Las Penas

 

 The cement truck hit the taxi sideways.  The worst damage was to the back door right where Rachel was sitting.  The screech of protesting tires, the impact thud, and the groan of bending metal as the taxi was shoved across the intersection, was followed by a hush, only broken by the whisper of slurry as the drum of the cement mixer rotated on its axis.  As the dust settled, a chatter of excited voices approached the wreck.  She heard the wail of an ambulance in the distance.  “Somebody must have been hurt,” she thought.  The cab hadn’t rolled over so she was still sitting upright, but when she tried to move, she couldn’t.  Her seatbelt was so tight she could hardly breathe, and one leg was held fast by a corner of the front seat that had come off its rail and been shoved into her lower leg. When she twisted her foot to get it free, a shock of deep pain shot from her leg to her heart, and for the first time, she cried out.  Eventually the firemen cut her seatbelt and freed her trembling black-stockinged leg, but by then she was exhausted from gritting her teeth and shouting in agony.   As they lifted her onto the stretcher, she felt rain on her face.  “Just my luck” she thought, but then remembered it had been raining when she left home, which was why she had taken a cab instead of walking to the restaurant.  Living near the centre of the city gave her the benefit of walking to work, but that afternoon she was on the way to a friend’s birthday party on the waterfront.  There were steep hills to navigate and at that time of year, the sidewalks were drifted over with orange and yellow leaves on top of a soggy undercoat that made for treacherous walking in high heels.  She would look great arriving at the party with the back of her pink skirt a mess of muddy leaves.  Now it didn’t matter.

The wet road might have been the cause of the accident but if the police asked her about the dynamics of the crash she wouldn’t be able to tell them much because she had been checking her phone at the time. Suddenly remembering the phone, she sat up on the stretcher and saw the smashed taxi. It was amazing she had come out of it in one piece.  She was about to call out to the firemen who surrounded the mangled wreck, to look out for her phone before they stepped on it, but she was knocked back by a sharp pain in her belly, below where the seatbelt had squeezed her ribs.  “The baby,” she said.  It was no surprise he was having a reaction to the crash because he’d been rattled around like jelly beans in a jar.  

“What is it?” the ambulance attendant stroked her forehead.  

She thought she said the word ‘baby’ again but it was difficult to hear over the shouts of firemen and traffic police. Nobody reacted. “Pregnant,”  she said, but it was an odd word that took her back to adolescence, and was more complicated than it should have been.  The attendant stared at her with concern but no comprehension.  She was having one of those dreams where nobody is listening so the dreamer shouts louder to wake himself up.  

The attendant pushed up one of her eyelids. “She’s shocking,” he said.    

“The baby,” she tried again and pressed a hand to each side of her abdomen.  Shewasn’t alarmed.  After the stress of being extracted from the taxi, she was as calm as if telling a hairdresser how she had broken a fingernail. Her lack of concern for the baby was because she was still of two minds about carrying him to term.  She wasn’t ready to look after a child, but she was already halfway through her pregnancy and the clock was running out on when she could have an abortion.  The dilemma might have now been resolved without having to make an impossible decision. The baby would make it or he wouldn't, the future was out of her hands.   

The ambulance attendant’s eyes widened as he lifted the sheet from her legs and focused on her pelvis.  She was wearing black stockings and a salmon coloured mini-skirt.  She felt an attendant cut away what was left of the stocking on her lower leg and hoped someone would rescue her heels because they were Prada and expensive.

“We've got a problem,” the attendant said to his colleague.  “How many weeks along?” He turned to her.

“Twenty,” she said, knowing exactly from which day to count.

Pregnancy at twenty hadn’t been part of the plan.  She wasn’t a virgin but made sure precautions were taken on the few occasions she had sex. There was no regular boyfriend on the scene so she hadn’t gone on the pill.  The exact date the baby was conceived wasn’t hard to pin down.  It wasn’t that she slept with any man who came along, but this one had been irresistible, and their connection had been such an overwhelming out-of-body experience, that she was not surprised she was pregnant.  On that particular occasion she had been touched deep inside, a barrier had come down, something had opened and she was flooded with acceptance.  Since then she hadn't been with another man.  She had done a home test, which showed positive results, and a doctor's visit, which confirmed it.  

