“Sam just messaged me. She knows I’m meeting with a friend, and she’s asking how it’s going.” He gave a merry grin and put the phone down on the table. The screen reverted to its background image.
“Is that a photo of Samantha?”
“You bet. She sure is beautiful, isn’t she? I don’t blame you for gawking.” Ryan laughed with the pride of possession and pushed the phone toward Mario.
For a moment Mario’s heart was stuck in his throat, and then it was free again and soaring to a height from which he glimpsed the rest of his life below him, bathed in golden sunlight that blurred and softened the details of the landscape. This was unreal, it couldn’t be happening, and yet the truth had been so simple. He’d never thought to include Ryan in the crowd of tourists who could’ve dropped the photo on the patio that day. And why not? Because a girl like this couldn’t possibly be with Ryan, and shouldn’t be! It was a cosmic misalliance that was about to be corrected. After six months of daydreaming, hoping, preparing his heart to love, Mario made up his mind in one instant.
“Why is the photo black and white?” he asked with more urgency and impatience than he intended.
But Ryan heard only surprise and interest in his voice. “Ah, that. We took that photo on a holiday to the Okanagan, three summers ago. Sam got burned to a delicate crisp. There was this thin layer of clouds, so it looked like it was overcast, but all the while the sun was getting through. Very deceptive. She laughed when I took the picture, but when it was downloaded onto the computer she insisted that we save in black and white. That way the boiled lobster colour came out looking like a deep healthy tan.”
“But you didn’t get sunburned?”
“Nope. I don’t burn easily. Sam’s a redhead, with very fair skin.”
So that was that for the mystery and nostalgia behind the black-and-white photo. What idiot lets his girlfriend burn like that if he knows she’s so vulnerable? One who doesn’t deserve her, of course. He and Ryan may have been evenly matched in a battle of wits and wills, but when it came to Samantha, Mario was about to square off with a twelve-year-old boy.
“So you’re back together?” he asked Ryan.
“We’re working on it. It’s a miserable life without Sam. I was meant to be with her, and I’ll learn to do what it takes to be with her. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear that.” Mario nodded with sincere approval. He didn’t want too easy a victory that might be taken away too easily, and hoped that Ryan wouldn’t give up Samantha without a fight. Even if he’d never know the identity of his rival.
“Did you tell Samantha about Tulum? Will you tell her?”
“Hmmm. It’s a complicated story, with no hero,” Ryan replied with a wry smile.
Mario chuckled. “That it is. Probably best not to tell her if you don’t want to scare her away.” He knew Ryan wouldn’t tell her for that very reason. Ryan’s stroke of genius was known only to the two of them, and so it would remain.
“Mario?” Ryan asked as if he’d remembered something.
“Hmm?”
“Why did you want to meet with me, to tell me all this?”
“Because I believe in fairness. And closure.”
“Closure?” Ryan laughed. “Why on earth would you want that for me?”
“Why not? I’m a nice guy.” Mario raised his brows in a smile of impish innocence. “You deserve closure because I truly believe you saved my life. And you’re the only person who can fully appreciate what happened to me. It means a lot, to be able to tell a story to the one person who can understand it.”
They looked at each other in silent understanding and in farewell to this strange acquaintance that had run its course. They knew they still liked each other well enough.
Mario got up and put on his fedora. “Well, take care of yourself. It’s been—interesting to know you,” he told Ryan with a puzzled smile, wondering what else he could have said. He turned around and walked to his car.
THREE
The hurricane that had swept Los Cabos three months earlier was keeping away the usual crowds of tourists. The two of them had the beach and the ocean all to themselves.
“Is Baja everything you imagined it to be?”
“It’s nothing like I imagined! It’s ten times better, a thousand times better.”
“Happy Day of the Dead, by the way. Whatever that means. That’s today, right?”
“I think that was a month ago.”
“Oh, really? Could’ve fooled me.”
“I think it’s any day you want it to be!”
She laughed, and he laughed with her because it was impossible not to. She was amused by this whole business of the dead, the svelte and dapper skeletons wearing suits and sombreros, the rib cages of their lady companions fantastically tilted to make up for loss of flesh to prop the low necks of their dresses. She thought it all rather cute.
