Nine Island (2 page)

And really, I lie when I ask who made men the trees, the stars.

Almighty fathers and stepfathers: that's who.

O
UT ON MY
balcony on the twenty-first floor, a wineglass sweats between my legs, my fingertips filming the keyboard. Miami Beach glitters and roars over the bay; beyond it, vast black sea.

spectacular bay views!! pool gym marina tennis koi ponds so much more!!! live the life!!!!

Well, the ad was true enough. There's the bay, full of boats and lights and glossy black. Twenty stories down is the gym; around back, the pool, koi ponds, marina.

Am sipping and pondering this life to be lived, while inside Buster navigates the floor. He's grown more blind in the month we were gone. He leans a skinny black shoulder against a wall and creeps forward until a chair or table stops him, then wavers with opaque eyes until deciding to push onward. His little black body creeps over the cork floor, beneath maps of water cities and islands, beneath shelves of books about color and plants, beneath my desk stacked high with Ovid.

Boats glint down in the bay, their lights and the lights' liquid ghosts.

Across the way, at Costa Brava, the next big condo on Island Avenue, a man has just stepped out to a balcony—and he appears to be naked.

Can't quite see—balcony rail is in the way. But I think I see the tender flesh channel at the hip.

The one it can be so nice to run a tongue along, at times. On one's way to delectable firmness.

Swallow a mouthful of wine and ponder. Is it really time to retire from love?

Ovid does not like women who drink too much.

Trying not to do that.

But tell me. Should I stay? Or should I go?

My friend K from South Carolina, with fiery blond hair and furious thumbs and the fastest mouth I've ever heard, types me her opinion:

You are NOT ready to retire, dammit. Put on that bikini, I don't care how old you are, and go out and live that life.

T
HE MORNING AIR
of paradise rolls in molten waves over your skin when you slide open the balcony door and dip out a hand, glass and tiles so hot they hurt. Inside, Buster has puddled the floor—hard to see puddles on the swirling patterns of cork, and I skidded in two before coffee. Wiped them up with yellow gloves, wondering what to do next.

Ignore problem and put on bikini, that's what. Not a minute to spare to go out and start living the et cetera.

Out my door I went in old polka-dot bikini, carrying towel and books.

This
building
is old, not old old but Miami old, circa 1980. I knew it when I rented the place two years ago but see it harshly now. The building's public areas, as they're called, are full of heavy woodwork, mirrors, brass sconces fixed crooked to the walls, and along the curving hallways whose floors aren't level—is that true? building sinking into sand, or what?—lies worn carpet with dull vegetal patterns that maybe once were green and orange but now are beige and dun. Door after door, brass sconce after crooked brass sconce, three of them flickering out. A smell. In the elevator are mirrors with cut-glass flamingos and, as the doors slid open today, a little pink man named Lino. In a white linen suit, strands of white hair beneath a white hat. He looked like a lascivious elderly elf.

Hello! he said as I stepped in. Do you live here?

I certainly do, I said, as I say each time he asks.

He eyed me. You don't look like you do.

Yet I do. For now!

Ha, he said. We're all just here for now. But anyway. If you live here, you better make sure your husband's a lawyer. Is your husband a lawyer?

Said no. Asked why.

Because the board's a bunch of crooks, he said. All those guys, they're going to ruin us. The pool, he said. They say it needs to be demolished. The whole thing replaced. The pool and koi ponds and garden and parking garage beneath it, the whole shebang. And you know why? Because they're all in the concrete business. They're crooks. Boy, do they stand to make out big—on us! Special assessments up the wazoo! So you better make sure your husband's a lawyer.

I'll try, I said. Okay, this is me.

The doors opened, he tipped his hat, I stepped out.

Was this true? Good god. No way could I afford it—my landlord would for sure pass it straight on to me.

On the mezzanine (a.k.a. second floor) is the restaurant offering early-bird specials; also the gym, where the bikes and running machines all rest; plus the card room, empty. No one up or down the long hall, just mirrors showing me, alarmed.

