Daydreams are better, not so violent. So the waning day darkens. The lingering daze dissipates with dusk. The eyes watch the eaves but see something else. Ravid wanders deeper into the maze toward conclusions of logic, perhaps, but no consequence. Which is not to say that these thoughts come to dead ends; these hours in repose pass in agreeable absence of stimuli. Besides, who can be motivated in such heat?
Basha Rivka Rockulz married Zviki Rahnoose against her better judgment, but sometimes, she says, you cannot know God’s plan, which, in this case, gave her a son — “You know how the song goes,” she often reminded him. “First comes the son, then comes marriage.” Ravid was nineteen before learning that the song actually explained his socially awkward introduction to the world at large. Some things don’t change. The skewed lyric was his mother’s playful way of disclosing his bastard beginning, which she invariably followed with the hearty question, “Who cares? You got your health!” He didn’t press for the logic or reasoning in giving him her last name rather than his father’s; it already seemed so logical.
A son was the only thing, by the way, that worthless man ever gave her. He left before Ravid could walk, returned to Lebanon for a piece of hashish or a whore or maybe a package deal on both along with a nice cup of mint tea. Good riddance. So what should she do, allow her only son to struggle with the name of a stranger, an Arab stranger at that? The father called himself Lebanese, but he wasn’t — nor was he Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian or Saudi — thank God and praise Allah too. He claimed Armenian heritage, but he could have just as easily been Jordanian, Omanian or a Buckeye. Who knew?
Ravid did not ask about initial attraction, because she’s his mother, after all, though conjecture on the subject proved a most difficult thing to repress. In time, he took solace in thinking that she too felt the fire inside at some point in her long and challenging path — like himself, more or less.
Eminently clear to Ravid Rockulz is the milestone he’s reached; in peak physical condition, give or take, he feels near the top of the performance curve, maybe not as strong as ever, but close, with more road wisdom in the mix. Now at square one on a brand new game board, he is a man with developed skills and a reasonably handsome face, facing the prime of life. This may be an optimal view, but times call for the benefits of a few doubts. What should a displaced man facing middle age with marginal prospects think, that it’s all downhill from here?
No, he should look up, not down. Everyone says that life begins at forty, which is two years off — okay, a year and a half — and the question of livelihood should already be resolved by this time. A man should have rent and groceries dicked by forty — are you kidding me? He should hit forty in stride with the dough rolling in, by rights, leaving him free time to focus on his legacy. Okay, so he doesn’t have the background of, say, an ivy leaguer from Yale or Harvard or capitalization as a birthright or family ties or social connections or collegiate associations. He’s come up the old-fashioned way, the resourceful way, and he has his wits — not that they proved so sharp in the recent past, unless they did and the process was bound to be dirty no matter what.
Never mind, a man living by his wits will have better wits than a boy with a silver spoon could ever dream of. A year and a half should be plenty of time.
Starting right now with a first step into the future, to define himself and the mark he’ll make — no, scratch that. No marks. No footprints. Only nature’s sweet embrace will be his destiny, on a path chosen mutually long ago by nature and himself, surely a match made in heaven. Like most people, he’d ignored what was right before him all along. Okay, maybe he didn’t ignore it, but he’d merely enjoyed it — which is not to dismiss enjoyment as a requisite first step. Enjoyment is integral to love and learning; it’s the foundation of any lasting relationship or insight. Let’s just say he did not embrace his calling to full advantage, but now he sees the path as the legacy.
Except that he did embrace it. He’d loved his camera work. He misses his astounding images. He freely admits his homesickness and tries not to ponder Skinny — but he could return to Hawaii and forget this little misunderstanding. He could be home in time for Sunday’s charter, or Monday’s for sure, legal — what can they do, the “local” mishpocha? He’s one of them. By law!
But no. He cannot. Imagining a return to Hawaii is like a boy wishing upon a star to be back in that perfect place, so warm, dark, cozy and perfectly fitted to every need — not that a man needs to imagine his mother in such terms. But the point is that life goes forward, not back, that the place and time behind us are gone. They no longer fit, are no longer available for reshaping, unless you’re part of the right-wing media. Otherwise life is present tense, in which fulfillment gets a proper chance if you can grasp the moment just so, not too firmly, not too light.
Maybe the mistake was taking rejection to heart when it was only a handful of people in New York saying in so many words, Hey, we’re too stupid and/or jaded to see the beauty in your work, not to mention the extraordinary character and technical excellence, to know how to make money on it. Maybe the true artist pursues his work no matter who says what in New York. Maybe the only true artist in any medium is the one never paid, the one with amateur virtue sustained to the end, like Vincent.
He ended as dust, neither more nor less than Leonardo or Galileo or the rest. Only the work survives. By forty a man has most likely become what and who he will be. At forty he is written, no longer imagined, whether he be a man of means, a man of spirit, or a man meandering among the labors, perhaps with a spiritual penchant and continuing appetite for intimacy with the earth. He can take pictures of fish along the way, or not.
Don’t think these mental gyrations, convolutions and genuflections are a waste of time. They facilitate inner guidance, because a man of no reflection is a man passing time, which all men do to some degree, but one who slows down to weigh the merits and downsides of this and that will realize a richness, even if he’s denied his dream, even if he’s condemned to work, eat and sleep in obscurity, which may be oppressive on the mean streets of New York but doesn’t count for squat in the azure clarity among garish minions here in the land of oceans.
Obscurity?
What are you going to be on a vibrant reef, famous?
Which comes back around to the legacy, meaning the place and fish and all that stuff tumbling like broken glass in a mirrored tube churning in chaos, except for the little reflective wedges rendering balance, order and symmetry, which is what this boils down to, once we cut the crap and get out of this room and into the world of constructive engagement, where a fool goes hungry, but where a man with something of value to give will give and thereby gain shelter and sustenance — and maybe some mirrored wedges of his own for a legacy. Yes, practicality can be depressing, unless you put it in terms of a simple, happy question: What would you do, given unlimited choices, in the whole wide world?
Well, let’s see... How about living on a beautiful, tropical island unblemished by humanity, where I work at something or other and take pictures of the reef every day?
I’ll take it!
Just so, a scenario takes form. That is: Here is a beautiful island home for many species, a few humans included. The humans complain of too few tourists and not enough money, but whining is human nature. In America they whine of gasoline going up twelve cents a gallon, as if God had killed their first born, so never mind. Three dollars a gallon, six dollars a gallon. Who cares? Let ’em skateboard.
The follow-up question is the balance of the scene. That is: If I get a scooter and rig it for my camera equipment and spend a few days or weeks taking pictures, then what? I ride around this island on its single perimeter road discovering places, using up my savings, going to bed early, eating at home alone, riding around, drinking beer at home for only a dollar and half instead of six dollars each at a bistro, and every week or two I head over to Papeete to walk the streets and be away. Then what?
Bad question, that’s what. The longest hike begins with a single step, and a person recently reborn to life and prospects might stumble for a while trying.
Okay, it’s settled, except that Ravid fears the old grind and rut. He craves liberation from making marks and manual labor, and this practicality thing may only need some imagination and give. In his brief use of psychedelic drugs, wonder and anxiety vied for attention till he realized either one could prevail, depending on him. Like a pilot with a joystick in free-fall reality, his gentle grasp could level things out at proper altitude or let go for a screaming nosedive.
