Max watched Nina. He knew there was no way of telling her how much love he felt without sounding like a fool.
Nina’s hazel eyes were drawn away from his and across the square by the barp of a scooter horn. She stood up on tiptoes and waved.
The young man pulled up. He killed the scooter’s engine.
“Goodmorning, Sir.” He flashed a smile at Max, his shorts showing the muscles of his thighs. His name, Max remembered, was Vernon.
Vernon turned to Nina. “You got back alright from the casino last night?”
“Of course. But it’s sweet of you to ask.”
“You know, Sir,” Vernon said to Max, “You’re the luckiest man on the island. You have the most beautiful wife.”
“I know,” Max said. He hated it when Vernon called him Sir.
“Sir,” Vernon continued, “You should have stayed at the casino last night. With your beautiful wife. A great time was had by all.”
“Sure,” Max said, folding his paper. “But we’ll look after our own lives, thanks.”
“Do you anything exciting fixed for today, Sir?”
“Well, of course,” Max said. “We’re off to the viewpoint, the top of the island.”
“Not to be missed,” Vernon said, smiling widely through his tan. He started up his scooter. “I’m sure you’ll both have fun.”
That evening, Max sat on the bed at the Corienne, exhausted. The guide book for the island said that there were native lads with donkeys to get you up to the viewpoint from the carpark. Which there had been, but they only took you half the way. You had to walk—climb—the rest. Max sighed, remembering the way Nina had scampered ahead. How the native lads had ogled her thighs.
Nina wandered out from her shower, her brown body gleaming. She was smiling, singing to herself, some popular tune with words and a rhythm and that he was too old to understand. Soon, it would be time to go out to the casino again. Max was already two thirds dressed, in his dark suit and trousers, his tie still loose. Getting ready for anything, he needed a good half hour’s head start on Nina. He stared down at his shoes, wondering whether now was the propitious moment to bend down and lace them.
Nina opened the windows on the balcony to the cooling air. Max could feel the draft dragging at his skin, getting down into his bones. The sky outside was lavender pink, lavender blue, delicately serrated with clouds. Remembering, Max took out his handkerchief, the sample. He was surprised to see that that too had changed colour with the darkening evening. No longer blue. He could feel the play of bruised light on his eyes and face. Perhaps there was something in what the little man had said after all—he made a mental note to get in analysed when he got back to the mainland.
“What’s that?” Nina leaned over close to him, pushing pack wet strands of her hair, droplets forming at the tips of her breasts, enclosing him in her soapy scent.
“Just the thing I told you about earlier, sweet,” Max said, resisting the temptation to tuck it back away in the grit of his pocket like some guilty secret. “The guy that came this morning, he said it was a scrap of the sky.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“But it’s neat, isn’t it? Don’t you think it would go well in my hair with the silver grey dress I got down at Mario’s?”
“Sure,” Max said, although he hadn’t the faintest idea what particular dress she meant. But it would look good. Everything looked good on Nina.
“Let me.”
He didn’t resist as she took it from his hands. She held it up to her shoulders, her face. “It smells like...like evening. Like alleyways and the seashore, flowers closing for the night, seagulls up in the air. Sunset, almost.”
Max shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Oh, I do. I’ll definitely wear it this evening. It’ll drive all the other girls wild.”
And what about the other guys? Max thought, watching her as she did a little twilight dance. Everything with Nina had to be new and fresh—she threw stuff out when she’d even hardly had time to use it, when the scent of her skin had hardly settled on the cloth.
Max made an effort. He stooped down to lace his shoes. But he could still see Nina’s perfect brown feet. He loved the curve of her arches, her easy grace, the twinkle of her toes. Was she really getting more beautiful as he got older, or was it just some kind of mist that was settling on his eyes? Twenty, thirty years ago, no woman had lasted more than a season. But now, he was down to one, and that one was—just had to be—Nina.