Have been here two years and only now see: it's a cruise ship. Empty old Love Boat. Once all the pairs have walked the plank and gone on.

Wait, still here! Wait!

But out back is the paradise jungle, ah, deep cool tropical shade. A pink concrete path winds past koi streams, through a jungle of fans and spines and huge shapely leaves, and at the end of the greenery: a blue pool like an hourglass. Still and clear, not a ripple, no stir, an hourglass full of sky.

There was once a limpid pool
, whispered Ovid—and I broke into a panicked run.

Towel and books dumped on a lounge chair, dress shrugged off: crash in.

Cool blue water pleats at your hands as you glide!

Floating in the hourglass pool . . .

Its slender waist, voluptuous volumes of blue.

Touch a woman where she most likes
, says Ovid,
touch her just right in her tiny pond, and you will see her eyes glow
.

Opened legs to the water and winged out my arms, shutting eyes so only they knew if they glowed.

Twenty laps later, I clung gasping to the concrete lip, the building's nine o'clock shadow cloaking the pool. Twenty-four floors (I counted, I count things, even when I already know), twenty-four stories times seven balconies (it's good to do math when you can, keeps the brain sharp), all those balconies and potential eyes looking over this pool, jungle, and bay to Miami. But no one on any of them, no one in any of the lounge chairs surrounding the pool.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide wide—

No. Jorge was hosing philodendra in his rubber boots and white hat. I slung a wet wave his way; he waved back. A green heron on a branch above the koi pond stared into the water.

I climbed out, wrapped torso in towel, walked along the cracked pink path through the paradise jungle, past the hot tubs nestled in shiny dark green. One still bubbled a chlorine bloom, and on the path—a trail of wet feet. Followed. But they grew fainter and smaller in the sun and were gone by the spiraling concrete steps to the dock. Spiraled down myself, past the silver-pink tree that is in fact a girl who ran from something and had to shoot headfirst into the ground to escape. Her slender trunk rises from the soil to a belly, then splits into two slim legs; between them, a delicate girl-cleft.

So lifelike: I admire her each time I pass.

No one on the wide, curving dock, just a bucket and another trail of wet on the planks at berth number five. The dock has berths for thirty-six boats—I don't have to count, they're numbered.
Tango
and
All In!
and others just like them,
all
sleek-shark yachts except my favorite,
Paradise Found
. That is its name, in happy white cursive. A miniature ferry, red with chrome trim. From the dock you could step over the water to its little back porch and open a door to a cabin with sliding windows, white-cushioned couches along the sides, a wet bar, you can see it—a place just like a honeymoon. Imagine living there, bobbing on the sea. Good morning! Sailor cap on head, blouse knotted at waist, stepping out into warm blue from happy warm sheets. Ahoy! And at night, at night, the stars aglow, music veiling the glittering dark.

A place for Marilyn Monroe. Yes. I can see her slinking around in there, creamy and gold, with a glass of champagne and those big eyes, shy.

Oh, Marilyn. Who couldn't have babies and didn't want to grow old.

Deep below the boats, through the transparent green, lie sunken concrete chunks, barnacled and slick with kelp. Also a labyrinthine-brain coral I check on often to make sure it's alive. Long needle-nose fish hang in the water, sometimes Portuguese men-of-war with their blue balloons and wicked tendrils, or moon jellies, tarpon; sometimes a manatee rolls up and snorts.

Always worth peering into the water. Almost living the life.

A large darkness down there suddenly stirred—I froze. From it moved a slender black length that became a fin, and then a black-gloved hand. A head appeared, slowly turned, and Heathcliff eyes stared up at me through a mask before slipping below the hull.

Hurried to the other side of the boat and peered into the depths: nothing. Down there slithering invisibly around?

Heathcliff! It's me! I've come home!

Went to the end of the dock and squinted up at my building, so
tall it seemed to tumble from the blue and the clouds. On a high balcony appeared someone—that incredibly thin woman with white-blond hair, could see how skinny she was from all those stories below. She looked out at the bay, then straight down to the ground. She stepped from view, came back to the rail. Then reached out her arm, paused, and let something drop.