Once the period of morning sickness passed she felt better, but still hadn't decided whether to keep the baby.  The father had long ago disappeared into the great white north .  She hadn't bothered to contact him when she found out she was pregnant because she didn’t plan on being a mother.  It was too soon, not even time for prenatal classes. The choice about whether to keep the baby would be hers alone.  Simply being related by blood didn’t mean the father had a superior claim on the child.  He wasn’t the one who would carry the baby, give birth, or be responsible for the child's upbringing.  In nature, a male might build a nest and make sure the mother was fed while the couple waited, but humans didn’t always follow the animal model.  Rachel had feathered her own nest and made enough money to live well, but her life would change drastically if she kept the baby.  Whatever she decided to do, she had no intention of involving the father, not even now when the baby’s survival was in danger. 

In the hospital corridor, the fluorescent ceiling lights sped by like the illuminated windows of a passenger train.  As they wheeled her into a curtained cubicle in the emergency ward, she was seized by another bout of painful cramps.  There was oxygen on her face, gloved hands fluttered over her exposed body, and she flinched or protested when tender areas were pressed, and winced when they gave her an injection.  Her legs, one now larger than the other because of the splint, were put up in stirrups.  As the medical attention focussed on her pelvis, she was embarrassed and looked sideways.  On the floor was a crumpled blood-stained rag that she recognized as the tailored salmon shorts she had been chosen to wear because they had an adjustable waistband.  It was strange to see the skirt lying on the tile floor like a part of her body had been removed and tossed aside.    

She understood from the mood in the curtained room that she had probably lost the child.  There had been too much blood, and once the medical staff had done their triage and cleaned things up, the sense of urgency abated. With her feet up in stirrups a doctor performed a procedure on her, which she thought might involve putting in stitches.   

Part of her hoped there would be a happy ending in spite of her reservations, and that the baby had survived but had been whisked away to an incubator.  If her baby lived there was still the option of putting him up for adoption.  She knew the baby was a “he” because she had been told so at an ultrasound the week before though she had not asked the technician.  The baby’s sex had tipped her slightly in favour of keeping him, because boys had less conflict with their mothers than girls.

 A doctor showed up at her bedside in the ward to explain that he had done a dilation and curettage to remove retained placental tissue.  The baby was stillborn and was too underdeveloped to survive outside the womb.  If it had been a month older, there might have been a chance, but the fetus had suffered a placental abruption and had been too long without oxygen.  

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you,” the doctor said.

She laughed because there couldn’t be much worse than almost having her leg severed and losing a baby at the same time, except for losing her life, which she wouldn’t know about if it happened.

“There was a lot of damage to the uterus,” he said. “In most women with the same traumatic injury, it usually leads to negative fertility outcomes.”  Any residual dreams she had of hugging her children to her breast, died that day. 

It was awkward getting around with a cast on her leg, but after a few days of bed-rest and another one to practice walking with crutches, she was back at home.  By the next week she was back at work at the bank. Except for the two steps from her swivel high-chair to the money counting machine, she didn’t have to walk far on her crutches except to the lunch room for coffee.  Now that there was no baby on the horizon, no inflated beach-ball to slow her down, she concentrated on learning how to walk again and get back to normal life.  With the bit of extra money she had put away in case she had kept the baby, she booked a holiday in Puerto Vallarta for early spring, only a few months away, and didn’t want to do it on crutches.  Once the cast came off and she saw the diagonal gash in one shin, it was clear that perfectly smooth legs in sheer stockings were a thing of the past. The injured leg was white, wrinkled, and had lost muscle tone.  Walks along a Mexican beach would do it a world of good, but in the meantime she wore trouser-suits to work.  The leg improved but if she was on her feet for too long, it ached where the fracture had been.  There seemed to be no physical after-effects from the miscarriage, except for crippling period cramps when she eventually started menstruating again.  The doctor had said the injury to her uterus made it impossible to conceive and carry another child so she didn’t go back to him to ask if it was normal that her monthly cycle had returned.  There were no men in the picture anyway, so it could wait. She had the lingering pain of her dented shinbone to deal with and the preparations for the trip to Mexico. 

It wasn’t until she was lying on a sunbed in Puerto Vallarta, far from the northern cold, in most people’s idea of a beach paradise, that she was overcome by a deep sadness.  There were things she had counted on having in her life that were no longer possible.  It was worse than finding out that Santa and the Tooth Fairy didn't exist, or that she had been adopted.  Like a calving glacier, a huge chunk of her future life had separated itself from her body and drifted away to melt in warmer seas.    

