Eventually he drifted off into the sour slumber of one deeply wronged.
He woke to hissing and sputtering and the scent of fresh coffee, and before he opened his eyes he wondered how the heck a coffee maker could work without electricity. The next moment he remembered that he wasn’t in the camper but in a motel room, and that things had changed. He opened his eyes to see Samantha sitting in the armchair with a cup of coffee in her hands. She looked at him and smiled a sad and gentle smile.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked.
“Ah, so-so. You?” It was their morning ritual to exchange these questions. Ryan began to hope that everything was right with their world again.
“Mm, I slept well enough. I’m sorry if I was bitchy yesterday. It is my time of month, you were right. But you know what? ” She gave an embarrassed little laugh. “It makes it easier to speak up during my time of month.”
“Speak up about what?”
“My mom always scolded me for acting like a little girl. She said I’m too easily impressed, too easily made happy. That I need to demand more from life and from men. I know I need to, but I forget to do that when I’m having fun!” She laughed and spread her hands, inviting the world to appreciate her silliness.
“That’s why I love you, Sam.”
This made her sad. “But I’m not a little girl, Ryan. I’m a woman who’s about to turn thirty-three, and I want my heart to settle down. I want a warm cozy little nest where we can curl up together. When you suggested this trip I thought you were going to propose. When we got to Baja. You know how much I’ve wanted to go there. I was having fun, but I was also anxious. I needed to know. So I challenged you, and that ruined everything.”
Ryan nodded. He was tempted to ask her if she really wanted to get married or if she was only playing ambassador for her insatiable mother, but decided that would be unkind.
“You deserve to know, Sam. I wasn’t going to propose on this trip. I was too busy enjoying our life together, that’s why I suggested this trip. It felt like with you I didn’t need to prove anything. Didn’t need to make any statements. Instead of taking that as a compliment, you took it as an insult.”
“You weren’t going to propose on this trip,” she repeated the way a stoic patient repeats a diagnosis they’ve received. She seemed not to have heard the rest of his words. “You know what, never mind. I feel like I’m mooching.”
“No, you’re not mooching. I owe you an answer.” Owing an answer was one thing; squeezing it out of himself was another. “I wasn’t considering marriage for us.”
“But why not?” She may have drummed up the needs and entitlements of a grown woman, but she was ever the little girl in how she asked for them.
“Look around you: marriage is a sinking ship. Why do we want that for ourselves, what’s the point? We already love each other, we already have what other couples want. Fifty percent of marriages—”
“How is that any concern of ours?!” Samantha lost patience. “Are we supposed to build our lives around other people’s statistics? It’s just the two of us, Ryan. No one else!”
“If it’s no one else, why copy other people?”
“There you go again. I really can’t explain it, Ryan. Okay, let’s say I’m a silly child, like you’re making me out to be. Do you reason with a child when they ask for a toy they want so badly, do you explain to them why they don’t really need it? And why Santa can’t be real?”
They sat in silence, almost the way they’d sat many times after a good meal. Samantha got up. “I’m going to the camper to pack,” she said. “I think it’s best for us to be apart for a while, take time to figure things out.”
“You’re not going on to Baja? We’re so close now, just another day away. You’ve wanted to go there for so long.”
“I’m sorry, Ryan. I can’t go to Baja on your terms. There’s nothing wrong with your terms. I can’t accept them, that’s all.” She shrugged and smiled a wry little smile, an invitation for Ryan to feel bad if he so chose.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Back home, where else? I’d like to stop over in LA for a day or two. Get my mind off things.”
They were silent for a few moments, both looking at their feet.
“You know best, Sam. Travel safely. We’ll talk when we’re home.” He stepped forward to hug her and was almost stopped by her pinched and miserable expression. She surrendered, put her head on his shoulder and was ready to cry, but gave a courageous little sigh and stepped back. Then she turned around and was gone.
And yet he loved Sam, and she loved him. They both knew it was not about fear of commitment (and what a stupid word that was, as if life together was a madhouse). He wanted what she wanted: just the two of them, untouched by the world and its expectations. He wished to admire her as a woman free from rules and conventions, unclaimed by the rat race of human ambitions. He didn’t wish for her to be his wife, his matron, given to him in marriage by her kindly and irritatingly stupid father (and who was she to be handed over—a cow? a car?), throwing a bunch of flowers for her airhead friends to shriek over. The whole thing was irritatingly stupid and demeaning, and he couldn’t shake off the power it held over him. This was how his own parents had started out, and look at them now. On every visit with his mother or his father he was treated to the same recital of grievances he’d heard many times before. If that’s what marriage did to you, he wanted none of it. He thought that he probably wouldn’t stop loving Samantha if they were to get married, but he wasn’t sure. He thought that he probably wouldn’t become like her father, or like his own, but of this too he wasn’t sure.
