Spanish Disco (14 page)

16

I
dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and went downstairs to the kitchen. The scent of onions and frying pig fat greeted me.

“Maria? Do you know where Roland is?”

“He left this morning with his fishing pole, so I don’t expect him back until the afternoon,” she said, her “eees” elongated by her accent.

“I’m going for a walk. If he comes back, please tell him I have to talk to him. It’s important.”

She nodded, but I noticed her vegetable chopping had gotten decidedly more violent.

“What’s the matter?”

“Ever since you came here, Mister Riggs is very upset. He drinks too much. That day you went to the bar…that,” she shook her head, “is not good for him. He needs to rest.”

“And this,” I pointed to a pan full of frying fat and sausage, “is good for him?”

“This is very good. All the people in my family live until 100 years old. And no wrinkles. No. Since you came, he seems not himself. I wish you would get your book and go home.”

“Me, too.”

“He is a very good man.”

“I would like to think so.”

“He saved me. My husband was mean…a mean and horrible man, and I was very young. And Mister Riggs saved me. And I just think you come here, and you don’t care about him. You just want something.”

“And what do you want, Maria?”

She chopped her onions, and I didn’t know whether the tears were from emotions or her cooking. “Peace,” she whispered. “This is not good. You see.”

“You know, I’m not very good at riddles. I’m going for a walk.”

I left the house, walking through the garden, and made my way through tall grasses to the sand. I walked angrily, pushing my heels into the sand and leaving little holes as I made my way up the beach toward a lighthouse. I hadn’t gone far when I spied a perfect sand dollar amidst a pile of broken pieces. Bending down, I picked it up and marveled that it hadn’t a crack in it. I remembered a myth of sand dollars. Inside each sand dollar are pieces shaped like doves. Certain markings on the sand dollar represent Christ’s wounds. I flung the sand dollar into the sea and sat down near a dune, feeling tears.

Myths of sand dollars. Myths of Pulitzer-prize winners. Myths of Michael. Myths of me. I dug my fingers into the sand, willing myself not to cry. Myths have no place in my life. I need manuscripts. Pieces of paper that I can mold into a book that will make money. I let the authors tell their myths, and I make them reality. I lay back in the grasses. Love was a myth. Sex was a myth. Family was a myth. My father existed like King Arthur for me. And now he was off to Avalon. A myth. And after he was gone, I would tell stories about him. And maybe no one would believe me. Maybe, after a while, the memories would fade so much I wouldn’t believe the myth myself. I remember the time I caught him crying.

It was right after my mother left. In the middle of the night, I heard a sound, and it was him. Crying. Lying on my mother’s side of the bed and whispering into the night, “I’m scared.” I was afraid to disturb him, yet I ached to see him hurting so much. If my mother went away, and he was hurting, maybe he would go away, too, and leave me with the dreadful housekeeper and her awful German food. I tiptoed next to him and started touching his face, sort of rubbing his cheek, the way he would touch mine whenever I had a fever.

“Please don’t cry, Daddy,” I whispered. Soon he stopped. I heard his breath come in regular intervals, the deep breathing of sleep, with an occasional shudder because he’d been crying. And then I crept back to my room. The next day, neither of us acknowledged that it had happened. It was a myth. Perhaps it never happened at all. Arthur never had the chink in his armor. He wasn’t really off at Avalon.

And Roland Riggs didn’t really write a 792-page poem.

I sat up and squinted in the sunlight. Down the beach
I saw a figure sitting in a folding chair. Gray-white pony-tail. I walked towards him, sweating in the Florida heat. Even in October, the days are sweltering.

“Roland?”

“Cassie…I didn’t expect you to see daylight.”

“Occasionally I foray into the world of the living. What’s in your bucket?”

“Bait. Some small fish, a few large shrimp. Not getting any bites today. But I’ve been watching the osprey. Look at him,” he pointed at a huge bird perched high above us on a platform erected on top of what looked like a telephone pole.

“What’s with the phone pole?”

“They’re trying to lure osprey back by providing places for them to build their nests. Least we can do. We took over the island.”

“Roland…why didn’t you tell me you took an advance?”

“Didn’t see that it was important.”

“I can’t publish a poem.”

“An
epic
poem.”

“An epic poem, then. I can’t. I want you to give Lou back his advance. Some of it. Part of it. He’ll never make a dime on this book, and you’ll ruin him.”

“You underestimate the reading public.”

“What? The reading public? The reading public clamors for sap. Pabulum. Celebrity authors. They’re not going to wade through an epic poem, and you know it. In the meantime, you have a very good man…a publisher, staking his reputation on a follow-up book to
Simple Simon
that doesn’t exist.”

“It exists. It’s just not what you want.”

“What do you need to publish this book for?”

“I have something to say.”

“You haven’t said anything for three decades. Why now?”

“You’ll see.”

“Quit with this mysterious ‘I’ll see’ crap. I
see
a manuscript I can’t do a fucking thing with. I
see
that this isn’t a follow-up to
Simple Simon.
It’s something entirely different.”

“I
see
an editor who thinks she knows everything at the tender age of whatever age you are.”

“Well, if you crawled out of your island cave long enough to see the world, you’d know this isn’t doable.”

“I’m not giving back my advance.”

“You’re being a selfish bastard.”

“
You’re
disturbing my harmony. I’ll see you at dinner. Please…take a walk. It might do you some good.” With that, he stared far off into the sea, past me, not seeing me. As if I was a speck of sand in his eye that he could just rub out, blink, and make gone.

