An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (21 page)

He lay
there for a long time. The headache only grew sharper and his tongue, now
swollen and hairy inside his mouth, commandeered his thoughts once he noticed its
state. With willpower alone, he pushed himself into a seated position, wincing
as an invisible pick plunged through his skull and out his left eye. He
remembered enough to focus his energy on standing up and getting into the
bathroom where water and ibuprofen awaited him. His legs had fallen asleep
while he lay on the floor and prickles danced up and down his calves and out
his toes as he hobbled across the room.

Every
act of getting ready took much longer than it should have, but by dinnertime
John had managed to shower, shave, and dress in clean clothes. He still felt
tired, but his headache no longer plagued him and the gallon of water that he’d
ingested one cup at a time had returned his tissues to their normal fullness. A
residue clung to his tongue even though he’d brushed it with toothpaste.

He
walked to Señorita’s and asked for a table in the corner away from James, the
ever-present double of Ernest Hemingway that he’d seen during his first stay on
Culebra. James would happily buy him a hair of the dog, but John didn’t feel
like listening to his exploits or his complaints this evening. When Janelle
came to take his order, she clucked and grasped his chin in her free hand to
tilt his face toward the light.

“Sweetie!
You look like someone mugged you! Are you all right?”

John
shrugged and pulled away. “Just too much to drink, Janelle. I’ll be fine
tomorrow.”

“I’ll
bring you a club soda with lemon. Order something healthy, too. No fries,
hear?”

John
sank back into his chair after Janelle brought him his drink and fussed over
him. He kept his eyes on the tiled tabletop, but there was no one around to
meet his gaze. Although the weekend beachgoers arrived on the ferry this
morning, Playa Flamenco absorbed their numbers and town remained quiet. Very
few tourists came to Culebra during the summer—that hot, dry hurricane
season—and no one followed John into Señorita’s for the next half an hour.
After she delivered his food, Janelle retreated to a barstool next to James and
across from Tim, the bartender, and the three of them gossiped in the otherwise
empty restaurant. John cut up his fish and lifted food into his mouth, but
every bite tasted like sawdust.

He heard
laughter near the entranceway just as he finished eating as much of his dinner
as he could swallow. Looking, he caught sight of Raimunda. Wearing a tight
t-shirt and blue jeans, she stood gazing up at Pablo, whose right arm curled
around her waist. So. She was a free agent, but he knew that, didn’t he? Maybe
he should renew their relationship. Same terms as before, even if he didn’t
have a girlfriend anymore. He didn’t know how he felt about Zoë. Or Tamarind.
He did know how he felt about Raimunda. It was lust, plain and simple. And he
deserved the funk that swallowed him every time it came over him. John pushed
his plate away from him without taking his eyes from her and put his feet up on
the seat of the chair opposite him. When Janelle came to collect the plate, he
put his hand on her wrist and ordered a Medalla.

“If you
say so, honey,” she said, but he only half heard.

John
watched Raimunda as he sipped his beer. She never turned to look at him but
kept her attention on Pablo and the bottle of beer Janelle brought her. When
Pablo left Raimunda to head to the bathroom, John tipped his beer up and
drained it before pushing his chair back with a loud squeak. At the sound,
Raimunda turned to watch him, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“
Hola,
gringo
.”

“
Buenas
noches
.” He sat down in an empty chair. “I came to steal you away from
Pablo.”

She
smirked and lifted her beer to her mouth. John watched her throat pulse as she
swallowed. Above the collar of the t-shirt, a small shell pendant rested in the
hollow at the base of her throat. She touched the tip of her tongue to her
upper lip as she set the bottle down in front of her.

“Perhaps
I don’t wish to be stolen away,
mi amigo
.”

John
leaned forward and traced the inside of her upper arm with his index finger.
“Perhaps I don’t care what you want,” he said into her ear.

Raimunda
laughed and tossed her hair out of her face. “Oh, I think you care what I want
all right.”