The children of other tourists ran back and forth from the water’s edge to their parent’s sunbeds, screaming with joy, cartwheeling, falling, landing softly and jumping up to play again. They were puppies at a beach who can’t contain the urge to run because the sand is so forgiving under their paws, with the presence of water to add an element of danger and excitement.  Dogs will roll around in the sand as if rediscovering the ecstasy of being on earth.  The sight and sound of children running in and out of the waves, flooded her with sadness for something that would never be.  There would be no toddlers, nobody needing sunscreen, nobody to recount how she had once foiled a bank robber, and no delicate fevered forehead to hold through childhood illnesses. The doctor suggested she could marry and adopt but she was lukewarm to the idea.  Natural motherly instincts might make her enthusiastic at first, but she could imagine in weaker moments, that resentment would creep in because the baby she was raising wasn’t one she had given birth to.  

In mid-afternoon, as the sun bounced its hottest rays off the Pacific Ocean, she packed her beach-bag and headed back to her hotel.  She missed having company to plan the evening with but if she had come on holiday with a group of girlfriends, there wouldn’t have been a second of quiet time to process the past and think about the future.  If she was sad she would have to cry it out alone and wash herself clean in a way that couldn’t be done by a gaggle of suntan-lotion hugs.

No sooner was she back at the hotel than she was overcome by a wave of sleepiness from the sea air and unaccustomed heat.  Up north it was still a dismal winter where everyone struggled to cope with the climate.  Lately, whenever she was out of the house, she found herself crossing her arms across her stomach because it was warmer and made her feel protected from the elements.  Mexico was hot so this posture was sticky and uncomfortable so she went back to swinging her arms at her sides like it was summer and she was a carefree child.  The heat was a reassuring blanket that wrapped her up in its folds.  There were no frigid winds in this tropical savannah.  

The hotel room was warm but when she put on the air conditioning and lay down on the bed she slept.  She was back at the beach and there were no umbrellas or children, only sand and salt water.  Thirsty when she woke, she reached for the bottle and knocked it onto the floor. Luckily the carpet was acrylic and the bottle plastic, because the tap water was rumored not to be safe.  Outside it was dusk, still early enough to go out for some dinner, so after a long shower and a generous application of moisturizer, she walked from the hotel to the seafront promenade to see what was available. Mexican wasn’t her first choice of national cuisines, but she had chosen Mexico because it was the closest place with warm winter weather, an overriding factor for anyone from the north.  She could have gone to Hawaii but it was too American.  She needed to get away from her everyday life, and Mexico was marginally exotic.

The streetlamps were on and the sea was black by the time she got to the end of the seaside promenade.  There she spotted an Italian restaurant, a glass-fronted, concrete building with a lush collection of tropical plants in pots on its front patio.  Since Rachel’s grandmother, the woman she called nonna, was Italian, she was sure to find food she understood.

 A boy barely old enough to grow a mustache greeted her at the reservation desk and instinctively looked over her shoulder for the other half of her party.  He quickly pulled himself out of his prejudice and gave her a professional smile.  “For one?” he asked, putting down one of the two menus he had picked up instinctively.  

She nodded and followed him to a table, not one of the best ones in the front window but hidden in a back corner.  When an older waiter, a thin, iron-haired man in black trousers, black gilet, and bright white shirt, asked what she would like to drink, she decided to throw caution to the winds and ask him what was a good aperitivo.  The man didn’t look like a teetotaler. 

“I suggest Angelo Azzurro, Señorita," he said.  He had probably already checked out her fingers for rings and had seen only the dime-sized amethyst that had belonged to her mother, but no wedding band..  

“I’ve had a Pina Colada before,” Rachel said. 

“Not before dinner Señorita,” he said.  “You will lose your appetito.”

“All right then,” she said, feeling daring and adventurous, a long way from her steady day job at the bank. “Un Angelo Azzurro,” she said in her best Italian. accent.  

She had told herself that on this holiday she would keep the accident, and miscarriage out of her thoughts, but it had a way of curling around her ankles until she felt like she had walked into wet cement and couldn't move. She may as well have still been trapped in the taxi.  Every time she tried to pull herself into a new life, the memory came back to claw at her.  She was beyond knowing how to get rid of the ghost of the child who would never be, but a holiday had seemed like as good an exorcism as any.  