The compromise will be to seek employment as a dive instructor. He will not resist what he is: a waterman by rights and skills. Older by nearly a generation than many instructors coming up, he will appear more seasoned, especially on that ignoble but inevitable question, to which he’ll chuckle: I don’t know, seven hundred dives a year. Ten, twelve years. What’s that? Seven times twelve. Not even ten thousand dives. So? I’m learning.
With no local knowledge he’ll face a golden opportunity to demonstrate quick-study skills on currents, drops, surges, wildlife and weather patterns. That he can’t speak French is more perfect still, since nobody speaks French or pig Latin under water. He has his gear except for tanks, which he can borrow. And he has his camera and lenses, which can lead to something good, or maybe not. It doesn’t matter, because a shutter will be opening on a regular basis to record godly images for people to see what is being lost when it could be saved. Recording those images is why he’s here, meaning here on earth. Maybe the shutter will open on something great, but prospects for greatness are best left to their own volition.
So he feels good — unusually good, better than a man of his recent challenges should feel. Maybe the place is so right that the good feeling is natural. But who would waste time wondering why he feels good? Tomorrow he’ll start over, making a home in a tropical paradise that will likely go the way of all else, to rack and ruin for more people with more cars and less happiness — but then maybe not. These frogs can fool you when it comes to life and its mystical import, which can never be greater than wine, some cheese and a baguette. Hold the pâté for now. Who knows? Maybe the place will be spared for the duration of this lifetime. The inevitable loss of this place seems as sad as the mothers who lose their cubs, but at least he’ll be dead by then, which is better than seeing another beautiful place go to hell.
But that seems as foolish as wondering why he feels so good, so he sets that thought aside along with the rest, wondering if the sidelines will get too crowded with thoughts, and if a man can actually leave no footprints in a legacy of nature preserved. Then he falls again to sleep, returning again to breaking waves and moonlight sparkling in the grin of his hostess. An hour later, he bolts awake with a pounding heart.
Can I lunge from one dream into another?
Of course he can. So he rises, towels off, dresses and walks out to the road and turns left — no, right — on his way to dinner, say, something French, something as rich and extravagant as the future might be, starting tomorrow, day one. Descending into the atmosphere of the new, more manageable dream he senses the tiles on his heat shield cooling, rattling less, his glide pattern stabilizing toward a smooth touchdown up ahead, a water landing of course.
An early moonrise feels lucky, with the big white bulb now high in the sky. Lucky too is the grassy shoulder easily four feet clear of the sparse traffic, and it’s soft under his stride, his first in a series of strides to come. Treetops blocking the moonlight and two miles of nothing roadside feel like another challenge, till he comes to a resort hotel that looks fancy in moonlight and feels extravagant, beyond a frugal man’s needs. He could walk back and eat across the road, if they serve late and he wants to walk another two miles on an empty stomach. So he goes in. What’s the alternative, saving ten bucks? That’s hardly half a tip on any given day, and the days will come again.
The seafood and French buffet are also more than anticipated, and at forty dollars cannot be justified. So he pays it, knowing his mother would encourage it, knowing she’ll send another forty, if only ethereally. What the hell, a man who gets married and swims in from the aggregation buoy at night and moves to French Polynesia within a handful of days and then fairly plans his new life in one afternoon shouldn’t blink at a forty-dollar buffet. Or cocktails at seven dollars each, which he has three of in the hotel bar, since the buffet won’t open for another twenty minutes, because the French like to eat way later and maybe one good reason is the liberation from pain and suffering these rounds provide. The drinks flow so easily, the first with a shudder, the second with a twist, the third with a bow wake on mirror-flat seas...
Then it’s time to eat, which all living creatures must do — but to survive as Ravid has done and then to eat as the French do is another match made in...not heaven, because he would not repeat the experience any sooner than he would stare at the face of God, but then he has stared at something awful and divine, so the match could have been made in the heavenly realm, or maybe it was Neptune’s realm.
He makes a mental note to come back tomorrow and have a word with management on serving swordfish, with its mercury toxins and black tumors and the obscene bycatch of turtles, birds and marine mammals killed wantonly on the swordfish long lines, as if anybody should live one more minute in blissful ignorance of this murderous carnage or the disgusting black and slimy poison that was excised by hand back in the kitchen mere minutes before carving and cooking the swordfish. But that will be tomorrow — tonight he’ll simply pass on the swordfish, scrunching his nose and wagging his head at the woman behind him, so she might catch on and pass the word as well. He makes another mental note to learn the French word for “tumors” and the words for “bycatch,” “leatherback turtles,” “marine mammals,” “sea birds” and “crying fucking shame.”
He laughs, and so does the lady behind him.
He forks the steak — a tough, cheap cut and way overcooked, so he takes a small piece and vows to chew it slow as a minute in the pitch dark depths...
Never mind.
Everything else is perfect: fillets, scallops, shrimps, salads, spinach and broccoli and these little pastry shells with delicious things in sauce inside and Caesar salad, fruit salad, pasta salad and tabbouleh. Sliced cukes in yogurt with dill and sliced tomatoes with olive oil and garlic, and cheeses and baguettes and — sadly but equally scrumptious — lobster tails and crab. Three trips seem in order, or five, with an evening to span, so Ravid puts solitude aside along with unwarranted happiness and death, and like a Buddhist who is joined by a most honored guest, he takes a table to dine with his most honored and newly minted self.
But wait! Never a sentimental or superstitious soul to bow his head in prayer to a private God who can be called upon to grant personal favors if the begging is sufficiently strident and the need sufficiently needy — though the Holy, Holy, Holy One was paged frequently on a very recent night — Ravid pauses with the ether. He takes a moment to feel it, to sort its essence, which is life as defined by a moment and then another. This sequence is so different than it was or still could be and maybe is, if in fact he drifted the wrong way and to this very hour is still treading, and this is merely...
He shudders, verging on apoplexy and tears, till he heaves on a deep breath and stops.
He exhales and so joins the rising steam. He inhales and so receives the perfect scents of sweet and sour and homecoming at last. He gives thanks to the plants and animals who have given of themselves to make this meal possible.
He dodges a momentarily lapse into the moment of fear shared by all living things just prior to the moment of passing. Or would that moment have already passed to awe and wonder?
He eats.
Never have taste buds stood so tall in tribute to sheer, shameless flavor. He can only nod at the waitperson’s suggestion of the hotel special wine for the evening, continuing his immersion in the extreme opposite of recent encounters...
But enough!
Let it go.
And let go of the letting go as well, because bad things fade at the same pace as good things, the same pace as life itself — too slow for some things, but the first sip of Bourgogne Burgundy Blanc displaces all things with goose bumps on taste buds. Anything more perfectly delivering the happy side of life would make a grown man cry.
But he won’t cry. He laughs aloud as onto the pool deck serving as a stage walk dancers: six dazzling women and, not to burden a random encounter, a lead woman whose shape, face and sheer essence trigger a feeding frenzy of insatiable eyes that don’t exactly bug, but then they do. This fantasy seems foolish to say the least, not to mention it’s irrational — or insane — to be scoping a woman at this juncture. The bigger mystery for a man in eerily odd sequence is the statistical chance of such a repetition. But then he can plainly see that the two events are not similar. They only seem similar just as a mirror universe is merely an idea, in this case encouraged by proximity to the equator, which makes no sense at all, except to a mind grasping at meaning. In fact, the two encounters have very little in common. Yes, he was out to dinner when he met what’s-her-name. So what? This isn’t out to dinner like that. This is way the hell out to dinner, like this.
