Greetings from the Vodka Sea (4 page)

The coroner says most people wait until the spring to kill themselves. Death in general is more abundant in the spring; hospitals and old folks' homes routinely report the highest number of deaths in March and April. The coroner sees this in a positive light, and I agree: people hold on to life for as long as they can. Surviving one more winter is, if not a small victory over death, at least a slap in death's face. I've come to think of you as this kind of person, the kind who plans to make it through one more winter. I think you'd like the coroner. In a lot of ways, he's similar to you. Stoic, that's the word. Stoic, but in the good sense. Not like an institution, but stoic like a well-fed farm animal.

I wanted to tell how I came to collect suicide notes, but it's not a very interesting story. A fluke, more or less. I chanced upon a note. I must confess that I was very apprehensive about telling you anything at all, especially at this time. But in a relationship like ours, we should be able to tell each other our deepest secrets as easily as we say “I love you.”

I wanted very much for this to be about someone else, but it's about you.

I've read your note. I was going to put it in my collection, but the coroner's offered me a handsome sum for it, and, at this point in our relationship, I think I should accept his generous offer.

Greetings From the Vodka Sea

T
hey'd heard rumours of marauders sweeping down from the hills to rob tourists and worse, but the sun, the salt air and the stillness of the Vodka Sea immediately put their minds at ease. The hotel, the Crown, was even better than the brochure promised, with the recent addition of two huge kidney-shaped pools linked by a swim-up bar nestled in the plaster grotto. The bar was called the Queen of Hearts, and the heart motif was echoed in everything from the heart-shaped stools rising out of the warm salty pool water and the heart-shaped water-proof doilies (what was the point of those?) down to the cupid cherry skewers and the complimentary heart-shaped chocolate mints, wrapped in red or silver foil, that accompanied the bill. The romance of the place was breathtaking, and the two of them, Dr. and Mrs. Hammond, let themselves be drawn into it. On the first night the normally shy and reticent Monica unselfconsciously gratified her new husband manually in the shadowed hot tub (oddly spleen-shaped) that bordered the grotto, even though they ran the risk of being caught (slight, given the lateness of the hour and Bruce's unmoving, impeccable silence that gave nothing away) or at least discreetly witnessed from a distance. In fact, the thought that they might be being watched (discreetly, that is, from a distance) heightened the experience for both of them. They relaxed and snuggled in the aftermath of Monica's handiwork and tried not to think of the bubbling unhygienic residue of the hundreds or thousands of similarly indiscreet couples who'd honeymooned before them. As they watched the stars vying for attention in the incalculable distance, they could hear the Vodka Sea caressing the shore. It was, they would agree later, the happiest moment in their lives.

That first morning they walked to the sea. It wasn't far, just past the mango grove (Bruce was quite certain that mangos were not native to this part of the world) at the far end of the grounds beyond the pools and tennis courts. One could cut through the grove (although they had been warned to watch for a small green snake, a kind of viper that could deliver a nasty and mildly toxic bite), or one could take the asphalt laneway that wound along the outside of the grove. That first morning they took the laneway; however, as time and their sense of London slipped past, they favoured the shortcut more and more.

The beach itself was splendid. Perfect round beads of pinkish-white sand, the colour of Monica's skin, tickled and massaged their bare feet. No sharp stones or rubbish or aluminum flip tops or bits of broken glass, so unlike Bristol's shaggy shores or those impossibly filthy beaches on the continent. Just warm, gentle beads. Monica said she'd love to lie in those beads fully naked, allowing the sand to surround her and warm her every cranny. Bruce squeezed her shoulder, and she understood that he would take her right then and there on the warm soft sand, if it weren't for that couple with two small children, on holiday from America, enjoying their morning coffee. Monica walked to the shore and put her pink toe in the water. It was colder that she imagined, not that it was cold, in fact it was probably just a few degrees below body temperature, it's just that she'd imagined it would be warmer. She breathed deeply. The smell of salty air (with a slight tinge, a wisp, of vodka) filled her lungs and invigorated her.

“Do you think it's safe to swim?”

Bruce was way ahead of her.

“Bathing is permitted and encouraged,”
he read from the full-colour brochure.
“The salt density is five times greater than that of the Atlantic Ocean. No one has ever drowned in the Vodka Sea.”

Monica nudged out another couple of inches.

“I wonder, are there fish in it, then?”

