We arrived at the dock and went aboard. The ship was trimmed out in lights and streamers to impress visitors, and we could wander on board, so we decided to go to the upstairs bar for a drink. I don’t know if the bartender recognized me as the crasher, but Jay stood out clearly from the other patrons. There were a few other people his age, but they were all very well dressed. Jay seemed to enjoy his black-sheep status, and smiled happily at the porter who hovered near us, waiting, I know, for the moment we could be evicted.
We sat at a table near the pool, which had been uncovered after we hit the warmer weather, and I drank off half my bourbon in one gulp.
“You know what got to me the most when I started this vacation?” I asked.
“Time.”
“That’s it.”
“Sure. That’s what gets to everybody.”
“Yeah. It was pretty bad. I kept wanting the days to end, so maybe something would clear itself up, but instead the next day would begin in that same void.”
“It’s a bitch,” he said. “I remember the first couple of months out in the bush I really thought I’d blown it. I mean, there was nothing to do but sit around and think about things. And then that emptiness that comes whenever you break a habit started really to get to me. I mean, when your whole life is a habit?”
“Yeah, I know.” I sipped my drink. “How did you get out of it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Got into little things, I guess. Studied French, read a lot—but mostly, you know, I don’t think it’s a question of doing anything special. I think that with me, I just got to a point where my body sensed that things had to change, almost like what was going on was a disease it had to take care of. And I just found myself feeling more at home with myself.
“It wasn’t that big a deal, like a revelation or anything. Suddenly little things got to be important in themselves. It was kind of like I was starting over completely and answering what I thought were the big questions became not so important. I mean, who really cares if you’ve figured everything out? You’re not living a study, you know. You’re living a life. And so I concentrated on details, on what naturally felt right, and pretty soon they added up to a whole different picture of what life was about. And all that other stuff, like my job, and what was I doing with my life—you know, the big picture—all that just seemed stupid. I mean, it didn’t work, and that’s the thing. Maybe for some people it does, but I tend to like enjoying things if they’re fun instead of wondering what it is in me that would like something so nonprofound.”
We were silent for a while, and I ordered another round from the porter. The first stars were becoming visible, and around us I was becoming aware of the bustle of people getting ready to leave. There was a warm evening breeze off the sea. It was a beautiful moment.
“You know,” Jay finally went on, “when I first got to my post, there was nobody there to meet me, and no hotel and no restaurant, needless to say, and so I just walked up to this hut and asked the father there if he could tell me where the
préfet
was, so I could get settled, or start something. But he wouldn’t even talk to me until he’d had me in to meet his family, and I’d finished dinner with them.” He shrugged again. “I don’t know if that means anything, but it made all the difference in the world to me at the time. I mean, here’s a guy who is poor as sin and doesn’t know me from Jesus, and he has me eat with his whole family. I don’t know. Maybe that was the first detail that got to me. It was so immediate. He didn’t expect me to ask him back, or to pay him, or to owe him something. It was just the natural thing to do for him.” He looked at his drink. “I’m rambling. Must be the booze.”
“No,” I said. “That’s the thing that’s been getting to me—that I can’t seem to get the details to mean anything.”
“Well, they don’t at first. That dinner didn’t mean anything more to me at the time than that it was damn nice of the guy to put me up. But it’s kind of like learning a language. The first words mean nothing. There’s no pattern, but you remember them because you know they mean something, even if you can’t define it, or it’s unrelated to anything else you know. So you just let the words build up and pretty soon you’ve got some sentences, and then you find that you can talk to hundreds of other people you might never have been able to know, and then one of those people, maybe, you fall in love with, or kills you, or leaves you a fortune, and it’s all traceable back to that first word. Woo. I must be getting loaded.”
“We might as well get below,” I said. “The penguin’s getting nervous.”
Down at our bunks, I once again felt uncomfortable with the crowd, the heat, and the noise. Jay was lying down, his eyes closed, and I was sitting hunched on the side of the bunk, thumbing through one of his books.
“Jay?”
“Huh.”
“What do you do if all the details—the first ones, I mean—are all bad? I mean really shitty?”
“What the hell,” he said. “They’re only details.”
I passed most of the next day on our deck. The air was cooler than it had been in Casablanca, but still quite pleasant. Jay stayed below. We’d pretty much talked ourselves out the day before, and I was content to stand by the side of the ship and look out over the expanse of water. Once, around midday, a school of dolphins kept us entertained as they broke water in front and on the sides of us.
I got to know a few of the other men on board, and talked at length with one of them, a gaily dressed giant black man named Minta. He talked in the same broken French I did, and we got along very well, smiling and nodding to each other while we tried to make ourselves understood. He taught me the game called
oware
that I’d seen the women playing with stones, and beat me handily four times.
Later in the afternoon, I went to the bar and did write a few letters, one to Lea in care of a mutual friend. I told her where she could reach me in case she wanted to be in touch. There were still many practical things to clear up. I felt good about writing to her. I didn’t really have the sense that I should hate her, or she me, and I restrained myself from saying that I loved her. She probably wouldn’t get the letter anyway for a couple of months, and by then maybe her whole world would be different. Still, it was a start and, at the same time, didn’t lead anywhere. I didn’t want to offer more than that.
Dinner was again lentils with some kind of meat. I ate a lot, talking to Jay and Minta and the others. After dinner, we gave out what oranges we had left. I was tired from a day outside on the deck, even though I had done nothing, and when they disassembled the tables, I walked over to my bed and lay down. Tomorrow we’d put in at Tenerife.
The ship rode easily, and I was aware for a while of its steady rise and fall, but before long the gentle rocking had its effect, and I slept.
