Juliet Was a Surprise (14 page)

He doesn't know if she came back to their villa that night, after J's, because he didn't go back himself. Technically, he left her more than she left him. Two days later, when he did return to their villa, he timed things for when the maid would be going through it, so if Anna was around she'd be down at the pool. Dale didn't go to the balcony to check because he didn't want to know. Nor could he tell if the bed had been slept in because it was already made. There was no scatter of empty bottles, but they might have been cleaned up. He noticed a new birdcage, of ornate bamboo wicker. The fruit bowl was full of green papayas and the small, wrinkled yellow mangos she loved. He nodded to the shyly smiling but perplexed maid, stuffed his clothes into his suitcase and taxied to his new room on the modern, less colourful side of town.

The next afternoon Dale saw Anna for the last time. He encountered her by accident, on the Malecon boardwalk. It had been their favourite haunt, so he shouldn't have been walking there in the first place. He didn't know what he was
up to—maybe he wanted to see her. Maybe he wanted to grab her back and protect her from everything, especially herself. Maybe she wanted him to, and maybe he knew that. He'd even got badly drunk, in a bar by himself, the night before, telling himself he was doing it in sympathy, in communal spirit, sharing that magical expansion, that wise loving embrace that alcohol can sometimes extend. It was in the darkest corner of the seediest bar he could find, no English to be heard anywhere, and on a windowsill he saw a dirty brown lizard that made him laugh and swear and point, and some
macho caballero
shouted something at him, and Dale may actually have been in danger, even as he turned to him and smiled dumbly and shrugged. All that kept him from going off in search of Anna that night was his staggering state—he felt certain he was embracing her in any case with his own Lowry drunkenness, and he felt certain she'd wait for him every night at J's Corruption, because that's what forlorn lovers did.

But when he saw her that next afternoon on the Malecon, she wasn't drunk. Dale followed at a distance. He noted bracelets and bangles, silver, stacked up both wrists. She was carrying a bouquet of dyed feathers in the most garish colours. She wore a new peasant blouse, that unbleached cotton. She appeared pretty much carefree. She wasn't looking for anyone, for anyone at all—that was clear enough. Every twenty seconds or so Dale mumbled “No,
gracias
” to the latest vendor shaking a trinket or T-shirt in his face, and he watched her strategy for handling the same. She had the pockets of her shorts pulled out, and to turn down a vendor she shook her bangled silver wrists at him and then pointed to her empty pockets, smiling. She had a phrase
or two to share with each, and to a man they laughed back and left her alone.

Leaving the Malecon, after several blocks she entered a café called the Blue Shrimp. The way she turned in to it, without looking, told him she'd been there before. He waited outside long enough to hear her say something in Spanish, hear something said back—a clutch of women it sounded like— and then Anna laughed as loud as Dale had heard her laugh in years.

He realized what was different about her. She had the look of someone who hadn't had a drink in three days. The exact amount of time since she'd last laid eyes on him. She looked uncomplicated, and fresh. She looked free of both of them.

NO, SHE'S NOT DEAD,
though they do say it's either all or nothing for people like her. It's not a case of being smart or stupid. Lowry was a genius, as Anna never ceased pointing out. It all might just be luck. Or who your companions are.

But what's she doing? He doesn't know what she's thinking right now, doesn't have a clue. He suspects that their famous fatal intimacy was bullshit all along. How could he not have a clue? He opened new bank accounts but kept their old joint account with enough in it to keep her going awhile, though the two times he peeked it hadn't been touched, and he's since forced himself to stop looking. He knows she would have had to come north to get her visa renewed by now. So likely she's been in town. She might still be. Her work never did call, nor did any of her friends—so they all must know, and they must have
been given instructions. He takes nothing from this; it could mean love or it could mean hate, and isn't that funny? Mostly what it means is confusion, because that is their epitaph. In any case, he bets he's not far off when he pictures her wearing something colourful—turquoise, rose, yellow—and giving lessons of some sort, maybe working in that café where he heard her laugh. Keeping up a simple, clean, one-room place. Keeping birds. He sees her as someone he'd like to meet, and take walks with. Have adventures.

