Sunburn (17 page)

BOOK: Sunburn

11.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

I’ve always hated the word romantic, probably mostly because of your definition of what a romantic person was—not somebody who cried alone, but somebody who wanted to be seen crying alone. I never thought I had any of that in me, but I should have known how wrong I was by how violently I reacted against that. When I heard it, it must have fit me to a T. Anyway, I sure as hell fought against it long enough. I bet I didn’t cry once for five or six years. Fuck that pity, I thought. You’ve got a job to do. But, as I said, I just got to feeling more and more that I had to let loose, let this burden ease up for a time. Then this guy, actually a pretty good friend of mine on the level I’ve been talking about, was up to the bar, and we got asked up to a dinner at this palace outside of town. Not really a palace, but a damn nice house. We had a great dinner, and drank a lot, and then afterward we all sat around and drank some more and I played some guitar.
There was a lady there named Lea, and all I can tell you is that she just killed me. I don’t even know if she’s that pretty, but there was something about her that . . . Well, you know. The trouble was she was married, and her husband was there, of course. So while I’m sitting there playing guitar, all of these feelings of having to communicate with someone become almost too much to take, and I start playing this song I wrote which I don’t play that often, even to myself. Suddenly it was all quiet and I felt as though I’d reached someone with it. But then again, almost immediately, I felt guilty, as though—you’ll probably think I’m crazed—as though Sharon were watching me. So I stopped, I felt I had to leave, but just as strongly I wanted to get to know this woman.
When I got home, I felt pretty shitty, as though I’d betrayed myself, and I didn’t want to get involved with anybody who was already married and had her own life. But it was the first time in my memory since Sharon that I’d been attracted to anybody else.
Well, the next day I saw her. We just went up to a hill and had some wine, and talked, and before I knew it, this whole thing with Sharon came pouring out, and I was crying like a baby. And the crazy thing is that even as I was crying, even as all this hell of wanting Sharon for all this time came back to me, I knew that in a sense I was finally getting rid of her memory. I sat there and held on to Lea for all I was worth, and knew that the thing with Sharon was over and done. And still I held her. I hated myself, but couldn’t stop. I held her to be holding her. Not for comfort, but because I wanted her. And all the while here she is believing, as she should, that I’m wrecked over the past, and as we talk I become more and more unable to imagine not having her, even if it means lying to her about what Sharon means. Because I sense that she’ll stay with me. Maybe out of pity, at first, but I don’t even care about that. Let her think I’m a lonely bastard who needs somebody to talk to. She’d be right. But now she wants to help me find Sharon. God! This is ridiculous. She wants to help me find Sharon, and I don’t want to find her anymore. There! It’s out. But if the search for Sharon will keep Lea with me, I’ll do it.
And still, you know, I don’t feel it’s wrong. I can talk to her. I haven’t even gone to bed with her. I only kissed her once, but felt that here I was alive again. So what am I doing? Moving from one impossible love to another? I don’t think so. I think we’ll work this thing out. She’s bored with her husband. I know that. Not that she’s told me, but he’s one of these guys who seems to have bottomed out. No spark.
She’s infatuated with me, but won’t touch me, and I won’t even try. I want to take my time, and have her get to know me. Maybe what she likes in me is the passion she saw that I had for Sharon. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m confused. Nothing really seems like I’m going about things the right way, but at least I’m seeing her, and I—and seeing her is the most important thing right now. Still, I can’t tell her that. Maybe it’ll take a few months of looking together for a trace of Sharon, but by then we’ll be together, and she can believe that I’ve slowly come around to loving her.

Shit, he thought. Do I really believe this? Can I really be that cold a bastard? His eyes burned as though the lids had been branded as he struggled to keep them open to read over what he’d written. The gin bottle was a good two-thirds gone, and out his window the sky over the Mediterranean was lightening. He lit a cigarette, and got up, pacing around the room. It all must be bullshit, he thought. If I found Sharon, I would take her. What’s all this talk of exorcism? What have I been living for all this time if not finding her?

But then his thoughts turned to Lea cradling his head against her breasts as she let him cry himself dry. He should leave her alone. He knew that she was falling in love with him. No, not in love. Infatuated, and for all the wrong reasons. It couldn’t work. But it had to. God damn, he’d had enough of being alone.

He lay down on his stomach on the bed, and took up the pad again.

So, Flem. What am I trying to say? That I’m confused, I suppose. I might be dead wrong in what I’m doing, but I’ve got to do it. It’s a cold world. Somebody’s got to lose, I guess, and I’m tired of it being me. Write if you want, but you don’t have to, obviously. I hope you’re happy.

He woke up facedown on the bed. When he tried to swallow, the sides of his throat were so dry they stuck together. He coughed, and turned his aching head toward the window. The sky was a clear blue. It must be afternoon, since the sun had passed over the window. The papers of his letter lay spread out over the bed. A few had fluttered to the floor.

Slowly he pulled himself up. He let the clothes he’d slept in lie where they fell, went into the bathroom and quickly got into the shower. The cold water hurt, but it brought him around slightly. He was, at least, awake. He took four aspirins, and walked, not quite dry, back to the bed, where he gathered up the papers and began reading.

Before he’d finished he realized that he must have been crazy drunk to have written all that. He didn’t know what he was talking about, all that crap about not loving Sharon and wanting Lea. It all read like a soap opera. Besides, what would Fleming care? Putting all the pages together, he tore the letter into strips and then into little pieces, which he dropped into the wastebasket under the sink in the bathroom.

He’d have to watch what he did when he drank like that, he thought. Luckily it wasn’t often.

