by KT Morrison
One week in Tahiti had left her shoulders peeling. Though her skin took sun reasonably well, she didn’t generally like it, preferring paleness to uneven tan lines and the current flaking shorelines on her browning collar, marking pools of rosy pink skin. Tahiti was Cole’s idea, and it was a good one, because it gave them peace and privacy, living in a grass-roof suite hoisted above the ocean on stilts. The air was warm, the sun hot, the ocean cool and clear. The first two days, they never even left their bedroom, but since then, they’d been enjoying the amenities.
Today they’d come to the main island of Bora Bora to eat out, get away from the St. Regis, do some shopping and walk around to get some vertical exercise. Boat ride across the lagoon to the island, a walk on the sandy beach, Tuna Tartar brunch at the Maikai Yacht Club, and now they were doing some afternoon shopping in the outdoor marketplace.
An easy breeze came off the ocean across the walkway from where she stood; the sun was bright, and she wore a wide-brimmed hat to cut the glare and to further protect her damaged skin. Now she was in a thatch-covered stand, this one selling hand-painted scarves and an assortment of pearl jewelry. The scarves, or pareos, hung from rods where they’d been looped. Between the hut’s bay doors, opened wide like wings, a Polynesian woman helped a man select a bracelet from trays she brought out from behind the glass displays. Cole was around somewhere, the last she’d seen him he was trying on raffia fedoras at a T-shirt shop farther up the beach.
Eschewing the more elaborate patterns that maybe catered to the tourists that came off the ships, she chose a deep green pareo with a Polynesian border across one side, then a blooming spread of traditional tiares, white flowers over bright emerald leaves. Paid without dickering, handing over six-hundred French Pacific francs to the smiling woman, then walked away, tucking her wallet back in the rope purse slung over one shoulder.
A man said to her, “I like your ring.”
In reflex, her fist protectively clutched the ring that hung over her heart on a gold chain, feeling violated, knowing immediately the man had been staring at her breasts in their black bikini top, and that this was a come-on.
Only when she looked up, she went weak in the knees, buckling and putting a hand out to support herself against a table arranged with beaded jewelry. Standing on the far side of the table, wind rustling his hair: her Max in a white Oxford and khaki shorts.
Inexplicably, she burst into tears. “Max!” she cried and covered her mouth and nose with both hands.
He came to her immediately, laughing, rounding the table and throwing his arms around her, she clutched him tight.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice still tightened by emotion.
He said, “What are you doing here?”
“What?” she laughed, stepping back now and wiping her eyes.
“Why are you crying?” he laughed.
“I don’t know,” she said, laughing and sniffling, regaining composure. “The surprise … why are you here?”
“Is this some coincidence or what? I thought you went to Europe.”
“Europe … that’s next week … what …?” She struggled to understand. He just stood there with a big smirk watching her blubber with his hands in his pockets.
“Maggie!” Now she turned to see Keely running along the walkway from the other side of the stall, arms outstretched, lips peeled in a wide and open smile.
“Oh my God,” she cried, arms out to receive her, taking her in a big hug, Keely rocking her back and forth.
Keely laughed and sang, “Oh, we got her crying,” and continued to hold her tight and sway with her. With the tips of her ring fingers she cleared the wet from her eyes to see Cole now, coming along from the same direction Keely had run, wearing a new straw fedora and his black Ray-bans.
Cole said to Max, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“This is crazy right?” Max said.
Cole turned to her now as she and Keely separated, saying, “Maggie, you see this?—Max is here! And holy shit,” he said now, shaking his head, feigning stunned, “Look, it’s Keely!”
“You can knock it off,” she said.
Cole took Max now in a big hug, the two of them laughing and rocking together as she and Keely had just done. Max slapped Cole’s back over and over. They each exchanged their cooing, Hey, buddys, while they embraced. Keely stood at her side now, rubbing her hand over her bare shoulder. She said, “I take it this was a surprise.”
She said, “What are you doing here?”