She leaned out to watch it fall.

I looked at where it must have landed, then back up the building to her. But she was resting her elbows on the rail now, neck stretched long, gazing far.

A
CTUALLY, THAT
white-blond woman is a key. Part of the code re the economics of love. That skinny woman and her man: I've looked at them a lot this past year. Out by the pool, he reads the paper, he never looks up, he rests ankle on knee and reads. His hand reaches for a drink, but his eyes don't leave the page. His flesh is smooth and tanned and full,
pinguis
in Latin, health glowing through his skin; as the sun rolls over, his shoulders shine, his golden-gray hair gleams. Supreme self-possession is what I see. Beside him, she agitates. In her skinny skin, those thin, thin bones, those large liquid eyes running in her drawn face. She lies down, sits up, looks around, twists, stands, paces with big hands locked behind her back, looks over the bay, turns to stare at the building, the pool, the man she married, who all the while sits absorbed in his paper. She's half his size: tanned bones.

A woman who wants, a man who wants nothing. These two have stalked the world for thousands of years. Penia and Poros. Echo, Narcissus.

Another female like that is an Ovid monster named Hunger. One hundred percent ravenousness, Hunger whistles and whirls into your room at night, crouches on your chest, glues her nasty mouth to yours, and breathes her neediness into you. From then on you are full of want.

Wanting is exactly what I've never wanted.

I drew Echo once as a skeletal girl like Hunger, bone hand reaching, face all mouth, to explain what I feared most.

The golden boy considered the drawing, looked pained, then slid it back over the table.

Some things, he said, should probably stay private.

O
NE VERSION OF
the birth of erotic love:

Penia (female, = Want) raped Poros (male, = Want Nothing), because she wanted what he
was
.

The child Penia bore, the child of Want and Want Nothing?

Eros, a.k.a. Love.

You can spend some time pondering the logic and logistics of this.

S
O
:

Should I stay?

Or should I go?

Just what is meant by “I,” anyway?

Look at it! Skinny little skeletal stalk, so simple and neat, coming not even close to conveying the runny, yolky mess it stands for.

“Ego” is better if you want to say “I.” Even
ich
. Or
io
or
je
or
yo
.

Let's be decisive and say, Go.

Yes.

It will be tonic, throwing away want all at once. Closing the door and saying, I'm done.

Sono chiuso
, as an Italian lady once said, pushing away her plate. I'm shut.

What a relief!

Seal the leaky jar.

And remember? It was always difficult, from the start. From the start, you didn't want to be touched. Remember? Splendid isolation! You wanted to be marble, slate, glass, chrome: anything but flesh.

Until you saw Sir Gold that day. Split open evermore.

F
OR INSTANCE
(here comes a transmutation of Ovid):

A tough girl strides through the forest, a girl who'd be made of wood if she could be. She doesn't want anyone near her. She's being watched. She doesn't know. Pacing through huge green leaves she brushes aside, she's stalking something elusive. She has on clothes, of course, she isn't naked, but her dress is hiked up so high to stay out of her way that with each stride (he's watching from behind a tree) the cloth flicks enough for him to see the dark moist shadow of what he wants. He's not an animal, exactly, but saliva slides into his mouth and he swallows, licks his lips. When he first saw her, a moving glimmer in the green while he went about his dirty business in the trees, he stopped—something hurt his chest. Something he'd never felt: a rip. His eyes haven't shifted from her since, and although he'd deny it, what he feels—his gaze sliding up her thigh, over the soft cloth with those gentle swells and swayings inside, then dipping as far as possible through the shadowed armhole, slipping up her neck slick with tropical sweat—what he feels is a lust rooted as much in groin as teeth, the lust of the hunt. He swallows again, salty, rubs his lips.

He wants to get all of himself inside her. Tongue, teeth, nails, cock. Not hurt her, not exactly. Or if he does—well, that's not his intention.