Dear Abby (2 page)

Abby scowls up at the sunlight filtering down
through the palm branches.

It's a satisfying fantasy, but then what? She
has a ten year span on her resume between graduating from the journalism
program and now, where all she's done is vacation and
write
fluff editorials. Then there's the advice column where she answers the trite,
inane questions from self-important people who don’t want real answers to their
travel questions—they just want Abby to point them to the most convenient
travel package that her company offers. That's not the sort of thing that will
get her a job with a real newspaper, doing real investigative journalism,
writing about real lives, real tragedies,
real
triumphs.
Making a real difference.

She's got to feed her cat somehow. She's got
an apartment to pay rent on, a car to keep up, a man that she has dinner and
sex with but she can't quite get to commit to committing, and the last trickle
of student debt to kill off.

She can't
afford
to quit, no matter
how miserable she is.

And isn't that an irony.
Miserable
in a fake paradise.

In the distance a group of young men holler
and splash, trying to attract the attention of another group of young women in
bikinis that leave exactly nothing to the imagination. Abby wants to be
generous to the young men, but stereotyping wouldn't exist if it
isn't wasn't
partially true, after all, and each of the
young men
radiates
self-centered, self-important just-graduated
douchebaggery
.

All-inclusive doesn't mean the staff!
Abby wants to snarl
when she sees one of them make a grab for a towel-boy as he walks by the edge
of the pool, but she holds her tongue. They'd just laugh at her, call
her an
old bag with her one-piece suit and her wide-brimmed
hat and her silly little notebook and then ignore her. Or begin pursing the
staff more aggressively in retaliation.

Or get the towel-boy in trouble. And, for all
she knows, ruin his lucrative side-business. It happens. Abby isn't an idiot.
She's been to enough resorts, hung around enough of the right kind of tourist,
who thinks that whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, so to speak. And who
is Abby to judge if she's seen some of the locals taking the tourists for a
ride, milking a few extra dollars or a few extra orgasms out of the silly,
selfish people who come to their countries and prance around like peacocks?
Both sides know exactly what's going on, after all, when money and bodily
fluids are exchanged.

Abby's never done it. She has to account for
everything she spends on the resort, and she doesn't make enough on the side to
be able to afford a clandestine grope with a local. Besides, she isn't sure she
has the guts for it. Casual sex, orgasms with another person just for the sake
of orgasms, hasn't ever appealed to her.

She toys with the straw of her depleted
drink, rolling it between the pads of her fingers, and wonders what it would be
like to be confident in one's own body, in one's own sexuality. To feel as if
the skin and muscle she pulls around herself every day fits properly. That
there are no odd wrinkles in the seams, that every gesture and posture is the
result of awareness and deliberation.

That's the way the not-goddess moves, Abby realizes,
and as soon as she thinks of the woman, her eyes find her in amid the sea of
turquoise patio chairs and yellow sunshades. She is wearing a fabric
neckerchief today, like the rest of the employees—patterned in a tacky neon
pink and yellow tropical design. What surprises Abby is that, when she reaches
out to clear off the empty plastic glasses that the group beside Abby has left
by their patio chairs, she turns and looks directly at Abby.

"Something for you?" the
not-goddess says.

Abby jumps, forgetting that the object of her
fascination probably knows that she's been staring.

"Ah… water? Please? And, here," she
holds out a folded bill. It's too much for a tip, makes it look like she's
trying to buy the not-goddess's attention for the rest of the day, to ensure
that she gets quick and quiet service. Well, so what if it does.

What Abby really wants is for the not-goddess
to have to come closer and hover by Abby long enough for her to read the
woman's name tag. The server
smiles,
and her teeth
like pearls against the brown-purple of her lip-gloss. Abby rolls her eyes at
her own clichéd comparison, but
its
suitable
nonetheless. Abby can't tell the woman's age—somewhere between twenty-two and
forty is her best guess.

The not-goddess takes the bill and it vanishes
discreetly into her breast pocket.

Ixazaluoh
, her name tag reads.
That is a very, very non-Spanish name.

Is that a first or a last name, Abby wonders.
She'll have to look at some other employees' name tags to find the pattern. If
this is her first name, why on earth would a girl's parents name her something
so complicated and obviously historical? Was it meant to be a finger at the
man?
Or to celebrate their heritage?
Or…

But staring at a nametag also looks a lot like
starting at someone's breasts, and Abby realizes it too late. She flicks her
gaze away quickly, ashamed at being caught out, and more ashamed still to be
behaving like one of those douchebag tourists who think it's their right to be
lewd to resort workers. As if skin colour and wealth, and country of origin,
gave you the right to treat the employees like accoutrements and added
luxuries, instead of human beings.

Ixazaluoh
smiles, a sort of
secret curling of her purple-brown lips that means that she finds Abby's
mortification amusing—if a bit juvenile—and sashays away toward the pool bar.

"Oh, god," Abby groans and covers
her face with her hands. She can't look away for long, though, because
Ixazaluoh
walking with her back turned to Abby will afford
her the chance to figure out just why the way she moves is so enthralling.

None of the other tourists seem to be staring
at
Ixazaluoh
as she passes by. None of them even look
at her. Abby would have thought that
Ixazaluoh
would
have been flagged down to fetch more drinks, at least be wolf-whistled by the
douche bags in the pool, but they all behave as if they can't
see
Ixazaluoh
.

