There Galapagos My Heart

by Philip William Stover

  Then I add in some mime techniques. I did take a performance art class in college, so I feel like I am really using my artistic training. I hold my elbows with my hands and shiver to convey cold as I say, “Chile. Chile! CHILE!” to the woman, who quickly moves from polite confusion to cautious fear. She pulls the child closer to her side and walks away. I have about two minutes left. I scream after the woman in desperation: “CHILE! CHILE!”

  Then someone taps me on the shoulder. “You okay, son? How can you be cold? It’s at least ninety. Let’s get on the bus and tell the driver to turn off the AC.”

  It’s Fred. I turn around, and I see his wife boarding the bus just around the corner from where I am standing.

  “Fred, thank you,” I say and walk with him to the coach. I take my seat in the back of the bus and pull my baseball hat down farther on my head, hoping it will cover the beads of perspiration across my forehead and the deep embarrassment I feel for screaming like a demented toucan on a street corner in the old town of Quito.

  Chapter 7

  I’m still panting as the coach makes its way out of old town to the Contemporary Art Center of Quito a few miles north. I down about two bottles of water. Rehydration, plus knowing Benton will be at the town square while I am at the art museum, allows me to relax for a few hours.

  The museum is a colonial-style building with stone arches on the ground floor and white arched windows on the floor above. Steps cut through the center of the building and divide the structure into two massive wings.

  The group takes a guided tour of the permanent collection with one of the museum’s docents, but I decide to explore an exhibit by an artist I have not heard of, Gerardo Serrano, on my own.

  I read the brochure at the front desk and I realize he has had quite an impressive career. He is originally from Quito but has a studio on Cucuve Street on the island of Santa Cruz. He has shown in impressive international spaces, including the San Diego Museum of Art last year. There was a time when I would have seen every contemporary exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art, but slowly my job at Biddle got more demanding, and I let my museum membership lapse. It feels like a jolt to my soul to be in a museum again.

  I open the door to the exhibit, and I’m surprised by what I see. Huge twenty-foot-high square canvases with black and white shapes repeated in irregular patterns are hanging on each wall. I had expected a contemporary gallery in South America to be filled with vibrant color. The lack of color in this space makes me rethink my assumptions. I walk closer to the first painting on the right wall to study it more closely. The thick black shapes have hard outlines that transition to gray areas before becoming perfectly white. You wouldn’t notice them from a distance, but up close, they are quite clear and add a dimension I hadn’t seen when I entered.

  I’m reminded of what I loved about painting. Of course there is the feeling of creating and imagining, but for me, I was always connected to the act of seeing and looking closely. Painting taught me to examine the details and understand how they’re put together to create a whole.

  Then my phone buzzes, and poof, I’m back to Mr. Biddle owning me. I walk out of the museum to read his message marked URGENT.

  Michael:

  I know you are away before you take on your new responsibilities, but Sheila can’t find any of the project files for the Dawson account. The Dawson account is major, as you know, so I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important. Please respond. We need you.

  Ted Biddle

  Sheila walks around the office asking if anyone has seen her glasses when they are usually on top of her head, so this doesn’t surprise me. Mr. Biddle thinks every account we have is major, but still, since he has emailed me three times, they must be freaking out. I shoot back a quick email with the specific names and relative location of the files on the hard drive. Even Sheila should have no problem finding it with this information.

  I promised myself I wouldn’t work while I’m away, but I answer one other email. After I answer that email, another comes in, and before I know, I’m going through my inbox responding to a dozen different requests for budget numbers, spreadsheets, and project estimates. Work has this way of pulling me in. Once I start I have difficulty stopping.

  “Hey, Mike, what did you think of those sculptures on the second floor? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  I look up to see Fred and Rita walking arm in arm out of the museum and toward the coach.

  “We thought they were just marvelous,” Rita adds, “but we wanted to get the opinion of a real artist.”

  Real artist? I’m not sure a real artist would have spent most of the visit to a contemporary art space sitting on the steps answering emails about stupid spreadsheets. But I realize that, for this adventure, I am the official artist in residence, so for at least the next few days, I can fake it.

  I join them walking and look at my cell phone as the Wi-Fi indicator goes from a full set of bars to three, to two, to none. Just like that I’m an artist again.

  Chapter 8

  After the museum we board the coach and head about fifteen miles north of the city to the Mitad del Mundo. We pass a cast-iron gate and drive by a row of busts we are told represents great leaders in South American history. At the end of the road stands a simple stone monument about one hundred feet high, with a topographical globe on the top. A painted yellow line runs straight through the center of the site, dividing the northern hemisphere from the southern.

  There are tourists lined up at regular intervals, taking pictures with a member of each couple in a different hemisphere or both straddling the line with a foot on each side. The photos are silly, and watching the antics makes me laugh. I want to take a picture myself, but it would have to be a selfie since I’m alone, and that doesn’t seem like much fun.

  I wander over to the gift shop in the northern hemisphere and browse the colorful jewelry and strange statuary. It’s full of kitsch, and I love every piece of it. I resist the urge to buy something for myself and instead find two perfect gifts for my little brother and sister—a T-shirt with the exact longitude and latitude of the location artfully displayed for Justin since he is a science geek, and a way overpriced necklace with carnelian and pink crystals for Gloria, which I know she will adore because she loves pink.

