He knocked on the door, but when no one answered, he walked around to the back where the chicken coop and what looked like an apartment building for birds stood. To his surprise, several laughing gulls poked their heads out of the holes in the stacked wooded compartments and eyed him curiously. A rooster strutted around the side of the low cinderblock wall and crowed when he saw John. John jumped a bit and relaxed. The spicy warmth of clove insinuated itself in his nostrils as he stood there facing the vigilant rooster.
“She’s not here,” rasped a woman behind him.
John turned to face Ana. He hadn’t been this close to her since March. Her white hair wove a fine mesh around her miniature features. The drooping lid of one eye lent her a sinister air. She stood with her arms crossed loosely over her chest, a hand-rolled cigarette smoking in one upraised hand.
“How do you know who I’m looking for?”
“Don’t sound so belligerent, gringo. Would you believe I can tell the future?” She laughed at his response. “Okay. Scratch that. I saw you and Tamarind in town more than once. And she told me you might come looking for her.”
“She did? Where is she?”
Ana narrowed her eye and took a drag on the clove cigarette. “I’m not sure she wants to see you.” The words issued forth in an effluence of hot smoke.
“Why not? Why can’t she tell me herself?”
Ana dropped her cigarette arm and walked a few feet away from him. Several laughing gulls fluttered out of their nests and hovered around her head. Reaching into her apron, she tossed bits of something into the air around her. The birds lunged and snapped for them. One bird, bigger and faster than the others, managed to shoulder aside another gull and snatch its catch away from it. This bird landed on Ana’s shoulder, looked directly at John and laughed, and then began to preen itself.
“This is a small island, mi amigo. Some have seen you here and there. Sometimes you are with Tamarind, sometimes you are with another woman. Perhaps you understand how people in such a small place as this love to gossip.”
“Where is she?” He gritted his teeth as he spoke.
“Carlos Rosario, not far from the nesting grounds on the peninsula, gathering seaweed and bird dung.” Just as John started to turn and go she called out to him. “From what Tamarind told me about your fight with your girlfriend, it sounds like you have quite a way with women, gringo.” Her laugh rang in his ears.
He said nothing but returned to his Samurai and drove to the parking lot next to Playa Flamenco. He hadn’t visited this beach since his first weeks in Culebra, but it took him only moments to find the head of the trail leading to the beach locals called Impact Beach. He walked the narrow dirt trail among dusty, drooping plants while overhead terns and brown boobies patrolled the skies where Navy bombers once descended upon decoy targets. The effulgent sun scorched his vision and parched him until his forehead ached and his crown burned. At last the trail ended at Carlos Rosario.
The beach appeared deserted. Then John recognized Tamarind’s shape on the far side where she kneeled among the tall grasses. He halted on the beach and watched her as she searched, tendrils of her unmistakable hair floating on invisible air currents around her head. When she looked up and saw him, he smiled and waved. She didn’t wave back.
John trotted over to where she waited, her face never leaving his and her arms still.
“Hey.” He stood close enough to see the blue of her eyes.
“Hello.”
“You weren’t at the dock today.”
“No.” She turned back to combing through the grasses near her.
“I brought you a book. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I enjoyed it when I learned to read to myself.” He held the book out, but she didn’t turn back to him. After a moment, he slid it back into his backpack.
“Is something wrong, Tamarind?” His voice caught on her name. “That old woman you’re living with—Ana—she said you didn’t want to see me. Can I ask why?”
Tamarind sighed and sat up. She pulled out a small bottle of something and poured it into her left palm before rubbing her hands together. After a moment she lifted a bottle of what looked like water from the ground near her left knee and poured it over her hands. When she finished, she wiped them dry on her shorts and then she pushed her hair out of her eyes, only to have the wind send it fluttering into them again.
“It’s been a long week, John. I have a lot of things to do and you shouldn’t expect to see me at the dock any more when you come to Culebra.” She stood up and pulled the burlap tote next to her feet up onto her shoulder.
John fell into step beside her as she walked across the beach toward the path. “No problem, I understand. So, dinner at Isla Encantada and then I’ll read some of these fairy tales to you?”
Tamarind stopped and looked at him. “Actually, I have a date to go dancing with Jesus tonight.” She started walking again. “Maybe we’ll see you there later with Raimunda.”
John said nothing until she reached the head of the trail. “Yeah, sure.”
Tamarind waved over her shoulder without slowing down. “You can keep the book. I’ve got plenty to read right now. Thanks anyway.” Her last words drifted back to him as she disappeared around a turn in the path.
Overhead, a seagull laughed as it bobbed and glided away toward the south.
Fourteen
Tamarind waited until Ana left for Dewey with her bag full of remedies, love potions, charms, and the secret cache of poisons that she didn’t know Tamarind had discovered. Although Ana had already spent the morning in town waiting for weekend vacationers from the ferry, she’d returned because a wealthy patron from San Juan had arrived unexpectedly with a special request. Tamarind had grown used to Ana’s frequent absences to treat wealthy locals and so she bided her time until Ana had gone from sight. When the old woman disappeared over the hill on the path toward the road, Tamarind shut the door and headed toward the shore.