John
picked up her hand from where it rested on the table and pulled it into his
lap. “I know what you want.”

“John?
Qué
pasa
?” Pablo materialized not far from them.

Raimunda
slid her hand up and around her beer bottle before Pablo reached the table.
John wondered if Pablo had seen.

“Not
much,
amigo
. Just saying hello to Raimunda.”

“John
and I are old friends,” she said as Pablo sat down. John saw her hand disappear
under the table and he imagined it on Pablo’s thigh. From the look on Pablo’s
face, he’d guessed right.

“Well,
it was good to see you two, but I’ll leave you alone to enjoy your dinner.”
John stood.

Pablo,
whose eyes had fastened on Raimunda’s ripe mouth, barely nodded. “
Hasta la
vista
, John.”

John
walked around Dewey for the next hour, passing by Señorita’s entrance a dozen
times before Pablo and Raimunda finally left together. He watched Pablo weave
down the sidewalk north toward his apartment. Raimunda propped him up as he
chattered incomprehensibly next to her; she intermittently uttered soothing
sounds in response to his commentary. After they’d gone fifty yards, John
followed them. When they reached Pablo’s apartment, Raimunda folded her arms
and leaned against the wall of the building while Pablo tried to insert his key
into the deadbolt. John waited until he’d caught her eye and pointed to Pablo,
then shook his head and pointed to himself. Raimunda grinned and took Pablo’s
arm. Waving to John over her shoulder, she took the key from Pablo and unlocked
the door. Pablo nearly fell into the building as she swung the door open and
away from him.

John
waited, his lips compressed. After only a few minutes, Raimunda reappeared in
the doorway—alone. She scanned the far sidewalk and when her eyes met John’s,
she smiled and leaned again, this time onto the doorframe. John strode toward
her; when he reached her, he gripped her elbows.

“Pablo
can’t hold his beer, can he?”

She shrugged.
“He’s sitting on his sofa muttering in front of his TV. Good thing he’s got a
satellite dish.”

“Let’s
go find out if I know what you want.”

Raimunda
rose up on her toes and kissed him, hard. “I want exactly what you want,
gringo
.”

She
threaded her fingers through his and together they walked toward Posada La
Diosa and his room there.

Wet sand clung to John’s bare feet
as he strolled along the strip
of Isla Verde beach owned by the Ritz-Carlton’s San Juan Hotel.  He heard
dozens of voices from other conference attendees as they spilled through the
hotel’s doors to the beachfront, chattering without seeing the beauty in front
of them. He’d already presented the paper that he’d written about the
difficulties in storing and accessing large amounts of digital video while
onboard a marine research ship. He’d escaped the ongoing presentations and
milling graduate students as soon as the last questioner scurried out of his
particular conference room on the way to another talk. Somewhere inside, his
advisor deftly worked his industry contacts, always looking for a way to turn a
spark of interest into funding.

“Hey,
man, you look like you should be combing the beach for loose change, the way
you’ve got your pants rolled up like that,” said a voice several feet behind
him.

John
whirled. His friend Stefan stood at the edge of the manicured lawn holding a
wineglass and a notepad.

“And you
look like Eddie Murphy in
Beverly Hills Cop
when he lied his way into
the Beverly Hills Hotel. You ever think maybe a t-shirt and blue jeans weren’t
the best things to wear to the Ritz?” John walked over to where Stefan stood.
“Have they put out lunch yet?”

Stefan
nodded and raised the wineglass to his mouth. “The wine’s actually pretty
crappy. But I doubt too many of the others will notice. They’re too wrapped up
in debating optimal bit rates and lossless compression. They don’t have our
refined sensitivities.”

“We’ll
just have to make do with the hotel buffet for lunch, but tonight I’ll take you
across the street to this Cuban place I know,
Metropole
. They have the
best
moros y cristianos
in Puerto Rico. Their
pastelitos
are also
very tasty. I eat there about once a week now.”