He laughs aloud and alone.
He stops laughing when she drops her rhythm for a personal inventory, scanning quickly for a nipple slip, a bottom out, proper packing, fit, ties, zippers and the full range of safety checks triggered by your casual tourist pervert breaking into a laugh for no apparent reason. With a misstep hardly noticeable to all but herself, she blushes, covering this little botch with staggering beauty. Nobody notices, till he laughs again at the maddening wonder of random events. He shakes his head to indicate that he’s not laughing at her but at the crazy turns life takes — he laughs again at his own capacity for ignorance and growth. He’d thought Minna — that was her name — was beautiful, with the legs, the hips, the ass, tits, face, graceful movement and the whole package. But he was wrong; she was harsh, with the liquor, the dope, the slutty sex and the greaseballs on her tail.
Who knew?
And who minded the slutty sex when he alone was at the receiving end? Nobody is who — nobody who matters, anyway. None of that sordid, trashy stuff could be fairly factored at first sight of Minna Somayan, though the heavy baggage was hard to ignore on the way in from the aggregation buoy. At night.
But this beauty is different, below the line and pure Polynesian — and maybe that’s the crux — that the difference is not in the Polynesian but the purity. After all, Tahiti and Tonga, Samoa and the Philippines, Fiji and the Cooks are hardly a hand span on the globe. How different can beauty be? Minna looked pure, so who can tell if this beauty has cooties too?
But she’s likely free of the pop culture pollution smothering Hawaii and its purity, because this watery realm called Oceania was spared the terminal greed that came in the missionary wake. The missionary modus operandi across the Pacific and around the world was converting the chief or the king so the rest of the flock could come to Jesus — with everything of value as a first tithing. But the scheme didn’t work so well down here, where the island nations confederated loosely, and a converted king came to Christianity with a paltry entourage and little more. Over a century later, the southern hemisphere is free of Big Sugar with federal price supports or massive ownership by the sugar and missionary families. Just as purity of spirit — untrammeled by intrigue and corruption — sustains itself, so too are bitterness and regret in shorter supply here.
Maybe that’s the difference between one beauty and another.
A man in middle age knows that mistakes are part of life; from the first pee-pee in his diapers to the last piss in his pants, he will err and go on. He will bear no shame at any point in life, unless he makes the same mistake twice because he learned nothing the first time. Well, the lesson recently learned will not be soon forgotten, but this time feels different, with luxuriant colors applied to a cleaner canvas.
Everyone develops complexities that someone, somewhere would think strange. Anyone without complexities may in fact be the odd person out, the dysfunctional example, the lone marcher to the separate drummer. Calling this dazzling dancer a mental case off the cuff would be unfounded, but then Basha Rivka would call her just that, with the coconut shells over her bazoombas and her pupick jiggling like Jell-O for all to see. Yes, and mothers are often right — and wrong. That’s why children leave the nest, to make their own mistakes and get smarter, having an adventure or two, like this one, with its jiggling pupick and garlic mashed potatoes with tarragon and lobster tits, I mean bits...and hip gyrations to make a young man smile, and, I think, olive oil? Yes — ah! So good! So savory, with a subtle, sweet hint of...what is that? Dill? Yes, dill! Till a mouthful and eyeful are nearly too much — don’t speak with your mouth full, but ogling with your mouth full is okay, with every inhibition, hesitation and doubt left back in the inky depths.
At night.
So Ravid savors the flavors, his head swaying to the beautiful dance like a cobra swaying in synch with a charmer, in a sensual choreograph of longing. And why not? Why wouldn’t a man in his prime ogle a nubile woman in her paean to fertility? He feels confident and visible, certain that she sees his potential.
Her name is Vahineura, but her family and friends call her Cosima. She dances for love — of music and movement, which is better than doing it for the money, which is a pittance at any rate and could hardly match the art of the thing. She touches a nerve with this artistic concept, the one by which Ravid has already rationalized his future. He too will accept no income to speak of in exchange for the purest love in the world, which is love of art.
Vahineura’s day job is manual and pays another pittance. She answers questions for tourists about the things they may consider acquiring, like hand-carved vase holders, pareos with Gauguin prints, black pearl jewelry, calendars with naked women and men of splendid Tahitian beauty, sundresses, T-shirts, tourist guide books and stuff. The retail scenario saddens Ravid, and she asks why the sudden gloom. He smiles forlornly.
But she touches him, because she knows. “Don’t forget: I also dance.”
Her gossamer touch triggers the soft alarm, because he’s a sensitive man, maybe the sort she’s had in mind, and she guesses that he’s homesick. He wants to remember this scene rather than vaguely recall it. And he denies her assumption, insisting that he’s never felt more at home. He’s sad because a chachka shop for tourists means that it’s already begun, the noising up and dumbing down, the effusion and clutter of words, signs and tourist pamphlets, of barkers and con men that will spread like fungus to displace the common beauty and sense of life in Polynesia, till the hideaways are no longer hidden, the names of reefs and fishes, the histories and legends, the people and myths will all be boiled down and homogenized to tourist-speak, printed en masse and stocked and restocked on a thousand racks, carried in hand by tourists speaking of the same wondrous discoveries you simply must see.
The overstock will get hauled to the dump to make room for next week’s load.
Where once teemed lush vegetation in virtually visible growth will come front-enders and closers in boiler rooms designed to gouge tourists for money with ultimate good cheer. Do you want vacations? Do you need vacations?
“You are so right!” the young dancer agrees, covering her mouth with her fingers, then touching his arm again. “But you are wrong. I would never let that happen here. You know? You talk like a man who’s been to war. It’s not like that here. Business is very slow. The shop only exists to satisfy the hotel guests. I don’t think it makes money. How could it? It’s so slow. And it’s only souvenirs. You know that word?”
“Yes. Everyone knows that word.”
“Oh. Well. I didn’t know. It’s French.”
“It’s universal.”
“What is ‘chachka’?”
“Trinkets. Unnecessary stuff.”
“What could be wrong with a little thing to remember your holiday by?”
“What do you mean, you won’t let it happen?”
“I wouldn’t. Why would I?”
“What could you do to stop it?”
“I have powers here.” Yet here she falters, treading lightly on uncertain ground. “Maybe you’ll see.”
Maybe he has already seen. Maybe a reach for majestic connection and magical power is a common claim in tropical climates, among the girls who wanna have fun. Well, let her cast her spell of love and understanding of something or other. Any bear worth his salt would stick his nose in this little honey pot.
But learning of her unusual position and outlook will come later, past laughter and chiding on the way to Ravid losing himself once more, on the way to finding himself again — and after what he’s been through.
The last long swim was indeed tiring and altered his outlook forever, but he rarely viewed such a prize as this. That is, Vahineura’s unusual and often disturbing relationship with reality contains her pledge to reward any man who can swim Cook’s Bay an hour after sunset and then swim back an hour before sunrise; he will earn the cherries. What else can a young woman of apparently paltry funds offer? She is a queen in need of a king. Or something.