Not far from the water she stopped on the path and crouched down. Moving several rocks and chanting under her breath, Tamarind released the cloaking spell that she’d used to hide her clothes and hair ornaments. She hummed for the first time all week, clicking through several octaves in a complex melody familiar to every mer. She checked over her growing collection of items and then stood up, removed her shorts and dirty t-shirt, and walked into the water until it was over her head. She lay back on the buoyant saltwater and stared above her where terns and brown-footed boobies played games in the cerulean sky. Around her, the water mirrored their antics. If she closed her vestigial earflaps against the water and wove a glamour between herself and the edges of her vision, she could imagine that she drifted on air currents with the sea birds. When one landed on the surface of the water not far from her, she shifted her head and studied it.
After a long time, Tamarind released the glamour. The horizon and the uneven outline of Culebra’s plant life disturbed her soak so she rolled onto her stomach and kicked toward the shore. Walking from the water on her own legs almost made up for the struggle to move against the inherent power of the lagoon.
She noticed that the lapping waves had deposited several shells and strands of seaweed near where she emerged. She stopped to look at them. Their resting places suggested that they’d been placed there by design, but she had no idea what they meant. In a moment a wave fingered the closest shell, lifting it a bit and sliding it into the design further. All at once, Tamarind understood that Mother Sea sought to tell her something. Sinking down, she cracked her knees on the slippery stones, plunged her hands into the water, and closed her eyes.
Mother, I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?
Her thoughts flowed from her fingertips into the current and for a moment she felt tension fill her and something powerful surged around her mind, but the meaning was lost. A residue of fear and warning remained as the power drained out of her.
Tamarind slapped the stones with both palms and stood up, water dripping from her hair and sh
oulders. She closed her eyes again and let out an audible breath. After a moment she hummed softly and gestured. Her fingers pulled continuous warm air strands over her body and hair. When her hair and skin had dried she uttered a single word and sliced the air in front of her with her right hand. The air calmed.
She returned to the hoard of clothes and searched around until she found the patterned halter dress that Valerie had helped her find on her first shopping expedition to San Juan two weeks ago. Even as she picked it up from the bundle and slipped it over her head, the memory of that trip played itself before her mind’s eye. Gray asphalt ribbons hosted multitudes of cars like speeding schools of amberjack while concrete and glass buildings hemmed them all around. Her chest tightened at the images and she remembered John’s words about having difficulty breathing sometimes.
After she tied the halter around her neck, she stepped into a pair of panties. She’d lingered in the lingerie store where the feel of silk on her fingertips engrossed her so long that Valerie laughed at her and strode around the store to pluck pairs from tables without a second glance. If she hadn’t spent so long gazing at the tern earlier, she might have scattered the panties around her on the warm stones and tried them on one by one. Should she live to be half the age of a mer elder, she would never grow accustomed to the feel of silk rubbing against her crotch as she walked, the way the elastic encircled her upper thighs and the material hugged her buttocks. As she repacked her clothes, she shoved the red wisp of material that Valerie called a thong deep into the bottom of the bag. The power suggested in that triangle made her heart beat faster.
She extracted the smaller bag that Valerie had given her along with a variety of barrettes, hair bands, and hair clips. None of the manmade items worked half as well as her shell ornaments, but the sticky, thick liquids and foams that Valerie showed her how to use tamed her hair so well that the fragile things sufficed. Even so, the colors and patterns of the plastic pieces rivaled the beauty of her former underwater home and the crystals had no equal in her experience, except for the reflection of stars on the night sea.
At last she found the large flat barrette crusted with sparkling cabochons. She laid it alongside her thigh while she squirted a mound of fragrant foam into her palm. She distributed the foam between her hands and then worked it through her hair. She plucked through her curls with the long tines of a comb and then gathered a handful from either side and clasped the barrette around it. The mirror in her small bag reflected the tiny stones in her hair when she glanced at the stranger that she’d become within in its hard edges.
Done transforming herself, Tamarind stowed all of her human possessions back beneath the stones and reset the protective glamour. No prying eyes could discern where she’d hidden them. She glanced at the late afternoon sky and stuck her tongue out to taste the relative humidity of the air because her skin always felt dry since she’d put off her tail. Slowly she headed back to Ana’s where she waited to walk the twenty minutes to Isla Encantada. Once the sun kissed the horizon, she set off barefoot toward the access road.
Jesus sat outside the restaurant on the curb talking to some of his friends. When he happened to look up and see her fifty feet away, a grin split his dark face and he leaped up. His deep brown eyes gleamed.
“Look at you, mi chica linda! We’re going to make everyone else look like clumsy beasts tonight.” He took her hands in his and held her arms up so that he could look at her. “Ah, I have dreamed of this all summer.”
Still holding her left hand, he turned to face his friends. “I told you. I am the luckiest man on Culebra. Come, cariño, let’s go get something to drink.”
They went in and found a table not far from the bar. As she sat down, Tamarind felt a prickling along her flanks and the sides of her neck where mer sensory pores still pocked her skin. She looked around and saw John sitting in a far corner, staring at her. Their gazes met, and for the few seconds that they held, Tamarind felt shock rise up her spine and electricity pulse in her brain. Then, as in her brief contact with Mother Sea, the charge flowed away. This time, her arms and legs trembled.
