the Caribbean sea with his parents back in Puerto Rico. They were swimming and having fun and his wife was there, too, once again alive and then suddenly a shark fin moving fast, toward him and it wasn’t right because where they swam sharks never came and he was swimming, trying to get between the fin and his wife but he could not move. He swam and swam with all his might and he would not move, then the fin turned into Marta del Toro. She lifted her head and the black fin was Marta’s black hair and she was naked and swam up and grabbed him and kissed him hard on the mouth and he looked back and his wife was smiling and waving him on, telling him it was okay.
He got the news that he’d be alone with Marta this night. Rebecca and Curtin would not be with them. He didn’t like that much and downed three Manhattans quickly, but that didn’t do much to help matters either. He was irritated with the girl. She was like a spoiled child, was annoying and confounding and he couldn’t stop thinking of her. He liked kissing her. He liked looking at her long naked legs and her brief outfits and could see her breasts through her clothes and they were magnificent and he loved her dark skin. He liked dark women, always had. He liked when she made sexual remarks and he liked that she came to his aid to fight the shark. But overall, he would have been a lot happier, as happy as he could be, if she had never come into his life.
Eventually she was there, beside him. She looked radiant. She’d put on a new dress and her hair was done up in a rather provocative style. She wore clothes that were too revealing and as far as he could tell, no undergarments.
“You look in a foul mood, Pedro.”
He didn’t respond. They got a table and dined. This would be their last night in Nassau. He wanted it to be over. They ate quietly and now Marta wanted to dance. He accommodated her briefly but just was not in the mood.
“I think I’ll turn in, Marta.”
“No. You can’t.” He looked up at her as it sounded ridiculous, plaintiff, as if a child had taken her voice. He looked her in the eye.
“I’m tired. That shark business wore me out.”
“Oh, nonsense. I’m sure you’ve done more dangerous things.”
“How are you so sure?”
“You’re a marine.”
“I’m not, not everyone wants to go around trying to kill themselves, Marta. Even marines.”
“You liked it. I could see you liked it. We’re not so different, Pedro. That’s what you like about me.”
“Do I?” He knew that was cruel and couldn’t help it. She faltered a little, showed a bit of human weakness and it made him sorry for her and like her now all the more.
“I’m sorry.” She looked down at the table. She always ran full tilt and often it was too much, too overpowering, especially for men. “I’m feeling a little blue, Pedro. My sister, she’s gone, she’s gone.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“With Curtin. She’s gone from me. Let’s dance.”
She held him closely and they moved about the floor. She gripped his hand tightly and he could feel her breath on his face. Once she reached up and kissed him gently on the cheek.
It was finally late and she convinced him to take a walk. It was a bright night, a bright moon and it reminded him of his home in Puerto Rico. Her melancholy was contagious and he too was in a somber mood. She seemed to sense it and gripped his hand tightly and soon they were kissing under some palms, next to the golf course. He liked kissing her and simultaneously hated it. He didn’t want to do this, wasn’t ready for it, couldn’t deal with it now.
“May I stay with you tonight, Pedro?”
It was the first time since he’d met her that she actually asked for anything. She was always demanding, ordering, in charge.
“No.”
She was hurt. “Don’t you like me?”
“Yes, frankly, I do and that’s why I’m saying no.”
“So, if you didn’t like me, you’d let me in your bed and we’d make love.”
“Yes, maybe, probably not.”
“But you do like me, and that’s why you won’t make love to me.”
“Yes.”
“Even if it was just between friends.”
“Especially for that reason.”
“But I’ve never tried it. I want to try it. Have you?”
He smiled weakly. This was a ridiculous conversation to have with a beautiful twenty year old girl. “I had a wife, Marta.”
“Oh.”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“She died in child birth, a hemorrhage. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. She was only twenty. It was two years ago.”
“And the baby?”
“Fine, fine.” He brightened at the thought of his little girl.
She kissed him again. “I really need you, Pedro.”