In the heat of day they walked on lawns cut from the coarse and meaty native grass with its spears shorn off and its vines clipped from their crawling spread. They bobbed on waves that lifted them as on crests of soft rounded hills and put them down in the valleys below. Beside them, frenzied tuna with bright yellow fins shot out of the water in pursuit of silver fish that rustled across the surface like flocks of large frightened fleas. They visited villages on the coast, each with a scattered population of similar-looking Chihuahuas sprung from the same root stock that looked nothing like the dogs back in Canada. These had sturdy crooked legs and huge ears that pointed sideways. There was a lonely dignity about them; but animals here didn’t suffer advances gladly. A small pup tied up outside a restaurant snarled and snapped as she extended her hand and addressed it with baby-talk. On the drive back to San Jose they saw a robust brown donkey by the side of the road, anxious to cross and seemingly very interested in passing cars. They stopped and she got out, hoping to approach the donkey and caress its soft white muzzle. For a moment the animal studied her, then gave an exasperated huff, turned around and trotted off. How could she not understand? he seemed to say. What made her think her attentions were welcome? Maybe he was a wild animal, or maybe humans had treated him badly.
The heat of day made it easy to forget that the month was December and the days were nearing Christmas. Lying in the sun he would forget where he was, almost forget his own name and who he was with. In the evenings that arrived all too soon they walked the streets of San Jose del Cabo and marvelled at the fire opals, the Mexican fire opals nobody seemed to have heard of; certainly nothing was said about them in the tourist books. Australian opals were quite common in the jewelry shops, and their almost unnatural extremes of colour were delightful to the eye and soul. She said with disdain that they looked gaudy and artificial. He knew that she wanted them the way a woman who has grown weary of being proper longs for a jolly if somewhat vulgar gift. But she needn’t have worried. Here, there was no competition between the vulgar and the dainty any more than between the living and the dead, and no boundaries between the cute and the frightening. Everything had a place and nothing was unwelcome. Finely crafted jewelry with splendid gemstones was sold next door to drug shops with Viagra ads in which the blue tablet wore a dapper moustache, a lecherous little grin, and a pair of speedos that proved the label claim while maintaining a pretence of decency. They ate dinner by the light of candles and illuminated trees in the courtyards of old haciendas. A couple of these romantic feasts were followed by porcelain bus rides back at the condo. One night he woke up to the sound of her retching and was afraid that their holiday was over; but by morning she was fine. She had strong health for a woman so ready to be emotionally fragile. They visited snooty galleries with pictures and sculptures of people with no expressions on their faces, and of grinning happy dead. They almost peed themselves laughing at the huge plastic Christmas tree next to the palms in the town square. At the foot of the Christmas tree an inflatable snowman held his hands to his frightened face and shivered, a literal Spanish translatio
n of “It’s cold outside!” written on his tummy. Above the doorway to the town’s cathedral a detailed mosaic showed three Indians dragging a priest previously shot with arrows toward a fire, no doubt to roast. There was no suggestion of ill will on anyone’s part. All four men went about their business, the priest being a martyr and the Indians making short and efficient work of him. There really was no such thing as ill will here, only efficiency in going about one’s business. But he remembered Tulum all too well, the moist air that bore down on your lungs and your whole being like the sweat of an angry pagan universe. He knew that the Indians’ pleasure at pleasing gringos couldn’t be the whole story, yet there were no English words for what they must truly think of us. Such thoughts and feelings weren’t English. San Jose del Cabo had its share of half-built and abandoned houses, once-lived-in and now crumbled houses, slovenly piles of rubble graced by vines, meagre cats, hens, and unripe coconuts among the garbage—the Mexico you don’t need to know about but that nobody takes great care to conceal.
He got her a ring with a Mexican opal, the transparent gem surrounded by a nebula of bedrock from which it emerged like a newborn galaxy of orange and green fire. She was in ecstasy that went beyond admiration of the stone. It suggested to him that she didn’t expect such gifts, hadn’t been accustomed to them.