  I walk out of the shop and back to the yellow line to witness more equatorial antics. I’m walking south, enjoying how much other people are enjoying themselves, not really paying attention until I am a few feet away from the equator, and I look up. Just on the other side of the world is Benton.

  “Hello, Michael,” Benton says, and our eyes connect.

  I melt a little inside. I feel an unexpected excitement to find out how he’s been and tell him how much the gang in San Diego misses him—maybe tell him I miss him too? But then I come to my senses, and the cool breeze of dignity freezes the melt.

  “Benton,” I say. “Nice to see you.” Then I reach across the hemisphere to shake his hand.

  Immediately we both realize this is incredibly strange. Let’s for a minute put aside the obvious—we are in Ecuador at the point that is considered the middle of the world, surrounded by tourists. But when you shake your ex-lover’s hand, it’s almost dissociative. It’s so strange to shake this hand, the same hand that caressed me warmly for years, the same hand that held my cock and showed it how to climax while being kissed, the same hand that prepared my ass for his incredible, and I do mean in-cred-ible, dick to enter me. For a moment I get lost in a sexual fantasy; clearly the altitude is making me hornier than usual.

  “How have you been?” Benton asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “And you?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Our scintillating dialogue feels like it has been ripped from chapter one of an English as a Second Language textbook. Inside I’m saying, Crap! Why are you still so gorgeous, and what is wrong with me that someone walking out on me doesn’t dampen my physical attraction to that person?!

&nb
sp; He left you, Michael. He should look like a mollusk to you, I tell myself.

  “How is your fellowship at the university?” I ask, working overtime to keep my emotions in check—or rather, completely out of this terrible conversation. The truth is, I want to add, “And how is that new little bottom bitch Penny says is all over your Insta? Trading down, are we?” But I just leave it at the first question about his work and hope the rest will be conveyed in subtext.

  “Great. I just finished a paper on ring-tailed lemurs with the professor I’ve been assisting. Waiting to find out if it will be accepted by a journal. Still working as an assistant account manager at Biddle?”

  He says Biddle with a great deal of disgust. The B bursts out of his mouth like the pus from a zit. Benton was never one to cover up how he felt about me working there. When I first started, he was supportive, but the more responsibility I took on at work, the more unpleasant he became. Why did he resent me moving forward in the company so much?

  “As a matter of fact, I am no longer an assistant account manager at Biddle.”

  I am about to tell him about my impending promotion to senior account manager when he flashes his big smile at me and says, “Well good for you. Time to realize you don’t need that job and follow your heart. I’m glad you finally got your act together and left.”

  “Got my act together?” How dare he? “I’ll have you know, Benton, I have my act together. My act has always been together. My act is more together than the Go-Go’s during their reunion tour,” I say, fully aware that I have not completely disclosed the entire truth to him but too pissed off to care.

  “Michael, I was trying to pay you a compliment,” he says formally.

  “Give me a break,” I tell him. “What do you care what I do? You made your decision.” I’ve done a good job of being calm and detached, but now my emotions get the better of me. My voice is raised significantly, and some of the tourists from other groups are looking at us.

  “Listen, Michael…”

  Before Benton can get at me, Penny appears.

  “Oh, wonderful, I’m so glad you two are getting reacquainted,” she says in her perpetually chirpy tour-leader voice. Then she leans in to us and says quietly but firmly, “Cut the crap. You are both on this tour to make nice with the rich, pale, confused tourists, so slap some sunshine on whatever the problem is and join the group.”

  “Sure, Penny. Sorry,” I say.

  “Of course. Sorry, Pen,” Benton says, using the most refined version of his British accent.

  We look at each other and smile the brightest, fakest smiles we can muster, but our eyes tell a very different story. Why does he have to be so incredibly handsome and so insufferable?

  The cruise portion begins tomorrow. I’ll be busy with my watercolors, and he’ll be busy observing bird droppings. It’s not a very large ship, so I’ll just ask Penny to make sure his room is on the opposite side of the boat. How hard a request can that be?

  Chapter 9

  “No. No way, Penny. Absolutely not.” I look her dead in the eye so she knows how serious I am. Up until this point, avoiding Benton has been going well if you don’t consider my mental health.

  After the visit to the equator, there was a lovely private dinner in the hotel restaurant, where Benton and I sat on opposite sides of the room with our backs to each other so we couldn’t even trade dirty looks. Penny was barely at dinner because she was freaking out about some last-minute emergency.

  I made small talk with the other guests about such fascinating topics as the benefits of angioplasty for heart blockages and where to find a good tax haven. I did a lot of supportive nodding.

  The next morning we took a short flight from Quito to Isla Baltra, the port for the Galapagos Islands. I watched as Benton boarded the plane in front of me wearing a tight T-shirt and even tighter jeans. Each step showed off every perfectly muscled inch. On the plane he was many rows in front of me, so I did spend a great deal of time staring at the back of his head. Half the time I wanted to slap it, and the other half I spent remembering what it felt like to caress it in my hands. Luckily I sat next to Roxy Rodgers, a “single gal” from San Antonio who didn’t need any interaction for her monologue on how bad the cowboys are in south Texas and how she’s been loved and left more times than a tumbleweed tumbles.

