at my chest, where the points of my nipples stand out against my thin white tee shirt. I don’t have large breasts, and it’s so uncomfortable to wear a bra, I rarely do. I cross my arms, feel naked.
"Zere is a shark just beyond ze beach," he says, turning to point.
I look that direction, cannot see it. The moon is blanketed by wooly clouds – plus I am having trouble focusing my eyes. Jacques suddenly grabs me, holds my body hard against his and kisses my neck warmly, wetly. I push him away, almost losing my balance in the act. He catches me, grips my upper arms, brings a sharp twinge of pain.
"I wasn't ready for that," I say.
"No? You do not want to kiss me?"
"Not really."
He lets go, studies my face as if for the first time. "I would not force you against your will," he says flatly.
"Thanks," I say. "I wouldn't like that."
"You cannot think zat I would do it."
"No."
"Of course, I am disappointed."
As we walk back to the resort in silence, Jacque pulls far ahead of me. I am too inebriated to keep up with him, swagger like a penguin in the loose sand. Finally I stop, panting. The moon has emerged from the hazy clouds and is now startlingly clear, a razor-cut disk reflected on the black sea. Jacques is almost to the door of his dungeon-like home, a tiny speck in the turbulent darkness. I strip naked and wade out into the warm water. A few yards out, I sink to my knees into shifting sands where sucking waves break onto shore. I fall with a little whoop, laugh uncontrollably. I float for quite a while, occasionally kicking my legs slowly so as not to drift too far out with the current.
**********
I collapse into bed as if shot at close range. A few hours later I wake up dripping with sweat, heart pounding. I’ve just had a dream in which I’m standing on top of a tall building in downtown Miami at night, looking out at the ocean, a full moon overhead. I jump, soar freely and joyfully over the ocean, then suddenly plunge underneath the water, swim with glowing fish, eels, turtles. I hear a series of electronic waves which strike me as inviting, musical, familiar. I rise to the surface and there is Mike, reaching for me, and I realize the sounds are coming from his mouth. In a flash I’m wandering through an old house, searching frantically for a bathroom but each door I find is too small to squeeze through.
My real need to urinate awakens me from my drunken stupor. I lean over and turn on the bedside lamp, hold my spinning head as I stumble to the bathroom. The alcohol binge has left me intensely thirsty, with a pounding headache. In the bathroom, I watch a cockroach the size of a queen conch crawl leisurely up a stucco wall and disappear into a crack. Probably he is headed home to his nice ranch roach-house, his passively dependent cockroach wife and their three thousand bratty cockroach kids. Not my kind of existence, I figure. My life consists of constant, raging change. I care about things, about people, but at the molecular level. After-shocks of the dream bombard my consciousness, as if I can actually feel waves of disturbing, high frequency radiation emanating from Mike, causing who knows what kind of damage. Where do these strange dreams and ideas come from, I wonder, staring at my haggard face in the mirror. Most people would have simply swatted that bug into its next incarnation without another thought.
Back in bed, I toss and turn and think about hot sex with Mike. The thoughts become unbearable, and I get up, venture outside, eventually find myself wandering through the sculpture garden, which seems even more sinister in this light.
The eastern sky, fading from gray to soft purple, is turning the statue garden into a cheap horror flick. Accepting the lead role, I wander among the weird shapes, crackling pebbles and dry weeds underfoot. Parts of Jacques' life float by, incomprehensible, solid for now but gradually being worn away by blowing sand. The steady breeze produces a melancholy symphony of wails, moans and cries among the sculptures, as though the objects d’art are trying to tell me their stories. But I can only consider my own.
What do I want from Mike anyway, I ask myself. The truth is, I want an end to wanting, an end to