Max parted from Cole, reached in his pocket and withdrew a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. He said, “This guy forgot his glasses in Rhode Island,” and passed them to Cole.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cole said. “Long way to come for glasses, but I appreciate it. These are my favorite ones,” he winked, transferring them to the pocket of his own shorts.
Maggie sighed with exasperation, watching the two of them. “Seriously, what is happening?”
Cole cocked his head, and took off his sunglasses, stepping to her and putting his arms around her. “Surprise, Maggie.”
She rocked in his strong arms and squeezed him tight. “That’s a great surprise,” she whispered in his ear. “Thank you.”
“They came in to Motu Mute this morning, so I had to get us over to the island …”
“Where are you staying?” she asked Max.
“With you.”
“What? …”
Cole said, “They’re in already. Flew in this morning, I took you out for brunch so these two … you know, could get their bags in and everything, move in to our suite.”
She slapped at her own cheeks, bewildered. “Cole, you’re the best,” she laughed, kissing the hot skin of his bare upper arm. “God, we’re going to have so much fun.”
“I need a hat like yours,” Keely said to her, holding a hand over her brow to shield the bright sun leaking over the top of her sunglasses and making her squint. She was white-skinned, almost alabaster, her bare arms glowing in the sunlight.
Cole took the straw fedora off and plopped it over Keely’s head, her long ginger ponytail swinging in the breeze. She unfurled the emerald pareo she’d just purchased and snapped it till it was unfolded and flapping in the breeze, folded it in a triangle then wrapped it over Keely’s shoulders to protect her skin from the same punishment on her own shoulders.
Keely turned her back to her, one hand holding Cole’s fedora in place as another breeze kicked up, and Maggie reached around her front to tie a loose knot in the scarf.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Keely sang, tilting her gaze up inland, looking at the two jagged points of the tiny island’s extinct volcano, Pahia and Otemanu. She kissed Maggie’s wrist.
Cole said, “You guys hungry? You eat?”
Max looked at his watch, said, “We had a little on the plane to Tahiti, but we haven’t had lunch.”
“How about an early dinner?” Maggie said.
Cole said, “Look at this guy,” stepping closer to Max and grabbing his wrist. “You got it?”
“Came by courier a few days ago,” Max said, turning his hand so Cole could admire his steel watch, the two of them developing a recent fetishization for vintage timepieces.
“Hey. It’s waterproof, right?”
Max said, “What …? Yeah, it’s a Submar—”
Cole dipped at the knees and wrapped his arms around Max’s thighs and hoisted him right up off his feet.
“What the fuck!” Max laughed, his hands gripping the back of Cole’s shoulders, looking at Keely and her with a shocked but happy face.
Now Cole ran, pausing to look both ways at the pedestrian walkway in case they would get clipped by a bicycle, trotting across, stepping carefully over a curb, sneaking between two close palm tree trunks, and then down a short grassy hill. Then he was on the beach, running with Max still lifted up and holding on to him, both of them laughing and yelling.
Keely laughed too, watching through her sunglasses, then putting a
n arm around Maggie’s shoulders. She said, “It would be funnier if they were closer to the water, you know?”
Maggie held Keely’s wrist, said, “I know. It’s an awful long way to the beach.”
Cole still ran, their yelling growing faint and lost in the wind. They still weren’t at the ocean.
Keely said, “You think Max would struggle a bit more. Put up a fight.”
Maggie chuckled as her husband and Max finally, soundlessly, made it to the shore, Cole leaping into a wave and the two of them being swallowed by foaming splashes, arms and legs poking out through the water. She said, “He let’s Cole get away with everything. He likes it.”
In dry clothes now, both him and Cole, they ate at the restaurant at the St. Regis. Maggie bought them towels at a beach-side stand, saying the taxi would never take them like that—dripping wet, acting like a couple of college kids on Spring Break—but smirking the whole time. They rode back to the resort and went to the suite and changed into dry clothes, Maggie and Keely going ahead to the restaurant to get a table.
