An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (20 page)

“Like
underwater fireflies?”

John
turned to Tamarind, but she’d already lifted her dress over her head and
dropped it on the ground at her feet, sighing. She wore nothing under the
dress. As he watched her stride into the phosphorescent water, thousands of the
tiny creatures shimmered like blue-green fire along the surface of her skin and
in the patch of hair between her legs. Around them, the
coquí
frog sang
its distinctive refrain and mosquitoes hummed.

He took
a step forward and then stopped. Tamarind swam in the obsidian water, her
strokes luminous and eerie.

“I
thought you were hot from dancing.” Tamarind lay on her back fifty feet away
looking at him, her torso elevated from the surface of the lagoon. Neon
streaked the surrounding water as she stroked to stay afloat.

“I was.”

“You’re
not now? Is something wrong?”

“No—yes.
Sometimes I feel a little like I’m suffocating.”

She swam
closer, her eyes never leaving his face. “Is that how you felt the day I pulled
you from the canal?”

“Yes.”

“I know
how you feel. Sometimes I find it hard to breathe when I’m out of water.”

John
remembered her swimming. “Coming from you, that makes perfect sense.”

She
stood up and walked to him, her small breasts high and their nipples taut.
Seawater fell from her in a glowing sheet. When she reached him, she took his
right hand in her left. He felt her vibrating hum through the skin of his palm.

“I’ll
take care of you.” She lifted his t-shirt over his head while he stood there,
shivering. “You’re cold?” Her hands, normally cool and moist, felt warm against
his shoulders.

She
stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing against him. Her
heat seeped into his skin and he shivered more. She laid her head against his
chest and hummed louder. John closed his eyes and breathed. After a moment he
realized that Tamarind breathed in unison with him and he felt warmer.
Something inside his chest unlocked and his lungs expanded to let in air.
Slowly he lifted his left hand and cupped the back of her head. She didn’t move
or halt her humming.

John
shifted so that Tamarind looked up at him. In the dark he saw only starlight
reflected in her eyes; her hair, so carefully clipped up earlier in the
evening, curved around her face in damp clumps. He lowered his mouth to hers
and tasted salt.

“Counting
turtle eggs? You’re so full of shit, John.” Zoë’s voice sliced through the
night around them. “Care to introduce me to your naked friend?”

John stood on the berm
between the road and the lagoon with the dripping
woman shrinking beside him. He dipped his head and stepped sideways, blocking
Zoë’s view.

“Wha-what
are you doing here?” He didn’t look at her.

“Fuck if
I know!” Her voice cracked on the last word and she clinched her hands at her
side. “I believed you when you said you were sorry about fucking another woman,
that you cared about me. I believed you when you said you just needed to get
away from grad school for a while, spend some time in the surf and sand. I came
down here to give you a second chance.”

Her
words flew at him. She almost wished that they were stilettos, and she didn’t
mean those ridiculous neck-breakers that Barbie dolls wore.

He
turned and said something Zoë couldn’t hear to his date. She scurried in the
direction of the Samurai parked thirty feet from them.

“I
didn’t lie to you.” John turned back to face her.

“So I’m
supposed to believe that this–this—” She flung her arm in the direction of the
Samurai. “That you haven’t been fucking this island bitch all summer?”

The moon
had risen over them, bringing John’s features into sharp relief. Shadows
underneath his eyes obscured their expression.

“You’re
supposed to believe that I never intended to hurt you.” He raised his hand
toward her—to ward off her next words or to console her, she didn’t know which.

“My God!
Even now you’re dancing around the truth! You think you love her, don’t you?”

John
dropped his hand and said nothing.

“What is
she to you? Someone not too educated to forget her place? You’re an asshole,
John, and I can’t believe I’ve been tearing myself up over you. Let me show you
what a real woman does when a man tries to make a fool out of her.”

