After Elias

by Eddy Boudel Tan

  I stared at the photos a Dutch family had posted twenty minutes before boarding the doomed plane, while they waited at the airport. They had sandy-blond hair and wore matching nylon windbreakers in bright colours. Their photos were goofy. They formed a human pyramid in one shot — the parents on the bottom, the two young sons on top. In another, they pretended to drink out of different bottles of liquor in the duty-free shop, the boys making comical drunk faces.

  I indulged in the tragedy of these people and those they left behind. I mourned for them and with them. They made me feel less alone. In a strange way, I found comfort in meeting the people who had accompanied Elias on his final flight. Although it would have been far less tragic had he been alone, a sick, selfish part of me is glad he wasn’t.

  The initial feeling of solace has mutated into something numb. The more stories I hear, the less real it seems, the duller my senses become. The throbbing pain continues to grow within my chest, but the rest of me feels nothing, even as I watch Holly’s poor mother grapple with her loss for the whole world to see. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve replaced sleep with staring at the news over the last few nights.

  “Turn off the TV,” I hear Elias say. “You’ve had enough.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I respond as I stretch my limbs across the bed.

  “You need to sleep.”

  “I need much more than sleep.”

  “You know I love you. Right?” His voice is gentler now.

  “Loved. Past tense.”

  “Stop it.”

  “If you loved me so much, then why aren’t you here?”

  “I am here. I am right here with you.”

  “You are so full of shit.”

  “It’s true,” he says. “Do you think a crashing plane could take me away from you? That death means I just disappear? Evaporate? Like it or not, dear, you are stuck with me. I am going through all of this with you.”

  I let the silence hang above us with the air held in my lungs before letting it out with a ragged sigh. “I would rather you be here, alive.”

  “So would I. But the universe doesn’t work the way we want it to.”

  “The universe is a sewer.”

  Elias chuckles in agreement.

  “You were supposed to arrive this morning,” I say, my voice quiet. “I was excited to show you around the hotel. I know you were skeptical, but I think you would have loved it. We’re scheduled to taste cakes today, you and me. How am I supposed to pick a cake on my own?”

  “I’ll be there with you. Do we really need a cake anyhow?”

  “Yes,” I respond flatly. “It’s a celebration, and celebrations come with cake.”

  “Whatever you say, dear. We shall have cake then.”

  Elias appears on the television screen, the same photograph that has been shared around the world over the past few days. He looks fearless in his pilot’s uniform.

  “Investigators continue their search for clues to the cause behind this fatal crash,” the familiar messenger announces. The pale blue colour of her blouse complements the red banner beneath Elias proclaiming his name. Her voice is bright and buoyant. “Much of the attention is being focused on Elias Santos, co-pilot of flight XI260. It does not appear as though Santos was affiliated with extremist groups, although details are still being uncovered. We can confirm that Santos passed all standard health examinations that pilots routinely undergo, though we do not yet know the details behind his history of mental health.”

  “Classy,” I say. “When lacking evidence, just question his sanity.”

  “They’re just doing their job,” Elias says, frustratingly objective even in death.

  “Can’t you see what they’re implying?”

  “They’re simply investigating all possible explanations.”

  “There is nothing wrong with your mental state,” I say, clutching the bedsheet beneath me.

  He doesn’t respond.

  • • • • •

  When Decker de Gannes was a young boy, his mother once left him with his brother and sister in their beat-up van while she got wasted in a bar on whatever anyone would buy her. He was only seven at the time, and his siblings weren’t much older. They waited in the parking lot for hours, huddling together for warmth as the night got darker and the air got colder.

  Their mother finally walked out of the bar with some help from a new friend of hers. She would have collapsed to the ground if there hadn’t been someone to hold. Decker watched as she followed her new friend to his car, climbed inside, and drove away. Not knowing what else to do, they slept in the van, shivering in the cold until their mother returned late the following afternoon.