They
turned and made their way toward the Vista Mar Terrace where the largest number
of graduate students, faculty members, and industry researchers now congregated
around open bars and tables laden with crudités, cheese and crackers, and fresh
fruit. When they’d managed to fill their small plates and gotten full glasses
of wine, they positioned themselves in a corner furthest from the building and
chatted between bites.

“So I
met Elí Arroyo López from Polytech last night at the reception. He’s very
excited to have an ‘exchange’ student as he puts it for the summer. He told me he’s
been working for some time to create a real department instead of offering a
single EE degree.”

John
popped a water cracker laden with Brie into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.
“Elí’s a good guy with a lot of ambitions for his beloved PUPR. Who knows?
Maybe he’s prescient about the need for high-tech degrees in Puerto Rico. A lot
of people are talking about India these days, but Elí thinks there’s a large
pool of talent closer to home.”

“You
getting a lot of work done here? I read your paper in the proceedings and it
looks like you might have yourself a thesis topic percolating in there.”

“Actually,
I’ve been working on another research paper for the Video IR Symposium in
October. It’s amazing how much work you can get done when you don’t really know
anyone.”

“No? I
thought maybe there were one or two women in this tropical paradise.”

John
shrugged and looked down at his plate. “I’ve been spending weekends on Culebra
where I have some friends. Some of them happen to be women.”

“That
explains why Zoë’s been a regular storm cloud around the CS department. You two
still together?”

“No.”
John didn’t elaborate.

“Ah.
Well, no wonder you’re in no hurry to get back to Pittsburgh.” Stefan grinned,
his Cheshire-cat grin. It irritated John. “Let me know if you need a place to
stay when you get back.”

“I’m in
no hurry to get back to Pittsburgh because I needed a break, Stefan.” John set
his empty wineglass down on the terrace wall a little harder than he intended.
A passing waiter glared at him as he rescued it. “My time away from CMU hasn’t
been wasted. I’ve seen endangered leatherback turtles struggle onto dark
beaches where they exhaust themselves digging pits for their eggs, which they
leave, trusting that the next generation will survive the greediness and
stupidity of people. I’ve also spent a lot of time teaching an illiterate woman
how to read. Compared to those two activities, worrying about which RAID scheme
works best for video storage seems a tad inconsequential.”

“So
what’s the answer then? Chuck it all and live on a Caribbean island?”

John
looked out over the horizon. “If I figure out a way to do it, I just might.”

Later
that night, John left the window looking out on La Isla Verde open. The moon
illuminated his suite so well that he found himself unable to sleep until long
after he lay down on the Egyptian cotton sheets. He slept without knowing he
slept, or so he came to believe. In the vivid light, he saw Tamarind standing
framed in the window. She wore the blue batik dress that she’d worn the night
that they went dancing and even in the shadows around her head he could see the
hue of her eyes. Pearls studded her hair, which flowed as smooth as water
around her head; abalone and obsidian ornaments dangled from her ears and neck.
She studied his face without smiling, but her eyes hinted at mirth. After a
moment, she hummed and clicked until John lost the dream and sank into sleep.

***

Ana trod
barefoot over the dusty path toward Playa Tamarindo, her calloused feet
insensitive to the hard stones and uneven ground. The dry heat burned her lungs
as it had done for more years than she cared to remember, but she knew that she
had long passed the point where she could choose a different home, a better
life. Above her, her favorite laughing gull hovered protectively and
occasionally dropped down to her shoulder and chuckled reprovingly in her ear.

She
stopped just as the path began to descend again toward the shore and peered
down through the opening in the thorny scrub ahead of her to Tamarind’s
scraggly-haired silhouette embossed against the night sky. Around the
motionless form emanated an aura like a grease slick on wet pavement. Seeing
it, Ana’s breath quickened and she bit her lower lip. Half the rainy season had
already passed and still the mermaid pined for the weak, lustful man that she’d
saved from a watery death. Ana could no longer wait for Tamarind to abandon her
mad hope for something more to happen with John. She must entice her with a
powerful alternative.