Nine Island (6 page)

S
ETTLED ON THE
lounge chair that gets shade the longest as the sun wheels around the building, although this means my head's by the trash can. Latin clipped open, dictionary splayed.

A pool of water: let's say a spring. Think of those mineral springs in Florida that bubble up from caves. Clear, but so deep—you never know what's down there.

A girl appears. Not the girl who turned into a tree, but the trees she passes might have recently been girls like herself: that's the kind of world we're in. Sighing trees, fingering with green sprigs the air they adore. Their trunks might one day be cut down but will never be fucked, and for this they shiver in relief. This girl walking through them is an athlete, strong and firm and right now, sweaty. It's hot. Her hair sticks to her forehead and neck, and her arms rubbing at either side are slippery—same between her legs. Gnats keep flitting at her eyes. She smells the spring first, and when she sees the gleam, her mouth waters. She sprints, feet in old leaf-dust and grass and then squelching at the silky, grassy rim of the pond. She can't rip off her dress fast enough but there, it's gone, thrown behind her, and she lurches in to her knees. Water! There is nothing better, parting cool before her hands and welling up around her. She ducks under and kicks, bare bottom with its cleft in the air a silly moment, but it feels good and who's there to see?

Well. I mentioned the depths of this pool, those caves. That's where he is. He's been saving his strength for when
someone, a girl, might venture in. It has been a very long time. He feels almost hollow with hunger—

• • •

You can see where this is going. Another attempted rape. She staggers out of the pond and runs and streams with panicked sweat and gets so slippery she realizes that's what she wants, to be liquid—no one can hold her that way. She turns into a stream. What had been a sweaty bare girl suddenly dissolves, only a puddle reflecting sky, then sinking, shrinking, sunk, gone.

I put my pencil in the spine of the book, laid it on the concrete beneath my lounge chair, rolled over, stared deep into the blue, shut my eyes.

That's not how O's story actually ends, but I didn't feel like following it. She turns into a stream, but it's a river thing she's been running from, so this won't help. He just turns back into a river so he can flow with her.
Into
her,
through
her—the Latin prefix means it all. Exactly what she did not want.

No skin of your own, he's everywhere, everywhere.

Leaving mud, smudges, scratches, bites, itchy infections between the legs, bruises that blue you awhile but then green and go. These are the things they leave behind. And thoughts that live a long time in your caves. Words, words, words.

Fascist
from the architect;
limpid
from Sir Gold.
Poontang
,
fockin'
,
hil-ah-rious
from the Devil.

Can't get rid of them once they've got in.

Dried riverbeds left at least, waiting to be filled again when the next man-rush rages through.

In the kitchen wall of the house my husband had when I met him, before the grimness of Germany, were termite tracks, dried rivers I could follow and crush with my nail.

And on a spring morning, transparent wings lay scattered on the blue floor, left from the termites' nuptial flight.

I let them lie there awhile, iridescent in the sun.

Still so hopeful, those early days.

Warm sun on my legs now, dark eyelids a-sparkle. From somewhere far came the clang of rope on mast. Also, a leaf blower droning. Breeze ran over the light down of my thighs, the only female-thigh down extant in Miami. As the sun rolled around the building, I could feel the impending bell of warmth before the strong sunlight itself.

A shadow blotted my eyelids.

Hello, said a husky voice.

(The white-blond Echo woman: N!)

Did I wake you? she asked. I didn't mean to wake you.

No, no, just thinking, I said and leaned up on my elbows.

This close she looked even more like a cross between my mother and me—my mother's nose and chin, body more like mine, but thinner, and so erect. A floss of hair, and in that straight back and jutting jaw what seemed like determination: to endure things you could almost see in her large, gray, watery eyes.

I've seen you in the pool, she said. I usually come out a little earlier than you. To swim. Then I like to sit in the hot tub. Boy, are we lucky here. What a place.

Unless they demolish it.

Which they will, she said. One day. A shame but not a tragedy.
I keep telling people that. Even though it's the only place . . .