  Decker told me this story one night as we lay on the lawn outside my dorm, staring up at the stars. Our first psych mid-term was the following morning, and we were taking a break from a particularly gruelling study session to get stoned. I thought he must have been joking at first, but one look at him confirmed he was serious.

  At first glance, you’d be forgiven for writing Decker off as nothing more than your typical entitled, arrogant, narcissistic jock. I was guilty of that. He had reminded me of my brother, Clark, when I first met him.

  Decker was charismatic and beautiful, with an athlete’s physique and a thick mess of blond hair. There was always a smile on his face and an entourage of similarly attractive people hovering around him. He should have been the worst kind of person you would find on campus, and it was easy for me to avoid his orbit. Imagine my surprise, and suspicion, when he’d go out of his way to speak to me in public, when he showed a genuine interest in being my friend.

  I tend to think the worst of people. Sometimes I’m guilty of typecasting them as two-dimensional caricatures, more like characters in my head than real humans. Decker surprised me. He was kind. He was gentle. He was perceptive and compassionate. He would never exclude, insult, or belittle anyone. Considering how much joy Vivi and I got from mocking everyone we came in contact with, Decker was annoyingly decent.

  Vivi and I came from a stratum of privilege we resented. We were embarrassed by our bourgeois families. I suppose we still are, though it would be more embarrassing to admit that, at our age, we still care enough to be embarrassed.

  I hated how my parents tried to groom me to be a younger version of my father, like Clark was — respectable, urbane, desperately conventional.

  Vivi never could bear the weight of her family’s expectations, explaining why she became an artist instead of a surgeon.

  The proper thing to do would have been to show gratitude for our privilege. Instead, we ridiculed it.

  Decker had no privilege to ridicule. He worked for everything in his life because his mother certainly wouldn’t do it for him. Getting into university had been an obsession for him, graduating high school at the top of his class and earning every scholarship he could apply for. When everyone else was getting sauced at basement parties, he studied. When he wasn’t studying, he bussed tables and installed drywall to keep his family fed.

  Before Decker moved out to live on campus, his mother said she was ashamed of him for abandoning her. He made the two-hour journey by public transit every weekend to visit, spending most of his time cleaning the house or doing the laundry. I convinced him to let me tag along once, and it was difficult to reconcile how a person like Decker could be produced in an environment like the one I saw there. His mother followed us from room to room as he did the chores, mocking and menacing, a bone-dry desert thirsty for sympathy. A plastic cup never left her hand.

  Decker couldn’t hide his pride on graduation day. He was the first person in his family to earn a degree. But when he walked across the stage amid roars of applause, looking like the son every parent dreams of raising, I could see a moment of sadness flash behind his eyes. His mother hadn’t shown up. His brother and sister, who grew up to be self-destructive and perpetually adrift, weren’t there either. While everyone took photos with their families, Decker went to his dorm to
fine-tune his resumé.

  I bet people often wonder why he is friends with me and Vivi. We are petty and cynical, while he is caring and warm-hearted. I don’t know what his explanation would be, but I do know why I’m friends with him: he makes me feel like I’m a better person than I am.

  “I’m worried about you,” Decker says. His face is different through the fuzzy resolution of the video-chat window on my tablet. There are creases around his eyes, and the ends of his mouth angle down like little hooks.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I reply, impressing myself with how normal my voice sounds. “I’m fine. Under the circumstances, I would say I’m doing better than fine. I’m good, even.” I smile to prove my point, and he looks at me as though a lizard has crawled out of my mouth.

  “That’s the thing. You shouldn’t be good. You shouldn’t be fine. You should be a wreck. You should be with the people who care about you. Instead, you’re alone on a deserted island.”

  An incredulous laugh escapes me, and the sound reminds me of Elias. “Why does everyone think this island is deserted? There are plenty of people here. There’s even a gourmet churro shop. Tell me: Do deserted islands have churro shops?”

