Something Right Behind Her (20 page)

I chuckled,
“It’s hard to see anything out there on the beach. I think the sun must’ve been
in my eyes.”

“Must’ve been,”
he said. And then he started treading water a little closer to me. “Maybe
tomorrow, Bella, I should stop in at the shop and get you some sunglasses.
You’ll burn your eyes out there without them.”

“I don’t know if
I can accept a gift from a stranger,” I said. “At least that’s what they tell
me.” I replied.

“OK, Bella. I’ll
tell you what. I find you tomorrow with my little present and you can think
about it overnight. If you think of me as a stranger, as you say, then I’ll
return my gift. But if you decide you want to be friends, then you will find
yourself with some excellent protective eyewear.”

“Fair enough,” I
said.

“Ok, then.” He
said, and he splashed a bit of the luminescent water in my direction.

“You know,” he
said, ‘it’s not like at home here, Bella. You make friends faster in a warmer
climate.”

“That,” I said,
“is exactly what I’m afraid of.” Pretty soon after that the main guide called
out to everyone to form a line. Carlos was barely visible, and back into work
mode, helping the stragglers get their paddles and boats back into position.
Then Dad swam over. “Wasn’t that amazing?” Dad asked. “Didn’t it look
incredible under water!” Dad’s hair was dripping into his eyes and he was
holding some sort of water-proof flashlight. Everyone else had been diving
under, viewing the luminous creatures from below, but I had somehow missed this
- I had been too engrossed in my conversation with Carlos, and he, it seemed,
had neglected his duty to equip me with a light. It bothered me a little, that
after all that paddling, I’d missed a part of what I’d come for.

Milly was asleep
when I got back to our room. She lay there under her floral bedspread, mouth
open, hair spread out across the pillow. Her skin was a little red from the
sun. She had the covers pulled all the way up under her chin and the air
conditioner was on full-blast, making the room chilly after being out in the
warm night air. I slipped off my wet things and tried to be as quiet as
possible finding some panties and a shirt to sleep in. I didn’t want to wake
Milly, and have her get up and start asking me silly questions about the
evening. She’d been jealous that only I got to go.

It had been a
pretty spectacular night. My flirtation with Carlos, though, had left me
feeling a little strange. My head felt heavy, and I had a strange sensation all
down my back. As beautiful as everything was, as much as I looked forward to
lying in the sand the next day, I felt pang of homesickness. Did I have any
business flirting with some guy on this trip? Didn’t I have enough to worry
about? I had decided that the trip would be the time to get my head together. I
didn’t need anything additional to think about, anything more to confuse me.
But then again maybe Carlos wasn’t anything to worry about. Maybe he would be
just what he said: a friend.

I took my dry
clothes and bathing suit into the bathroom and turned on the light. I hung up
my things, and decided to hop into the shower and rinse off - after all,
thousands of those tiny, shiny organisms probably clung to my hair and skin. I
felt kind of slimy just thinking about it. I rinsed off and used some of the
hotel’s shampoo - it was minty and fresh-smelling. Maybe all I needed was a
shower and a good night’s sleep. So far, the island air had been conducive to
nightmare-free rest, so I had reason to believe.

Suddenly, I noticed
a little spot of blood on the shower floor, bright and expanding with the force
of the stream of water. My period, that was why I’d felt so out of sorts. My
mood was nothing more than this.

Getting my
period sort of erased in my mind the tape that had been playing about what had
happened with George. We had used protection that night - but still - there’d
been that moment, just a flash, some embarrassment on his side. I’d pushed it
out of my mind. Getting my period made it seem like the whole thing had never
happened. It didn’t need to happen again, either. I wasn’t sure what I wanted
from George, and that probably meant I shouldn’t be sleeping with him on a
regular basis. George only made sense if I thought about how fucked up I’d been
to sleep with Doug, how desperate I’d been to get Doug off my mind.

I didn’t know
what I had been trying to prove. Maybe it was just that nothing seemed to
matter all that much. The real deal was what was happening to Eve. Maybe to get
myself out of this downward spiral, I had to think a little less about that, a
little bit less about how quickly everything you cared about could vanish.

I got out of the
shower and dried off with one of the thick, white towels with the hotel’s name
on it. I brushed my hair out and dried it off a little with the blow drier that
sat on the clean marble countertop. I could get control of myself here. I could
just keep my phone turned off, not worry about George, or Eve, or anyone. If
there were some emergency with Eve, Mom or Dad would get that call anyway. What
I needed was to rest, to feel renewed, clean. Who cared if I had no social life
when I got home? I could just do my work, run a mile or so here and there to
stay in shape, and be calm, until…I didn’t even think the words “until Eve died,”
but my whole way of thinking hung on the word “until.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mom and Milly
decided to go to the pool after breakfast. Milly saw some girl around her age
hanging out by the pool and she wanted to see if she could meet her. Dad was on
his own program too. He was getting his SCUBA certification renewed, so he was
headed down to the beach to meet up with a diving instructor. Just as I thought
he would, he tried to get me to go along, but I was pretty clear with him. I
said, “Look, I’m here to relax!” and to prove it, I showed him how I turned my
iPhone off completely. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t find my charger in my
suitcase.

I found one of
the nice puffy-cushioned lounge chairs on the beach near the pavilion where
they played music. It was just pop songs mixed with some island stuff and I
kind of liked to have it in the background. Mom got me a hat at the gift shop
after breakfast so my face wouldn’t get too dark. I have this olive toned skin,
so I don’t burn too bad, but I’ve seen those women around town who got too much
sun when they were younger. They have that skin that looks like a paper bag,
and that is so not what I want to look like at forty. Not that I can really
imagine myself at forty.

I read for a
while in the warm morning sun, my floppy straw hat pulled low down almost
covering my face. I was wearing a bathing suit I really loved that mom got me
at Kimi’s - a black bikini with just a few hot pink flowers on it. It had pink
ties on the sides and just one pink flower in the front - super cute.

I didn’t notice
the beach filling up around me, but by about eleven-thirty, most of the chairs
were taken. Then I saw the red-short guys - they were walking around handing
out beach towels. Some of them were playing a game with a Frisbee, trying to
hit some posts, some of which were in the shallow water, after the break in the
waves.

At first, I
didn’t see Carlos, and I felt a simultaneous pang of regret and slight relief.
After all, my program was to chill, not get hung up. Then, I saw him down the
beach a bit with a group of little kids - he was banging beachballs into the
air and passing out hula hoops. He looked like he was enjoying himself messing
around with the little kids, not like he was eager to look for me or anything.
I shut my eyes and took a little rest.

I don’t know how
long I lay like that. The sun had made me drowsy and I was in a half-dream
state. I snapped out of this weird, light sleep just as a small puffy cloud
passed in front of the sun. It must have been the slight coolness of the air
that startled me awake. I sat up and began to get reoriented and saw then that
Carlos was just a few steps away, handing out his hula-hoops to a group of
biniki-clad girls. They looked like they

were a little
older than Milly, maybe seventh graders, wearing big hoop earrings and lipgloss
at the beach - definitely the type Milly would shy away from.

I could tell
Carlos had seen me by the way he avoided looking in my direction, like he was
just there doing his job and all. He was wearing aviator glasses, like all the
other guys did, but then I noticed he had an extra pair of sunglasses on top of
his head. They were white, and they looked sort of retro – like the
lenses were a little rounded and so dark they were almost mirrored. I smiled to
myself, since those had to be the glasses he’d promised me. I still didn’t know
what I’d done with my own sunglasses, but I’d been in kind of a packing frenzy
so of course something had to get lost.

“Hey there!”
Carlos called out when he caught me looking in his direction. He was pretty
careful about that - letting me realize I was actually the one scoping him out
again. He came over and sat down in the sand next to my chair, “Here’s a very
attractive pair of sunglasses I saw for you at the gift shop. I thought they
would be very flattering with your pretty face and dark hair.” He reached up
and plucked them off the top of his head and handed them too me. “I see you had
the good sense to get yourself a hat, but the eyes still need protection.”

I laughed. “Oh,
well, they’re really fashion forward,” I said. “Very stylish.” I took off my
hat and donned the shades then looked up at him for his approval.

“Excellent! I
feel I have done my job well now - I’ve saved a lovely young American from
certain retina damage.”

“So, you’re
following in your father’s footsteps, maybe,” I said. “But an eye-doctor,
perhaps, instead of a dentist.”

“Guapa, I think
I have had enough of being the only Dominican guy in Short Hills, New Jersey.
Last thing I need is to follow what my Dad’s done. No, I am thinking of this
business - hotels and restaurants might be my thing. I am going to Cornell next
year, to their hotel management school.”

“You know that
already?”

“I applied last
year, but deferred, which was fine with them since I had this plan to learn on
the job. Anyway, I sent my photo in with the application. You see, hospitality
people are very keen to get some brown skinned types in the business.”

“Son of a
dentist that you are, you deserve all the special treatment, of course.” I retorted.

“Son of a
dentist and an accountant, but brown all the same, Guapa. And you - the
daughter of…?”

“Lawyer and a
teacher,” I deadpanned.

“And how many
generations back do the lawyers and teachers go?”

“Oh back all the
way to when we were rabbis and got chased out of Europe.”

“Ah,” uttered
Carlos, and he sighed a little, a kind of final, bored sort of sound.

“Well, anyway,
thanks for the glasses. I really like them,” I said. It was true, I liked the
glasses, and I liked that he thought I’d wear them. They weren’t the sort of
thing most glam-types would be caught dead in.

“I’m here to
serve.” He replied. Then he stood up and reached down to help me out of my
chair.

“And where are
we going?” I asked, caught slightly off guard.

“Well, I bought
you a gift, and now you are going to do me a favor. You’re going to be the
pretty girl who’s first to join up for the beach hula contest.” He took me by
the hand and began jogging back to where the kids were, gathering all these
giggling girls around us.

There wasn’t any
way to escape my fate, so I went with it and let him time me, first just
straight hula-hooping and then with a hula hoop on my arm as well. Everyone
gathered around and they all started clapping for me and counting seconds. I
lasted a good three or four minutes with a hoop around each arm and one around
my waist. It’s a talent I was glad for. When I was finally beat, I just stepped
out of the hoops and handed them back to Carlos, with my hat and sunglasses,
then headed to the water for a dip while he hung with the rest of the kids. I
took a good long swim down the beach and back. I don’t have great strokes, but
I am used to swimming in the dark cold waters of New Jersey, so the water in
the DR was practically like a swimming pool to me. It was lovely the way you
could see down to the bottom, see the little fish flitting between the stones.
It brought me back to that day at the beach with Eve, how she’d been so into
seeing all the bluefish and crabs, how the whole thing made her seem so
hopeful. I began to feel a bit of that - hopefulness, though I was not sure, at
that point, what it was I should be hoping for.

When I got back
to where Carlos had been holding his impromptu hula contest, the kids and
Carlos were gone, but my hat was sitting there with my new sunglasses folded up
inside it. I could see Carlos down the beach with a bunch of guys setting up
some sort of Frisbee thing. It wasn’t his job to chat up lone girls on the
beach, but to be the guy who gathered everyone around and got them moving.

When I went to
meet Mom and Dad for lunch, they were already sitting down at a table for four
with Milly. Grandma and Grandpa had gone back to their room to rest. Milly had
a huge plate of fruit and rolls. Dad was polishing off a Cuban sandwich filled
with sausage and cheese. Despite my swim, I didn’t feel all that hungry. I
asked Mom to order me a pineapple juice and I went over to the salad bar and
tried to get interested in the seafood salad. I was feeling a little crampy,
and my headache had started to come back. It was like PMS, even though my
period had already started, which didn’t seem fair. It was a weird sort of
period, though, like my body had gotten thrown off by the traveling, because it
seemed almost like my period was already ending, like it started and then
almost immediately stopped. I filled my plate with a couple different salads,
and then gave in and took one of the awesome-looking rolls Milly had, and
headed back to the table.