Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  What is it about me?

  Ravid wonders how to flush the enemy within as the matron turns to him with the same question, “What is it about you?”

  “Thank you, but I didn’t start that. I mean, he stood right in my way when...”

  “Yes. I saw him. Here.” She hands him a card with a two-digit number on it and tells him that the Polaroid ran out of film right before his turn with the girls, so she had to go to point ’n shoot, digital, for quick and easy prints, but he’ll have to stand by for a few minutes so she can finish with the guests, each of whom gets an embrace and a Polaroid. Ravid stands by, watching his special dancer blush and blink on her way out.

  The crowd thins, and cleanup begins. He decides to come back later for his photo, because now he needs a long walk home on the blustery lifts and headers of a first night in Tahiti to better sort the days and details mounting like seas in a freshening breeze. These seas are figurative and less threatening than those of the recent conundrum, which was life or death. This turmoil is only a disturbing challenge on getting along in the world. What is it about a man who attracts trouble at every turn? The question comes in gusts.

  Still, a man may need a huff and puff to better understand the why and wherefore of his gravitation to violence, and vice versa. Why couldn’t he close his eyes and avoid the confrontation, let a meatball take his meatball video and roll away to his meatball room where he could slip into his meatball hooker and then slide into his meatball dream, like everybody else? Looking up, he squints in the spotlight glare.

  “I am Hereata,” the matron says.

  “Yes. I know. I mean, the dancer...” he indicates the exit.

  “You mean Vahineura.”

  “Yes. She told me your name.”

  “I saw that, too. I’m sure she told you more than my name, and I must advise you...” But she stops short of advice to jog her papers, to flex her full, supple body, as if subtle sexual provocation would be in any way avoidable in the context of so much sheer, raw woman. The powers of nature are in fact not avoidable but aren’t necessarily fearsome either. The flirtatious lilt is merely typical to a fulsome, fully realized woman in a light, clingy dress, high heels, lipstick and the wherewithal to attract a man’s interest, more or less. So her body language is a harmless amusement, really, a cultural ornament to please the eye. “Come. We make a print for you. So you can send it home, and your family will see that you’re having fun.”

  He follows her in the opposite direction of the dancers’ exit, toward the lobby and through it to an office, where she squats like a linebacker tying her shoe to rummage in the dark for the computer’s power button. Or maybe she’s looking for a pencil she dropped a few days ago. Who knows? Her casual manner disarms him as her dress rides above her panty line, and she swears that God invented computers to wreak revenge on sinners, and if this merde pile of a hotel wasn’t so cheap it would let her buy one of those printers where you just stick the thing in there, and out comes your little prize, voilà!

  But no...

  “I can come back. You can print my picture tomorrow, please. I don’t want to be a problem.”

  “Your family should see you having fun, so they don’t worry. Or your friends. That way you avoid a bigger problem.”

  “How do know my family will worry? Or my friends? Why do you think I’ll have a problem?”

  “Maybe I guessed and got lucky. Whose family doesn’t worry? What friends don’t want to hear from you?”

  “Still, I can come back. Better in the daytime.”

  She stops rummaging and stands up. “Okay. I think you’re right. What’s your name?”

  “Ravid.”

  “Rabid?”

  “No. Ravid, with a v. And it doesn’t rhyme with rabid. It’s rah-veed. Veed!”

  “Oh.” She shrugs, willing to let his name be what it is without a struggle on her part to get it right. “Where you from?”

  “I came here from Hawaii.”

  “I don’t think you were born in Hawaii.”

  “I was born in Morocco, but I’m from Haifa.”

  “You’re an Arab?”

  “I’m Israeli. It’s a long story from long ago.”

  “But you came yesterday from Hawaii?”

  “Yes. How do you know it was yesterday?”

  “Maybe I guessed and got lucky. It’s Sunday. You look new. I don’t know. You look familiar. I think I know you.”

  “We’ve never met. I would remember.”