He got dressed and went outside. It was a bright, sunny day. Some high, white, fluffy clouds occasionally blocked the sun, but they passed quickly. It was late afternoon, probably close to four. There was no trace of the chill of last night, though it wasn’t hot. He stopped in at the Aster, a hotel he felt comfortable in, for some badly needed coffee. A friend of his was there, reading.

“What’s the book?”

The friend looked up. “Schoolwork. Philosophy. Good for the soul.”

“I need something good for my soul. You think they’d take me in school?” He smiled, and signaled the waiter to bring the coffee.

“Rough night?”

“Look like it?”

“You have looked better.” The friend went back to his reading when Mike’s coffee arrived. He drank it in silence. When he finished, he clanked his cup down a bit too hard, and stared stonily ahead.

“Anything wrong?”

Mike dug his thumb and forefinger into his eyes in an effort to clear his mind. “No,” he said quietly, “not really. I guess I’m just hungover.” Again he rubbed his eyes. “You know, I guess I don’t want to talk about it.”

He got up, patted him on the shoulder, and walked outside, blinking against the afternoon sun.

Thirteen

Lea kicked the blankets, which had become tangled in her legs. Doug was gone again. It must now be nearly two weeks since they’d gotten up together. Still, it wasn’t bad. She was finding less and less to say to him, and the times they’d gone up to bed together had been disastrous. She thought of the last time, when he’d finished before she’d been ready to start. Then he’d gone downstairs to read, leaving her tensed, curled up in the cold bed until she’d slept. When had that been? Four days ago? Maybe five?

He was acting like a child. She couldn’t understand it. It seemed to her that ever since they’d arrived, he’d been bored, anxious to—no,
desperate
to believe in anything, something that would end his spiraling despair. And now here was the opportunity, and he saw in it only a threat. After all these years they’d been together, how could there be a threat? But she had to admit that she enjoyed Mike’s company more than her husband’s. It might be that Doug’s lack of interest across the board had finally affected her and made her realize that he had stopped living, and she wasn’t ready for that. Not for a long time. She felt younger than she had in years.

Let him brood, she thought. If he doesn’t come around, why should I give it a thought? He doesn’t care himself. He was probably out drinking now, even this early in the morning. Drinking, with no plans, and no future. For a fraction of a second, she wished that they had no money, and that they would need to go back to work again, but that wish quickly passed. They had saved for this, earned it, and she would take it. Besides, it was more all-embracing for him than simple lack of work, although she supposed that that was what had brought it on.

Then all at once it came to her that he no longer loved her. That would explain it all, wouldn’t it? The boredom, the feeling of going through motions socially, the perfunctory sex?

The sheets and blankets still held her legs captive, and she twisted to get herself out. The room was cold. The electric heater didn’t do much good. She went in and stepped into the shower only long enough to get wet. Looking in the mirror, she surprised herself smiling, and stared at her face. Her looks pleased her. She pinched one of her nipples, and smiled again as it hardened under her touch. Too old, huh?

She was only now coming into her own. All this time of being a wife and a working woman and following all the proper steps to what? To happiness? Only now was she even becoming aware of what she wanted.

And what she wanted was to live, and not in her staid, old, predictable way. But she didn’t even say that to herself yet. Instead, she felt that she would have to make a fool of herself a few times. It wasn’t clear how, and she didn’t try to reason it out. She felt it as a tension.

She’d never done anything foolish. Her life had always been reasoned and correct. Now was she making a fool of herself with a boy fifteen years younger? She didn’t think so, but only because she really didn’t think she could yet act foolishly. She only knew, somewhere beyond her thinking, that she would have to make mistakes, and afterward she would know that they had been errors all along, and that she had known it. She sat down on the toilet, and felt the beginning of a menstrual cramp. Too old, too old, too old.

Coming back to the bedroom, she began putting on her clothes in a lighthearted mood. Suddenly she felt an overwhelming excitement, and simultaneously a curious indifference to whatever might happen in this house, particularly with her husband. Though she would never have admitted it to herself, she had in fact passed into something beyond indifference. Had she been more in touch with herself, she might have looked into the dressing mirror, smiled at the reflection, and said, “Then fuck him.”

On the floor in the hall outside her room was a note from her brother, asking her to come out at her convenience and meet him on the roof. She’d gone up there several times before to enjoy the solitude, and knew that it was also one of his favorite places. The note actually said: “Get yo’ skinny ass up on the roof here ’fore noon, and mebbe we kin git some words in together ’fore you leave.”

She smiled and walked downstairs. The house was deserted except for Berta in the kitchen, and she wondered where Doug and Kyra had gone. It was still early. She took her coffee and hot milk in a handled bowl and walked out through Sean’s office, across the back courtyard to the stairs that led up to the roof.

Sean sat out on the beam that extended from the house, straddling it. Smoke from a thick cigar rose evenly over his head in the still morning air. He chomped at its end as though it were a piece of gum. His coffee cup sat in front of him on the beam.

She looked at him with interest. There, she thought, is a happy man.

“Hey,” she said, mounting the stairs, “what makes you think I’m leaving?” She handed him the note. “Says here, ‘before you leave.’ ”

He looked down at her. “Come on to this side of me, will you? I can’t hear a damn thing out of this ear. And give me some of your coffee, sill voos plate.”

He held out his cup, and she poured half of hers into it. He looked at it critically. “All that milk make your shit white?”

They laughed. “You are gross.”

“I’ll not deny it.”

She sat down on the ledge that circled the roof, and he backed off the beam, and turned to face her. He sipped at the coffee. “I love it up here. Just look down there at Tossa. Even with the trees mostly bare now, it’s a great sight. And with the fort there, you can imagine anything happening.”

“That’s never been a problem for you, has it? I mean imagining?”

“No, I guess not. But here is something special. ’Course I suppose that’s why I decided to stay here. It’s a good place.”

BOOK: Sunburn

11.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads