Читать книгу Sunsets of Tulum - Mr Raymond Avery Bartlett - Страница 12

The Third Girl

Reed found Laurel on the far side of the pool, a straw sun hat partially covering her face, one leg up on the chaise longue in a supermodel pose, her skin already a deep bronze in just three days. A tall glass of something pink and fruity was on the table next to her, and a dog-eared novel hung in her left hand. Nearby was a bowl of salted peanuts and an ashtray made out of a shell. A twenty-something waiter with chiseled biceps melted away from her as if a sixth sense told him that a husband was near.

Reed sat in the chair next to hers and for a while neither spoke, even though it was clear from the lack of turning pages that she was not reading anything anymore. An optimistic seagull was hanging in the sky above them, riding a micro thermal, as immobile as if it were a toy tied to a string. Only its head moved, the sharp eyes scouring the cement below for crumbs.

“I was looking all over for you,” Reed said.

“I’ve been right here.”

“You could have said you were going to the pool.”

“You were already in the shower.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d almost say you’re avoiding me.”

Laurel looked at him. “I know what you want this to be,” she said. “I’m sorry. We’re not there. Or I’m not there.”

“What’s that mean? What do I ‘want this to be’?”

She sounded more philosophical than sad. “This. This vacation. And it was a nice thing you tried last night. Getting the waiter in on it. I was touched.”

“Not touched enough to actually dance.”

“Because it was embarrassing.”

“Not as much as being the guy who couldn’t coax his wife up onto the dance floor. After all that. In front of all those people.”

“You should have told me. Given me some kind of warning.”

“So you could say ‘no’ right from the start.”

“Probably true,” she laughed. “It was sweet, Reed. That song will forever take me back to—” She stopped.

Reed smiled. “It’s like our little time machine.”

“Except, Reed, we’re not who we were back in college anymore. Sometimes I don’t even like hearing that song. It makes me sad.”

“What’s sad about it?”

“You’re hoping I can be who I was back then.”

“No, I want you to be yourself.” He wanted to be in the helicopter, soaring up like the seagulls that were forever above the pool, high enough above the world to see the big picture and not worry about the little details. “I just want that person to also be wanting the same things in life that I do.” He reached out and took her hand. “That’s not impossible, right?”

“I don’t think having kids is possible. Adopting, I mean.”

“People juggle kids and a career all the time.”

Laurel put her book down and looked out at the pool. “You know how it is. The moment an anchorwoman gets pregnant they’re out. It changes everything. God, I still get butterflies thinking about how that felt when I got that promotion. It was a dream come true. I don’t want that to crumble.”

“I still get butterflies thinking about you,” Reed said quietly. “But it’s pretty easy to tell it’s not mutual. Hasn’t been for a while.”

His wife stared out at something far away for a long time, then nodded slowly. “It’s hard to think about…about disappointing you. Hurting you. But I’m not in that place right now. I’m not sure I ever was, but I’m not there now. I know you want me to be there. I’m just…my heart’s not in having kids anymore. If it ever was.” Laurel kept staring out, past the pool, past the seawall, somewhere far out where the blueness of the Caribbean met the mapping of her own mind. She started to say something and then stopped, tried again, then slowly stood up.

“Weren’t you going to learn to swim this time?” she asked. “No, wait, you were going to learn to ‘enjoy it.’?” She sounded tired.

“You’re changing the subject,” Reed said, trying to make it sound like he was laughing, but his chest felt as if someone were sitting on it. “Like you’re onto the next news story. And I’ve always wanted to swim. I didn’t say it like that.”

“Enjoy it. Those were your exact words.”

“Honey, there’s a lot more that we could be doing here than just sitting by the pool.”

“Sure. We could swim in it.” She walked to the edge of the water and bent her knees.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Reed couldn’t help admiring her dive: Barely a ripple, as if she’d sliced the surface with a blade and slipped inside. He watched the white patch of her swimsuit as it shimmered in the blue until she came up for air nearly three-fourths of the way across the pool, and he wondered what it would be like to enjoy staying underwater that impossibly long. She continued in a leisurely backstroke to the opposite side, then pulled herself out in one fluid motion and walked to the bar.

It took Reed a few moments to realize that the conversation, maybe the biggest one they’d had since getting married, was over. His hands were shaking.

“A drink, Señor?” asked a young waiter with “Carlos” on his name tag.

“Sure,” Reed replied, sinking down onto the still-wet nylon webbing of the chaise longue. “Anything, just make it strong, tall, and cold.”

No doubt Carlos was trained to watch for such situations and defuse them quickly with attentiveness and alcohol. Reed imagined that the boy had seen a thousand discussions just like this one, a hundred thousand hopefuls pinning their marriages on a week in this or that brochure’s paradise pages. In a day or a week or a month, the actors would rotate, new actors flying in, the same little dramas would play out and end in divorce or sex or bitterness or reconciliation or something in between. But it wasn’t like a week anywhere could wipe a slate clean, turn back time, or conceive miracles any differently than had the two stayed home.