Oh, Nina. Sweet, bittersweet, bitter Nina. The silk chemise settled over her shoulders and breasts as she dressed. Max calculated the moment to stand up. Waiting for the aches to settle, he looked himself up and down in the mirror, the stiff black evening suit that enclosed all the looseness inside. Now that would never go out of fashion; the suit, something hard and dark that you could put on and tie around your neck like a shell. Pity that all the clinics still couldn’t get the rest right.
Max watched Nina put on her stockings, effortlessly smoothing them up her smooth, effortless legs. What he wouldn’t have given for one imperfection, something he could have in common with her. What he wouldn’t give, at the end of the day, for her love. Her love. Yes, that was it, straightening his tie in the mirror as though anything would make a difference, would stop him looking old as the moon. Her love. And, yes, he knew that inside that sultry casing she was grabbing, vain, stupid, uncaring. But he was like all the old men. For some extraordinary reason, now that the years screamed back at him from the mirror, he wanted love.
They drove to the clifftop casino where there was already music and the promise of another unforgettable night. Nina wore the scrap of sky tied back in her hair. Walking across the carpark with the salt breeze lifting from the faintly glowing waves far below, Max saw that it was now deep purple, playing off the soft gleam of her lips, the rosy cast of the skin. The first thing you came to through the high porticos inside was a wall of mirrors. Max tried to look away from himself as Nina turned.
“Darling.” She surprised him with her arms and a warm kiss.
Max hugged her back, feeling a lifting and tightening inside his whole body that was more than anything the surgeons had ever managed.
“This thing you gave me.” Nina’s hand reached to the back of her head. “It’s quite marvellous.”
Max nodded. She was right. The cloth had the texture of velvet, dark and endlessly deep. The tips his fingers disappeared as he touched it, were swallowed by the prescience of night.
“Let’s dance,” she said.
In a happy daze, he followed. The music was the same music they played here every night. The band was the same band. But tonight it was all new. Max was only used to watching from the bar, the ridiculous effect it had on the trim bodies, the graceless contortions. Now he was part of it. Nina twirled. Her dress fanned out and her body drew him into the beat. The sky in her hair grew darker as she twirled. It began to glitter with stars.
What, Max wondered, had ever been the problem with this music? The beat was straight, hard, inevitable. As he danced, he turned in a breeze that carried the scent of Nina’s shoulders, her breasts and her hair, the dark open spaces between the stars. And when Vernon came up, his muscles sliding inside his suit as called Max Sir and asked Nina for a dance, Max didn’t have to say a word, Nina simply smiled and waved him away. That was the best moment of all.
Driving back, his hands and his thoughts easy on the wheel, just enough drink to make the tyres slide smooth and easy along the white road through the dark plantations, Nina’s hands were smooth and easy too. Around his shoulders, on his lap. She pressed close to him and the scrap of sky brushed his face. She whispered in his ear about all the things she would do to and with and for him when they got back to the Corienne. A thousand promises. And every one of them turned out to be true.
Late next morning, Max and Nina sat in their usual place at the bistro beneath the olive trees. And in the usual heat,
although Max hardly noticed it. He felt both fresh and tired. Like he’d been for a swim and fallen asleep without drowning. Nina was humming beside him, her fingers playing absently with her blue scrap of sky, shredding it with sharp little tugs. Max watched her, breathing slowly. Her sweetness was still on his skin. I’m just an old fool in love, he thought, smiling.
The food came. The bread was fresh baked, still moist inside the crust. Max ordered more wine to go with the coffee, knowing he could drink what he liked and never get drunk, feeling this way. As the waiter uncorked the cool dark bottle, Max heard the putter of an approaching scooter. It was Vernon.
“Good night last night eh Sir?” Vernon said, dressed in his usual shorts, his thighs tensing and untensing, still letting the engine rev.
“Not bad,” Max conceded, trying not to swallow the dust the tyres had kicked up, telling himself that Vernon and his kind were no longer a threat. Nina-with-the-sky-in-her-hair had given him the brush-off. “I’ve known worse and I’ve known better.”