He didn’t want to be alone in the camper on a journey that had been intended for two; that would be unbearably sad. So Baja was out of the question. Neither could he retrace the route they’d taken together to get here. Returning to Vancouver and his former life, now already uprooted, was unthinkable. Sam might think she had nowhere else to go, and for her going home really might be the best thing. But for him Vancouver an impossible destination right now. Yet he needed to go somewhere. After a morning of walking the unremarkable streets of Palmdale, he booked a ticket to Cancun in the afternoon. He put the camper in a storage lot on the outskirts of Palmdale and in it he left his laptop and his cell phone. Thank goodness he wasn’t one of those important people who make endless conference calls. His life had imploded, rolled up on itself like beads of quicksilver from a broken thermometer, had become reduced to the numbers on his cell phone and the files on his laptop. He wondered how much of this would remain essential when he came back in ten days, and how much of it would be missed in that time.
Ryan arrived in Cancun at eleven at night and cursed himself for assuming the hotel shuttle would be waiting for him at the airport. After walking the gauntlet of persistent cab drivers and realizing that he should’ve emailed the hotel in advance, he finally caved in to the tune of three hundred pesos. He was shaken up and confused by the events of the previous two days, and had forgotten that he was no longer in a country with an infra-structure designed to wait on his every need. The Cancun night was muggy and he was tired and thirsty after several hours on the plane, but now he would rest, and tomorrow he would be better prepared to face this exile called a holiday.
While Ryan and Samantha were driving through southern Oregon on a holiday that became a separation, Mario took a walk along the streets of Seattle toward the pier and the market. Earlier that morning he’d taken a severance cheque. He’d never been a violent person, but on that day he wished he could do some severing of his own.
The way Mario saw it, he’d lost two marriages and several years of life to this blasted job. He’d sacrificed evenings and weekends and entire holidays to pore over files or go on wild goose chases of evidence and witnesses. He was paid very well, but only in money, not in the prestige he knew he deserved and that hisassociates, damn their eyes, enjoyed thanks to his efforts. At least now he was dissociated from the whole rotten lot of th
em. He knew very well that he’d earned his place as senior partner at least two years ago. He didn’t push, he waited with patient dignity. And instead of senior partner he got this!
His first wife had left him because of what she called his mis-placed sense of loyalty. After too many cancelled trips and vacations she’d had enough. She told him he was like the guy in Kafka’s story, the guy who’d woken up to find himself turned into a beetle but whose biggest worry was being late for work. Did that not frighten him? She was right, of course. It frightened him, but with a distant and muted fear packed with cotton balls, more like a duty to be concerned than real fear. He couldn’t help his upbringing, his cursed work ethic, his obstinate and helpless insistence that all this would somehow be rewarded. As the beetle he’d become, he couldn’t help it if he was compelled to show up for work day after day to do what he was really good at. He’d become an addict, pure and simple. A bona fide junkie for work. His second wife married him because he was well-off and never at home, and because he was too wrapped up in work to see through her. He was the one who ended their marriage, weary of her whoring around and worried she’d bring him some manner of gift that requires a long course of antibiotics. After the divorce he swore off wives and even girlfriends, deciding he simply didn’t have the right constitution for a relationship. He couldn’t help being a sucker for beautiful women and putting them on pedestals, and of course they couldn’t help taking advantage of that. It was only human nature. He resolved to live single, occasionally exchanging benefits with a friend until—until what? He had no reason to answer this question. His life after the second divorce was peaceful and protected from worries, and it was a mistake not to leave well enough alone, to plot and conspire for something better. Fate would surely punish him for such ingratitude.
And now this. This was his reward for being in the shadow all these years, for making these assholes and their law firm rich and sought-after, for all the sacrifices he’d made: a nice round payout. Money, nothing more. For the first time in his life he felt the vertigo of a man very much alone, with nothing and no one to break his fall. Money couldn’t do that. He could have made the same money working for himself, running his own law office. Why had he been afraid to do that? His first wife had asked him this many times. But it wasn’t about being afraid, it never had been. It was because, as his own employer, he suspected he wouldn’t take himself seriously enough. He wouldn’t show up for work on time, wouldn’t even seek out the work, and would become easy to disregard, to doubt, to challenge to disobey, to completely sabotage. As his own employer, he simply held no authority over himself.
But what was he to do now—hire himself out as someone else’s pet beetle, again? Impossible. That loyal and self-effacing part of him had been shattered, crushed to death like a beetle by a careless passer-by. He would never again be able to work for someone else without feeling bitter resentment. The money he’d saved plus what they’d paid him out would last a good while, but not forever. He would have to work again, and soon, because skills and knowledge like his got rusty very quickly. His reputation as a brilliant defense attorney would fade if it wasn’t kept up. But the main reason he’d have to work was because that was his only known source of pride and contentment. He loved speaking to an audience, loved the power his words could have over people and their lives, loved the responsibility this put on him and the graceful intelligence it took to carry this burden. How strange that he should hold so little authority over himself when others thought so highly of him. Again he felt the vertigo of staring down a precipice, this time at himself; there was no one but himself down there, no one else to scold him or to help him. He had no choice but to become his own master, to sort out his differences with himself, to come to an understanding that he was to be respected and taken seriously. It seemed an impossible task, yet he had no choice but to succeed.