  But after a safe landing in Isla Baltra, disaster struck at the airport.

  Penny discreetly asked if she could see Benton and me alone. At first I thought we were going to be admonished for our little outburst at the equator, but what she had in mind was far worse.

  “There’s been a little emergency, and I need a bit of help,” Penny told us.

  “Absolutely,” Benton chimed in immediately.

  “Of course,” I added. “Anything you want.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that.” She took a deep dramatic breath. “As you know, Mrs. Kimble brought her granddaughter along a bit unexpectedly. She is a major client. Wealth deeper than an iceberg, and keeping her happy is a full-time job. Well, I’ve been able to arrange everything for her granddaughter except one tiny little detail.” She held up her fingers as if she were holding an imaginary pea.

  “What’s the tiny little detail to which you are referring?” I asked with suspicion.

  “The granddaughter refuses to share a room with her grandmother. You know how teens can be. I had to do a little switching around of accommodations.”

  “Switching around?” Benton asked.

  “The good news is I’ve upgraded you to a queen-sized bed. The bad news, and I’m not really going to say bad because there is nothing bad about being on the San Isabella III, it’s a lovely ship. Did you know it is the only ship touring the Galapagos to get five stars? And the amenities are…”

  “Spit it out, Penny,” I said.

  “Fine. You two are going to have to share a room for the cruise.”

  Whatever is under that bright-auburn synthetic wig of hers must have turned to mush under the heat of the Ecuadorian sun.

  “No. No way, Penny. Absolutely not,” I tell her.

  “Oh, don’t be so petulant. It’s one of the nicest rooms on the ship. Look, I have to make sure Mr. Radzio has taken his heart medication. I do not want to medevac anyone out this time. You’ll both be fine. See you on board.” She turns on her heel and scampers away.

  “Penny. Penny!” I shout after her, but she is off to handle the next crisis. “Well,” I say, my body as stiff as a chopstick.

  “Well,” Benton says with an icy edge.

  A silence vibrates between us as we stand by the luggage claim area.

  Trapped in a stateroom with the unfortunately gorgeous and unavailable ex-boyfriend who left me over a year ago, and who is, according to Penny, frolicking around the British countryside with some guy who is probably just out of college. I wonder if the captain will mind if I sleep in a lifeboat. Then I wonder how hard it would be to steer a lifeboat to shore by myself. Then I wonder if they would let me through the Panama Canal if I told them I was trying to escape being stuck in a cabin with my ex. Surely someone at the dock would take pity on me.

  “I suppose this charade of trying to avoid each other has to come to an end,” Benton says calmly. He pronounces charade as shah-rod. I swear if I hadn’t grown up watching Masterpiece Theater, I wouldn’t be so turned on by his accent.

  “Not necessarily,” I tell him. “You saw It Happened One Night. We could set up a bedsheet across the room. Stay to our separate sides.” I smile smugly.

  “Well, at least with the sheet hanging between us, I’d know where it is,” he says.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Michael, I think you know your tendency to steal the sheets. Most nights I woke up completely naked without so much as a hankie to cover me.”

  “You… I never…. But…. Argh,” I say and walk away from him toward the luggage carousel.

  Why did he have to bring up his naked body? It will take hours to stop
thinking about his perfectly muscled body and its thin coating of fur that’s thick in all the right places and thin where it should be. Even Benton’s body hair was under his charm.

  Truth is I’m not a narcoleptic sheet grabber who mindlessly pulls the warmth toward him. Not at all. I’d wake up early and carefully remove the sheet from him so I could stare at his body unnoticed. I would look at how the muscles in his shoulder rounded and peaked, how the sides of his waist had curves of muscle that led right to his groin. I’d sit there and admire his erect dick. He always had wood in the morning, and this was the one chance I had to simply admire the size and composition of his manhood.

  But he doesn’t know all that. He just thinks the worst of me like he always did. He never tried to understand the choices I made and why I made them. He just left.

  Chapter 10

  Crossing the gangplank to board the San Isabella III feels like being transported to another world. The vessel is small so we can navigate to islands that are more difficult for large cruise ships to reach. Before heading to “our” room, I wander around the ship to take it all in.

  The interior is classic—dark wood-paneled walls offset by shiny brass railings, rich Oriental rugs, and nautical blue-striped wallpaper. On the top of the ship, the Darwin Deck is mostly open air, with various canopies covering the bar, dining area, and the hot tub. Plenty of deck chairs and small tables are strategically placed along the railings.

  I walk to the edge of the deck and admire the view. A rich blue sky stretches across the ocean waves, creating a horizontal layer of color that moves from deep blue-gray to sunny sky-blue azure.

  I’m about to head to my…to our room when I feel a familiar buzzing in my pants. I thought we were out cell range, but I suppose we are close enough to the port to have a slight signal squeak through. I lean over the railing to get as much reception as I can before I make my last contact with outside world.