Vernon looked at Nina. “Say, you left a bit earlier than you used to.”
Nina smiled and crossed her legs, leaned her chin on the palm of her hand. “Me and Max, we had things to do.”
“That right Sir?” Vernon’s grin grew broader. So did Max’s. He was thinking of Nina, the way she...
“Tell you what, Nina. The lads and I—a few friends—we’re having a party up in the pinewoods. All day, up where it’s cool. That’s if you don’t mind, Sir.”
“Maybe we’ll drive there,” Max said. “Later.”
“Pity of it is, Sir, you’d never get a car up that way. Now Nina, she could just hop up on the back here. And off we go. Holding tight on the hairpins, of course.”
Max was looking at Nina. Nina was looking at Vernon. Vernon gave his scooter an extra rev.
“That would be great,” Nina said. She jumped quickly up from her chair and straddled the back of Vernon’s scooter. She slid her arms around his waist. “You don’t mind, do you, Darling?” she shouted over the increasing sound of the engine.
“Sure, I don’t.” Max said.
Vernon and Nina pulled off. They disappeared amid the white houses and the sleepy noon. Max stared at his coffee, the untouched bottle of wine. Lying there on the bright tin table were the remains of the little scrap of sky, shredded the way Nina always ended up doing with anything that got in her hands, from silk scarves to beermats. A faint breeze was coming with the fishing smells up off the harbour. As it tugged at the fleece of blue threads, they tumbled one by one across the square, snagging in the dust like thistledown, in the patches of donkeydung, on the splinters of the bare wooden shutters.
Max intercepted the maid and rummaged in the bin back at the Corienne to find the card from the little man in the grubby suit he’d dumped there. He wandered the back streets of the port in search of the address. Even in this grim siesta heat, he knew what he was after. The thought kept him busy, kept him from worrying too much about Nina and Vernon.
When he found it, the sign said, SOUTH OVER EAST, TAILORS FOR THE DISCERNING. NIGHT AND DAY WEAR A SPECIALITY. It was hanging askew from one hook over a peeling door.
Max went in. The doorbell rang, then fell from its mounting and rolled across the gritty linoleum towards the counter. The place smelled both sweet and leathery, vaguely like the breeze that came out from the doors of the sweet shops that Max had never been able to afford to go into when he was a kid.
“I remember you,” Max said, pointing at the same crumpled man in the same crumpled suit standing there. When he was doing business, this was one of Max’s greatest compliments.
“I recall visiting your hotel suite only yesterday,” the man said.
“I’m here to do a deal,” Max said, brushing some of the dust from the counter and leaning his elbows down. “That, er, sample of the sky you gave me yesterday. I’ve decided I want a whole lot more of it...not,” Max added, fearing he was in danger of loosing his usual financial cool, “...that I haven’t got other suppliers. But I happen to like you, and I like the quality of the stuff I’ve seen to far. Believe me, this is the big break you’ve been looking for.”
“Indeed.” The man gave the smile of one who has been straight through and out of the other side of many big breaks. “How much exactly do you wish me to supply?”
“I’d like enough to make up a dress. And you’re a tailor, aren’t you? Perhaps you could do the whole package, although of course I could always get my usual people in for me I you can’t be bothered.”
“I’m sure I can manage anything that you’d like,” the man said.
They began to talk price, and when they had settled on that, the tailor asked Max about Nina’s size, which for all his knowledge of Nina’s figure, Max didn’t know.
“Tell you what,” Max said, giving up shaping an imaginary body with his hands. “You’re a guy like me, aren’t you. Not queer or anything?”
“Not, I think, in the way that you mean, Sir.”
“Then do you have a vision of a perfect woman?”
“Of course sir. Why, long ago on the ferry between the islands I saw—”
“—I’m not interested in your memories. Just make it that size, and it’ll fit Nina fine. A perfect woman. You understand?”
