Greetings from the Vodka Sea (5 page)

“It's definitely tidal. You can see the line where it came up to.”

Bruce looked. In truth, there was nothing there.

“It is rather unlikely, Peachtree. But maybe you're right.”

Monica took another step. The water did not cover her ankle.

“I wonder how deep it gets.”

Bruce shrugged. “The manager said it doesn't go much deeper than ten feet.”

“That was McGuffan.”

“I think it was the manager, dear.”

“I'm sure it was McGuffan. He said so only last night.”

“Perhaps it was both, then. It's hardly worth arguing over.”

“I'm not arguing.”

Bruce thought to say something, then shut his mouth, which annoyed Monica more than just about anything he could have said. She wanted to be mad, but those eyes, those eyes of his, caught her and lifted her up. It was the eyes, the eyes that had first attracted her. Bruce was really not her type. Far too angular, too milky, too British. Monica liked men with a dash of pigment in their skin, a hint of something other than public schools and holiday motor trips south and skin that burnt and peeled at the mere memory of sun. When he'd first asked her out (she was Anthony's sister's boyfriend's neighbour; it was a much-brokered deal) her inclination was to say no, doctor, as she told her sister, or not. But then she caught a flash of those eyes. Very dark, a black, black chestnut, almost evil, somehow rather American. She liked that. She liked those eyes. And when he fixed them on her with a sexual confidence that surprised her, she said yes. Their first date was antiseptic: luncheon (that's the word he used) in the hospital cafeteria (an emergency compromise), Bruce on his cell the entire time, shards of perfunctory conversation. She'd figured that was that. But at the end he apologized and asked for a chance to make things right. Part of her wanted to take a pass — she was definitely the kind of girl who could turn a man down — but those eyes, those eyes engulfed her, and she granted him his second chance. Was he conscious of the power of those eyes? Did he (an only child, whose mother was, in the most charitable term, difficult) understand English women so completely, understand their need to find a sliver of darkness beneath the facade? Or was he simply a sexual savant, a self-absorbed, hypercritical, handsome head in a jar? He'd shown his passion: on their second date, an Irish concert and then the pub, he'd kissed her at just the right moment in just the right way with just the right amount of force and just the right amount of discretion. It was not the chaste kiss of a woman's romance (she was far from virginal, after all, but not too far), and she and he allowed their hips to slide together, and he pushed with little force on the small of her back, drawing her in even closer, and she allowed herself to press into him and felt how big he'd already become and looked again into his dark, dark eyes, into nothing but more darkness. And that's how love was born.

Monica waded out several feet, until the water snuggled her hips. She wanted to wash her face, get the smell of him off her; she wanted to take a drink, get the taste of him out of her mouth. She bent down and cupped her hand, but as she raised the water to her face, a dwarf whale surfaced and spouted inches from her head. Monica jumped back, bringing her hand across her chest. And then she laughed. She threw her head back and brayed in delight.

“It startled me!” she cried, when she'd caught her breath. “Aren't they just the cutest . . .” And she dove in head first, quickly bobbing to the surface and rolling to her back. “It's like flying! You float, you float without the slightest effort.”

“It's the salinity,” Bruce said, but what he meant to say was that Monica had never looked more beautiful to him than she did at that moment; he had never been more in love. That's when she did it. She turned her head and drew a mouthful of water, then put her head back and spouted a mist of vodka water into the air.

“Thar she blows!” he called, as playfully as possible, resisting the urge to caution her against drinking the water. Monica turned her head again and took another draw, not as long as the first. She seemed to be swallowing this one, closing her eyes as she did. She scrunched her face.

“Yuck. That's awful.”

“Remember McGuffan's caution, love.”

“It tastes like . . .”

She turned her head and took another drink. “Cor. That certainly doesn't hit the spot.”

Bruce was watching his floating bride and inching out himself when Ricki, the manager, appeared, holding two yellow towels.