Before
he could anticipate her or even protest, she lifted her right knee to her
chest, rising onto the ball of her left foot. A fraction of a second later her
right heel connected with his solar plexus, sending him flying away from her.
He landed on the soft mud at the edge of Puerto del Manglar. She followed the
kick up with a dash and a swing of her left leg that stopped short of his head;
as she stood over him, panting, she knew he got the message: she could knock
his block off if she chose. Then, after a long moment, she lowered her foot and
turned away.

***

Ana
hunkered within the scant shade of her doorway, her good eye squinted against
the mid-afternoon light. Smoke from her clove cigarette curled and wafted until
it was snared within the strands of her coarse hair. On a grass mat before her
was a mound of tamarind pods, nearly ten pounds, that she’d collected this
morning after scouring the ground near the tamarind trees along the coast; it
was the first of the season’s fruit. She’d already washed each pod and now
broke them into smaller pieces, leaving the outer shell and seeds with the pulp
and tossing them into a large cast-iron pot at her right side. Reach, grasp,
snap, snap, snap. Her body swayed and rocked as she worked, her movements
efficient and easy; only the sounds of birds competed with her radio, now
playing Latin salsa behind her.

After
she’d finished breaking the tamarind pods, Ana built a fire under a cast-iron
frame ten feet from her house. She hauled the pot to the frame and lifted it
onto a hook over the flames. Next, she poured in twice as much spring water as
fruit from her cache of bottled water and stirred the tamarind around in it,
her left hand drifting to the stub of cigarette in her mouth before removing
it; as she stirred, a spicy scent of tamarind fruit insinuated itself through
the cloying smoke. She stirred until the water began to darken and the pulp separated
from the shells and seeds. These she strained from the pot with a long-handled
sieve and saved in a wooden bowl for later use in lotions and syrups for a wide
range of ailments.

She let
the water simmer for ten minutes or so before she tossed in a handful of
cloves, allspice and black peppercorns, then slices of lime and ginger. She
breathed the vapors rising from her brew and sighed before sinking down again
on her heels under the shade of a nearby tree and waiting for the fruit and
spices to flavor the water fully. A slight breeze stirred the air around her,
drying the sweat from between her flaccid breasts and lifting the ends of her
hair from her cheeks.

When
she’d judged that the decoction was sufficiently spiced, she strained out the
spices and fruit. Near the wooden bowl into which she deposited these spent
flavorings sat two five-pound bags of palm sugar; she added these slowly to the
pot, stirring until she had a thin syrup. She let this syrup boil for several
minutes and then doused the fire under the pot. As the syrup cooled, she ladled
it into a large glass bottle (which one of the Culebrenses had given her as
payment for curing his diarrhea) filled with several gallons of purified water.
Now the brew was cool enough for the yeast, which she’d already dissolved in
warm water. Her task was nearly over: she would watch the fermentation over the
next two weeks, adding sugar whenever it seemed to slow down. By the end of
that time, it would be drinkable; in a month, it would be a spicy beer.

Ana had
brewed a variety of other wines and beers from Culebra’s fruits, but none
tasted nearly as good as tamarind beer and she’d long since abandoned any other
recipes that she’d tested. Even though she had no one but herself to please,
she’d found that more than a few of the locals preferred her tamarind beer to
commercial beers and she was able to sell a cup here and there for far more
than that which a bottle of Medalla garnered.

She
lifted the full bottle of fermenting brew into her decrepit refrigerator, its
once-white exterior now chipped and pockmarked from a lifetime of use. It was
one of the few modern conveniences that she’d grudgingly adopted from her
previous life as a sailor’s wife, but one which earned her respect for its
ability to make her life more pleasant and pay for itself. It, a warming plate,
and a radio were the only appliances that she owned.

Now that
she’d finished brewing, she pulled out a smaller, two-and-a-half gallon bottle
of finished beer from one of the higher shelves in the refrigerator and poured
herself a cup. She took the cup and a fresh clove cigarette and returned to the
doorway of her single room to wait for the rain that she smelled in the air.