  “I don’t mean that I know you like an acquaintance.” She tosses the casual half smile of the cosmically attuned over her shoulder and proceeds to more earthly tasks.

  Well, a man ponders the levels on which another person may know him, but he chooses to set that sorting aside for the blustery walk home. “What else do you know?”

  “Young. Confused. Very handsome. Lonely.”

  “Are you psychic? You are correct, but I was so hungry and had such a good meal, and I was having fun. I thought the...uncertainty didn’t show, at least for a little while.”

  “I’m more logical than psychic. I see what there is to see. You looked hungry, all right.”

  “And you?”

  Such an open-ended question will invariably prompt the subtle twist into eye contact and feminine advantage in a woman given to physical expression. “What about me?”

  “What about you? What are you? What do you feel?”

  “What do you see?”

  A question of equal open-endedness will prompt caution in a man of even moderate seasoning, for here are two doors, one opening to anger and the other to affection. He can’t quite see where the affection might go, other than in natural progression to warmth and friendship, which shouldn’t seem odd in a new place that could not likely offer a better friend, all things considered. She’s apparently smart, connected to tourism in general and to a high-end hotel specifically. She obviously makes friends easily and could well be a great person to know. So he ers and uhs with a playful gesture of stroking his chin to see what there is to see and finally says, “You are a woman. Very good looking. About my age, give or take. Generous, caring, brave, maybe fearless...”

  “You think I’m brave because of that scene in there? You don’t know much about tourism. Besides, it’s not brave if you’re not afraid. I had backup. That man was drunk. And typical. What was he going to do?”

  “Sorry. I thought you were brave. Not every woman could stop an attack with a kick in the ribs. And I do know about tourism. I’m a dive instructor.”

  She raises an eyebrow on a new eyeful, assessing him again with a nod. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink. I want to hear. You can help me wind down. You know how it is with hotel people on the late shift.”

  Another drink seems unnecessary and his slow wag says as much, with further displays of fatigue and a full belly, so she suggests a cognac, a short one as a digestif to round things out and settle things down. So he nods, because a drink with a mature woman in tourism may be the best result for a day of mixed results, because prospects for friendship and help are far more than he brought to the grand buffet. “Okay, I’ll let you buy me a drink if I can buy you one too.”

  Soon they relax at the bar, free of choreography and life questions, staring at their drinks. The silence could be awkward for two people who just met, but it isn’t, indicating compatibility. “I think it is a very good test of our friendship. I think what they say about silence, that it is golden, is not always true. Sometimes silence can be a great wall between people who have nothing to say to each other, or worse, who cannot speak because of obstacles in their hearts. But when it passes easily as a stream on a mountainside, then it indicates that two people are compatible — like two animals enjoying the sunshine in a golden field. Have you seen that? Surely you have felt it. I think I feel it with you. I think we will know each other for a long time. I like that.” She turns his way in a pose, awaiting affirmation.

  He tentatively meets her gaze, hesitant to eng
age in saucy repartee verging on a tacitly sexual if not romantic exchange — this one with an unlikely woman obviously his senior on several levels. He smiles at the lingering beauty in her well formed face, her angular cheekbones, her Polynesian lips, her rich, dark skin, her compelling cleavage heaving as gently as a hospitable sea, her eyes sparkling like a beacon on a secure mooring...

  He laughs short, wondering if she has a sandy bottom or just some loose slag over hardpan.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing. You laugh. Tell me what.”

  They stare. He looks back at his drink and says, “It’s different here. It feels different. Less of some things. More of others. I think I like it, but I can’t be certain. Not yet.”

  She responds to her drink. “Hmm. Yes. It’s more French here. Not so Christian, like Hawaii.”

  “Yes. I feel that.” In another minute, he asks, “Why did you warn me? Or start to warn me.”

  “I didn’t warn you. You practically picked a fight with that man.”

  “No. Not about that. About the dancer — what’s her name?”