The Blue Angel turned out to be blue curacao, triple sec, and gin.  It tasted like gin and orange juice but was much prettier in its stemmed martini glass, an ice-blue witch's potion with a twist of lemon. The first sips spread a warm glow from her throat to her chest and by the time the waiter came to take her order she was sure her face was flushed. Drinking did that to her sometimes.

The restaurant was busy but not full, as it was too early for the locals to have dinner.  Rachel had no specific plans for the evening, but would see how she felt after eating.  It was only her first full day and she still had another nine to go.

She ordered another Blue Angel and a plate of shrimp with lemon sauce, steering clear of ordering pasta in restaurants because after her grandmother’s it was always a disappointment. As she sipped on her second Blue Angel and felt her mouth going numb, she was aware of how alone she was at the big table.  She would never have the dubious pleasure of sharing a meal in a restaurant, not only with the child she had lost, but with any of her own children.  If she had been adopted into a family with children, she could have been a model aunt to a sister or brother’s children, giving and teaching them things that their parents wouldn’t or couldn’t, but she was an only child so there were no nieces or nephews to nurture. 

She carefully picked the cilantro off her shrimp and bit into the succulent meat. If she had children she wouldn’t be able to treat herself like this.  Kids would want hamburgers, chips, and Pepsi instead of grandma’s lasagna or a plate of shrimp.  As a single parent with a low-paying bank job, she wouldn't have anything extra to offer children.  If she had to move to find cheaper rent, it wouldn't be fair to anyone's kids to be in constant upheaval, sleeping on mattresses on the floor with a battered suitcase at the end of their beds. A penny-pinching and transient life would do children any favours. 

 It was unusual, or so Jaco told her later, to see a woman eating alone in a restaurant.  He had been at another table with friends, but when he happened to walk by her, he stopped cold like he had caught sight of a deluxe watch in a jeweller’s window.  

“Excuse me,” he said.

She looked up from her plate to see what he wanted. 

“I’m sorry,” he added.

She didn’t say anything, not even a “Yes?”.  She wasn’t at work, so there was no need to be particularly polite to anyone who was not the bank’s best client. He wasn’t a bad looking young man, about her age, wearing a t-shirt and white trousers.  From his accent, she assumed he was local; a resident lothario who had honed his skills on thousands of tourists like her.

“You are sad,” he said, as if sympathizing with someone who has hurt themselves.  

What he said was true, but it reminded her of the come-on of a gypsy fortune teller.  That might account for his almond feline eyes.  His next ploy would be to suggest something that would involve him putting his hand out for money. 

“And you,” she said.  “I suppose you have the key to happiness.”

He smiled broadly and his perfect teeth seemed to stretch from ear to ear.  

“In fact I do.” He pulled out a chair and sat down uninvited. “My name is Santiago but my friends call me Jaco,” he said, and held out his hand.  She should have protested.  She didn’t know this man who had made himself at home, but if he became a pest she could ask the waiter to get rid of him.  Something about his boldness, instant smile, and earnest eyes, told her to let him stay.  He was a harmless charmer and she could use some flattery.  She had already finished her meal when he had come along and she was deciding between dessert, another Blue Angel, a coffee, or a digestivo. At least this handsome young man might recommend a drink or maybe a beach to try the next day. Maybe he had a car and would whisk her up to some bougainvillea-covered villa with a swimming pool up in Las Penas. “Stop,” she told herself.  “Back up.” If he had a house in the hills he was probably a porn movie producer who would drug her and toss her out onto the street when he was done with her, but then it didn’t really matter what happened to her.  The future had been yanked unceremoniously away.  She would never have the chance to prove she was a good mother even if she didn’t want to be, so whatever else happened in her life was of little consequence.   

It turned out that Jaco was the owner of a tourist shop five minutes walk from the restaurant.  He was out with friends celebrating his cousin Miguel’s onomastico.   

“What’s that?” she asked.  Distracted and perked up by the banter with the young man, she signaled the waiter to bring her another Angelo Azzurro, but her visitor had other ideas.  He held up a hand to stop the waiter.

“You should try a Mexican digestif,” he said.  “It calms the stomach after eating.  I see you had some appetite.”  He winked.

“Okay,” she shrugged.  “No harm in trying something new.”

