Dear Abby (3 page)

Nobody will be breaking in.

Nobody has any reason to.

Here on a resort, Abby has learned to make
herself as unmemorable, as forgettable as the staff. It's better that way.

She just wonders, now, if it's possible to
also make
oneself
invisible.

☼

Dear Abby
,

I'm looking for a resort for my family and
I—we have two young children—that has a real flavour of the country. We want to
make this vacation a learning experience. Can you suggest something with four
stars in Thailand?

-Roaming Dad

Abby stares at the computer screen and wonders
how this is her life. A crappy column that satirizes a popular advice writer,
and
a sunburn
on the tops of her feet where she forgot
to put on sunblock cream yesterday morning. It itches like crazy, and she tries
to subtly scratch the burn with the cracked skin of her heels without
irritating it further.

There is no one at all around her. She's
chosen a lounge chair as far from the pool and the rowdy drunkards, the swim up
bar, the games of water volleyball and the screaming children as possible. It's
a shaded area, lots of palm trees reaching over the manicured lawn to vie for
the clear space above the deck. It's close to the staff entrance to the
kitchens, and the air smells of bacon and eggs, and underneath that tamarind
and cinnamon, jalapeños and pineapple. Later, when she's all caught up on her
work email, Abby is thinking of going down to the beach.

She tells herself it's because she should
check out the much-talked up natural reef that the resort's beach cradles, and
not at all because she's never seen
Ixazaluoh
on that
part of the compound.

Abby types up five hundred words about her
agency's most expensive all-inclusive tour to Thailand, the four-star hotel,
the safe little café run by safe little trained chefs, the children's play area
and the highly scripted elephant tour through the jungle to see movie filming
locations. She did this trip two years ago, and it was somewhere around then
that this disquietude had begun to settle around her heart.

She thinks it had something to do with how
sad the elephants looked.

A shadow moves between Abby and the
green-dappled sun, and she blinks up at it, wondering if someone has come to
try to engage her in a conversation. Usually having her laptop outside with her
encourages some vaguely paternalistic man or other to tut over her and
tell
her that she's on vacation and she should relax. It's
one of the worst chat-up lines Abby's ever heard, and unfortunately, she's also
heard every variation.

But it's not a man.

It's
Ixazaluoh
.
She's holding a tray with one glass of water, and one piña colada, and she is
smiling her pearly purple-brown smile. Today's hideous neckerchief is aqua and
Day-Glo green. Abby clamps down on the urge to scream and jump, and instead
flicks her eyes to the clock on the computer screen.

"It's only eleven," she says.
"Bit early for a piña colada."

"You are on vacation,"
Ixazaluoh
says, and her grin gets bigger, brighter, somehow
more
without actually changing at all.

"You know very well that I'm not,"
Abby says, and she doesn't mean to be grumpy, but that's the way it comes out.

"All the more reason,"
Ixazaluoh
says and puts both drinks down on the little
table beside Abby's patio chair without asking.

"You… you don't have to," Abby
stutters, suddenly, overwhelmed with shame. She hates that these sorts of
places feed their clients such a sense of
entitlement,
and hates more
that she can't seem to shake the guilt for it.
Ixazaluoh
is just doing her job, and she's getting paid to do it well, isn't she? "I
wasn't trying to… buy your attention or, or anything."

Ixazaluoh
laughs,
and it is sweet and clear and somehow reminds Abby of the sound a little stream
makes when it splashes along a small, rocky waterfall.
Plinking
echoes, and soft deep plunges.
The computer on her lap keeps her from
being able to see
Ixazaluoh's
feet,
and maybe that's a good thing.

Abby's got herself convinced that she was
being ridiculous yesterday. She doesn't want to prove herself wrong, however
accidentally.

"I do nothing I don't want to do,"
Ixazaluoh
says patiently. Abby wonders if English is her
first language, because it's excellent.
Nary a burring
consonant or Spanish vowel to be found.
  She speaks lightly,
easily, and with a strange forthrightness that makes Abby wonder exactly how
many languages she speaks—Abby's only heard that queer flatness of tone and
roundness of vowel from true polyglots.

How can this woman be so educated and still
just work as a drinks server?

"I didn't mean—" Abby tries, but
then
Ixazaluoh
sits down
on the lounger next
to Abby.

"Nor do I… give my attention to those I
don't want to," she says softly.

Abby is riveted. She can't take her eyes off
of how
Ixazaluoh
leans forward, conspiratorially, the
polished planes of her forehead and cheekbones, the soft spray of her
eyelashes. "I don't want you to get in trouble."

Ixazaluoh
grins, that wide
grin full of honest appreciation that somehow doesn't change at all from the
bland one she wears when she's serving except in how it completely does.
"They won't see,"
Ixazaluoh
says,
her voice low.

Abby bites the inside of her cheeks to keep
from asking about yesterday, about the way
Ixazaluoh
wound around the people who didn't seem to see her, about how she moves
gracefully and silently, like a koi among rushes. She keeps her eyes firmly on
Ixazaluoh's
, big and dark and shining with something like
mirth, and something like a look she's never seen in a woman's eyes before.
In a man's, sure, across a table or across a bar, but never a
woman's.
Ixazaluoh
licks her lips, and Abby
can't help but get drawn in by that flash of pink sliding across purple-brown.

Cold-hot panic slams against the back of
Abby's neck. That sense of screaming not-right-ness crawls along her flesh and
yet, and yet, she can't back away. She's…
enchanted
, she thinks is the
right word.

"Drink your piña colada,"
Ixazaluoh
whispers. Abby doesn't realize that she's leaned
toward
Ixazaluoh
until she feels her breath against
her cheek. It is soft and cool, like a stream. "And finish your work. And
then I will bring you some lunch."