Ravid will hear this fantasy rendition of reality in monotone, the teller freely revealing her delusion and pathology along with her hope for the right king to claim his crown. The offer is apparently long-standing — or has stood since Vahineura reached the age of consent, if not reason. “You mean that you are available to any man who has the balls to make the swim. You know ‘balls’? Les oeufs profonds?”
“Tu es drôle, mon pauvre Ravid. Who has ever heard of profound eggs?”
“I thought you liked me.”
“Oh, but I do.”
“But you want me to swim that bay at night?”
“No! Not you!”
He wonders if she will give herself to him without the swim, or if she means that he’s not in the running to claim the prize. He doesn’t ask, because her purity and/or sanity become incidental to her compelling, nonverbal persuasion.
She seems normal when she’s not speaking, aloof as an emerging teen yet accessible once warmed up, eager to display her social disconnection — hey, look who’s talking. Never mind; what’s clear is that she’s not like the other one, not even close, unless you count the quirks and uncertainties along with the bold moves where least expected. Which ought to count for something, especially in light of reviewing these same character malfunctions between the aggregation buoy and the south shore. Which was a sparse light, indeed.
At night.
Which should have made an impression, but maybe it didn’t, because Ravid the rockhead has a fatal appetite for tender, young leg. But can all the women be mental? Well, probably not all, only the ones he finds. That should be a consolation; he fails so miserably at his true calling, yet he’s so consistent in his failures. Maybe he should set out to bang every nutty young woman below the equator. Then he could be a huge success. In the making, at any rate. Never mind. A healthy sexual appetite is not wrong and can often provide happiness for others. Besides that, the young dancer’s fantasy may well be a curse that won’t end till somebody claims the prize — like the guy on the horse who finally struggled through the sticker bushes to kiss Sleeping Beauty on the lips. The winner won’t likely be an old man, or not much older than Ravid, though two elderly fellows tried already and failed, tolerable men with the fatal distraction.
At least I wouldn’t put my pee-pee in the pickle slicer by choice. Oh, sure, the cosmic crowd would say that it’s all free will. Hey, go fish on that one. What, should I be a monk? Besides, I’m not old. I can swim that bay on my back. Besides, those old guys drowning were a relief for the fair maiden. Neither one was wealthy. At least I got potential. Well, I got no flab.
But why would anyone drown in that pond? It’s a mile, maybe — unless “drowning” was easier to tell the immediate family than disappearing with no trace, if you get my drift.
But insight and prognostication on the “pond” will also come later.
Sooner, on a long day pleasantly unwinding to a beautiful evening, Vahineura brings her luminous self to speaking range. “You are laughing at us. Why are you laughing? What do you see that’s funny?”
Halfway through his third go at a sixteen-inch dinner plate, Ravid puts a forefinger in the air, clears a swallow and shakes his head. “I am not laughing at you. I am laughing at...life. At my life and the.... I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but I...I laugh at the turns my life has taken in the last few days. Please, forgive...”
“What impression is the right impression?”
“You’re a beautiful dancer. I’m sorry if you thought I...”
“You looked, and you laughed.”
“With delight.”
She smiles because he said the right thing; so few men do. “When the show is over, we will invite the guests to have their pictures taken. Perhaps you would like to have a picture taken that you can send home.”
It’s discomforting that she recognizes him as a tourist; he’s been residential for so long. Well, it’s a small town, so she probably knows he’s new. He assures her that a picture would please his mother by showing him healthy and having fun. “Yes. I would like that. My mother would like that.”
“Did you bring your camera?”
“Yes, but not here. It’s a real camera, for diving, for underwater pictures. It can take regular pictures too, but I don’t have it here. It’s too big to carry around.”
“That’s all right. You can use our camera. See that woman right there?”
And that’s how fate paints a picture, on simple strokes as seemingly inconsequential as butterfly wings aflutter.
Yes, he can see that woman, the matron of the svelte dancing troupe, in the aftermath of her own svelte years, more immersed in middle age than he is. Admirably preserved with a glowing, tawny complexion and a bit of cushion but still firm, she may have a svelte curve left here and there. She reminds Ravid of his Aunt Hadi, who wasn’t his Mother’s sister but a friend of lusty stature who let young Ravid view her on many nights, as long as he pretended to be asleep and only peeked through eye slits, even when she played with herself. And here she is again, still affable and affectionate as ever.
“She is Hereata. You will love her. It’s only Polaroid, but it only costs a thousand francs, about twelve dollars, or thirteen. You’re here to take pictures underwater?”
Ravid’s head rocks side to side, uncertain of viability on his stated purpose in life. “Yes. I am here for that.”
“Good.” She offers her hand to shake. “I am Vahineura.”
“Ravid.”
“I don’t mind if you laugh at us. I only wanted to know why.”
“You made laughter spring from my heart, which is different than laughing at you. You see?”
“I see. I see you later. Comme ça?”
“Yes. I mean, oui.”
She drifts back to the stage casting a sweet smile over her shoulder. The interlude has quelled his appetite. Besides, hardly a spare cubic centimeter in the old breadbasket remains, and food for thought rounds the meal nicely. Pubic centimeter? That’s disgusting, but you know what they say about men in emotional turmoil: indomitable pussy hounds are what they become. Or is that unbearable pussy hounds? Either way, the profile fits. So what the hell? Speaking of sweets, a slice of pineapple upside down would align nicely with the tenor of the evening, flavoring the balance of the show, in which a good dancer becomes gifted in every way. Or is she only incorrigible? She smiles again, connecting the sparkling dots, feeding the potential.
So the evening rounds with the utmost lesson in life: It’s for the living. You have to get out and mix it up, or you have nothing but walls and a roof surrounding your introspection. Such clarity flowing forth seems unlikely to bottleneck, but random events occur in the strangest places and can indeed clog the flow.
Or so it seems when a meatball who is not part of the dinner buffet stands out among the tourists. He is a meaty meatball wearing loud jams — baggy shorts going below the knees with the waistband riding below the butt crack. This guy could have a load in his crotch with nobody the wiser. Setting off this show of slovenly indifference are an array of gold nuggets — a watchband of gold nuggets with a matching ring and a beefy nugget necklace to prove success in the Russian mafia. Maybe he sells timeshares on the Caspian Sea to former commies who like vacations, want vacations, need vacations.
That is, he looks Russian, which may be a generalization, but what else do you have with a bald head, pudgy hands, lumpy shoulders, an overall thickness and an overbearing accent? Oh, and the clear liquid he swills that is clearly not water.
Like Nikita Khrushchev on steroids with a gold nugget earring, he watches intently, like the dancers are the General Assembly and he might need to pound his shoe on a table. Fleshy folds pile up where his head meets his neck. He stands to make a point, arms folded, legs apart, with “USA” on his left butt pocket above an American flag. Below the flag: We’re #1! But he’s neither #1 nor American. On the other butt pocket is a dive flag — diagonal white stripe on a red field — making him one more macho idiot with a scuba certification card to prove it.
The fellow’s diphthong/glottal mix of Slavic and Curd, or maybe Slobbovian, indicate zealotry of a different stripe, or stripes with polka dots. Maybe he loves the American way, or he’s anti-American. Either way, the guy is loaded for bear, American style, confrontation his apparent means of gaining his point. He scans like a sentry, keeping his little world safe for bad taste, seeking an opening for preemptive war. His date is a hugely breasted, heavily rouged woman who seems confused with cross-cultural disjunction. She goes along, because she appears to be hired.