“Indeed,” he said, which sounded like an oddly British thing to say.  “Mesero," he said, "Tráiga una cuarenta y tres a la señora!”

“What’s that?” she asked, hoping that whatever it was didn’t taste too bad and that if he was a real gentleman he would offer to pay for it.  She had no intention of paying for something she didn’t want or like.

“I offer,” he said, as if reading her mind.  It is a licor with the taste of vanilla, orange, and canela. We Mexicans take it with coffee.”

“I’ll give it a try,” she said.  “Thank you. Without the coffee.”

“You see,” he said,  “We Mexicans are friendly people.  Especially to beautiful young ladies like you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m keeping you from your table.”  His smarmy compliment had irritated her.  She’d have a sip of the liqueur he recommended and make her own way out into the night.

“I know them all my life,” he said, tilting his chin in their direction.  “We will see each other tomorrow.”

The drink arrived, a transparent yellow liquid in a shot glass.  

“Don’t take it all at once,” he said.  “It is like the life, you must take it slowly and taste everything on the way.”

“A philosopher,” she said and smiled at him for perhaps the first time.

He behaved like a true friend that night and walked her back to her hotel without trying to insinuate himself inside. When he said goodbye, he invited her to come round to his shop the next day and he would make her a proper Mexican coffee.  She said goodnight, pleased that he hadn’t made things awkward or difficult, and she could decide tomorrow whether to meet him again or not.  Having no plans was the beauty of a vacation.

The next day dawned beautiful and sunny, exploding with colour, a surprise after the black and white northern weather.  Here the Aztec Gods enjoyed the previous day so much, they decided to repeat it.  Blue skies were predicted for the next ten days, and for Rachel, the colours, the smells, and unfamiliar noises were proof she was not at home.  Being out of her element was just what she was looking for.  She suspected that visiting Jaco in his shop would be like a feather in his cap because a young foreign woman had called on him, but she didn’t intend to be his trophy, a living demonstration for his male power.  She stretched out on a sunbed, lay back, closed her eyes, and let the heat of the morning sun warm her northern bones.  

With her eyes closed but not asleep, she couldn’t turn off thoughts of the future.  Would a man like Jaco, from a culture where family was everything and the Madonna had the highest power, take a relationship with a barren woman like her in stride?  For a Catholic, not being able to have a child was like coming to a dead end railway spur.  A woman with no hope of children was a disappointment not only to her mother-in-law, but also to the paternal grandparents. Why would their boy go with a sterile mule?  Rachel knew that having children wasn’t a requirement for a woman, but it was a biological possibility for most. Nature programmed men and women to procreate, but it doesn’t work the same for everyone. There are those who have children and shouldn’t have, and those who should have had children but don’t.  Prerequisites for parenthood are good helpings of physical, mental, and emotional strength, and many fall short of the mark.  Many women become mothers without understanding what they are taking on and it is only in retrospect they realize they were not equipped to manage it well.  They didn’t love their children less, but they lacked essential qualities and infected their offspring with their own demons. Rachel’s stomach growled and she started thinking about lunch.

It would have been a very late lunch for a banker by the time she had gone back to the hotel to shower and walked down to the end of the promenade to see if Jaco had some free time that afternoon.  He had given her his card and told her to stop by when she wanted.  Certainly a professional womanizer would have his own card, but Jaco’s was a card for the shop.  It was difficult picking out the name or number from the row of merchandise-adorned shops, one indistinguishable from the other.  She imagined that if one shop’s pottery, necklaces, or cotton dresses encroached on the territory of another, a turf war would break out.  There were always raised voices between the shopkeepers though they didn’t sound angry.  It was like the phone hadn’t been invented yet, or one side of the conversation or the other was deaf.  

As she hoped, Jaco was still in the shop, this time wearing a bright shirt with blue and yellow parrots on it.  He introduced his mother, who was tiny, round, and professionally sweet but had cold eyes.  

“It’s really her shop,” Jaco was nervous, perhaps thinking that if Rachel knew the shop wasn’t his, she would be disappointed. “It belonged to my parents until my dad died.  I come here to help when it’s busy and keep mama company. Verdad mama?” He hugged his mother but she didn’t reciprocate, keeping her arms at her sides as if her son had been a bad boy and she hadn’t forgiven him yet.  