“It's a beautiful morning for a swim, sir. Of course, sir, it always is.” Ricki smiled and handed the towels to Bruce. They were still warm from the laundry.

“The water, is it safe to drink?” Bruce asked.

Ricki looked almost insulted. He stumped his pinkie finger into his hairy ear and corked it around, evidently composing himself. He had a large oblong head, like those mystery men of Easter Island, and rounded, bulky arms and legs, simian. Rumour was that Ricki had fought on both sides of the civil war that had ravaged the countryside in the decades before. (Alice said she'd heard the International Tribunal at The Hague had a standing warrant for his arrest, although McGuffan, in the most comical manner imaginable, pooh-poohed her. They really were quite a couple.)

“I can assure you, sir, no one has every come to harm . . .”

“McGuffan said . . .”

“I understand, sir. Mr. McGuffan has shared his concerns with me. But they're folk tales, really, to amuse the peasants and their children.” Ricki's voice faded, politely. His gaze fell on Monica, who was standing again. The sea had pasted her t-shirt to her bra, and in the cool sunlight, Bruce could track the gravy-coloured outline of her aureoles and the harsh stubs of her nipples (hard, Bruce assumed, hoped, from the cool morning breeze). He glanced at Ricki, and had he been a jealous man he might have thought that the manager was giving his bride the once-over. It's funny. Bruce had never thought of Monica as particularly beautiful. Not plain, no. Louise was plain, in that flat-chested, horsy-faced, hospital-cornered British-matron way. Monica had a certain virginal sexiness, an attractive middle-aged nunnishness (Sister Grace, for example, Nursing Head of the chemo ward, who turned a resident's head or two). But this morning, in the cool sun, with stubbing tits all glisty wet, her fleshy cheeks peeking out from her bikini bottom, that orgasmic smile, that don't-give-a-damn glaze to her eyes — this morning she was a bit of something. Ricki held up his arms.

“Towel, ma'am?”

Monica took a towel and rubbed her hair, messing it up in such a way that she only looked sexier. Ricki extended his hand and helped her out of the water.

“I'll think you'll enjoy the breakfast today, Miss. Strawberries, fresh from the fields, and local blood oranges — better than the Italian. And Monsieur Langour was up very early preparing his apple-almond croissants. I'd suggest you try them with yellow pepper marmalade: spicy, sweet, a house specialty.”

“That sounds wonderful,” she said, as Bruce drew the other towel around her shoulders (trying discreetly to cover her visible nipples) and led her by the arm toward the mango grove.

“He's an interesting man,” Monica said.

“Yes. Hairy, too.”

“Yes, indeed. Hairy.”

. . .

That afternoon they took the boat tour across the Vodka Sea. McGuffan and Alice joined them, although they'd taken the tour a dozen times before. McGuffan was the sort who'd interrupt the tour guide to offer his own by now much-practiced insights; the Australian was quickly losing his lustre. Likewise Alice's calculated hee-hawing and endless slogging had worn thin. (Bruce had quickly come to hate the sight of her lips as they snarled over yet another bottled vodka spritzer.) They were like two tireless party guests who refuse to leave even as you stand there, hats and coats in hand, yawning and blearily eyeing your bedroom door.

“Is it true that, at its deepest point, the Vodka Sea is barely ten feet deep?”

(
Objection, your honour! Counsel is leading the tour guide
.)

“Yes, sir. Even at its deepest point, the Vodka Sea rarely exceeds ten feet.” The tour guide, they called him John, for convenience, smiled at McGuffan, calculating, Bruce supposed, his tip.