Ravid avoids patriotism; it’s so removed from nature. Patriotism motivates the uninformed to war against others, which may slow the rate of human population growth but hardly makes up for the natural destruction most wars cause. Besides that, geopolitical borders have no regard for species or habitat. This thick man is passé and avoidable — till he stands in front of Ravid, blocking the view. A fellow might take it as a taunt.
Let it go, Ravid murmurs and is able to do so.
After the show, he goes for the photo op, as he said he would. It takes only a minute, and once he’s posed for his happy photo with the beautiful dancers, he walks into the line of sight of the meatball’s video camera, smiling into the lens.
The camera is lowered to reveal a beefy scowl and unspoken threat. Ravid no speaka too gooda de Française, but he gets by. “Vous êtes trop gros pour une fenêtre, mais très parfaite pour une porte, n’est-ce pas?”
The fat but muscular man steps up as if to better hear or to hear a clarification. The matron steps between, placing an open hand before either like a referee. To the thickset fellow, she instructs, “Arrêtez, Monsieur.” But the glove is thrown and calls for response. So the two men glare till the thick one speaks in rough, threatening language as he moves assertively past the matron, who hooks his ankle with her foot and sends him sprawling. Ravid sidesteps to make room for the hard landing.
Which would be all she wrote, ending the little spat with an awkward but manageable loss of face. But the big man is up to his knees on a second effort till the matron plants her bare but sturdy toes in his ribs. “Ne pas ici, Monsieur! Not in my show. Not in front of my guests. Go home now.” She towers over him to discourage a third lunge, or maybe he’s discouraged by the three bouncers in triple XL, who assist the surly man out, practically lifting him by the arms as he looks back with a brow set deep on revenge.
What is it about me?
Ravid wonders how to flush the enemy within as the matron turns to him with the same question, “What is it about you?”
“Thank you, but I didn’t start that. I mean, he stood right in my way when...”
“Yes. I saw him. Here.” She hands him a card with a two-digit number on it and tells him that the Polaroid ran out of film right before his turn with the girls, so she had to go to point ’n shoot, digital, for quick and easy prints, but he’ll have to stand by for a few minutes so she can finish with the guests, each of whom gets an embrace and a Polaroid. Ravid stands by, watching his special dancer blush and blink on her way out.
The crowd thins, and cleanup begins. He decides to come back later for his photo, because now he needs a long walk home on the blustery lifts and headers of a first night in Tahiti to better sort the days and details mounting like seas in a freshening breeze. These seas are figurative and less threatening than those of the recent conundrum, which was life or death. This turmoil is only a disturbing challenge on getting along in the world. What is it about a man who attracts trouble at every turn? The question comes in gusts.
Still, a man may need a huff and puff to better understand the why and wherefore of his gravitation to violence, and vice versa. Why couldn’t he close his eyes and avoid the confrontation, let a meatball take his meatball video and roll away to his meatball room where he could slip into his meatball hooker and then slide into his meatball dream, like everybody else? Looking up, he squints in the spotlight glare.
“I am Hereata,” the matron says.
“Yes. I know. I mean, the dancer...” he indicates the exit.
“You mean Vahineura.”
“Yes. She told me your name.”
“I saw that, too. I’m sure she told you more than my name, and I must advise you...” But she stops short of advice to jog her papers, to flex her full, supple body, as if subtle sexual provocation would be in any way avoidable in the context of so much sheer, raw woman. The powers of nature are in fact not avoidable but aren’t necessarily fearsome either. The flirtatious lilt is merely typical to a fulsome, fully realized woman in a light, clingy dress, high heels, lipstick and the wherewithal to attract a man’s interest, more or less. So her body language is a harmless amusement, really, a cultural ornament to please the eye. “Come. We make a print for you. So you can send it home, and your family will see that you’re having fun.”
He follows her in the opposite direction of the dancers’ exit, toward the lobby and through it to an office, where she squats like a linebacker tying her shoe to rummage in the dark for the computer’s power button. Or maybe she’s looking for a pencil she dropped a few days ago. Who knows? Her casual manner disarms him as her dress rides above her panty line, and she swears that God invented computers to wreak revenge on sinners, and if this merde pile of a hotel wasn’t so cheap it would let her buy one of those printers where you just stick the thing in there, and out comes your little prize, voilà!
But no...
“I can come back. You can print my picture tomorrow, please. I don’t want to be a problem.”
“Your family should see you having fun, so they don’t worry. Or your friends. That way you avoid a bigger problem.”
“How do know my family will worry? Or my friends? Why do you think I’ll have a problem?”
“Maybe I guessed and got lucky. Whose family doesn’t worry? What friends don’t want to hear from you?”
“Still, I can come back. Better in the daytime.”
She stops rummaging and stands up. “Okay. I think you’re right. What’s your name?”
“Ravid.”
“Rabid?”
“No. Ravid, with a v. And it doesn’t rhyme with rabid. It’s rah-veed. Veed!”
“Oh.” She shrugs, willing to let his name be what it is without a struggle on her part to get it right. “Where you from?”
“I came here from Hawaii.”
“I don’t think you were born in Hawaii.”
“I was born in Morocco, but I’m from Haifa.”
“You’re an Arab?”
“I’m Israeli. It’s a long story from long ago.”
“But you came yesterday from Hawaii?”
“Yes. How do you know it was yesterday?”
“Maybe I guessed and got lucky. It’s Sunday. You look new. I don’t know. You look familiar. I think I know you.”
“We’ve never met. I would remember.”
“I don’t mean that I know you like an acquaintance.” She tosses the casual half smile of the cosmically attuned over her shoulder and proceeds to more earthly tasks.
Well, a man ponders the levels on which another person may know him, but he chooses to set that sorting aside for the blustery walk home. “What else do you know?”
“Young. Confused. Very handsome. Lonely.”
“Are you psychic? You are correct, but I was so hungry and had such a good meal, and I was having fun. I thought the...uncertainty didn’t show, at least for a little while.”
“I’m more logical than psychic. I see what there is to see. You looked hungry, all right.”
“And you?”
Such an open-ended question will invariably prompt the subtle twist into eye contact and feminine advantage in a woman given to physical expression. “What about me?”
“What about you? What are you? What do you feel?”
“What do you see?”
A question of equal open-endedness will prompt caution in a man of even moderate seasoning, for here are two doors, one opening to anger and the other to affection. He can’t quite see where the affection might go, other than in natural progression to warmth and friendship, which shouldn’t seem odd in a new place that could not likely offer a better friend, all things considered. She’s apparently smart, connected to tourism in general and to a high-end hotel specifically. She obviously makes friends easily and could well be a great person to know. So he ers and uhs with a playful gesture of stroking his chin to see what there is to see and finally says, “You are a woman. Very good looking. About my age, give or take. Generous, caring, brave, maybe fearless...”
“You think I’m brave because of that scene in there? You don’t know much about tourism. Besides, it’s not brave if you’re not afraid. I had backup. That man was drunk. And typical. What was he going to do?”
“Sorry. I thought you were brave. Not every woman could stop an attack with a kick in the ribs. And I do know about tourism. I’m a dive instructor.”