As they started into a back street off the promenade, he asked if he could hold her hand.  She shrugged.  It was too hot to get too close, but holding hands was a gesture between friends and meant nothing.  His hand was warm and dry and gave her a slight tingle when their fingers touched, reminding her that a human connection was different than cuddling up to a substitute cat or dog.  She wasn’t sure how she would have responded to the baby that she had grown inside her. It would be a slippery sticky mess at first.  At the beginning of her pregnancy these raw thoughts had made her feel like an involuntarily reproducing space alien, but in a better frame of mind couldn’t wait to embrace a plump miniature being that needed all she had to give.  

“Chinese?” Jaco asked out of nowhere.  She didn't understand the question but it brought her baby thoughts spiraling back down to the narrow street as if she was being reeled in from a dream.  They had stopped in front of a restaurant.

“Why not?” she answered.  The restaurant had a small entrance as if it was a secret door in a Peking backstreet.  She would not have gone in alone, but once inside, the room was a vast low-ceiling space with red wallpaper, red hanging lamps, red lacquer woodwork, and shiny black floor.  The restaurant was mostly empty because the afternoon was hot and most of the tourists were still on the beach.

Jaco asked for a red leather booth and once she sat down, he squeezed in beside her.  She moved over to make room but would have preferred if he sat opposite.  If he was sitting beside her, she couldn’t look him in the eye to judge how genuine he was.  His play for intimacy made her feel crowded, so she moved further back in the booth. 

“I’m not having a drink here,” she said.  “It’s too early.”

“Very wise,” he said.  “I also won’t drink because I am at the shop tonight.”

“Is it just you and your mother?”

“No no,” he said.  “There is my sister sometimes, and my cousin Miguel.  He comes to help when we need him.”

The chicken and vegetables didn’t seem Chinese at all except they had probably been cooked in a wok and were served with a bottle of soy sauce. Jaco had moved even closer to her again so their shoulders were almost touching.  She may as well have been drinking because his insistent proximity made her feel flushed but she put it down to the warm weather.  Though the restaurant was buried under a cement building that kept it cool, there wasn’t any air circulation. 

She had not been intimate with anyone since the time the baby was conceived a year ago.  The doctor assured her there would be no pain with intercourse but she hadn’t had a chance yet to try penetrative sex.  She was healthy enough and sometimes had an appetite for it. Maybe Jaco was angling for a dessert that wasn’t on the Chinese menu.  He had made it clear that he didn’t have to be back at work until late afternoon.  She decided that if things looked like they were going to get intimate, she would not tell him about her childless future because it might make him think she was less of a woman.  She would tell him she had taken precautions; he didn’t need to know everything.

Though she protested he paid the restaurant bill.  By doing this it put her in a position of owing something and she had always resented being blackmailed into transactional games.  Her mother had been like that.  “If you do this for me, I’ll do that for you.”  She had considered saying yes if he proposed going up to her hotel room but then he might think his power game had worked.  She might even invite him in before he asked, and shift the power back into her hands. Either way, she would get what she wanted, a fling, a holiday romance where one knows very little about the other except the secret language in their eyes and the heady perfume of their bodies.

She didn’t get to ask.  When they got back to the hotel he accompanied her to her room like he was her husband and had every right. She didn’t challenge him because it was also what she wanted. They were both so excited they didn’t take time to undress.  Paco was more skilled than she imagined and took her to places she had forgotten about.  It was only after, when they stripped out of the last of their clothes and took a shower together, that she saw how beautiful his body was.  He was lithe but muscular with very little body hair and skin like milky coffee.  With the feeling of him still inside her, she was ready to start over again, this time more slowly, but he said he had to get back to the shop.  His mother would be waiting to go home.

Rachel was in no hurry to go out as it was too early for nightlife, but she thought that later she might stop by to check with Jaco just before his shop closed to see what he was doing later.  In the meantime, she pulled the tangled sheets over her and slept.  A siesta was such a civilized idea, but for a northern worker it was a guilty pleasure.  She dreamed she was in a room with yellow walls that were covered in red loops of paint, like a giant child had been practicing writing basics with a dripping brush. There were rows and rows of loops like those of an illiterate student being punished by repeating the rows of linked O’s until he could do them perfectly. “I don’t understand,” she said in her dream.  “I know how to write.”     

“Do it again,” a voice behind her said.

She took up her brush and started another row of loops.  

“Squeeze,” the voice said.  “Tighter.”