Now they were all together in the restaurant, a Jean-Georges, at a window-side table on the lagoon-side shore of the Moto Piti A’au looking across the water at the darkening jutted shape of the main island’s dormant volcano as the sun passed the high point and sunk toward the west. The sky still a brilliant baby blue with cottony, sunlit clouds, the teal water of the lagoon was choppy and shot with dashing white arrows.
With Maggie and Cole sitting together on one side, he sat next to Keely. Maggie wore the pareo now to cover her bikini top, Keely appropriately attired in the same light dress she’d worn on the little plane from Tahiti to Bora Bora. As a table, they split appetizers; Sautéed Reef Octopus with jalapeño, seared duck foie gras with papaya chutney, and avocados with scallop sashimi. Two bottles of wine on the table; a Languedoc Picpoul and a Spanish Albariño. He offered to buy them dinner but Cole told him the whole thing goes on the tab; the restaurant being on the resort. Martin would be footing the bill, and it must be enormous, a month-long honeymoon at five-star accommodations.
“How was your first week being married?” Keely asked Maggie.
“Blissful,” she said, eyes sparkling as she took a sip of the Picpoul. Cole and Maggie held their inward facing hands together, fingers interwoven, Maggie’s engagement ring and brand new wedding band winking in the candlelight. Cole raised their conjoined hands and kissed her knuckles.
“God, how cliché,” Max laughed. “So where next?”
Cole said, “One week with you guys here, then we go to Tuscany for five days …”
Maggie finished, “and then Paris for ten.”
Keely, eyes rolled up with the sweet pleasure of the vanilla with the duck liver, said, “Mm, sounds so amazing.”
Max said, “And have you decided? …”
Maggie stabbed a piece of avocado in her mouth, said, “Work?”
“Yeah.”
“Google.”
He said, “I told you.”
“You did,” she laughed. “They don’t want me till the new year.”
“Free time,” Keely sang happily.
Cole mourned, “Yeah, but I’m back to work.”
“Bummer,” Max said, Cole acting as an in-house assistant hedge fund attorney at Oxbow.
Keely said in a hushed tone: “So did you guys even get out of bed this week?”
Maggie laughed and said, “Enough to burn my shoulders,” tugging away the pareo to reveal the sunburn he’d noted earlier. Cole leaned to her and kissed the new and pink skin. Maggie caressed his cheek, her Cartier bangles singing on her wrist.
“The villa is unbelievable,” Keely said. When the two of them arrived from the airport this morning, sneaking into the suite to deposit their belongings, neither of them could believe the place, Keely pretending to swoon at its extravagance and him catching her. They made out a little before getting into a cab and meeting up on the other side of the island, in text contact with Cole.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Maggie asked. Then to Cole: “Is that why you booked the six-person suite? How long did you know they were coming?”
Cole shrugged and chuckled it off. “I don’t know. A couple of months.”
Keely said to him, “And you and Max think I can’t keep secrets.”
Cole winked and reached across to hold her chin, he wiped a dot of papaya from the corner of her pink lips. “You did good, kid.”
Maggie clutched her two hands below her chin, and Max flinched, getting caught in her direct stare. “I couldn’t be happier,” she said to him. “My two favorite people in the world.”
A narrow wood deck ran from the restaurant’s exit out into the lagoon’s brilliant turquoise water. Extending out from shore it came to a T and together the four of them turned left, still chatting and enjoying each other’s company. The lagoon here was interspersed with thatch-roofed villas, sitting up on their concrete legs, and ahead was the Premier Villa, their private space for the last week. Beyond the roof of their villa the peak of Mount Otemanu poked, almost black now against a blood orange sky, its dual spires eclipsing the low looming sun.
The deck ended at the door to their villa, Cole ahead, opening it and ushering everyone in. Cole said, “Everyone grab a seat and let’s relax,” extending the word relax like it was the most important thing ever.
She asked Max: “You must be jet-lagged.”