The man nodded. Of course he understood. He wasn’t queer. And the dress would be ready for collection late that afternoon.
Nina came home with the evening and the salt-perfumed wind off the sea. Max was sitting out on the balcony of the Corienne, waiting. The dress was on the bed, in a large, thin, rectangular box. As soon as he’d got back with it, Max had opened it up to see inside, then left it that way. Right now, when Nina came in through the door, the colours of it were flowing across the room, making the ceiling glimmer just the way the water was down in the harbour.
“My goodness,” Nina said.
“You like it?” Max asked. He was smiling, remembering all the promises Nina had made and kept last night. And he could tell now from the look in her eyes that there were more to come, many other things he hadn’t even imagined.
“It’s...” Nina lifted it up. There was dust and sweat in her hair and on her face, and Max saw that her tee shirt was now on with the label showing on the outside. But none of that mattered.
“Do you love me?”
Nina gave him a kiss that tasted gritty, a little like the side of the road. “Like mad.”
“And what about Vernon, all those other guys?”
“What other guys?”
Nina held the sky dress up to her shoulders and twirled. Clouds and the sunset soured out across the room. She was transformed.
They ate alone that night, down by the harbour. Max bought every table in the restaurant to ensure that they wouldn’t be disturbed. There was candlelight, music, fish fresh from the boats that had come in with their keel eyes on the flow of the tide that very evening. Nina glowed. Her dress was clouds and moonlight, silver grey sails shifting endlessly on a sea of twinkling black. After the plates were cleared and they and the rough red wine had reached a miraculous balance, they danced amid the empty chairs, the photographs along the walls of cats and dead ancestors. Max kissed Nina’s shoulder and ran his hands along her spine, down to the edge of her dress and beyond where her skin gave way to the blue darkness of the fabric night. It felt cool to the touch, like dipping into a clear pool. His fingers strayed amid the stars, feeling Nina breathing beneath. As the music slowed and the candles guttered, Max saw the white trail of a comet adrift along the curve of Nina’s spine. He caught it like a little fish between finger and thumb and cupped it in his palm for Nina to see. She laughed in wonder and the feathery light snagged in the fall of her hair as she leaned close. And there it stayed, still curled and faintly glowing as they walked back arm in arm to the Corienne, as the night took them to their room, as they made and re-made love, as Max finally breathed every sweet salted promise and Nina lay dreaming on the firefly pillow beside him.
In t
he morning, the comet had died. There was only a note. Off with Vernon and a few others of the gang. Hope you don’t mind Sweet. See you this evening. Luv Nina. The dress was curled by the side of the bed where he and Nina had tossed it the night before. Even with the widows open, the blue of it looked cheap and artificial, like the chlorine-scented colour you got at the bottom of a swimming pool. Max stomped out onto the balcony, nude and old and not caring who saw him. And up there was the bloody sky, right above the bloody sea, just the same colour. Tile blue plastic blue cheap fairground blue. The only difference was, there was a black patch at the corner of the horizon. But with all the stuff that had gone into Nina’s dress, Max guessed that was only to be expected.
He went straight down to the car without bothering about breakfast. He guessed that Nina and Vernon would have gone up to the hills. Past the shining waterfalls, barefoot into the green dark. He killed the engine where the track gave way to bluish hallways of forest. He got out and sniffed the air. With the birdsong, the sigh of falling water, there was laughter. Up over the ridge.
Nina’s note had been wrong. There were no friends. It was just her and Vernon. Now, that almost came as a relief—Max’s wilder imaginings had involved most of the residents of the island, including the fishermen, the black old ladies, the croupiers and the saxophonist in the casino band. But it was just Vernon and Nina and a waterfall sliding down amid the dripping green. Cool and bright down the wet rocks, down the smooth buttresses of marble, down her offered breasts, down his thighs. Max watched for as long as he could bear. But he soon got the picture. Sex was like dancing to modern music. It looked stupid and ugly unless you were directly involved.
Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 24