She raises an eyebrow on a new eyeful, assessing him again with a nod. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink. I want to hear. You can help me wind down. You know how it is with hotel people on the late shift.”
Another drink seems unnecessary and his slow wag says as much, with further displays of fatigue and a full belly, so she suggests a cognac, a short one as a digestif to round things out and settle things down. So he nods, because a drink with a mature woman in tourism may be the best result for a day of mixed results, because prospects for friendship and help are far more than he brought to the grand buffet. “Okay, I’ll let you buy me a drink if I can buy you one too.”
Soon they relax at the bar, free of choreography and life questions, staring at their drinks. The silence could be awkward for two people who just met, but it isn’t, indicating compatibility. “I think it is a very good test of our friendship. I think what they say about silence, that it is golden, is not always true. Sometimes silence can be a great wall between people who have nothing to say to each other, or worse, who cannot speak because of obstacles in their hearts. But when it passes easily as a stream on a mountainside, then it indicates that two people are compatible — like two animals enjoying the sunshine in a golden field. Have you seen that? Surely you have felt it. I think I feel it with you. I think we will know each other for a long time. I like that.” She turns his way in a pose, awaiting affirmation.
He tentatively meets her gaze, hesitant to engage in saucy repartee verging on a tacitly sexual if not romantic exchange — this one with an unlikely woman obviously his senior on several levels. He smiles at the lingering beauty in her well formed face, her angular cheekbones, her Polynesian lips, her rich, dark skin, her compelling cleavage heaving as gently as a hospitable sea, her eyes sparkling like a beacon on a secure mooring...
He laughs short, wondering if she has a sandy bottom or just some loose slag over hardpan.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing. You laugh. Tell me what.”
They stare. He looks back at his drink and says, “It’s different here. It feels different. Less of some things. More of others. I think I like it, but I can’t be certain. Not yet.”
She responds to her drink. “Hmm. Yes. It’s more French here. Not so Christian, like Hawaii.”
“Yes. I feel that.” In another minute, he asks, “Why did you warn me? Or start to warn me.”
“I didn’t warn you. You practically picked a fight with that man.”
“No. Not about that. About the dancer — what’s her name?”
“Oh, Cosima — Vahineura. She’s a nut, that’s why. She already got two guys dead and broke a bunch more hearts. And for what? A nut.”
“Why warn me?”
“Because you’re a man. I think you been through enough.”
“You think? What do you think I’ve been through?” He swallows half his cognac. “Now I believe you’re guessing.”
“Maybe I’m guessing. But I know what a tired man looks like. I told you: You look confused and tired. A man your age shouldn’t look so tired. I don’t mean work tired. I mean life tired. I don’t know what you been through, but I would bet it was tough. I bet it was physical too, besides the mental and emotional. Yes? No?”
“How old am I?”
She squints in scrutiny. “Thirty-eight, going on fifty-two.”
He slides a hand over his hip pocket to feel his wallet, to be sure she hasn’t clipped it and read his driver’s license. Well, maybe she guessed and got lucky. Maybe he looks a little tired, after all. “How old are you?”
“Younger than you. Only forty-eight.”
He laughs, downs his drink and signals the bartender for another round, knowing the trick the sauce can play and loving the sauce for playing its lovely trick. He asks again, “Are you psychic?”
“I think so. I think I see that I weigh less than you do, too.”
With a wry eye he scans her up and down, weighing her as directed, thinking their weights close enough for a wrestling match. He nearly suggests two out of three falls in playful jest but holds back for fear of something not quite right. He brings them back to mental telepathy on the recent past and the scheme of things playing out.
“Do you see details? Reasons? Directions?”
“Sometimes. But I told you already: What I see is more logic than psychic. Did you forget? You should pay attention. You’re old enough to see for yourself. My visions are ordinary, not extraordinary. What’s strange about seeing things as they are?”
“Look at me.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll let you know when I see something.” They watch their drinks, the silent comfort between them quivering one way and the other. Finally, she relents. “Okay. I see water. The ocean.”
He turns to her. “So? We’re surrounded.”
“At night.”
He moans.
“That’s all for now. It isn’t happy. I can see this, because you’re showing it to me, and you’re telling me this information as well. It’s not psychic; I tell you what is plain to see. That is also why I warn you about Cosima. I don’t like to say things that are not so nice, especially about a person who may be nice on the inside where it counts, especially when she is one of my dancers, maybe not my best dancer, but she’s learning, and not so clumsy as she was. You don’t see that, because you’re a man, and I know what happens, and I saw what happened when she spoke to you.”
So she tells of Vahineura — Cosima to friends and family — of the young woman’s curse/delusion and the prize awaiting any man to make the night swim over and back an hour either side of sunset and sunrise.
He’s too tired to ask for details of the bay, like depth, current, sea creatures, shoals and rocky landings or to seek another chapter from the book of strange tales. All answers school and flee the questions, and with paltry prospects for insight, he holds his cognac to the candle flame. “Is water ever happy?” he asks.
“Of course it is. You of all people should know that.”
“I should? I mean, yes, I should. But I sometimes think it’s neither sad nor happy but only...efficient.”
“Efficient does not mean that it has no happy moments. Don’t be foolish. No man should let his spirit get so tired, especially a man your age, who may still recover.”
He winces at the sting of truth and the stated potential of total loss. Yet he is grateful for her plain, common sense — for her optimism and friendship, which now feels more naturally sealed. In a few more minutes, the bar is closing and it’s time to go. She says she lives in a small house on the far side of a field at the base of a piton a short distance up the road, not even three quarters of a mile.
He sees her as a very nice woman, a warm and intelligent woman, a woman on another edge — of youthful beauty. It’s a far edge to be sure, but her wisdom and caring and still-viable figure make her flat-out doable at this late, inebriate hour, with friendship, warmth and all that stuff so firmly established. Still, he pauses for the tough question: Would he pick the same tomato in daylight, stone sober and seeing the fruit is not so overripe or badly split but only seeping slightly and still red with not so many dark spots?
Never mind is the convenient rejoinder. Take your petty needs home in the dark and let a beautiful friendship be. “I’m staying at the bungalows across from Taverua.”
“That’s two miles down!”
“Yes. On a beautiful night for a walk.”
“Beautiful? A night with no moon? With squalls coming one after another? I think sometimes a tired brain is a dangerous one.”
Perhaps psychically, he sees the driving rain windswept to horizontal and himself slouching into the headers, through the downpour, diving for the ditch when cars veer too close. So with last-call rationale, he follows her out, comme ci, comme ça, thinking how enjoyable will be the hours ahead in any direction with so much indifference at hand.
The rain starts lightly before they reach the bottom step at the end of the walkway leading from the bar. They pause to imagine a difficult walk back to the bungalows across from Taverua. At least the walk back will be easy compared to a few other miles so recently traveled. He breathes the night in long draughts, recalling the inky depths and how he longed to put one foot in front of the other with traction. Well, it would have been like trying to run through a dream, which it was and is and will be — till the rain begins in earnest, and she interrupts his stupor. “You stay at my house tonight.”
He perks unwittingly at prospects for friendship between two aging candidates. What better can life have to offer? Or is it the foul weather he truly wants to avoid? Either way, this makes sense — or at least a case could be made. “Do you think so?”
