Shannon is pretending to listen. Her mind is fixed on Joe and whether she can lead him down the beach and whether the other surfers would miss them for just the few minutes she knows it would take.
“
Can we walk on the beach after dinner?” a surfer asks Salvaro.
“
Is maybe not the best idea,” Salvaro says. “Not after dark. Is romantic yes. But maybe there are people there or dogs there that would ruin your vacation...”
Each surfer is left to imagine what would happen down the dark beach at night in Costa Rica. Some imagine rough men looking to prey on tourists, some imagine crocodiles or wild dogs or large snakes. Their imagination provides enough of an excuse to stifle the desire to walk on the beach at night, a thing that every visitor to the Outer Banks of North Carolina has done.
Most of the surfers have a beer with dinner, but only one has two, and thus the surfers are done and ready to return to the camp as soon as the dishes are cleared. Salvaro settles up with the restaurant and shepherds his charges to the van. Some of the surfers are beginning to wonder why they are never left alone, why Salvaro always arranges for someone to be with them. Some decide that he just wants to make sure that they have help wherever they are. Others suspect that there may be an underside to this Pacific coast of Costa Rica that is less idyllic and that he is trying to prevent them from seeing, or experiencing, or, maybe more accurately, from being caught up in.
On the drive back Shannon again lets her hand drift to Joe’s thigh, and then higher. They are in the back seat of the dark van. She gently traces his dick with her finger. He forces himself to control his breathing and his voice, to not writhe and moan. The other surfers are talking while Salvaro concentrates on the road. It is only two lanes and it is completely dark. There are very few street lamps and no reflectors embedded in the middle, where there would be yellow lines in America but where there are none in Costa Rica. There are no reflectors on the side of the road, and no warnings about every sharp curve or every steep hill, of which they are dozens between Jaco and Hermosa. There is nothing to see out the windows of the van. A steep hill rising into the rain forest is on the land side and the Pacific is on the ocean side. With the cloud cover there is no moon.
“
Someone dies every day on this road,” Salvaro tells them. Perhaps warning them about trying to drive it themselves, or riding a bicycle, or walking on this road. Or perhaps warning them about taking a taxi from place to place.
Joe is forced to remove Shannon’s finger from his pants. He holds her hand in his through the rest of the drive, and while Salvaro grinds the van up the hill. All the surfers decide to exit and walk down the hill again. Once again Shannon decides to “take in the view” from Joe’s balcony. Once again the surfers politely accept that Shannon is not returning directly to her own bungalow. It is Costa Rica. One of the men lingers for a few moments with one of the women at her bungalow. He will enter neither it nor her this night, but he will every other night for the rest of their time together here. It is Costa Rica and there has been surfing at dawn and fresh fruit and hints of danger from the ocean, and the road, and the jungle. It is intoxicating and consuming. With the carnal lust that is radiating from Joe and Shannon, the other surfers, if they weren’t already, become fixated on sex.
Joe
We are barely in the door with the drape pulled behind us before she is kissing me and running her hands up and down my back, lingering on my ass, and reaching in front to touch me again.
She pushes me back to the bed and in an instant she has shed her short shorts and loose top. She is wearing no underwear and is naked astride me. Leaning forward, kissing me on the mouth, on the neck, letting her breasts dangle in front of me, and rub against me.
She slides down, undoes my pants, and pulls them off me.
She takes me in her mouth and I cannot think I can only give in. She keeps me in her mouth and works me with her hand and I feel like a creature from the jungle, a crazed animal that is only lust and sex and fresh and now. I scream and writhe and am totally out of control like some wild animal in the jungle. She keeps me in her mouth and keeps working me with her hand until I come in shrieking agony and ecstasy that goes on and on.
Nearly comatose I finally sink into the bed.
She leaves my bed, replaces her clothes, then leans over to kiss me on the forehead.
“
Don’t be late for the surfing van,” she says.
“
You’re leaving?” I manage.
“
I need to sleep,” she says. And with that she is out the door and headed down the hill.
Too tired, too sated, too shocked, I do not go after her.
I somehow feel dismissed. Used and dismissed. But how is it that I can feel used when she has just given me this gift. Confused I quickly descend into sleep.
Shannon
I can still taste him in my mouth as I pick my way down the hill. I see the lights on in the bungalows as I make my way lower and lower. My bungalow is at the bottom of the hill, closest to the main house, where Salvaro lives with his girlfriend or wife. Her status is unclear.
I arrive at my bungalow and turn to survey the scene before going in to sleep. They have pulled a chain across the entrance to the grounds from the dirt road that runs alongside the property. There is a man on the front porch of the main house. He is a rough looking man, a Costa Rican different from the others. Later I will learn that he is Nicaraguan. His purpose, I realize, is to sit up all night and make sure that no-one and no thing intrudes on this little magical piece of paradise. If it were an island, visitor after visitor would refer to this place as Fantasy Island. The rough looking man would belong to one of the unexpected outcomes that Ricardo Montalban always seemed to fashion on Fantasy Island.
I am sure that if Joe is dreaming, he is dreaming about me. About being inside me, and about what I have just done. I didn’t know it would happen that quickly. But in a way I am glad. I need to sleep, and I am unsure whether I would have survived another fuck. I am close to completely losing myself, to once again believing that I am in love with him. I cannot confuse love and fucking. I love to fuck him. But that isn’t love.
What do I know of love? My marriage is over. I have assumed, and believed for so long that all the fault lay with my ex. But I never gave myself to my ex the way that I have given myself to Joe. I never gave myself over completely to anything, like traveling to surf or like traveling to fuck like I have to Joe. I suspect that it might have made a difference. That it might have made Rick different, or at least different with me.