Yes?

Oh, and she shook her head. It isn't interesting. But I have a question. Do you have any pets?

Yes
, I said and thought, For fuck's
sake
. I then told her about Buster and his diapers and pills.

Poor little fellow, she said, looking stricken. It sounds like you're taking good care of him, though. But, well, I'm sorry—I tricked you. I lied. I knew you had a cat because I saw you on the causeway walking from Publix with a big bag of cat food. And that interesting pink
umbrella
. So he still eats?

And purrs.

Well. She spread out her thin yellow hands. Well, then he's alive. You'll know when it's time. I've been there. Oh, it's sad, but you'll know when the time comes. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that if you need me, I'm here to help. I care for pets. That's what I do. To keep busy. I retired way too early, it was a mistake. I used to be a nurse. I just like
caring
for things. And now I have all this time and— Her large hands opened up arcs of nothing in the blue sky.

Here, she said, and pulled from her bikini a card with a little black image of a dog and cat, her name printed beside it, N.

Now you have my number in case you need me. Or want to walk, or talk, or anything. Call.

S
O, THE ORIGINAL
idea was to be soapstone, wax.

Erotic Frigidaire, you mean, the spot-eyed architect said.

No
, I told him. Not erotic.

But the fact that you're telling me this means you want to be provocative. To tease.

No
.

But he was right, sort of. Strength has been the goal. First, impermeability. When no go with that, potency: I'll fuck you, yeah. I'll fuck you
up
.

You could be a courtesan.

Oh dear, Sir Gold, didn't you know? My bill—over there, on the pillow.

B
Y NOON EACH
day the sun has cranked around to the pool and blanched my spot by the trash can, so I stagger in dazzled, then shower, lotion, eat an English muffin with butter and Vegemite, and gird myself for the next stage of work.

I was out at my green balcony table, looking up from the numbered lines of words, fixing eyes on the horizon to stretch them, and cracking my knuckles, when I realized I'd been hearing a patter. A drip of water on the balcony rail. Rain? No. Only that corner. In fact all along the rail as well as on the glass were old yellow sprinklings and speckles. As I was putting together these complex associations, a shower spattered my arm.

Hey! Slapped shut the laptop and craned to look up.

A face appeared above me, then disappeared.

I'm getting wet down here!

Silence.

Are you up there?

I must water my garden, a voice called.

Well, can you keep the water up there?

Silence.

Hello?

I shall try.

Thanks.

Downstairs, men were blowing leaves from the gumbo-limbos. Across the bay, an alarm wailed.
There has been a fire alert reported in the building. Please move to the nearest exit and exit the building. Repeat. There has been a fire alert reported in the building.
In the shifting breeze it became:
There has been . . . building . . .
Blue, blue sky. A boy playing basketball in the court between buildings yelled Fuck! whenever he missed a shot. At Costa Brava, two young couples appeared on a balcony. All four put their hands on the rail and gazed out and opened their arms to the vista and turned to one another and smiled. Then they raced back in, where two danced, one threw herself on a sofa and pedaled the air with her legs, while the other tumbled fruit into a blender.

You can see almost everything you need to here.

Requiring binoculars only occasionally.

Looked into my own apartment through the sliding glass doors. Straight through to the front door, broken doorbell fixture dangling beside it.

Not much to see in there.

Back to O. Was working on the eleven-year-old girl on the beach, the one O has climb a bull, but not me. She's in a bright yellow bathing suit, digging moats, making grinding noises inside her mouth, only just beginning to have an itchy sense of the future of wanting, et cetera, about to come.

Maybe first check messages.

No messages.

