I went back to my drink and prepared to pout when I noticed her grinning, and like a stream of internet porn, her smile was endless.
After about an hour of hard drinking, the woman sitting next to me at the tiki bar finally allowed me some real eye contact. I watched as her eyelashes lifted off from her eyelids and danced in the air around her pretty nose like a dragonfly trying to alight on the tip of a fishing rod.
“Is this a poem?” I asked her.
“No. You are not a poet. You go through life without introspection.”
“Hey, how would you know? We just met.”
“I can tell.”
I went back to my drink and prepared to pout when I noticed her grinning, and like a stream of internet porn, her smile was endless. I laughed at myself and we toasted as strangers on a Caribbean beach will often do. I was feeling better. This exotic woman was like a dream, and now she had revealed that her cruelty was no more than flirtatious repartee. Now I could feel the rum in my belly pumping up through my veins and into my brain, warming my synapses like marshmallows over hot coals. I would take another stab. “Is this a short story?”
“No. You are not a writer of short stories. You don’t have the dedication.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I say what I know to be true.”
I finished what was left in my glass and tried hard to think of a Hemingway quote. I would show this vision that I was worthy of her level of bar banter, that my mental elevator could go all the way to her floor. I was about to tell her an anecdote about Papa in Cuba, reeling in a giant marlin when I decided to change strategy.
“A penguin walks into a bar and says . . . ” I began.
She put her slender and exquisitely manicured forefinger gently against my lips. “Please keep your jokes to yourself.”
“But you didn’t let me finish. It’s a damn funny joke.”
“You are not a comedian. You’re only funny in your dreams.”
“Well, goddammit woman, you are as presumptuous as you are beautiful.”
“I like that.”
Finally, something non-venomous escaped from her tantalizing lips. She spun around on her bar stool so our knees were touching and asked me a question.
“Are you married?”
I am a bad liar, so I did not lie. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Are you happily married?”
“I could be happier.”
She gave me the beginning of a smile. “Your honesty is more attractive than your bullshit.”
“Well, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Now look who’s being presumptuous.”
My momentarily raised hopes quickly settled back onto the doormat at her strappy-sandaled feet. I knew she was a lost cause, but against my will, my mouth continued. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“That’s the first good question you’ve asked me.”
She waved over the bartender and ordered another mojito and I got myself another Captain and Coke. We drank in silence and watched the ocean do its magical thing. I tried to position myself where I could gaze at both her and the waves. Just then, she leaned over and kissed me. Before I could ask her why, or even emit a sound, she murmured in a haunting tone, “You deserved a little something.”
“Uh, thanks,” I sputtered. I leaned in for another kiss but she pulled away from me with narrowed eyes.
I took a breath. “Maybe this is the beginning of a novel?” I ventured.
“No. God no. You are no novelist.”
“A graphic novel?”
“If only you could draw,” she said with a sigh. She sighed because it was too much trouble to run me over with a truck, but it was equally effective.
“Is this a screenplay?” I asked with unwarranted optimism.
She let out a single-syllable laugh.
“Am I getting close?”
She let out a two-syllable laugh. “I will tell you this—stay with what you know. Embrace who you are.”
“Well, since you know so much about me, and since I’m not a poet or a comedian or a novelist, just tell me—who the hell am I?”
She put a thumb under the strap of her bikini top and casually stroked her collar bone. She did this because she knew I was a kitten, and she, a ball of string. “I’d like another drink please.”
I was obviously getting nowhere. I ordered the drinks and sat in petulant silence for as long as I could, then, in spite of myself, I blurted out another guess. “Is this a blog?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, not exactly, it’s more of a eulogy.”
“A eulogy for who?”
“Whom,” she corrected, then pointed down the beach. “Look.”
“What am I looking at?”
“That man. See that man?”
I looked again and saw a ragged-looking man carrying a big bottle of rum and stumbling toward us. “Yeah, I see him. Who is it?”
“It’s someone just like you.”
“You mean he’s a writer?”
“Exactly. A drunken bum.”
“I can live with that.”
She looked at me with a mixture of pity and curiosity and said nothing.
“Sometimes I think about all the things I should have left out. All the edits I should have made.”
“Have you ever considered that what you really regret is all the things you never dared put down in print?”
I looked back at the ragged man stumbling along the beach. Tilting to his left and then his right, he now tried to keep his forward momentum going while taking a swig from his bottle at the same time. He fell face first into the wet sand. Upon impact, he sounded like a beach ball popping.
“I think he stopped breathing,” she observed.
The man who had fallen remained absolutely still.
“Oh, shit. We should probably try to help him. Should we help him?
“Why not?
“Put your hand on my left breast.”
Her request should have startled me more than it did. I did as I was told. I do not regret it. My hand resting on her warm left breast, we watched the ocean waves surround the rum-soaked soul and engulf him in white foam.
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said.
“How can you say that? It’s all so pitiful.”
“I know you want to edit out the sad parts, but you can’t do that.”
I looked at her for an extended moment. Her beauty had lost its power to make me squint, so I could stare at her for a long, long time. She ordered another mojito.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
We sat in renewed silence and watched as the waves lifted the man into the water and carried him out to sea.
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