“Pooped,” he admitted, pausing at the glass inset in the wooden floor that showed the waters of the lagoon below. Even though daylight dimmed, floodlights shone from below the villa to illuminate the sub-aquatic goings-on. He stood with his legs astride the glass, like he was afraid to rest his weight on it, ghostly blue light shining from below him. As she approached, Keely bounded over to join him, coming to his side and hugging him, watched as he watched down between his legs. The light from below filled the inside of her dress and she could see the silhouette of her tall shapely body under the fabric.
“What are you looking at?” Keely asked Max.
“Something moved down there,” Max told her.
Maggie joined them while Cole turned on some Stravinsky, keeping it low. On Max’s other side, she peered down as well.
“Nurse shark,” she said, as the black, distinctly shark-shaped shadow streaked past.
“Oh my God,” Keely said, stepping her sandals back an inch farther from the glass’s edge.
Cole said, “Don’t worry, they’re friendly. Not like man-eaters or anything.” He stood at their mini-bar and kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of white.
Keely said, “Well, I guess I won’t be swimming this week,” as she crossed to the black wicker couch and sat herself down, pulled off her sandals and crossed her long legs.
“You’ll be fine,” Maggie said, going to the couch, plopping down next to her so they were hip to hip.
Keely put an arm around her shoulders, saying, “Will you protect me?”
“You won’t see them during the day.”
Max joined them as well, sitting at an angle to them on the lime green cushion of an ottoman. Cole brought the chilled bottle and four wine glasses, setting them down on the table in front of the couch.
“Amazing dinner?” Cole asked, dropping to sit in a bright fuchsia cushioned armchair that faced them.
Keely said to her, “I can’t believe you didn’t have any of the kulfi. It was cinnamon,” emphasizing the flavor as her point of disbelief.
Cole said, “She went off sugar almost completely now.”
Maggie nodded and smiled, and Keely said, “Good for you.”
Max was watching her and he smiled warmly. “I remember a time Maggie would finish off a pizza and beers with a chocolate brownie covered in ice cream.”
Cole punctuated it with a wink to Max. “Sublimating.”
It made her laugh, and she threw her head back at the fond memory.
Keely laughed too. “Altieri’s,” she said with respect.
They were
all silent for a moment, and she watched Max as he smiled across the table at her. Grown-up Max, doing very well for himself, but she always knew he would. Looking good and in shape, black T-shirt and gray shorts, his expensive watch. Handsome too, as always, some of that cuteness falling away as he continued to mature, exposing some of the man inside. It wouldn’t have been too bad to be with Max. Not too bad at all. Where would she be now? Safe in his home, free to pursue the things she’d used when she was a kid to escape. Would she still play the cello? Paint? God, the last time she held a brush was the fight with Carol. She’d handed one to her, saying, You show me how you paint. Carol didn’t shrink from the challenge, but didn’t accept it. Set the brush down, a smile showing she’d been caught, but also somehow showing victory. Carol had never been an artist. Just a mastermind sowing seeds of doubt. Worst thing was the bolstering pride she’d felt knowing that Carol had recognized her daughter’s perception and appreciated it greatly. Carol still winning somehow even though Maggie thought the victory had gone to her. Carol winning the war, not the battle.
The sad longing in Max’s eyes though betrayed that old deeply imbedded weakness. An unmovable sliver in his psyche that she imagined he would always have till the day he died. Thought that because she knew she would have it too, or at least her own version of it. There was an almost intangible bond between them, something neither one of them could sever no matter how bad they may be to each other. It couldn’t be severed. It ran both ways between them like an umbilical. Whatever travelled its spectral membranes nourished both of them.
They stared into one another’s eyes, smiling at each other almost to laughter. Finally, Max said, “You know what we should do? End of summer, Cole takes a weekend off, before Maggie goes to work … we head up to the Schroon Lodge.”
Cole nodded with a happy face, looking at each of them in turn.
Maggie said, “We should. We have to.” Then delivering the bad news: “Martin’s selling the Schroon Lodge next year.”
Keely whined, “No-oo, I love the Schroon Lodge,” and snuggled against her.
Cole laughed and said, “Buy it for her, Max.”