I go into my bungalow, undress to sleep naked, and am quickly asleep.
In my sleeping dreams Joe comes to me, as does the driver, and as does my ex. He is younger, fitter, smiling and happy the way he was when I met him. Dream Joe and the dream driver come instantly to my bed, giving me in my sleep what I did not take after dinner. My dream ex stands by the door watching, wondering who this woman is. I look at him in my dream while the dream driver is inside me and on top of me.
The words ‘I’m sorry’ briefly cross my mind, and then are gone as a crashing orgasm washes over me and takes the dream driver over the edge and into his own release. I am alone the rest of the night, with the dream Joe and the dream driver satisfied and gone, and with the bewildered dream ex wandering somewhere on the grounds wondering what he could have done differently to have had me like this, to have had this version of me.
Shannon and Joe
The week passes in a repeating pattern of surfing, fresh food, spice laden humidity, and copious copulating interrupted only by one ‘rest day’ spent in a park in the National Forest. A local guide helps the surfers discover the rain forest and its plants, molds, frogs, monkeys, snakes, trees, flowers, ants, birds, lizards, and fish, all on a scale undreamt of by the gringos. Brilliant yellow grasshoppers the size of mice, mice the size of rats, rats the size of ground hogs, and lizards the size of cats and dogs. There is nothing about the rain forest that can be related to anything in the States.
Surfers are added and subtracted from the camp on an irregular basis as different visitors fly in and out on different schedules.
Joe is scheduled to leave the day before Shannon. He considers changing his plans to stay the extra day, to fly back on the same day as her, on the same flight. But he changes his mind, having received no signal from Shannon that she wants him to change. She has mentioned that she is looking forward to seeing Costa Rica during the daylight for one day. They have spent every waking moment either surfing or sexing.
He accepts her statement. Reminds himself of the agreement he made before. Reminds himself that loving her will be a Tale of Four Cities and will most certainly be the best of times, the worst of times, the most complete of times, and the most empty of times. That days together will be filled with Technicolor radiance and that days apart will be monochromatic voids filled with deathly silence and longing and looking at the calendar to figure out the next day he can write, and the next day when he will see her. His leaving first or her leaving first makes no difference in the larger scheme of the agreement they have made, of the bargain they have struck to live together the days they have together, and to live apart the days they are apart.
Shannon
Joe is leaving tomorrow. He is packing his things now, before dinner. I will be here without him an extra day. I will surf and I will explore. I am a geologist, I do like to learn things. There are interesting rocks and formations here.
To his credit he has not asked me to leave early, and he has not asked whether he can stay later. He is free to do what he wants. I will tell him neither yes nor no if he asks to stay. I will say no if he asks me to leave early, to leave with him. But I will tell him that when he comes and goes is up to him. I am not his schedule maker, I am not his wife or secretary or business partner. I am his lover.
He is in love with me. There is no doubt about that. He is completely besotted. As moonstruck as a man can be. Or as pussy-struck. I don’t care. I have had a great week and am ready to return to work, to my family, to my Ohio, after spending a day here alone. I need a frame of reference of what this place can be without him. He has been good for me. I think this week each spring will be good for me. I will make a special container for my Costa Rica things. Things that will be worn here and nowhere else. Things I would not even consider wearing anywhere else.
I see Joe coming down the hill in the last of the daylight. It is nearly time for dinner, and then we will have one last time together after dinner. One last time until July, or maybe even until October. With my family at the beach house there may not be an opportunity. I will not disrupt my July with my family to accommodate sex with Joe. No matter how incredible and free and away it makes me feel. It is just sex, and they are my family. Rick never got that.
Wait. Maybe this week I have seen something. Maybe he did get it, in his own way. Maybe I am displacing my rigidity about him, my assumption that no-one could understand me onto him. Damn him. I do not want to think about him anymore. Not in this place, not with my lover approaching and fresh food waiting and not with one last night before Joe is gone and I am alone here. Damn it.
“
You look lovely,” Joe says.
“
Thank you,” I answer. I do not like compliments. I know I am not lovely. I know that I am short and plain with no figure and with the hairs that are not grey turning auburn in the equatorial sun and with lines that are deepening from squinting in that same equatorial sun. I wish he would not compliment me.
“
I think we’re going back to the beachfront restaurant in Hermosa,” Joe says.
It is small talk. Talk to fill space and time with words about nothing. Talk that is not needed. I do not need this talk. I don’t need those spaces filled. I like those spaces the way they are, as spaces. I do not need human intrusions on those spaces.
I am happy that I will have my day alone here. I am happy that I have not brought Joe to my bungalow, or to my cottage, and especially to my new home in the Coast Guard station. Not even my sister visits my cottage. It is my place, where I am alone, and where I am happy, and where empty spaces remain empty and pure and spaces. If all the spaces were filled there would be no place to move, no time to think. There would be only filler and the chaos of organization of things that should never have been accumulated in the first place.
Once again I place my hand on Joe’s thigh in the back of the van. It is torture for him. I know it. He comes so quickly after dinner when I practically rape him with my mouth after we return. After dinner I control him. I dictate what we do and when he will come. During the day I give in to this place and this time and to him. We are together and surrendered and given up to the lust and sex and fucking. But after dinner I have asserted myself. I have not surrendered. I have made him surrender. I don’t think he has noticed, I don’t think he cares. What man would notice with all his blood in his dick and none left for his brain? No he would not notice what I am doing.