Six months was a short time to be together when plotted on the map of their lives, yet so much had happened in that time. He’d moved from Seattle to Vancouver to be with her. He knew that his one-man law practice would be much more difficult to establish there than in Seattle where all his contacts remained. But this too proved to be a blessing in disguise, an occasion to reconsider. He thought about Ryan’s question of why he’d become a defence attorney rather than a prosecutor, and the answer he’d given then was no longer true. He’d outgrown what now seemed a contrarian and childish desire to show the world that bad people could be innocent on certain occasions. And while the business of prosecuting criminals was not nearly as lucrative as the business of defending them, it was better suited to his new dignity of a mature man mollified by the gifts of a second chance at life and of love. On the day he received his license to practice law in BC, he applied for a miraculously rare position of Crown prosecutor that didn’t require exile to a backwater. He got the job, and took this as the third and final installment in his run of good fortune. From here on he was on his own. He wasn’t required to start work till January, so he and Samantha, who was between jobs, took the month of December off for their first holiday together.
Delia, Samantha’s best friend, was devoutly and fiercely on his side because he proved her right in her every word, proved what a good friend she’d been, how perceptive about Samantha’s need for a good man and about Ryan’s incompetence in this regard. He worried that such fervour from Delia would do more harm than good, that in her instinct to protect the weaker party Samantha would defend Ryan and thereby start missing him. He was careful not to use the “l” word. He knew it would be wise to step back and give her a chance to miss him, to start thinking ofhimas someone she could lose. But instead of stepping back he proposed a step forward, into this paradise. This was no place for strategies; this was a place for pure happiness without the base alloy of doubt, fear, and the gimmicks they inspire. And despite knowing that she wasn’t in love with him yet, he was happy.No te preocupes,he reminded himself in the all-forgiving language of the happy people around him. It was meant to be, and it would happen in due course. Because this relationship, and not revenge, had been the prize meant for him all along. Meant for him, listen to that! He never used to talk like that, or think like that. Had he caught the germ of lazy fatalism from Ryan? Maybe; but he didn’t care to fight this one off. Samantha—not Sam, for fuck’s sake—was so simple to love, it was so simple to make her happy! Someone uncharitable would say that she was easily impressed, all too easily. The same person would say about Mario that he was the marrying kind, and would be right about that too. Yet all it proved was that they were perfect for each other. Or would be, when she was ready to love him. So,No te preocupes.And he did not.
They touched each other with deference, in body and in words. It didn’t worry them in the least. Their reserve with each other marked the dawn of romance, not its sunset. She was still fragile, still learning that she deserved to be happy, embarrassed that she’d allowed herself to be starved of love for so long. He thought of her as a rare and precious being recovering from a long illness, a heart looking for shelter that he longed to give. She didn’t dare to be bold for fear of hurting him through a careless promise she wasn’t ready to keep. She was wrong about only one thing: believing she held greater power over him because she loved him less than he loved her. He was dishonest about only one thing: he had not run into her by chance. He’d known of her long before he met her, and this gave him a thievish advantage for which he meant to make up with increased affection and protectiveness. Each shielded the other from the effects of the power they believed they held, and in this they were perfectly matched.
After a week at the condo in San Jose they headed for the Sea of Cortez, Samantha’s Sea of Dreams. They were expected in Loreto where a couple of her friends spent their winters. They took the road along the coast of the open Pacific and stopped for a picnic on what they hoped would be a beach but turned out to be a steep bank covered with dry spiny shrubs and overlooking a strip of dirty-looking sand below. They sat on the edge of the bank and watched the waves, rolling mountains of frenzied water crashing down and splintering into a myriad white bullets that fell and melted in the churning white water below. This water was frightening, yet it was the same water that had lulled them on its smooth billows off the Cabo coast. The waves were at least five meters tall, Mario estimated. Through some perverse and obstinate curiosity, some ancient instinct of facing the worst imaginable horrors, they wondered how they might save themselves if thrown, it didn’t matter by whom or why, into the midst of these waves. They decided that their only hope was to dive into the foot of an oncoming wave and try to swim through it to the other side, then to get as far away as possible from the shore and wait out the frenzy. On stormy days in Cabo they’d seen the gentle brown rays flirting with the waves, riding inside a vertical wall of water as it rolled toward the shore, undulating on brown wings through that wall just before it broke and tumbled on the shore. They admired the graceful animals and the friendship of their bodies with the dangerous waves, the mirth and silliness with which they shot out of the water and fluttered before smacking down like pancakes. But they knew that even rays might not save themselves from the crashing towers of water on the open Pacific.