  “You know I’d do anything to be there with you now, right?” There’s so much earnestness in his voice it’s almost pathetic. My eyes drill into his, willing them not to tear up. I don’t need to see him crying for me.

  “I know. I’m just happy that I’ll see you tomorrow. You have a pregnant wife to look after. I’m lucky you’ll be here at all. Sam needs you more than I do.”

  Do I really believe this? I’m not so sure. A part of me wants nothing more than for Decker and Vivi to drop everything to be with me, as though I were the only thing that mattered. Another slightly more insistent part of me wants them to forget I exist so they can go on with their lives, and I can go on with being alone on my deserted island.

  “Sam feels awful that she can’t be there at all,” he says.

  “I can’t really hold that against her. If the doctor says not to fly, she shouldn’t fly.”

  “Remember the last time we all took a flight together?” Decker asks, a nostalgic grin lighting up his handsome face.

  “You mean when Sam threw up all over me on the way home from Jamaica?”

  He laughs and it sounds like music. “I will never forget the look on your face. Pure disgust.”

  “I still don’t understand why she decided to hurl on me instead of you, the boyfriend sitting on her other side. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day analyzing Sam’s subconscious motivation for turning left instead of right at that critical moment.”

  “It was revenge,” he says. “You were really pissing her off that day.”

  “I think she knew that throwing up on you would have affected her odds of a ring in the future. Smart girl.”

  “Watching her cover you in vomit made me love her even more. That’s what sealed the deal, to tell you the truth.”

  “Oh, shut your mouth,” I say with a laugh.

  “I’m just happy we didn’t eat the same Jamaican patties she did. I warned her that the cart looked dodgy.”

  Decker and I sit in silence, smiling at the memory of Sam’s embarrassed face, my white linen shirt covered in what resembled butternut squash soup, and the flight attendants’ stifled giggles as they helped me out of my seat.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Elias more embarrassed than he was on that flight,” I say, remembering how unhelpful and self-conscious he had been. I regret ruining the moment by bringing him up, but I can’t help it. “You would think he’d been the one covered in orange sludge.”

  Decker pauses to consider this. “I guess it can be easy to forget to laugh when you’re too busy thinking.”

  • • • • •

  Elias looks like a ghost. His night-sky eyes are flat and unseeing, their satellites dimmer than usual. The expression on his face is inhuman — not happy or sad or excited or calm but void of detectable emotion. I thought I loved this photograph. He looked invincible. Now that it’s been blown up to this size, as though it were a portrait of Napoleon hanging in the Louvre, the larger-than-life-sized face of Elias looks alien. Lifeless.

  “It’s not right,” I say. Maria’s eyes dart in my direction, weary. “He doesn’t look like himself.”

  “This is the picture you chose,” she explains gently like I must have experienced a lapse in memory. “You chose the size and the frame too.”

  “Yes, I realize that.” I try not to sound irritated, but the impatience bubbles under my skin, warm and satisfying. I let the negativity wash over me. It reminds me of how it feels to drift to sleep after fending it off until the end of a movie. The weakening of resistance. The sweet rush of submission.

  “So what would you like us to do?” Maria asks.

  “Change it. We need another photo. He needs to look alive. He needs to look like himself.” The face stares back at me from behind the glass, caged within the handcrafted tin frame displayed on the easel in Maria’s office. Its eyes aim past the sharp descent of its nose, a hawk’s beak — no, a vulture’s — as though gazing at its own vacant reflection.

  “Si, señor. You can send me another photo. We will change it.” Maria studies the face. I know she can’t stand to look at me now, more out of pity than frustration.

  Maria hasn’t been the same since our encounter in the English Garden. The motherly warmth is gone, as is the playful sense of humour. There is only one Maria available to me now: the efficient professional. Her pity is the only thing that tempers the iciness between us. I see it in her eyes and in the way she pauses before every response. I would prefer the cold.

  “What about the band?” I ask. “They’re all set?”