"
Th
-thank you,"
Abby says. She sits back, and
Ixazaluoh
rises and
then she is gone, slipping around the crowds, vanishing behind a
resort-sponsored beer pong competition.

It never occurs to Abby to question why she's
suddenly decided to abandon her plans to head to the beach.  

☼

It is just after noon and the soft buzz of
white rum has made her loose, the warmth of the sun and the familiar whirring
of her laptop luring her toward sleep. It would be unwise to nap on a patio
chair at the full zenith of the day, but she's draped her legs with her gauzy
floral bathing suit cover, and her hat has a wide enough brim. The only thing
she'd really need to worry about is the laptop, and who on earth would want to
steal that? She could just throw a beach towel over it, close her eyes…

A soft touch on the back of her neck, a
fingernail scraping just between the small curls that the humidity makes of the
hair at her nape when she has it up in a ponytail, and Abby leans into the
clandestine intimacy of it for two seconds before she realizes that
she
doesn't know who's touching her,
and it makes her jump out of her skin.

"Jesus!" Abby says, jerking
upright. Behind her,
Ixazaluoh
laughs her clear-water
laugh.

Abby twists in her seat, setting her laptop
down under her own tented knees, and glares up at
Ixazaluoh
.
Before she can say anything, the woman has plopped herself in the free patio
lounger next to Abby and is pressing a bowl into her hands. It is filled with
soft, still warm tortillas and tamales, fried
plantains,
and something a bit creamy and white that Abby thinks might be cheese.

"What's this?" Abby asks. It smells
heavenly.

"Lunch,"
Ixazaluoh
says.

"Where did you get this? I've never seen
this at the buffet.
Or this."
She picks up some
of the plantain and pops it into her mouth and, oh god, it’s incredible.

Ixazaluoh
sets down a cup of
something that looks like pure chocolate next to Abby's empty piña colada
glass. "A bit clichéd in my choices, I'll admit,"
Ixazaluoh
says. "But why eat American food while among the Maya?"

Abby has a corn tortilla halfway into her
mouth, smothered in the cheese, and so can only nod emphatically in agreement.

"You like it?"
Ixazaluoh
asks.

Abby nods again and makes an enthusiastic
noise. She offers the bowl to
Ixazaluoh
, but she just
shakes her head and says, "It is for you.
Just for
you."

Abby saves the liquid chocolate for the end,
and is only mildly surprised by the swift, sweet kick of heat that chases down
the back of her throat.
It's
decadent in a way that
Abby's never indulged in before, rich velvet and spice on her tongue, coating
her teeth.

Ixazaluoh
watches it all with
keen, narrowed eyes. Abby can't help but feel self-conscious as she takes her
last swallow and sets down the empty cup. She licks the chocolate that lingers
on the bottom of her lip away, afraid it will drip down her chin and make her
look like an idiot, and
Ixazaluoh's
gaze jerks down
to her mouth.
Ixazaluoh's
cheeks have gone dark and
ruddy, Abby realizes suddenly, and in response she feels colour climbing up her
own face. Warmth pools low in her belly, like the chocolate has decided to go
all the way down and start coating her more intimate parts, bypassing her
stomach entirely. It surprises Abby.

She's never,
never
felt like this with
a woman before.

"Yes, good, yes,"
Ixazaluoh
murmurs softly, so softly, and then she leans
forward.

Abby could stand up. Abby could lean back.
Abby could put out her hand and say, "No, stop."

She does none of these things.

Instead, she stays very, very still. She
closes her eyes. She holds her breath. She waits.

The cool puff of breath against her mouth
makes Abby tense up, but then there are warm, smooth, gloss-slick lips against
her own. They press, careful and firm, without being insistent or shy. It is
the kiss of a woman confident that she will not be turned away.

Abby's not-goddess takes one of Abby's hands
between both of hers. She pulls Abby to her feet, their mouths still connected
like a grounding wire.

"Come, come with me,"
Ixazaluoh
says against Abby's teeth, and her fingers twist
between Abby's.

Only then, when Abby breathes
"Yes," does
Ixazaluoh
pull back. Her
genuine smile has returned, the real one, and she tugs Abby towards the kitchen
doors. Abby can no more resist stumbling in her wake than a dinghy can resist
being towed by an ocean liner.

Abby looks down.
Ixazaluoh
still has no shadow. She should be
scared,
she knows
this logically, because people without shadows shouldn't exist. But it doesn't
matter, because
Ixazaluoh
is beautiful, and she is
kind, and she tastes fantastic, and she
wants
Abby. Nobody has wanted
Abby like this is years, maybe even decades. And Abby wants to feel wanted.

Ixazaluoh
pulls Abby into a
storage closet, flicking on the light and locking the door behind them. There are
shelves and shelves of tablecloths and neatly pressed napkins on every wall,
and
Ixazaluoh
crowds Abby back against a soft stack
of fabric. Hands on either side of Abby's head, palms flat against the wall,
breasts crushed together in a way that Abby never realized would be completely
distracting,
Ixazaluoh
says: "May I?"

"Yes," Abby says, even though she
isn't entirely clear what she's consenting to.
Sex
, she knows, but not
the details of what
Ixazaluoh
has planned. Who cares?
Abby can be flexible. She's never been flexible before, but what happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

Abby gathers her courage and cups
Ixazaluoh's
breasts in her hands, fingers digging in to the
sides slightly through the fabric of her hideous shirt.
Ixazaluoh
moans and dives back into Abby's mouth,
not taking it slowly
this time, not shy
.