Reed stared back up at the seagull, envying it the effortless non-mechanical loft. No rotors to worry about, no gravity that it couldn’t handle, no pilot to send it plunging earthward. As the waiter left behind a stand of coconut palms, two young women appeared at the stairway railing, looking around at the pool. Hesitancy was the only thing that gave them away as non-guests.

The first was tall, five feet nine or so, with straight, honey-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, and an affable, friendly smile. A blue bikini top with strings tied in little bows on the sides barely covered the tan, curvy torso. The other girl was a peroxide blonde, a head shorter, pudgy, with a chiseled nose that looked too cookie-cutter perfect to not be surgically crafted. A black vinyl camera bag hung from her wrist, studded with what could very well have been real diamonds.

Reed was about to turn his attention back to the abalone shell and its mysteries when a third girl appeared. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was tied in a low pony tail, quick and careless, as if the only purpose was to keep it from tickling a neck as long as a sea lion’s. Unusually bright lips glistened below a small, perfect nose. A loose, faded blue T-shirt hung over translucent white shorts that muted a greenish-aqua bikini bottom to a light mint green. Well-worn leather sandals protected her slender feet, and shimmery green polish made each toe look topped by a tiny seashell.

Reed stared at her as she slowly took in the hotel and pool grounds, seeming to commit the setting to memory as if she were going to reconstruct the scene later in her mind. When her gaze fell on Reed he tried to force his eyes away but couldn’t, holding his breath as if he’d been suddenly pushed underwater.

Reed reached for his drink and realized it was gone. When he looked up again, the girl’s attention was elsewhere, drawn to something on the beach or in the stairwell. She reached into her bag, unwrapped something and tossed it down out of sight to whatever hungry animal was below. Reed assumed it was a dog, maybe the same one he’d seen before. Dipping from the sky as if it had been shot, a seagull disappeared behind the wall, reappearing moments later with a tortilla in its beak. The piece flopped like a yellow sardine as the bird flew away.

She tossed a second piece down the stairs.

“If you keep doing that the stray will just follow you all day,” the rich-looking girl said.

“I know, Cecily,” the third girl replied. “But I’m going to feed it anyway.”

“You could walk up and down the beach for a million years and not help every dog.”

“I’m not trying to help every dog. I’m helping that one.”

“Just wait until it gives you rabies.”

Only when the girl was near enough for Reed to smell the piña colada of her sunscreen did he notice that her left arm hung strangely against her side. Just below the line of the T-shirt, Reed could see a band of skin pinched in around the bicep a little too tightly, making the contours of the wasted muscles beneath clearly visible. It was as if someone had placed a cable-tie around her arm and then pulled it tight. Some kind of childhood injury, Reed thought, or maybe a birth defect. The way she carried herself was so natural that he might never have noticed the injury had he not been staring.

“Is it okay if we visit the loo?” the tall girl asked the waiter, wincing as if to apologize for the intrusion. So that was why they had come, Reed thought. To scam a bathroom visit in the ritzy hotel.

The boy seemed confused. “You are here to see Mr. Loo?”

“The bathroom,” Reed interjected. “They need to use the bathroom.”

The waiter placed the drink on the table, then shook his head.

“I’m sorry. Bathrooms are for guests only.”

“What, should we just pee in the fucking pool?” the rich one said.

The man seemed unmoved.

The tall girl winced again. “Please? We’ve got to get the bus back to Tulum, and it doesn’t have a bathroom either.”

“They’ll only be a second, Carlos,” Reed said, reading the name tag.

“The access is locked to prevent theft.”

Reed fished in his pocket and pulled out a plastic card. “Then they can use my key. Hell, they can use my bathroom if they like. Room 1114.”

“But if they go to a room, security might—”

Reed laughed. “If they take anything, I’ll pay for it.” He turned to the girls. “Just go.”

“Thank you so much,” the tall girl said, reaching out for the piece of plastic. She winked at Carlos. “Shhh!”

The third girl approached and stood directly in front of him, her hips in line with Reed’s head. “Can you watch our stuff? While I steal the hotel diamonds?”

“Only if you split it, fifty-fifty,” Reed said, feeling his face flush, conjuring something witty to his tongue.

She smiled and then followed the other two, the thumb of her left arm hooked casually into the pocket of her shorts. Reed shifted in his seat and stared, praying she would turn around just once more, hit him just one last time with another flirty glance. She did. God. He felt his chest constrict, and he reached again for the cold cocktail glass just to have something to do with his hands.

He took another long sip of the new drink. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on the table and let his eyes drop to the girls’ stuff before him.

Neither bag had any obvious clues as to what the girls’ secrets were—no condoms or tampons or birth control pills. No medications. No visible money. A book blocked most of the view inside, but he could still see the tops of two bottles of sunscreen, Coppertone 30 and a Mexican discount brand of unknown SPF. A small towel, blue terry cloth and a flower pattern. The strap of a cellphone with a small Hello Kitty on it. They had to be college age at least to be traveling alone. It simultaneously thrilled and depressed him to think that if they were college freshmen he would be more than twice their age. A well-thumbed issue of Cosmo, the same one his wife was reading. Reed hoped that it didn’t belong to the brunette. He thought of how the dark-haired one had smiled at him just long enough for him to think that she meant it.