She narrowed her circles so more loops could fit onto the row.

“Zero,” the voice said.  “That’s correct.  Zero, zero, zero.”

Rachel’s eyes popped open in the darkened room.

“Zero,” she said.  “Nothing.”  The thought made her sit up in bed and pull her knees up to her chest because she felt alone and empty after the storm of sensory overload from Jaco’s visit.  The phrase “no issue” repeated in her thoughts and made her shoulder’s sag with the same weight that an unmarried woman feels when she hears the words old maid. When she rolled over to turn on the light, she saw a man’s watch on the bedside table.  She wondered if Jaco had left it there on purpose so he would have a chance to see her again.  The renewed memory of his touch pushed aside her feeling of emptiness and she decided to return his watch to him that very evening.  Why wait?  If he wanted to get together with her again when he closed up the shop, that would be fine with her.  This time she would slow down and appreciate the unexpectedness of his attention.

As the lights of the promenade blinked on, she didn’t stop to shop or snack, because she wanted to return the watch and find out what he was doing later.  She walked right past the shop the first time and it wasn’t until she got to the Italian restaurant that she knew she had gone too far.  Backtracking, she hardly recognized the shop now that most of the merchandise was gone.  The door was still open so she wandered in and peered past dress racks and around corners for someone to help her.  Jaco’s mother must be gone.  She would have never left a shop so undefended against thieves.  

“Hello?” She called, but nobody answered.  She went back out to the street to look around in case Jaco was at another shop nearby, or had been behind a rack of postcards chatting to someone and she hadn’t seen him. He must have been in the shop, but it was strangely undefended.  She considered standing guard until someone came back. 

Back in the shop she tried another “Hello?” but with no results.  Looking over her shoulder to make sure there was nobody else around, she headed for a curtain that covered an archway at the back.  She pushed the curtain aside and could barely make out by a dim light at the back, Jaco’s naked torso looking very much like he was in the middle of having sex with someone she couldn’t see.  She didn’t know whether to call his name and interrupt him, or back out of the doorway and pretend she hadn’t seen him.  She chose the latter but she didn’t make it to the front of the shop before Jaco appeared, buttoning his parrot shirt as he came out of the back room.  In the dim shop light she could see beads of sweat on his forehead.

“You should have called,” he said.

“I didn’t bring my phone. I did call out when I got here but nobody answered.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said.

“I don’t know what to think.” The heat of embarrassment flushed her cheeks and forehead. He was right that she could have called ahead from the hotel, and when she got there she could have shouted louder, but that didn’t matter now.  “I guess this afternoon wasn’t enough for you,” she said.

“Of course it was my darling,” he said, and was close enough to reach out for her arm but she backed away.  “This is something else,” he said.

“Enlighten me,” she said.  “It looked like sex to me.”

“No, no, no.  Miguel was helping me to fix the refri.  It was too hot inside.” 

“With Miguel?.  Right after me? I’m ashamed of myself for giving you the time of day.”

He ran after her but she wouldn’t turn around.  She was too stupid to be let loose in a world that was full of tricksters and men who only thought about propping up their egos.  She strode as fast as she could back to the hotel, and explained that she didn’t want any calls or visits , especially from a certain Jaco.  The next morning she went to a different beach just in case.  He didn’t find her though he may not have come looking for her.  She avoided the Italian restaurant at the far end of the promenade because it would take her right past his shop.  She didn’t want to hear explanations or excuses.  It was something that had happened.  She had lost her head but now it was done.

Two months later, on a regular day at work, she settled herself onto her teller’s stool and greeted her first client of the day.  He was a regular who came in with deposits from his corner shop but when he leaned forward to push the money pouch to her, she was hit by an invisible cloud of expensive men’s cologne.  Her throat automatically closed and her stomach clenched.  She knew what came next, it had already happened that morning as soon as she got out of bed.  She had been surprised to find herself with a case of the dry heaves over the toilet. It was probably a stomach bug and she shouldn’t have come to work that day. The manager would be upset with her not only because she might have to go home in the middle of her shift, but because she had brought a flu virus into work.  With a quick word to another teller, she scurried for the washroom, her hand over her mouth in case things came up before she could get there.  Floating above the awful wrenching nausea as she braced herself over the toilet bowl, a rational part of her brain asked if this could be something besides flu, but then the thought evaporated when another wave of nausea punched her in the gut.