Of the rest of the trip to Loreto they saw and remembered only cacti, nothing but cacti for endless hours and endless kilometres. What puzzled them was not seeing any skeletons of these plants. And yet it was impossible that they rotted away when they died, because nothing rotted here. There was no soil layer in this perfectly clean and arid desert, and no dimension for an afterlife. The dead and the living must share the same space. Could it be, they wondered, that these myriad cacti were hundreds of years old, perhaps thousands? That they never died? Or perhaps the cacti were made solely of water and a gossamer net holding together their body and some evanescent ligneous soul, a phantom skeleton that sublimated away in the wind. They weren’t bold or cruel enough to poke through the needles into the green flesh.
Shortly before arriving at Samantha’s friends’ house they came upon a sign for Puerto Escondido and decided to take the turn; it was too early in the day to descend upon their hosts who’d gone to Sunday market and brunch in Loreto. The sign was a large and prominent one, promising a grand spectacle. There was indeed a hotel to the right, but civilization ended with it. Beyond it they saw a deserted marina at the end of a drive along a deserted wide promenade flanked by decorative shrubs someone had planted but hadn’t come back to tend. Mario thought that this was what the world might look like after a mass extinction à la Stephen King. Several a
bandoned buildings faced the pier, some only with their paint chipped and others with broken glass and doors removed from hinges in a sad autopsy that taught nothing. And yet there were numerous people on the pier and a row of cars parked in a dusty lot sprinkled with garbage. The people were all Mexicans. They made token efforts to catch fish, exchanged contented chatter and laughter, smoked. A heavy young man in a baseball cap pointed at the water and shouted with joy to his friend,¡Que gordo!Samantha, who could speak rudimentary Spanish, asked him what kind of fish it was and he told her the name; it sounded likevargaorbarga, a fish they’d never heard of, and all they could see of it were long silver shapes moving in the water. Maybe it was a creature that lived only in the Sea of Cortez. On the other side of the pier they admired a small school of delightfully coloured fish moving through the water like a regatta of rounded sails in blue and yellow. The colours were so sharp and pure that they seemed designed to please, and it was strange to see them near a place once built with purpose and now abandoned. In the little parking lot and studied the cars’ license plates and saw that many were from up north: the States, their own land of BC, even as far north as the Yukon and Alaska. But the two of them were the only gringos on the pier. There was life and activity on the other side of the water where a couple dozen modest sailboats were moored to a small island fringed by green mangroves. Their owners had travelled from one end of the earth to this other one, to live on such different waters of the same ocean. They walked further along the shore in search of a beach for Samantha, who made a point of swimming in any water that was remotely swimmable. There was indeed a little beach at the foot of a towering cliff. The distant view from here was fantastical, more Martian than earthly, with blue sea filling the valleys between ranges of bare mountains that looked like giant worn-down stalagmites in a cave whose roof was the sky. In the foreground were two ugly concrete platforms that had once been the supports of a pier; Samantha swam around them as an exercise in facing a low-grade humming fear. There was no danger from these long-dead structures, and yet they were menacing in their reminder of the destiny of every Ozymandias, of every one of us blessed with careless promises made by a boastful and frail civilization. While Samantha was going about her swim, more out of duty than enjoyment (the water was strangely colder here than on the open Pacific), Mario walked over soft piles of seaweed to the foot of a cliff; there were scraps of plastic garbage tangled with the seaweed, but they were surprisingly few. A vulture observed the waves from its perch on the last sand bank before the waves. Maybe it was looking out for dead fish, but Mario preferred to think that the bird was simply watching the Sea of Cortez, that it had time and desire to do so. And why would it not? Surely not everything animals do must be bent on survival and reproduction.
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