But first, a holiday. It was about bloody time he took a holiday. After he bought his ticket, Mario decided that the assholes had done him a favour and that the severance had been a blessing in disguise. He imagined himself a lion emerging from the shell of the crushed beetle; but he was a newborn, weak and wobbly lion who couldn’t yet see or walk very well. Still, a lion who’d one day become capable of serious damage. It pleased him to have such mischievous and silly thoughts; it made him feel like his whole life was still ahead of him. And what was this nonsense of swearing off relationships? Maybe he’d meet a nice lady on this holiday. He deserved to reap some rewards for the sacrifices that no one had really asked for or required.
Despite being very tired, Ryan spent a night of meagre watered-down sleep. The air conditioner rattled and kept him cool but awake enough to know that something was sorely missing. In the morning he rolled over to find no Sam beside him, and he reset his mind to this new reality. It would hurt for a good while, there was no way around that. He got dressed and took the elevator downstairs to breakfast.
But in the breakfast room there were happy couples holding hands and chatting about their holiday plans, and despondency grabbed Ryan by the throat. He was very alone, and weak. He decided he would check his email to see if there was a message from Sam, maybe even send her one himself. After breakfast he headed for the “business centre” which was a little fishbowl of a room with two computers. A man was trying to use one of them. It was the same man Ryan had seen sitting by himself and studying maps at breakfast. His clothes were simple, tasteful, and he made no effort to dress like a man much younger than his imminent middle age. Neither had be been busy jabbing a cell phone with his finger; maybe, like Ryan, he hadn’t brought his cell phone along. Maybe he didn’t even own one. Ryan thought he looked Mediterranean. Italian maybe, or Spanish. Or perhaps an upper middle class Latin American. But for all his patrician forbearance, the man looked just about ready to smack the useless piece of shit in front of him.
He became aware of Ryan, looked up, and said with a helpless shrug, “I can’t get the internet to work.”
Ryan felt let down: the guy sounded like your generic North American. Yet he didn’t look like a North American, at least not one from this day and age. He was handsome but his teeth weren’t bleached, and his smile was a real smile, not a customer service grin. He got up and held out his hand, relieved that someone had arrived in time to save both his dignity and the feckless computer. “I’m Mario,” he said.
So maybe he was Italian or Spanish after all. Second or third generation.
“I’m Ryan. It’s that obvious I’m a gringo, eh?” It felt good to return the guy’s smile.
“A Canadian gringo at that. Takes one to know one. I’m from BC, but I live in Seattle now.”
“Where in BC?”
“I grew up in the Lower Mainland. Chilliwack. My family moved from Ontario when I was four.”
“No shit. I grew up in Hope.”
“Right on, a small world.” Mario nodded as if such an encounter were to be expected. “Are you staying here? I mean, in Cancun?”
“That was the plan, but now I’m not so sure. I’m thinking some place more quiet, less touristy. A friend told me about Tulum. Beaches with silver sand.” Ryan felt as if someone else was using his voice to speak. It was true that a friend had told him about Tulum, but the idea of going there hadn’t occurred to him until this moment. It was the silent influence of the man he’d just met, a man who took care to dress with style and no doubt to vacation in style. He’d made Ryan feel that he too deserved to enjoy his holiday.
“Good choice, I’m going to Tulum myself,” Mario said cheerfully. “I was there a few years ago, they tell me it’s changed, but it’s still not as crowded as Cancun. The bus leaves from downtown.”
Ryan wanted to say he’d planned to explore Cancun for a day or two before moving on. He really didn’t feel like providing chatty company on the road to Tulum, although the guy seemed nice enough. It was just that Ryan wanted to enjoy the bus ride in solitude. Contemplation and daydreaming always marked his first day in a new place.
That was the way he liked it, and it was rude to gawk out the window when another person demanded your attention. But he’d already rejected Cancun, so the lie would be obvious. Besides, he had Mario to thank for turning the tide of his weakness. If Mario hadn’t been there, Ryan would have got the internet to work. He had a perverse talent for getting the internet to work when he most needed to stay away from it.
“Well, it sounds like a no-brainer. Do you know how to get to downtown?” he asked his new acquaintance.
“Yea, there’s a local bus that stops just around the corner from here. I don’t know the schedule, but it’s supposed to run every twenty minutes.”
“I’m almost packed and good to go. I’ll meet you in the lobby?”
They took their seats and watched the intercity bus fill up with tourists and a few locals. Some of the tourists came pre-roasted; others, like Ryan and Mario, were white as larvae. The locals were Mayans, a people of small stature and soft peaceful smiles.
“I onlylook like a Mafioso trying to keep a low profile.” Mario laughed. He was wearing dark glasses and a straw fedora that he placed in his lap. “French and Scottish trapper and Cree Indian, your honest red-blooded Canadian blend. Except my parents were opera fanatics and named me after Mario Lanza. Mario, from Chilliwack. Thanks, mom and dad.” He laughed without malice.
Killer of a Mind Page 2