Dale was back home more than two months before he noticed the
Speak Spanish!
book. He was in the process of packing everything up to move to a smaller apartment, because a single man does not need two bathrooms, and he found one with a decent view from the balcony, a silver-blue glimpse of Burrard Inlet up through to Indian Arm, which, irony of ironies, was where Lowry lived when he wrote
Volcano
. (Delighted, as speechless as a little girl, Anna had taken him along to explore Lowry Walk, a surprisingly serene path through beachfront forest.)

Dale found the bright red
Speak Spanish!
book in the small bathroom, as they used to call it. The book was sitting plain as day on the back of the toilet where she'd left it, ready for her to pick up and commit one or two more words to memory. As soon as he saw it he realized he'd seen it quite a bit, lying around the place. He thinks he saw Anna prone on the couch reading it, saying words aloud, trying her accent, excited for their vacation and boning up for it—but to tell the truth, she was right, he hadn't been paying attention. None at all.

Only since finding the book had he begun to see the size of his mistake.

Now every few days he opens her closet to check her clothes, feeling the fabric, trying to remember her wearing this blouse or those jeans. Sometimes he can. But these clothes of hers, which was everything she chose not to bring to Mexico, feel like cast-offs, and part of what she'd happily left behind.

Black Roses Bloom

S
haring his pillow, Katherine asks if it's ever happened to him. Redmond goes up on an elbow. His sandy hair is mussed and boyish, despite the high, intelligent forehead. She finds exotic the permanent snarl of his lips, and that trace of English accent flips her heart.

“Never. That's never happened to me, Kath.”

Even lying naked beside him, Katherine finds it hard to talk about sex. She'll use timid hand gestures, or resort to the worst euphemisms. Your peter. My—he laughs at this one—nether region. Redmond is the first man with whom she's talked about it. This morning they have ten minutes to linger before they must shower, dress and drive to the bank where they work.

What's happened is, she mentioned the flood of dreams she had at her orgasm, and he was surprised.

Katherine adds, “Lately it's happening even more. Maybe every time. Should I be worried?”

Redmond presses a knuckle into her shoulder and lies back on his pillow. “Well, I'm jealous. I don't even get to have my pillow-smoke anymore.” Redmond quit smoking at her insistence a week after they met (just as he got her to quit her glasses for contact lenses). Though it's been three months he
jokes about it constantly, slyly blaming. One thing he says is, Europeans are elegant smokers, so they should be allowed to.

Redmond asks her, more softly, “So what exactly did you see today? In your post-coital reverie.”

Katherine tells him it's hard to describe because it's a flood, a stream, of random images. But little stories too. The main thing is, it feels like memory. It's dreams she's had before. Lots, she's certain, are from her childhood.

“So I'm not
having
them,” she says, understanding it more herself. “I'm
remembering
them.” All feel drenched in nostalgia. The sweetness of long-lost.

“Give us an example, then.” Said like a plucky English schoolmaster. Hello, Mr. Chips.

Mostly Katherine is afraid of boring him. She knows she's stiff; she knows she's not colourful. If there's one thing she's afraid of with Redmond, it's that. And aren't people famously bored by others' dreams? She'll keep it short.

“One was, I'm in a pet store. There's a goldfish, it becomes the dog I always wanted, and I think as we're walking home, it turns brown and gets old and dies.” Back on the pillow, Redmond stares straight up, blinking. She says, “And one I was in China, that place with the craggy mountains rising out of the water, and I fling myself off this cliff, because apparently I can fly, since I had this secret training. But I just fall into the trees. I'm completely embarrassed, because I was bragging about flying to all these tourists. Chinese tourists. I try to fall deeper into the branches so they can't see me anymore.”

“Wow,” Redmond whispers. He may in fact have said “Oh.” He's either bored or concerned.

Katherine can't help herself.

“And there's this pineapple I pick, and it's full of wonderfully cooked meat. A stew, a curry. It's spiced like heaven. There's gold
nuggets
shining up from it. Then there's this ceremony for me …”

“This happens every time you cum?”

At first she thinks he means does a ceremony happen every time. And she so dislikes that word, cum. He somehow even pronounces its abbreviated spelling.