“Thanks,” the tall girl said, surprising him, already back. He hoped he hadn’t looked as if he were snooping. She handed him back the key card. “You’re a lifesaver.”

She bent down and began to lift the bag, but lost her grip on one handle and it dropped. The stuff balanced on top fell off sideways, sending the camera and the third girl’s bag to the floor, spilling the contents, scattering things under the table. There was a soft splash. Several coins rolled out across the cement, stopping eventually in ever-tightening concentric circles, a few dropping into the water and sounding like rain. The digital camera bounced off the hard terra cotta and came to rest near Reed’s left foot. Without the book to act as a stopper, the tiny purse emptied: a Pandora’s box of random tiny things onto the ground. Movie ticket stubs, coupons, two hair bands, a small comb, a foil and plastic package of small pills that actually did look like birth control, a wad of money that was not U.S. dollars and was not Mexican pesos. Euros?

“Shit,” the tall girl said.

“Wow,” Reed said, standing up, steadying himself on the table before moving to help. “Looks like you set off a grenade.” They looked at each other. She giggled.

“Right?” He said, miming pulling a pin and tossing an imaginary incendiary over the pile. “Boom! Stuff all over the place?”

The other two girls pushed open the bathroom door, saw the mess, and came running over.

“What happened?” the peroxide blonde said.

“It was all my fault,” Reed said, interrupting her. “I tried to hand it to her and somehow I just knocked the bag over. I’m sorry.”

“He’s just being nice,” the tall girl said. “Saintly. First the bathroom, now taking the blame….” She touched his shoulder briefly.

Reed realized she was flirting with him and wished it were the enigmatic brunette instead. But the brunette was just standing back, watching casually, not seeming to care that her stuff, along with the others’, was strewn over the cement.

“Damn it, Sharon,” the short blond said. “You dropped my camera? If it’s busted you’re going to pay for it.”

“Hah,” Sharon snorted. “If it’s broken just ask Daddy Warbucks to send you another.”

“If you broke it, you fix it.”

“If I’m buying you a new camera you’ll be getting a one-time disposable. Something that fits my budget. Or…what, you think I should turn tricks on the corner to pay for it?”

“Did you even turn it on yet?” the third girl asked. “Stop bickering. It’s probably fine.”

They waited as the other girl hit the power switch. Reed heard the telltale electric whine of the autofocus.

“Does it work?”

The rich girl took a photo and peered at the viewfinder. “It looks okay. But if it turns out to be broken….”

The third girl looked at Reed, then silently mouthed “Drama,” lengthening the “a”s.

Reed felt his cheeks begin to get hot, a heat that started in his neck and then spread upward and outward, all the way to his ears. The three coeds collected the dropped items, thanked him again for the use of the key card, and started to leave.

“Wait,” said the third girl. “Where’s my book? It was right here.” She looked at Reed, as if he’d somehow hidden it.

“We’re going to miss the bus,” Sharon said. “You’ll find it later.”

“But it’s not here.” Again, a look at Reed. You took it?

After they’d gone, Reed settled back into his chair. He closed his eyes and saw that young woman’s face swimming there in the darkness of his eyelids. He remembered the look she’d given him, how they’d shared that secret laugh at the other girls’ expense. That feeling in his chest, as if some magician had reached his white gloves into the top hat of his torso and released a wild dove there. The idea that the last thing she’d ever think about him was that he’d swiped her book bothered him. The unanswered, “Why?”

Laurel returned right as Carlos was serving him another cocktail.

“What was that all about?” she asked. “Those girls.”

“They needed to use the bathroom. I lent them my key.”

She sat down. They looked at each other.

“Reed,” she said, softly. “I’m going to go back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? What do you mean? We just got here.” He sat up and stared at her.

“I’ve got so much going on back home. You know. Important stuff.”

“Oh, like this isn’t important?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I think it’s important. Us.”

“I shouldn’t have said it like that. It’s just—”

Reed stood up. “I’m sorry but I think that’s bullshit.”

“People are staring,” Laurel said, looking around.

“Let them look. I care about us. Having a future.”

“Stop it, Reed. Now.”

“We don’t share anything anymore.”

“I mean it.”

“But don’t you think we could—”

Laurel cut him off by plunging back into the pool. This time she popped up only a few yards away, and before she could say anything Reed cut her off. “So now you’re just going to walk away? That’s it?”

“I’m not walking away,” his wife said. “I’m swimming away.” And then she went under.

“What?” Reed yelled. Ripples seemed to mock him. He felt dizzy, but there was nothing to steady himself with. He curled his toes around the smooth lip of the edge. His chest felt tight. But she was still underwater, past the midway point to the other side. He wasn’t going to chase her anymore.

He was turning to leave, planning to storm back to his room, when something in the water caught his eye: a novel—sodden and bloated—was clogging the mouth of the cleaning intake just a few feet away from the chaise where he’d been sitting all day.

He remembered the soft splash. It all made sense now.

“There’s your book,” he thought, as if explaining it to her. “It was there the whole time!”

He bent down and retrieved it gingerly, and the fight he’d just lost seemed very far away.