  “Yes, they will arrive the morning of the event,” Maria says, still looking at the face. “On the first ferry of the day. We will be sure the sound check is complete in the afternoon. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “And the flowers? I want flowers on every table, on the bar, at the entrance, along the banisters, everywhere.”

  “Yes, there will be flowers, just like we discussed. We will have roses, lilies, marigolds, and, of course, the magnolias. It will be lovely.”

  “I hate flowers,” I hear Elias say.

  Be quiet. You don’t hate flowers. Nobody hates flowers.

  “Whatever you say, dear. It is your party.”

  “Señor?” Maria’s manicured eyebrows are raised. I must have looked like I had drifted away.

  “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “The cakes. Are you ready to sample them?”

  Ah, yes. The cakes. How I had looked forward to tasting these cakes. Of course, the original plan involved my future husband being by my side as we sampled them. We would have giggled at the silliness of the process, nibbling at thin slivers while determined to choose the perfect one, like we were self-important judges in a televised baking competition. He would comment on the texture of one, while I would critique the flavour combination of another. We would disagree and defend our choices as though the outcome of this decision would leave an everlasting imprint on our lives. Finally, one of us would succumb to the other, and we would put forth our final decision, united. Perhaps I would playfully smear some frosting on Elias’s cheek. He would smile and retaliate. We would leave the room happy, smeared in frosting, and having chosen a cake.

  “Of course,” I say with resignation. “The cakes.”

  Maria offers a terse smile, then leads me out of her office. I’m relieved to get away from the face behind the glass. We make our way through a hallway lined with doors before entering the lobby. Prisms of sunlight reflect throughout the room, forcing my eyes to squint. I hear greetings from staff members directed at me. My head nods, but I can’t look at them.

  The hotel is calm today. The guests are wasting away on the beach or harassing the locals in town. There is only a handful of intruders in khaki shorts and straw hats
to avert my face from.

  We climb a spiralling flight of stairs and enter the hotel’s restaurant. I haven’t eaten here — I haven’t eaten much besides the occasional dish delivered by room service — but I know every detail about it from studying the hotel’s website over the last fourteen months. Otra Luna is supposedly the island’s top restaurant. Its owner, Ramona Merida, is part of the elite band of chefs from the capital and Oaxaca credited with revolutionizing Mexican cuisine over the past two decades.

  Ramona prides herself on marrying ingredients from the land and the sea. As one critic put it, “Ramona Merida has transformed the humble concept of surf ’n’ turf, creating a delicate harmony between earth and sea that allows the flavours to sing like a siren’s call.” Her signature dish is octopus grilled with lime, paired with pork tenderloin rubbed in chile adobo. It is served in a shallow clay bowl covered by a green purée of avocado and coriander, garnished with twists of zucchini blossoms. The slightly charred tentacles of the octopus wrap around the tenderloin like the kraken pulling an ill-fated ship into the murky sea.

  The air in the restaurant is cool and soft. Light filters through the gauze-like curtains that cover the windows. Broad leaves spill from large ceramic pots, giving the space a wild, organic ambiance. The walls are decorated with brightly coloured masks depicting the Aztecs’ fanciful interpretation of jaguars, their white eyes standing watch over the room below. Best of all, it’s empty.

  Maria motions for me to sit in one of the many bentwood chairs neatly arranged around linen-covered tables. She disappears through a door and returns minutes later with a middle-aged man wearing a typical chef’s uniform of black pants and white double-breasted jacket. He pushes a cart with three plates, each one displaying a triangle of cake.

  “Where’s Chef Merida?” I ask.

  Maria and the man swap glances. She gives me a tentative smile. “Chef Merida does not work here full-time. She lives in Mexico City.”

  “That’s disappointing.” Did I actually expect Chef Merida to guide me through this trivial tasting? I can’t tell.

  “She created the entire menu though, and visits once in a while to meet with the kitchen staff,” Maria explains. “She even leads the dinner service on occasion.”