She turns sternly, “Do I think so? I said it, didn’t I? The question is whether you heard me correctly. You can stay at my house. But no funny business. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. No, no. Please. Nothing funny. Please.” She reaches around his waist and draws him near, roughly, pressing him to her stern warning with the friendship already felt, till he moans from the pressure.
She concedes, “Mm! I had to do that. You’re so tired, so sad and drunk. And so cute. Viens! Vite!” So they step together up the road hardly three quarters of a mile, a short distance in daylight but a long one in the pitch dark on the rocky shoulder in the pouring rain with passing cars veering close enough to make him flinch. She scoffs at his tense reaction, chattering all the way over her life and times in this area, from back before the road was paved, when it was a dust storm in dry weather and a mud bog in the rain, to now, when it’s modern, convenient and can kill you much quicker. She’s made this walk many times over the years, many times in worse conditions.
Yes, he’s familiar with the phenomenon of a world changing for the worse, with dirt going to pavement instead of mud, creating a gravitational vortex in which more cars are spontaneously drawn in.
At least the road running up at a right angle toward the piton is still dirt. Also pitch black, with puddles, it defies navigation, except of course by one who knows it in the dark. So she grasps him again to better lead, pointing her weak flashlight at their path. She comforts him as if he’s convalescent, and the infirmary is right this way. They’re wet, but warmth is squeezed between them. He likes her lead and assurance, as if arriving at last among friends; she seems so resourceful in her many facets of reflection on the neighborhood and the world. Like extended family, she leads him home, so to speak, one of the myriad kindred spirits walking the earth at any given time, some of whom actually meet and take care of each other. He finds her tactile skills as gifted as her logical views. And he knows that a failing flashlight and dancing shadows tend to favor a seasoned woman in silhouette.
On the porch she steps out of her slippers, admonishing herself for not leaving a light on, but then who knew it would rain and she’d drag the cat home? She laughs through the door, and he takes one step to follow her in till she reaches the light switch and turns it on. It’s a single, dangling bulb scantily clad in a straw shade with enough light to delineate off to the side, near the door, a pair of boots, size twelve. As if intercepting his doubt she says, “They are very effective, don’t you think? A woman learns these things.”
Inside is slightly better lit than the dirt road by flashlight. It’s a roof over four walls with the interior space undivided, with a kitchen table and chairs, and a couch that is soon folded down into a bed. She points out back at the salle de bain, advising that if he has to pee-pee he can stand on the edge of the porch pour le w.c. — the edge going to the left on his way out, not to the right — sur la gauche, pas à la droite — where her garden is trying to grow. He would playfully ask if she also makes pee-pee from the left edge of the porch but catches himself on second thought: of course she does. Why wouldn’t she? Then he’s mum as she fritters over no rest for the weary and wet clothing and catching her death, even here in Paradise, where you might be surprised at the care required to avoid such things.
She disrobes casually as an anecdote, peeling away the clingy dress now wet and more clingy, perhaps intentionally displaying the truth of the situation so the parties of the first and second part can dispense with foolish speculation, wonder or disappointment. With no inhibition or doubt, she demonstrates the French and Polynesian approach to what is normal after all, which is merely and ultimately logical — and natural, but of course. Wet clothing must be removed, mustn’t it? Thoroughly naked, she faces him as directly, honestly and politely as she first faced him and chats easily about how well the place sleeps, and how they’ll walk back up to the hotel in the morning for his picture so his family can stop worrying and see that he’s having fun. She plucks a towel from the wall, and while gingerly dabbing down her arms and legs she explains that she’ll be walking back up anyway for work, so it’s not a problem and no extra effort, so don’t worry about imposition or anything, because really, it’s no trouble at all. She tosses the towel to him. Then she crawls under the sheet, taking only half the bed, as he stands like a statue first erected on entering.
Coming back to life, he follows here too, disrobing but turning slightly to hide the awkward truth of his own difficult relationship with the world at large, including extended family members and well-wishers, which is not sexually motivated but merely a chronic burden of youth and vigor, hardly diminished by liquor but rather rendered out of control, which is not to say reckless but warranting an extra dash of patience. And tolerance. What is a younger man to do after such pleasant stimulation throughout the evening, then presented with a naked woman? She should be flattered on one level, but the converse potential feels damning. Is she staring?
So he crawls in carefully alongside, struggling to shrink the pup tent on this, her private sleeping space that was offered in good faith, decent hospitality, friendship and a warning against funny business. Is this a civil response?
They lie in silence again, this one either as natural as the last or way more strained with flagrant trespass. Submerged in darkness, difficulties are easier to bear, though he wishes to countermand the obsequious obtrusion and be a grateful, well-mannered guest. No thoughts can bring it down — not the meatball, not the buffet, not his room across from Taverua, not the long walk home avoided, not, not, not, till she rolls to him, gently rubs his arm and says, “Go ahead. Tell me.”
Her touch is warmer still, her hands the softest implements of pleasure. He would rather close his eyes and have her fingers walk about, effusing their magical release from one square inch of tension to the next. But then he’d fall asleep, which would solve the problem of obtrusive behavior, but this rare companionship might be a long time coming again, so he says, “I’m not exactly sure when it began...”
He sighs heavily, realizing that he is in fact exactly sure of its beginning, and so he opens the book on his recent blight, in which the fates darkened his world. He lets his story pour out, gulping and glugging here and there, but for the most part getting it out, harking back to the innocent outing one night a few weeks ago, which seems like a long, long time ago, on which he felt something, call it synchronicity, which is an airy-fairy word popular in Hawaii but also holds true in a way Carl Jung may not have imagined.
In simpler terms, call it happiness stumbled onto by chance, which is serendipitous and then some, when you look back on the prevailing influences and what might have been. Or just call it an evening of profound relaxation and insight on which he was able to map his future with clarity and certainty, which feels very good, in case you haven’t had similar success in planning things out. But then the plan got permanently derailed when a beautiful woman turned his daily routine into an unbelievable heaven on earth, till his golden path to the future became a living hell, starting with her jealous ex-boyfriend who came around shooting his gun, leading to the next day and deportation by the federal government in an unrelated chain of sordid events. At least it seemed unrelated at the time, but now...
As if the pudding weren’t thick enough, that situation too was followed by a round of kidnapping and attempted murder by the deranged boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, whose friends tied him, Ravid, with ropes and put him in the bottom of a little boat and took him way offshore and threw him overboard, out past the aggregation buoy at night in medium heavy seas, from where he swam in — swam — four or five miles, at night.
He pauses here, breathing long and deep like a distance swimmer given a rock to stand on for a minute to try and catch his breath, underscoring the poignant point of his recent adventures. Now he gushes forth, telling this angel of understanding, whose ear is a receptive vessel for his turmoil, that he’s only human, and though every life is beset with challenges, he’s had a short run that feels very wrong. Buried alive in the rubble of what had been a lovely life of days, thank you very much, he was surrounded in mere hours by imminent death in a ghastly, relentless presence, orchestrated from somewhere else to test something or other, or maybe just to kill him. He doesn’t know what or where from or by whom, but the magnitude and nature of his duress seems designed, yes, designed to challenge his capacity and will for life — or his acceptance of death, and frankly, he has come to feel wholly indifferent toward either one and both.