There has been a fire alert reported—

—This itch, she's thinking as she digs, wet sand grains jamming her fingernails. It's like some alien thing crawling inside her. Or like she's about to become some alien thing. Or in fact she wants some alien thing. She does, she realizes all at once. She shoves her spade into the sand and stares at her little girl-mates around her. Oh my god, she thinks, I am so bored. She wants something supernatural, sublime. Last week, for instance, up the beach she found the head of a baby goat. It looked like a conch from far away, but then she saw its tender ears and, closer, the long lashes around its shut eyes. She squatted to study it and delicately dug just enough beneath its matted little chin to know that the rest of the goatlet was not buried below. It's something like this she wants now. Horrific, marvelous, something to crash in from the other side—

The drip at the corner of the balcony was now a shining thread. It wavered in the breeze, struck the rail, and jagged down the glass; a puddle pooled on the tiles.

—Bring something, bring something, bring something! she shrieks in her head to the sand. Spinning, she screams it to the waves, the sky. Break open and bring me something! Make me—

Messages?

No messages.

Buster appeared at the sliding doors. He'd been doing his circumnavigation of the walls, and since the sliding doors are open, he stopped and sniffed the outside air, long white whiskers and eyebrows alert. Gingerly he placed a paw over the sill. Another paw. A lurching scramble, and out. He swayed. Left or right? Right would take him along the sliding door to where it met the balustrade and, if he kept going, the runnel of water. Wouldn't that be a surprise. He wavered: then leaned his right shoulder against the glass and began to creep. The water now fell in a Morse pattern: runnel-drip-drip, runnel-drip.

There has been a fire alert reported in—

—Now she thinks she actually sees something far out in the water. Really? Out there, yes, where the waves smooth out, or maybe it's the other way around, where they start to swell. She puts a gritty hand to her stomach. Yes—something that is definitely not water is out there, white the way the surface of the moon is white, meaning not really, a curved thing, slicing in—

The other girls are looking, too, huddling dovelike, hands at throats and mouths in girl-terror. Oh, god, do they disgust her. She stamps the sand from her knees and steps toward the water—

Pure drip now. Halfway there, Buster stopped. The diaper with its blue stickers made his little hips so thin, wobbling above his bony shanks. Almost no skin on those shanks.

—What are you doing! the girls cry. Are you crazy? You can't go in! It's a—

Three feet from the puddle now.

Am feeling guilty. Knee juddering with anticipation.

—oh, yes, she can go in if she wants. The itch in her is now a rip, a rip that wants more ripping. She wants—

A long drop slowly formed, not ready to fall. It swayed.

If the breeze surged—

Buster didn't even know if it was daytime or night.

Once a prancing little boy-cat! A brave small kitten boxing my hand.

Wavering with opaque eyes, skinny hips, in diapers.

He pressed his head to the glass, pushed on.

The breeze lifted—

And water flew and fell and showered his head, streamed into his eyes, leaked over his fur, his old curled paws.

Wet fur at my nose, nails in my arm.

I'd
never
drown my baby baby baby cat.

A
M THINKING:

Maybe too soon to have cat as only love interest?

Maybe not retire just yet?

Because those giddy moments come, they do, those delirious, ecstatic moments when I've had a little to drink and the garlic sizzles and funk plays loud and I dance, I dance to “Pass the Hatchet,” I do the bump with the granite counter and spin and bump again, and I think, yeah—I want I want I want I
will
!

Flash images then of men reeling in and out of the place, me greeting each at the door and dancing somewhere, driving full speed, everything moving quick as light, then waving each good-bye again, a superfast imaginary life.

This is what I'd seen in the sky of spinning ions when I arrived in paradise. This idea of how it could be, once I'd left my poor death-in-life marriage and resolved to live the life.

Before setting all hopes on Sir Gold.

When in fact what happened, what happens, is that the numbers change slowly on the microwave clock as I wait for the pasta to cook, again.

A
NOTICE HAS
appeared by the mailboxes: there'll be a board meeting this week to discuss the pool. Now everywhere in the building—lounge chairs, elevators, lobby, garage—white heads nod close and whisper, with quick looks around in case someone hears. Millions of dollars at stake, they say, as much as eight million dollars. It's all about concrete and whoever's most connected to the business.