Bruce plunged into the brochure. “I'd suspect not. The alcohol combined with the salinity — well, bugger me.
The Vodka Sea supports several unique species of aquatic plants and a high concentration of free-floating crustaceans, close relatives of the brine shrimp. These are the single food source of the Bolen's dwarf whale. No bigger than a carp, this Lilliputian leviathan is the largest inhabitant of the Vodka Sea
.”

There was a picture of the whale in the bottom left corner of the brochure, a cartoonish drawing of a miniature blue whale breaching, curls of water rolling from its blowhole. At the top of the spout tumbled smiling shrimp sporting top hats. Bruce scanned the horizon.

“What are you looking for, love?”

“Whales, Peachtree,” he said.

She hugged herself, almost blushing. “Miniature whales! Isn't this absolutely the most romantic place on earth?” She turned back and smiled at Bruce and he reciprocated. And at that very moment a tiny whale surfaced not ten feet from them and fired a handful of mist into the air before surrendering to the sea again.

. . .

McGuffan told them all about the Vodka Sea over dinner that night.

“The whole thing sits on a kind of peat bog,” McGuffan explained. “Layer upon layer of castings and roots that have decayed and built up since time began.”

Monica and Bruce carefully forked their pâté and sweet-breads — they hadn't the courage to try the whale brochettes — and hung on McGuffan's every word.

“At one point, it all lay underground in a subterranean cavern, isn't that what the tour guide said, Alice?” Mrs. McGuffan, who was midway through a long sip of claret, snuffed her agreement. “The whole thing acted like a natural still — the minerals in the rocks, the vegetative bog, the salt water, all compressed and contained for millennia — until one day the earth above collapsed, and the Vodka Sea was left exposed to the world. It's a geological wonder but not as uncommon as one might think, what with the Argentine Gin Flats and what-not.” It was McGuffan's turn to test the claret. A rather portly Aussie who'd made his fortune in industrial plastics and, more recently, lost half his nose to skin cancer, McGuffan and his wife had been coming to the Vodka Sea for a decade.

“The first time we came it was a collection of rustic cabins, and that's being generous,” Alice was saying as the waiter served their entrées.

“The room had snakes and these giant blue spiders. Remember those, love?”

McGuffan nodded. “You don't see the spiders anymore. I wonder what happened to them.”

“Yes.”

“They were attractive in their way. A most wonderful blue hue, right, love?”

“Yes. Deadly.”

“Deadly's overstating it, love. Paralyzing. Coma-inducing. But you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who'd actually died . . .” McGuffan's voice faded into another glass of claret. He smacked his lips and dove into his whale fillet. Monica and Bruce looked meekly at their mutton and new potatoes in a light grape-shrimp coulis.

“Fancy a bite?” McGuffan offered a forkful of whale to Bruce. “It tastes just like chicken, only saltier, with a hint of — what's that flavour, love?”

“Vodka, dear. I believe it has a hint of vodka.”

. . .

The Vodka Sea hadn't been their first choice. Spain. Spain is what Monica's parents decided, and her sister and Anthony, Bruce's best man, concurred. But Spain seemed so . . .
Spanish
, so
done before
. And besides, the spicy food didn't sit at all well with either of them. France, of course, and Italy were options, but didn't everybody who didn't go to Spain go to France or Italy? Mrs. Perkins, across the hall, had been to Berlin on her honeymoon, but that was eons ago and her husband was, after all, a survivor of Dresden. Who goes to Germany for their honeymoon? You might as well go to Iceland. They asked Barbara to find them something different, something completely off the map. It would be their only holiday for quite some time; they wanted to make it memorable. Barbara looked at them for a whole minute before speaking. She was a handsome woman, middle-aged, in a crisp grey dress boldly bordered by a pearl choker. She looked more like a head-mistress than a travel agent. “I've got something perfect, I think.”

Bruce and Monica had to lean forward to hear her. Barbara got up and closed her office door, then chose the yellow key from a small coffee cup, souvenir of Barbados, at the side of her desk. She unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out a single file folder. She removed a brochure and held it out for Bruce and Monica, without actually letting go.

“Have a look at this,” she near-whispered. “But I must ask you to keep it to yourselves.” Bruce and Monica looked at each other, and on her signal, he took the brochure. “The Vodka Sea isn't for everyone, and we want to keep it that way.”