Twenty-one
Mike sat at the edge of the pier in Marseilles trying to decide where he had gone wrong. He’d been there since early in the afternoon, when he’d come back from shopping for lunch to find Lea gone. She’d left a terse note. There was no mystery this time.
So he’d come down to the waterfront. It was cold. The wind blew in off the water. He didn’t know what to think. In the evening, there was a cloudburst, a sun shower, with the cold rain soaking him even as he watched the sun going down. The squall passed. It got dark quickly, and then he was really cold. He considered getting in his car and driving back to Tossa. But what waited for him there?
He got up stiffly and began walking back to the hotel. He needed some dry clothes. That was the first thing. As he walked, he cursed Lea.
The streets shone with the wet. He was more comfortable in the back alleys, and walked with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, hunched over. Occasionally one of the girls would call to him, but he wouldn’t look at her. To fight the cold, he started jogging down the middle of the street. When he was nearly back to the hotel, he stopped at a corner to get his breath. The street looked to him like a cheap movie set, the lights doing nothing but making him feel how dark it would be without them. His breath curled up out of his mouth as he leaned up under a doorway and panted.
Across the street, a door opened and a girl stepped out, framed in the light from inside. Mike could see that she was not old. She wore a heavy, dark coat which stopped far above her knees, and she looked sullenly across at him, and lit a cigarette. When the match glared briefly, he saw her face and couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Sharon’s face. Her hair was blond, not the dyed red most of the whores had. He stared at her while she looked vacantly down the empty street and dragged again at the cigarette. Behind her, the door opened again and a man stepped out, patted her on the rear, and walked off. Mike came out of the shadow of the doorway and looked at her. She paid no attention to him. It was amazing. He wanted to speak to her, but couldn’t say anything. He’d like to hear her voice. Maybe it was her, after all this time.
She threw down her cigarette suddenly and disappeared inside the door. He stood looking at the spot for a second, and then turned the corner and went back to his hotel.
The concierge didn’t want him to enter looking so wet and mangy, but Mike shut him up with a look before he could say anything. He took the steps two at a time and let himself in his room.
Fuck her, he thought. I don’t need her.
He picked out some of the new clothes he’d bought, and carefully checked to see how he looked in the mirror. His mind raced. He didn’t know what he would do, but he’d do something. Outside, he went down the street to a large bar at the corner. He sat down, conspicuously facing the center of the room, though off to one side. The bar wasn’t crowded. He ordered a good bottle of wine and a bottle of Perrier, and settled down to wait.
After perhaps an hour, the girl he wanted came in alone. Except for the fact that she was slim and had dark hair, she didn’t look much like Lea. She was young, probably not yet twenty, maybe a secretary somewhere. She dressed well, conservatively. Nylons with a seam down the back of her legs, light gloves, a dark sweater, a wrap-around skirt of fashionable length. That wasn’t what made him sure she was the right one, however. There was a brooding quality about her, even as she stood by the bar. She looked around too much, not as though she were expecting someone, but rather as though she needed to know she was missing nothing that might threaten her.
Mike stopped the waiter and asked him if he would invite the girl over to share some wine. He knew she wouldn’t refuse. He looked presentable, and she had come into the bar unescorted.
When she came over, Mike stood, all manners, and held her chair. They introduced themselves, and he poured wine.
At first they made small talk. How well he spoke French. He told her the same thing, and they laughed. She hadn’t known many Americans. What had brought him to Marseilles?
But he evaded that. Instead, his eyes clouded briefly, and his face hardened. Then, immediately, he brightened again and asked her about her work, her family. Then, as they started the second bottle, he quieted himself. The laughs became scarce and then, when he felt she was ready, he began.
“You ask why I’m in Marseilles. I want to tell you.”
“Do,” she said. Her eyes were wide, focused on him. He lifted his glass to his mouth and she followed it with her eyes.
“I don’t want to bore you.” All seriousness now.
“No, go on. Please.”
“I came here to Marseilles for the first time when I was eighteen. But I was younger than that. Too young, I supposed I believed, then, in love, and I came with my lover. We were on vacation, and . . .”
It had worked with Lea, although then he had meant it. And it would work with this girl. He would show them. He understood now what it had all meant to her, and if she hadn’t wanted him for himself, and he knew that, then he would at least learn something from what she had wanted. This girl would be easy, and then there would be more. And he went on and on, and her eyes grew wider with sympathy, and when he felt himself near to crying, he stopped.
They finished the wine. He was here to look for her. Did she understand how hard it was?
Getting up, they left the bar, walking down the near-empty street toward his hotel. He talked quietly now about his hopes, his future, his forlorn and lonely past. The wind made a siren sound between the buildings, and she let him put his arm around her so they both wouldn’t be so cold. The tears came, and she brushed them away with her gloved hand, looking up at him, believing. He kissed her, touching her lips gently, then forcing her easily until they were sucking in each other’s breath on the cold street, their tongues deep in each other’s mouths.
And then, when it was so certain, so easy, he knew he couldn’t do it. It would only be a matter of taking her back to the bar and excusing himself to go to the bathroom. It had been a rotten plan, leading nowhere. He had been hurting and had wanted to hurt. He still did, but not this way. This girl had never hurt him, and never could.
He turned her around, and suggested another bottle of wine. He sat her so she’d face away from the door, and then told her he’d be right back. Was it all so stupid? he thought. He felt abandoned. He turned quickly off the street back into the alleys. Maybe this would not have to be such a horrible thing. He hadn’t loved Lea. There hadn’t been time. Maybe he’d needed her, but for what?