He laughed too. It was a musical sound that was parallel to my ear-lobe and it made me want to smile just at the thought of it.
“Maybe after I’m done in Diyu I’ll show you a real beach.”
“What, you mean in the next life?”
His smile grew. “Yeah, you’d like it a lot.” He closed his eyes as if trying to remember something. “The water is so clear and blue you can see the reefs right through it…”
I tried to picture the image in my head. “I like the sound of that.”
“The coral comes in every sort of color you can think of: pink, purple, and yellow. Did you know corals get their color from this stuff living in their tissues?”
“No.” I smiled. “I didn’t know that.”
We stayed that way for a while, just looking at each other in a way that said something without having to be said. It was nice to lie beside him and have the quiet closeness of the moment. I questioned if this was what Dad had so often missed with Mom—their late night conversations at the end of a busy day. I had to confess that if nothing else, I felt comfortable in the confines of his companionship. And I had the most terrible feeling that I would miss it when it was gone.
A query came to me and I considered the possibilities: “Hey, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really think you’ll go to hell…when you die, I mean?”
“I don’t know.” His expression remained indifferent. “I can tell you I don’t want to think all them people have been wrong all this time. And ’sides…people like me should have somewhere just for us so we can’t be hurtin’ pretty girls.” He laughed, but it was bitter and disheartened.
I turned and stared at him with my mouth agape, searching for the right words, but my blush took over.
“I gotta do lookout tonight.” His announcement was abrupt. “You wanna come with me?”
“Um, okay.”
He nodded to the ceiling. “Okay.”
Before I could say anything else, he jumped up and lit another cigarette. I stayed on the floor and watched him walk to the door. He seemed different than usual, and although I couldn’t put my finger on it, he did seem happier.
“Addie?”
“Hmm?”
“Wh-what do you think ‘bout that kind of stuff?”
“The afterlife?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
I stood up and rested my weight on my elbows. “I don’t know.”
“No happily ever after?” I could tell he was mocking me again, but this time he seemed genuinely sad about it.
I smiled back. “Maybe it’s a ‘wait and see’ sort of situation.”
After I spent most of the day creating origami animals, I did some sketching before I quickly grew bored. I did, however, manage to amuse myself by working in some standard yoga and flexing my body into contorted shapes to help my circulation. The exercise helped get my mind back into working order after the perplexing series of conversations I had with Charlie. I made myself laugh repeatedly while trying to balance in different positions in that awkward little room.
Despite his temper and occasional foul disposition, Charlie had been tender with me when it wasn’t necessary, making me think that maybe there were these levels of him that overlapped into a complexity that made it difficult for him to function. He thought himself a burden on the world, this much I understood. But he was also sexist, violent, and lacked a formal education. But still, there was that otherworldly attraction that I couldn’t deny or take myself away from. And based on some of his behavior, I had to wonder if he felt the same way. I could at least tell by the way he looked at me that there was some attraction there, but other than that…
Charlie returned as promised several hours later and looked quizzically at my accomplishments for the day.
“Got bored, huh?”
I pulled at the tail of my origami swan and watched his wings take flight “A bit.”
He smiled and my heart began beating a little faster. I wondered if he’d always have this effect on me.
“You should talk to the concierge about getting a room with a balcony,” I joked. “I don’t understand how you manage to spend all this time in here without any windows. The lack of a view is crippling my imagination.”
He took the ball cap and placed it on my head, his kaleidoscope eyes staring into mine. “I don’t need any windows. This cabin already has