“Remarkable,” McGuffan declared, although there was nothing remarkable about it. He turned to Monica, beaming, and raised his eyebrows like an excited ten-year-old auditor who'd just found a KitKat amongst the debits and credits. Monica smiled back and tilted her head in a motherly fashion, then she shifted in her seat slightly, adjusting her dress. She wanted to give Bruce, sitting directly across from her, a better view. She wanted him to see that, under the crepe sundress, white, translucent, she wasn't wearing any panties. She'd done that for him, she supposed; she'd thought about it for a long time as she readied herself after lunch. She stood in front of the mirror with panties on and panties off and panties on and panties off just to get the hang of it. She felt so free without out them, but did she dare? It's not the kind of thing a nice woman, a decent woman such as herself, did, walk around in a crepe sundress (it hardly hid anything, and in any case, concealed only as a roundabout way of revealing) with no panties and no bra (her nipples were clearly visible, if she looked hard enough) in broad daylight. But every time she made up her mind to go with them, she slipped them off again, the soft fabric brushing her soft skin, bikini-waxed at Mercury Spa not four days before, just to see if she could dare go without them. It wasn't a matter of comfort, because she felt more comfortable with her panties on. It just seemed different, like something she would never do and may never do again.

“And the tides? Our friend here,” McGuffan nodded toward Bruce, “was wondering about the tides. What about the tides?”

John shrugged. “The tides are still a matter of some debate.” The tour guide had a vaguely Oxfordian accent. Perhaps he'd studied there. Perhaps he was the son of a local potentate and had been afforded the advantage of a British education.

Monica continued twisting one ankle and raised her knee and looked expectantly at Bruce. She could feel the fabric of her crepe dress drop below her (just as she knew it would, as if the fabric was now part of her), although the top of it still lay respectably on her knee. She felt the breeze move up her skirt and across her trimmed pubis, and with one more minor adjustment — there! — she awaited Bruce's reaction.

He caught her gaze and was smiling back at her now. She rather dramatically ran the back of her hand across her brow, then slowly lowered it to rest on her knee. She drew her sun-dress up another inch and watched her husband's eyes widen. He seemed at first to panic, to signal her with urgent nods that something was amiss. But she only drew her hem up, discreetly, another notch, and slowly let her hand fall onto the pocket of fabric that tented her crotch. A finger lazy brushed the skin along the inner thigh, and Bruce's signals became more frantic. The other passengers were engrossed in the tour and paid no attention as she casually let her hand drop to her thigh, and slipped two fingers along her smoothed skin until they lightly brushed the ruffled, raised flesh. Bruce crossed his legs and tried to look away. Was he angry? She couldn't tell.

“The Bolen's whale, then, is it related to the humpback?”

“Exactly right, sir. This whale is a close relative of the humpback. Scientists believe that the Vodka Sea was once part of a vast oceanic corridor that stretched from pole to pole. Way back, as the oceans receded, a pod of humpbacks may have become landlocked. They practiced the elementary rule of evolution: adapt or die.”

“What about the marauders?” It was Bruce's turn to ask the question. John hesitated. This was not the kind of question he normally faced. Bruce watched the guide scan his memory bank for a moment. John had one of those ageless foreign faces; he could have been anywhere from fourteen to forty. (Bruce thought of a story Anthony had told him about how his sister-in-law, ex-sister-in-law now, had once befriended an orphan during some South American getaway and decided to take him home and adopt him. They'd done all the paper-work, at least they thought they'd done the paperwork, but as they were entering the airport the chief of police stopped them. Turned out their orphan was a twenty-six-year-old midget with a wife and children of his own. The kicker to the story, as Anthony told it, was when his now-ex-sister-in-law lamented, “What's the world coming to, when you can't even trust a midget?”)

John cleared his throat, suitably recovered.

“Everyone has heard such stories,” he said, beading in on Bruce. “But it's important to remember that our government has never supported the — what's the word — notion? Yes, notion of a resort on the Vodka Sea. First of all, they mistrust foreigners in general, even Australians,” John turned to the McGuffans and smiled; Alice hee-hawed appreciatively, “and wish to do anything to avoid encouraging them to come here. And second, the government is given to a certain,” he paused again, grasping for the right word, “fundamentalism. The notion of a sea of alcohol, well, they don't quite know what to make of that. First they tried to ban it, but as you can imagine, it's hard to ban a sea.”

The small crowd tittered.