He feels like a foil in a basic plot, with survival turning out to be the greatest delusion of all, leading to nothing — nothing, as in a total vacuum, void, without happiness, without hope, with predictable and overwhelming loss and regret on each and every rise — proving that the design is only for death, and the game plays out, because he’s still trying to keep things going among the living but feels like a very small mouse being toyed with by an egregiously mischievous cat. That he’s merely evaded the inevitable beheading and eating for a few days doesn’t mean that he can cheat the reaper indefinitely. Everybody knows that. Even the mice. Don’t they?
Yes, he survived the phantom-riddled depths, crawling out and onto a sandy beach with his pulse intact, but without the soul he’d enjoyed the day before. He was not the same man who was thrown overboard, as no man should be. He’d changed from the inside out, not for the better. How could it be for the better, with horrific death suffered each moment as life beat stubbornly, perhaps foolishly onward? He has lived outside his body ever since, like a divided spirit, the troubled half watching from a distance as the functional half fails to meet minimal social standards.
So he left his house and home — his job and friends and everything that had been familiar for years — the following day, or two days after, anyway, because of the bureaucratic gauntlet. “Including my cat, Skinny, who I may love with unusual devotion, because she’s only a cat, but she knows me so well and loves me and understands me, and we have this routine together, and it’s painful to think about her, and I think what she represents to me is what I miss the most.”
He fairly sobs now, with heaving breaths bringing the tale up to the moment, with a flight out for Tahiti, where he honestly can’t tell down from up at this point, which feels like vertigo, because of so much in so short a time, which is why anyone could see fatigue and confusion, especially a woman gifted with logical vision.
He rolls toward her as might a child rendered safe from harm, stifling his whimpers, relieved now that such a burden has been shared. His own hand lights on her shoulder and moves back and forth as if seeking the source of its silky softness, or maybe taking comfort. She absorbs his grief and lets it bend her own smile to sadness. The darkness hints her sympathy and sense of inadequacy in making it all better; she can do so little to ease his grief and loss. He feels her arms, her neck, her ribs and up to her breasts, perhaps hungry for more of a silken something in contrast to the harshness so recently borne, or maybe from a childlike curiosity to examine the softness from coast to coast and border to border. She tenses when he reaches the nipples, and he braces for the scolding, but her admonition bears insight yet again, not with chiding but with guidance. Grasping his insistent self with tactile precision equal to the softness of her skin, she tells him as promised of what else she sees: “This is up. Come here.” Grasping the back of his head she introduces him to her womanly essence. “This is down. You haven’t been with a woman in a long time. You are not a mouse, but you must eat the cat, before it eats you.”
“Mmm,” he acknowledges, careful to distinguish the figurative cat from the beloved Skinny, realizing that the last perfectly playful woman he encountered does seem like a lifetime ago. And this one seems restorative, like the perfect aperitif; call it liqueur de frangipani avec citron. Make that lime. How’d she get citrus in there? No. Wait. Maybe it’s frangipani and nitrous oxide. Or, what the hell; maybe it’s just pussy...
“What does nitrous oxide smell like?” she whispers, unless he only imagines the hoarse inquiry.
“Juth one hit an’ it doethn’t even mather...”
“Mmm...” she seems to comprehend. “How did you know?”
“How thith I dow wha?”
“Mmm... I wanted your lips...there.”
“Lucky gueth...” Yes, well, many women would agree, and from a hard-worked waterman’s perspective, a certain snug harbor has solid appeal for the shelter sometimes available there.
Next thing you know it’s an easy up and in, natural as tiddlywinks into the cup, for the most grounded hospitality in Ravid’s recent memory. No, it’s not like hot cocoa and pound cake served up by none better than his own, dear mother. Not at all, except perhaps for that unmistakable smidgeon of extra goodness, beginning as ever from the skin and effusing forever from the heart. That is, a feeling of love transcends the physical, a feeling characterized by comfort, not like a plush sofa but more like a plush sofa with cushy pillows, a sweet scent, no concern for gaffe or grace, no inhibition and no rules.
And maybe a nice bowl of chicken soup into the mix.
No, scratch the soup and the mother’s sofa. Here again we are behooved to view this pussy for its simple goodness, as just plain pussy, because this may be the best pussy a man could experience; not to dismiss pussy as a generic pastime or casually discount its engagement in a pejorative sense or make light of the difference between this and, say, your average pussy. Because any man will tell you that there is a difference: diameter, musculature and the like, not to burden the specifics with clinical detail, but in general the content and feel of the thing, right down to the most difficult, most challenging test of all, which is the comparison to perfection as it was recently known.
And yes, we have a winner!
Some men at the same juncture would freely concede that the difference is one of association, that an association of love — make that the greatest love any man can feel — that turns to dire hazard and fear, will pale any time to an association of care, understanding, safety, protection and, again, love.
One man’s pussy may be another man’s one-and-only, to have and to hold, for better or worse till somebody dies. Which is also pussy for another year or two, but in trying his hardest to imagine enough of a particular pussy and failing, a man may be struck by love also unimaginable — and unanticipated. Which is why men often agree to marry. For some men it’s so good that they seek the marriage; some even rush into it.
Did I mention that I was married?
Never mind. This is not that or like that in any way. This is — not to discount the hospitality, the warmth and heart of the woman or the essential timing of the rejuvenation — simply great pussy. Okay, it’s the greatest pussy ever felt by Ravid Rockulz, which is not to say it’s better than or comparable to Minna Somayan’s in any way. It simply restoreth the soul to former levels of happiness, contentment and peace in the world.
Now is not the time to assess its affinity for love or to bear any thoughts whatsoever of Minna Somayan or the whacky woman from San Francisco — or Basha Rivka, her sofa or her soup. No, just let it be, to have and to hold till sleep do us part. This is the gift that is; the gift that makes pain incidental in this veil of tears no matter how much time is left to endure.
This is the fulfillment of manhood, youth and health.
And gratitude and in and out.
Perhaps seeing his struggle with letting go of one thing and another, she facilitates comfort further with casual aplomb, as some women can do when making a man feel welcome. Easing him over and rolling on top she towers overhead like a giant in the land of the little people. Dominated and eagerly subservient, he caresses as she rules the summit. No tensing or flinching here, she reaches the peak in loping strides, laughing or crying, he can’t tell which, though he’s fairly certain that she’s pleased with the pace he’s been able to maintain, as she’d fervently hoped he would do and likely believed that he would but a woman never knows with a man so severely tested and so recently drunk but nonetheless so firmly rooted in the age of viability; not even forty, and he can still take a punch.
She rolls again till he’s on top, where he casually catches up, strolling over the line like an urban gentleman out for a promenade. Then she surely cries. He doesn’t ask why she’s crying; some women do at odd times. He caresses her face and says, “Thank you, Here... uh... Herea...”
“Hereata.”
“Yes. Hereata. Thank you for your help. I won’t forget you.”
“Forget me?” She sniffles and wipes her nose. “You just met me. How can you forget me already, after what I have shown you? Me. You never met anybody like me.”
“No, I haven’t. You’re right. I only...”
“Sh... I know.” And she pulls him near in a soft embrace that makes him shudder and recoil with the old claustrophobia brought on by clinging women and breaking seas, till he stops resisting and eases in to home-sweet-home in a sensation unique to his experience among women.
Then she finds his lips for a sweet goodnight kiss, their first.