She turned back to Jesus and slapped the table with an open palm. “Where’s my drink?”
He startled, then grinned. “Only tell me what you’d like to drink and it’s yours, mi corazón.”
“Beer. I’d like to have a beer.”
***
John ordered another Tom Collins even before finishing his first. In the dark of Isla Encantada he could see only indistinct shapes where Tamarind and Jesus sat, but he’d recognize her profile under a burqa. Tamarind sat sideways to him so that he glimpsed little flashes from the barrette she wore as it caught what ambient light existed. When she leaned over to speak to Jesus, he saw in the candlelight that her tame curls cascaded across her shoulders and framed her face. As she laughed, candlelight caressed a reflective pendant at her collarbone. She laughed a lot—especially after drinking from the dark bottle Jesus brought her from the bar. After their earlier eye contact, she never came over to say hi or even turned in his direction. The snub hurt more than he could have imagined.
John scowled and sipped from his Tom Collins. He glanced at the door, but Raimunda didn’t saunter through it wearing a clinging white shirt and ruffled skirt. Several Culebrenses came in and settled down at neighboring tables while the band fiddled with keyboard and drums before their set. The smell of fried food reached his nose as a waitress emerged from the kitchen with a plate of yellowtail snapper and plantains. He’d skipped dinner and should have been hungry, but his stomach only tumbled.
He switched to drinking coquitos on his third drink and the coconut and rum congealed in his knotted gut. Then the band began playing and the din tunneled into his brain unopposed. He leaned his face into his raised hands and massaged his temples with his thumbs. When he looked up, he saw Tamarind and Jesus dancing. She had eyes only for Jesus, who led her in the peculiar rolling gait of the salsa; his arm wrapped around her waist and his stomach pressed against hers. The small triangle of chest above her dress shone and the dim light glittered off the pendant and the stones in her barrette as they danced. Her delicate feet, as bare as always, lifted and settled on the tiled floor.
“Hola, gringo,” said Raimunda at his side. “She’s a tasty bit, that one is, isn’t she?” She leaned over and kissed him, long and hard. “But I’m a full meal, mi amigo.”
John said nothing as she sat down on his left side and held up her hand to signal the waitress. While she waited for her beer, Raimunda leaned closer to him, her hand on his inner thigh. She nuzzled his neck and nibbled his ear. John lifted his coquito and drained it.
“Let’s dance,” he said and stood up, his chair scraping loudly.
He pulled Raimunda to her feet. She grabbed her Medalla, tilted it at her mouth, and gulped half of it down as he strode to the dance floor ahead of her. When John pulled her into his arms, she laughed and clutched the half-full bottle between them. As they danced, John closed his eyes and focused on the music. Raimunda sinuated about him, her full breasts brushing now against his upper arm, now against his chest.
John abruptly lurched from the dance floor and out through the entrance. Bending over, he braced his hands against his thighs and breathed in.
“Too much to drink?” Raimunda leaned against the doorway, her arms crossed.
John breathed in and out several times before standing up. “No, I’m fine. Let’s go back in.”
They walked back into the stuffy restaurant, Raimunda’s arm entwined in his and her hip rubbing his thigh. John’s gaze traveled to the dance floor where Tamarind and Jesus still rocked and swayed to the loud Latin music.
“I’m going to the toilet.”
“No problem, mi amigo. I’ll just wait at the table and order another Medalla, on you.” She smiled and dipped her eyelashes.
John went to the men’s room and gripped the white porcelain rim of the pedestal sink. In the harsh fluorescence, he stared at his reflection in the mi
rror. He looked like a madman: strands of hair had escaped his ponytail holder, darkly misting the outlines of his pale face; his wide eyes suggested that he’d just witnessed his mother being raped and his father shot. Closing his eyes for a moment, he leaned his head back and expelled his breath. Then he turned on the cold water and splashed handfuls over his face. When his eyes had relaxed and his breathing had evened out, he turned off the water, dried his hands, and made his way to the bar. Raimunda sat looking toward the dance floor, a bottle cradled in her hands.
“You know that guy over there?” John gestured with his chin toward the dance floor.
Tomás, who’d been talking to the bartender, looked up and out at Jesus. “Sí, Señor Juan.” He shrugged. “He’s well known around Culebra, especially by the women.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s, how you say it? A ladies’ man? Most of the ladies like him.”
“Most? What’s that mean?”
“Some say he isn’t always sensitive about whether a mujer wants to be with him or not.”
“Are you talking about date rape?”
Tomás shrugged again. “Who am I to say? Me, I think women always find something to complain about. If it’s not the way they look, it’s how much money we spend on them.”
“I believe in the old adage ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire.’” John stared at the couple. “Some women just don’t know they’re going to get burnt.”
He looked at Tomás until the older Culebrense looked away. Then Tomás nodded and turned back to the bartender. John left the bar and headed toward Tamarind and Jesus. When he reached them, Jesus saw him first and swung Tamarind out and away before embracing her. Jesus smiled at John over Tamarind’s head.
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 17