It's as if
Ixazaluoh
is only real, only visible to Abby.
Which is ridiculous, the
stuff of blockbuster films and scary books.
But no,
look
, Abby
tells herself. The way that the child in the water wings skirts around
Ixazaluoh
without looking up at her, the way the bartender
doesn't acknowledge or speak to
Ixazaluoh
, just puts
a glass of water down on the bar that
Ixazaluoh
herself transfers to her serving tray, the way the drunk man in the tilly hat
weaves to the side, leaving just enough room for
Ixazaluoh
to squeeze between him and his wife without touching either.

Goose pimples march up Abby's arms and
despite the clear, bright sunlight and baking Mexican heat around her, she is
suddenly, inexplicably chilled. Abby curls up on her lounger, pulling the gauzy
wrap from the back of it to curl over her shoulders.

And then the strangest thing yet: as she
passes the pool,
Ixazaluoh
dips one sandaled foot
into the water. Just a brief touch, the kind you'd use to rinse the sand off
your toes, and it catches Abby's attention. Why? Such a strange motion, why
would she…?

Ixazaluoh
looks up at Abby,
looks
right at
Abby and grins. She walks toward Abby, the cup of water
balanced expertly on her tray, and it takes a few seconds for Abby to realize
what is strange about it. It's not the way she walks, the way her hips move and
the way her feet don’t seem to touch the ground. It's not the smoothness of her
step, nor the deliberateness of every gesture.

No. It's the way that despite the fact that
she just had her foot in the
water,
she is leaving no
footprints behind. It is the way that
Ixazaluoh
has
no shadow.

☼

Call it a tactical retreat,
Abby tells herself
as she leans back against the door to her
ensuite
.
She feels silly, beyond silly, locking the door and sitting on the edge of the
obscenely large Jacuzzi.

She's going to think I'm crazy
, Abby thinks, and
then wonders why on earth she should care what
Ixazaluoh
thinks about her. She's sure the woman's forgotten she even exists by now. Or,
no, she's probably at home with her family laughing about this weird gringo who
paid her an obscene tip and then vanished before she could return with her order.

When Abby envisions
Ixazaluoh's
family, she is very careful to imagine that all have shadows, each and every
one.

Abby has reservations for the resort's
Japanese restaurant, and she has to be there in an hour and a half. She showers
the chlorine, sweat, sunblock and sand from her skin, and spends an hour
puttering around her suite naked simply because its warm enough, and because
she can. She opens the windows that face out onto the pool and turns down the
lights so her silhouette won't be seen. She paints her toenails on the balcony,
naked under the moon, and thinks about the ruins of the city she'd seen when
she'd been to the Mayan Riviera last year. Tulum, it was called, she thinks.
There had been a ziggurat, not as high as some of the more famous ones, but
Tulum was the first place the sunlight hit on the summer solstice and they'd
cut holes into their buildings so the shaft could penetrate the entire city
from the shoreline.

The solstice is close, Abby thinks with a
sudden jolt.
Three days away, maybe?
Four?
She's not sure, and she is suddenly, petrifying afraid
to put down her nail polish and go check her laptop. A small splatter of purple
drops from the end of her brush and splashes with perfect precision into the
centre of an orchid painted onto the tiles beneath her chair.

Her gorge crawls up her throat and she
swallows once, heavily. The smell of wet polish, acrid and strong, suddenly
turns her stomach. In the moonlight, the splatter looks like blood.

I'm being ridiculous, Abby scolds herself.
One
pretty, haunting, weird woman and a play of light on the deck and I'm suddenly
having the screaming willies about blood sacrifices and human victims? I'm
being ridiculous!

She shakes her head, water spraying out from
the shoulder-length mass of boring brown curls and spattering down her back.
She finishes applying the nail polish, wipes up the spilled splatter with a
tissue, and then waddles back into the bathroom to wait for the colour to dry
and to slick
herself
up with moisturizer. All this dry
heat is hell on her skin, and she wishes she had a boyfriend here with her—or a
friend, at least—to rub the lotion between her shoulder blades, in that
horrifically itchy little spot that nobody seems to be able to reach on
themselves.

Once she's drip-dried, she puts on a light
floral perfume. She dresses carefully, in the breezy little black dress with
the full skirt and the plunging neckline that her girlfriend gave her for
Christmas, and finishes it off with a patchwork of chunky silver and lapis
lazuli jewellery that she has assembled over her many, many trips to Mexico.
She only ever wears it here, believes it's too big and too showy for home, and
for the first time she wonders why she thinks that way. Perhaps it's because
she doesn’t like being reminded of the work she dislikes so much when she's out
in the real world, in her real life.

Then she slips on her strappy sandals, grabs
her teal shawl, and checks her appearance in the mirror. It's the same outfit,
the same
uniform
she's been wearing out to dinner at resorts for the
last three years. It's easy, it's comfortable, and Abby has long ago stopped
caring if it's attractive. This is just what she wears.

Catching the glint of silver and turquoise
peeking out from between the strands of her dishwater brown hair, Abby has a
brief thought for
Ixazaluoh
. What would she think of
Abby, looking like this? All dolled up with literally nowhere to go.

Abby shakes her head and bites the inside of
her cheeks as punishment. No, she's only just got her breathing back to normal.
She is
not,
she is
not
going to get herself
wound up again. She's being ridiculous. She's being
silly
.

She's just
lonely,
and keyed up, and slightly drunk from the piña coladas. And she refuses,
absolutely refuses to believe that she saw what her stupid old brain seems to
think she saw.

All the same, she spends the whole evening
jumping at shadows, and when she retires to bed after typing up her notes on
the dinner, she doesn't allow herself to admit how ridiculous she is for
jamming the desk chair under the patio door handle, and pushing the armchair up
against the suite's door. She's on the fourth floor, for goodness sake, and she
hasn't got anything valuable.