“No you don’t, Marta. You need to think about this, think about your sister and think about what will make her happy. You are close, and that is a good thing, but you are grown women now, it is time you lived your lives, separately. Let her go.”
“But it’s too hard.” He thought she was crying, but it was her temper coming through. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead.
“Your sister is a very lucky young lady, and you are a very lucky young lady. Good night, Marta.”
Before she could say another word he was gone.
Curtin awoke to Rebecca watching him sleep. “Good morning.” He kissed her. “How long have you been awake?”
She scooted up next to him and rested her head on his chest. “Since three.” It was nearly seven.
“Since three? What made you wake up?”
“You. I was thinking of you and it gave me some ideas and I wanted you but didn’t want to wake you.” He sat quietly for a while. Said nothing.
His demeanor suddenly changed, a little too seriously. “Rebecca.” He sat up, leaning on an elbow. “We need to talk.”
“Oh?” She didn’t like his tone.
“From now on, whatever I’m doing, wherever we are, no matter how tired I am or how soundly I’m sleeping, you always, and I mean always tell me when you want me.” He smiled coyly.
“Even in church?” She climbed on him and he was becoming distracted.
“Yes, even in church.”
“When we’re having dinner with your parents?”
“Yes…well, my parents are dead, but if they were, alive, yes, even then.”
“At a dinner party, with guests all around and with you carving a roast or a turkey or a ham?”
“Yes, even then.”
“I love you Robert Curtin.” She moved some more. “Now, shut up, I’m busy.”
Marta showed up at the pier as requested and Del Calle helped her onto the sloop. She looked it over, interested. She’d done a little sailing, but only as a passenger. She watched Pedro work and prepare to shove off. She could see he was a capable sailor and knew that this was his peace offering. He looked on at her when he was set. “All ready?”
“Ready.”
She helped him push off and they were out, moving steadily to sea. He looked the sails over, made adjustments here and there, sat down beside her and brushed a lock of hair from her eye. “Sleep well?”
She smiled a little weakly, felt embarrassed to give him the answer. “I haven’t been to bed yet.” He let it go.
“She’s a nice little sloop, we have her until noon.”
She sat back and began to doze. The silence of the craft and the steady movement across the waves made her sleepy, she leaned back onto his shoulder, relaxed. It was the most relaxed he’d seen her, but that didn’t last long. She shook herself a little
, like a toddler who wanted to keep awake. “Can it go any faster?”
“A little.”
“Make it go.”
“Nope.” She looked at him, a little surprised. He was the only person, other than her adopted mother who told her no so often.
After a time and a brief nap for Marta he dropped the sails and then the anchor. It was pleasant out there, too far out to hear the holiday makers on the island and far enough away from seafaring traffic to be a bother.
Marta awoke and looked about as Pedro opened a picnic basket. “Let’s see what we have here.” He had a happy look on his face, a kind and fatherly look and it made her think of her adopted father. He pulled out cold chicken and champagne, some fruit and cheese. He poured some for the both of them. She ate and felt better, more awake.
“So, this is nice.” She felt a little self-conscious. “Kind of romantic for just friends.” She didn’t look up.
“Oh? I don’t know. Friends can go sailing.”
“Would you take another marine sailing, with champagne, let him sleep on your shoulder while underway?”
“Why do you want to fight with me all the time, Marta?” He wasn’t being mean or angry, he wanted to know.
“Why do you want to be nice to me all the time, Pedro? I’m not nice to you. I tease you and demean you and I’m just a plain little shit to you.”
“I don’t know.” He poured another glass and sipped it. “This is good champagne, most of it usually tastes like vinegar to me.”
“Did you bring me out here to finally make love to me?” She looked down into the cabin. It was furnished with a bed in the bow. It would serve as a fine little bordello.
“I don’t make love without love. I already told you that.”
“What if I told you I don’t need you to now?” She could see him wince a little. “What if I told you I found a man last night, after you left me?”