A hush
descended over the afternoon as the sun reached its zenith and all of the
Creator’s wildlife dozed in its heat. Even Ana grew sleepy in the still warmth,
her head drooping over her cup and her hand holding the cigarette growing limp.
Gentle fingers saved her from being burned and woke her with their cool touch.
Struggling awake, Ana lifted her face. Seeing the mermaid, she shifted on her
heels and brought her cup up to her mouth. It wouldn’t do for the young one to
guess that she’d been waiting for her. She drained the last of the tamarind
beer, its fiery descent into her stomach bracing her, and set the cup down. She
rose to face Tamarind, who still held her burning cigarette.

“I’ll
take that.”

Tamarind
handed it to her, her forehead puckered. The young one looked so much like Ana
herself had before she’d married her sailor that a deep soreness settled in her
chest, but this time there was no tamarind beer to fortify her nerves. Even if
she had a mirror, Ana knew that Tamarind would not recognize her own innocence
and vulnerability within it.

“You’ve
been gone all night.” She said, her voice gruff from the heartache, and took a
drag. “Did you manage to win your legs by mating with that man?”

The
muscles in Tamarind’s face tightened. Ana noticed that her dress, originally
brilliant blue, was dusty and torn in several places.

“Did he
hurt you? Tell me and I’ll brew him a special potion. Or I’ll call on Mother
Sea and curse him to the seventh generation!”

Tamarind
sank into a squat and folded her arms across her chest. Her corkscrew hair
concealed her face.

“He
didn’t hurt me the way you think. We went dancing last night and I took him to
Puerto Manglar to show him the glowing ones. Then he kissed me.”

She
stopped, but Ana said nothing. Instead, she went inside and returned with a cup
of the tamarind beer. She handed it to Tamarind, who gulped some of it and
winced.

“His
girlfriend appeared at just that moment. Her anger pulsed from her—it nearly
overwhelmed my senses. John asked me to wait in his Samurai, but I could still
hear them talking.” She paused long enough to sip the tamarind beer. “Then she
kicked him in the chest. He fell hard and she nearly kicked him in the head,
but she didn’t. I could tell she wanted to though.”

Ana
dropped her cigarette butt onto the hard ground and twisted her heel on it.
“Ah. Did he plead with her?”

“No, he
lay on the ground, clutching at his chest. I waited until she left to go to
him, but he said nothing to me, just waved me back into the Samurai. When he
finally got in, he said it was time for me to go home. He dropped me off at the
bottom of the hill.”

“Where’ve
you been then?”

Tamarind
looked into her cup as though she looked at it for the first time and didn’t
like what she saw. “Just wandering—and swimming. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

Ana
gripped Tamarind’s chin and made her look up. “I warned you to stay away from
him. He’s not worth the pain you’ve already been through. Don’t let him hurt
you anymore.”

“His
girlfriend said he thinks he loves me.”

“Bah!
She said that in the heat of the moment. Even if she’s right, he’s not to be
trusted. Look how he’s hurt her. I doubt he knows what he wants. And as hurt
and angry as she is, I bet you a colossal squid for dinner she’d take him back
if he asked her to.”

Tamarind
stood up. “I need another swim.”

“Go and
have one. But keep in mind, young one: you win this man, you’re not likely to
live close to the ocean. You won’t be able to swim whenever your heart troubles
you.”

Tamarind
frowned. Without speaking, she turned toward the hidden path to Playa Tamarindo
and trudged away.

Ana lit
another clove cigarette and took a deep drag, her eyes all the while on
Tamarind’s hunched shoulders. After Tamarind disappeared over the rise, she
smiled and exhaled smoke, which lingered around her face pleasantly.

***

John’s
head ached. His head and torso felt as if they’d been hollowed out and then
stuffed with a mix of sandpaper and wool. He groaned and rolled over onto his
side, misjudging how close he was to the edge of the bed. He crashed against
the floor hard, but the pain receded quickly as he realized that the air
washing over his face was cool. Looking up to the clock on his bedside table,
he read 4:08 p.m.