Louise was not impressed. Monica told her about the Vodka Sea (she hadn't meant to, it just sort of slipped out, it's hard to keep secrets from your sister) and showed her the brochure. But Louise could not understand. “Why go someplace no one's ever heard of? Why take the chance?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Is this one of his money things?” It was a common theme in her family, Bruce's thriftiness. “It must be the Scot in him,” her father would say, glad, for once, to see another familial male taking the heat.

“This isn't about money, Wheeze. It's the perfect place for us. It's so unknown.”

“Everything's unknown until you get to know it.” She wore an earnest smile with her blue and green pantsuit. She looked more like a travel agent than a sister.

“That's deep. Have you been listening to Tracy Chapman, then?”

Louise rolled her eyes and laughed. “Am I being a bitch?”

“You most certainly are, sister. I mean, it's
our
honeymoon . . .”

And that's when the waterworks started. The whole pressure of the wedding hit Monica like a monsoon, and large pituitary-gland-shaped tears tumbled down her cheeks. Louise reached out and hugged her and rocked her back and forth and understood completely, like no man, no husband, ever could, the emotional maelstrom swirling inside her little sister's heart. “There, there, Monkey. It'll be all right. Everything will be fine. He's a fine man. A fine, good man.”

Things were no easier on Bruce. Dr. Welsh, head of OBGYN, offered his villa (in Spain, no less) free of charge and rather angrily rebuked his young protégé for turning it down.

“You shan't want to go portside in Chocko with no bullets in your backpack,” he said, or words to that effect; in moments of high emotion, Dr. Welsh often reverted to an incomprehensible public school patois. Bruce calmly held his ground (the cool head went a long way toward explaining his meteoric rise through the hospital hierarchy: thirty-two and already Senior Fellow) and said both Monica and he were quite comfortable with their choice of venue. Dr. Welsh, who was one for the parry but not the thrust, spent the week lunching on his own and didn't entirely return to form until after Bruce had made him a present of Wagner's complete Ring cycle on CD.

It was only through such machinations and breakdowns that Bruce and Monica were able to go to the Vodka Sea with more or less everyone's approval (his mother was a problem, but that went without saying). Dr. Welsh even called up and made sure there were roses and champagne waiting in the room for them when they arrived.

. . .

McGuffan had cautioned against drinking the water. Not that there was anything wrong with it, per se. It was just the thirst it caused. The salt, he supposed, combined with the vodka. You could drink and drink and drink, he said, and never be quite satisfied. But Monica wanted to taste it just the same. Their second day on the beach, and already they were feeling more daring. They'd woken up at sunrise with the vipers and birds and invisible blue spiders and made love on the bed (and loveseat and floor) without bothering to shut the blinds. It was early, she said, setting her tongue on the skyline of his belly. No one was up to see, and damn them if they did. She took him in her mouth (which silenced the last of Bruce's half-hearted concerns) and led him from bed to loveseat to floor to the kitchenette (Bruce resisted the passing urge to put the clean cutlery away in the drawer) and back to bed again before bringing him to what just might have been the loudest single orgasm in English history. He looked at her afterwards rather sheepishly, which is when Monica suggested they go down to the sea, in part so he could escape his ear-shattering embarrassment but mostly because
she wanted to
.

The sea, smoother than a freshly shaved patient, beckoned to Monica. They'd already been through the question of the tides. Monica believed that the sea had its moods, its highs and lows, its empathy with the moon. Bruce did not. He wasn't forceful or even particularly rude, just dismissive in that matter-of-fact way he had. No. The Vodka Sea was not tidal. Entirely landlocked, no bigger than a dozen of your smaller football stadiums, Stamford Bridge, say, or Upton, pushed together — it didn't seem practical that the moon would have a discernable effect. They'd asked around, but no one had a definitive answer. McGuffan wasn't sure, and Ricki, the treacly hotel manager, had never been asked before. Even the brochure was silent on the matter, which rendered it, to Bruce's mind, a non-issue. But before entering the morning sea, Monica mentioned the idea of tides again, perhaps because she believed in them, or perhaps, and she was surprised to find herself even thinking this, because she wanted to get a rise out of her newly minted spouse. He could be so flat, so constant, so damned reassuring (and again, she only became aware of these feelings at that moment, as she stepped into the Vodka Sea, the taste of him still in her mouth, the unwashed morning smell of him on her hands and face).