“Maybe. Yes.”

He smiles. “It's usually the man who does the passing out.” He looks sideways at her, vast brow furrowed. “You actually do pass out?”

Katherine simply nods. She's already explained that she does. She wants to ask other things, wants to know that she's not some kind of freak. Is she too loud, or not loud enough? Or would he like her to resist a little at first, or maybe he'd like to be stroked after, in “the afterglow”? Part of which she spends stricken by dreams.

Redmond squeezes her knee and is first up and into the shower. Her revelation seems to have made him quiet, but then he's humming in the spray. Katherine can smell a waft of her shampoo, which he doesn't mind using. Lately he's been staying over two, sometimes three nights a week, and there's been mention of finding a place together. She's fond of her condo and proud that it's mortgage-free, and though it will
hurt to lose it, it's necessary that they find
their
place. They have yet to discuss her equity and his lack of same. But—as Redmond might joke as they divide a restaurant check—they're both bankers, this shouldn't be hard.

REDMOND LOVES ME
.
Katherine can say this and does daily, aloud to herself, in smiling amazement. She is forty-five and had almost given up on that part of her life—the relationship part, the love part. Over the years she'd worked at two ragged and prolonged affairs, but until Redmond, there wasn't love. She'd even begun telling herself that this part of life, the love part, didn't really matter, almost convincing herself that since you're born alone and die alone, the long middle part would only be muddled by a partner. Loneliness, she'd been whispering to herself, built character. She sees now that in life's bruising race to the finish line, she's been positioning pillows between herself and her greatest pain. But now Redmond loves her—she's sure of it— and she loves Redmond, and there's nothing muddled about it. Their love is a sentence that began clear and continues clear. The orgasms, the first in her life, are magical punctuation. Are proof.

THAT NIGHT: A FLAME-GREEN BIRD,
its song the
tink
of a cheap souvenir bell and poignant for it. Then her father's face in the side window of a black car, a criminal's car. He sees her, points at her, laughs behind glass. She's on the weedy sidewalk in front of her childhood house. A long-forgotten truth: the smell of her trike tires.

RESTLESS IN THE WAITING ROOM
, Katherine almost gets up to leave. Magazine beauty ads can't distract her. Her horoscope in the back is spectacularly good and says her love will grow, but she reads the others too and they're all spectacular and apparently good love is everywhere, which she knows is garbage. She feels foolish coming here and doubts a family doctor would know anything about orgasm dreams anyway. But last week, before Redmond's special dinner for her, she promised herself she'd get it checked if it happened again despite her efforts to stop it. They ate the Sicilian macaroni, finished the wine while listening to the wily jazz Redmond had brought, moved to the bedroom, enjoyed sex—after the peak of which she sank instantly into dreams. In that way of dreams, she was aware of herself having them but at the same times helpless to stop: she's beside a beautiful glacial river, with a smell of dry, hot pine needles, it's Banff, she's barefoot and shouldn't be, she's lost her shoes and is hunting for them. Then mostly it's glimpses—like thumbing through colour swatches—whiffs of emotions that by turns tug, gladden, make restless. They all feel like memory.

In her inner office Dr. Reynolds asks awkward questions. Katherine would prefer being physically naked to this. Dr. Reynolds is roughly Katherine's age and her name is Dorothy, but despite knowing her for two decades, Katherine has never been invited to call her that. Which is fine, especially now.

“So let's clarify. Sexually—you've never had orgasms before. Not even through self-stimulation.”

Katherine nods, won't meet her eye. So let's clarify my freakishness.

“And, the effort it takes. To reach orgasm. You say it's lots of work. So can you tell me, out of ten, with ten being the highest, how much effort it takes?”

“I didn't mean it's just work. I don't know quite what—”

“Of course it's ‘enjoyable.'” Dr. Reynolds does quotation marks and almost smiles. Imagining this thick woman in the crisp smock having orgasms too, Katherine doesn't know if it's endearing or nauseating. The doctor continues, “But, subtracting the enjoyment, can you describe the effort? Is it distressing? Do you ever feel faint or—”