“Asshole,” I muttered and turned on my heel. I walked far enough up that beach so that he was no more than a tiny dot to me. Then I plunged into the Gulf of Mexico. A week ago, Lou and I had the world at our feet. Today, the myth that I knew what I was doing was washing away with the tide.

17

P
issy. That’s how I felt at dinner. That’s how I felt after dinner. I retreated to my room and poured myself a large shot of tequila—a highball glass of tequila…straight and neat. I checked my e-mail.

Cassie:

I really need the book you took from me. And I think we have more to discuss. You know my hotel. Call me.

Donald

Donald:

I’ll call you when I feel I can tolerate a lugubrious, eel-like, bottom-feeding yellow journalist. Right now, I have not had my vaccination.

C.

Pissy. Perhaps pissy was too nice a word. I felt downright homicidal.

Cassie:

I feel stuck in chapter 16. I can’t write without your encouragement. What should Sandra do now that her lover has left his wife? Will she consummate their love, at last? Call me and we’ll greet the dawn. I’ll even promise to behave. To not frighten you with talk of how fond I am of you. I’ll be properly English with a stiff upper lip.

Michael

Michael:

Sandra should take a butcher knife to him. The rest of the book can be a homicide investigation.

C.

I drank the tequila, allowing that flushed, slightly drunk feeling to wash over me. I just wanted to escape to sleep. Sleep. Sleep. I poured more. I drank more. And some time in the early evening, I passed out on my bed with the far-off sound of “Big money, big money” drifting up to my room.

I dreamed of Michael. Meeting him and making love to him. I touched his face, and I felt his arms around me rock solid. And then I took a butcher knife to his chest. Tequila does that to me. I woke up with a fog hanging over my brain, filling my mouth with dusty drunkenness. My head was heavy, and I was sweating. My windows were open, and some time in the evening, the breeze had died.
I listened for the sound of the Gulf of Mexico, but it was still.

Pound. Pound. Pound. Decapitating myself was not an option, so I went to my suitcase and fished out some leftover Tylenol with codeine I got when I had my root canal. Popping two, swallowing them with a swig of tequila, I felt sure I could conquer the waves of heat and mid-hangover nausea spilling over me.

Hangovers are bad enough; waking midslumber is worse. Haven’t slept enough of it off. The fucking heat. The fucking God damn Florida heat. I looked at the clock radio by my bed. Eleven o’clock at night. I listened to the silence of the house. Roland was apparently in bed or at least in his room. Maria always went to the guest house before ten. I envisioned a solitary swim to fend off the humidity and headache.

I undressed quickly and put on my bathrobe. Sneaking out of my room into the semidark hallway, I listened again. Nothing. I went downstairs and out the door.

Shark bait I do not wish to be. In fact, I can count on two hands the number of times I have actually swum in the ocean beyond my knees.
Jaws
ruined the beach for me. That and sand and heat and obnoxious muscle-bound lifeguards and the silicone women who flirt with them.

Roland’s pool faced the Gulf. The pool lights weren’t on, but the moon was full enough to let me see how beautiful it was. A waterfall cascaded in one corner and Key West-style landscaping lushly filled every inch of available space. Jasmine scented the air. Orchids hung gracefully
from trees and flowered in pots. I looked around at the still night, my head relentlessly throbbing. Dropping my robe, I dove in with one single splash and let the slightly cool water engulf me.

Skinny-dipping is the only way to swim. With my mass of black curls, water and humidity are akin to teasing my hair into a bouffant. A few drops of moisture and SWOOSH! Big hair. So if I am going to get it wet, really wet, then it had better be worth it. I had better be naked.

My head was soothed. Coming up for air, I felt revitalized. Not homicidal at all. I did a breaststroke from one end of the pool to the other. I did a handstand. I somersaulted. I even considered calling Michael when I got upstairs. And at that precise moment, I heard Barry Gibb’s falsetto. “Stayin’ Alive” was floating in the air.

I swam down to the other end of the pool. Leaning my arms on top of the pool edge, yet shielded by the waterfall, I could barely make out the music over the water. But it clearly came from Maria’s cottage.

I swam to the opposite corner. Disco. In high school, I liked Zeppelin. I desperately wanted to lose my virginity to Jimmy Page. But I was also a bit of a wild child growing up in Manhattan. I was an underage club kid. I’d snorted coke with a transvestite inside Studio 54. I’d danced on stage at the Palladium. I dressed in glitter, and big hair was an asset in those days. Not a proud moment…skintight Lycra and shiny gold shirt…but I couldn’t help myself. When I hear disco, I have to dance. I dove underwater and felt like a mermaid, my hair streaming be
hind me as I made my way in the darkness to the other side of the pool. Climbing out, I realized I forgot a towel and just put on my robe. It clung to my wet skin. Shaking my hair like a puppy dog, I walked toward the music.

Maria’s cottage was quaint. Covered in climbing vines, with cats sprawled on every piece of lawn furniture, it was charming. Her sliding glass doors were open, and through sheer curtains I could see Maria dancing. I felt intrusive and backed up. But it was hard to avert my gaze. She didn’t just dance. She
was
the music. She swirled and turned and shook from side to side. She moved like a professional dancer—or at least the best transvestite dancer at Studio 54. She was lithe and moved effortlessly, and her rhythm was perfectly in time with the beat.