  “Oh, Cosima — Vahineura. She’s a nut, that’s why. She already got two guys dead and broke a bunch more hearts. And for what? A nut.”

  “Why warn me?”

  “Because you’re a man. I think you been through enough.”

  “You think? What do you think I’ve been through?” He swallows half his cognac. “Now I believe you’re guessing.”

  “Maybe I’m guessing. But I know what a tired man looks like. I told you: You look confused and tired. A man your age shouldn’t look so tired. I don’t mean work tired. I mean life tired. I don’t know what you been through, but I would bet it was tough. I bet it was physical too, besides the mental and emotional. Yes? No?”

  “How old am I?”

  She squints in scrutiny. “Thirty-eight, going on fifty-two.”

  He slides a hand over his hip pocket to feel his wallet, to be sure she hasn’t clipped it and read his driver’s license. Well, maybe she guessed and got lucky. Maybe he looks a little tired, after all. “How old are you?”

  “Younger than you. Only forty-eight.”

  He laughs, downs his drink and signals the bartender for another round, knowing the trick the sauce can play and loving the sauce for playing its lovely trick. He asks again, “Are you psychic?”

  “I think so. I think I see that I weigh less than you do, too.”

  With a wry eye he scans her up and down, weighing her as directed, thinking their weights close enough for a wrestling match. He nearly suggests two out of three falls in playful jest but holds back for fear of something not quite right. He brings them back to mental telepathy on the recent past and the scheme of things playing out.

  “Do you see details? Reasons? Directions?”

  “Sometimes. But I told you already: What I see is more logic than psychic. Did you forget? You should pay attention. You’re old enough to see for yourself. My visions are ordinary, not extraordinary. What’s strange about seeing things as they are?”

  “Look at me.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ll let you know when I see something.” They watch their drinks, the silent comfort between them quivering one way and the other. Finally, she relents. “Okay. I see water. The ocean.”

  He turns to her. “So? We’re surrounded.”

  “At night.”

  He moans.

  “That’s all for now. It isn’t happy. I can see this, because you’re showing it to me, and you’re telling me this information as well. It’s not psychic; I tell you what is plain to see. That is also why I warn you about Cosima. I don’t like to say things that are not so nice, especially about a person who may be nice on the inside where it counts, especially when she is one of my dancers, maybe not my best dancer, but she’s learning, and not so clumsy as she was. You don’t see that, because you’re a man, and I know what happens, and I saw what happened when she spoke to you.”

  So she tells of Vahineura — Cosima to friends and family — of the young woman’s curse/delusion and the prize awaiting any man to make the night swim over and back an hour either side of sunset and sunrise.

  He’s too tired to ask for details of the bay, like depth, current, sea creatures, shoals and rocky landings or to seek another chapter from the book of strange tales. All answers school and flee the questions, and with paltry prospects for insight, he holds his cognac to the candle flame. “Is water ever happy?” he asks.

  “Of course it is. You of all people should know that.”

  “I should? I mean, yes, I should. But I sometimes think it’s neither sad nor happy but only...efficient.”

  “Efficient does not mean that it has no happy moments. Don’t be foolish. No man should let his spirit get so tired, especially a man your age, who may still recover.”

  He winces at the sting of truth and the stated potential of total loss. Yet he is grateful for her plain, common sense — for her optimism and friendship, which now feels more naturally sealed. In a few more minutes, the bar is closing and it’s time to go. She says she lives in a small house on the far side of a field at the base of a piton a short distance up the road, not even three quarters of a mile.

  He sees her as a very nice woman, a warm and intelligent woman, a woman on another edge — of youthful beauty. It’s a far edge to be sure, but her wisdom and caring and still-viable figure make her flat-out doable at this late, inebriate hour, with friendship, warmth and all that stuff so firmly established. Still, he pauses for the tough question: Would he pick the same tomato in daylight, stone sober and seeing the fruit is not so overripe or badly split but only seeping slightly and still red with not so many dark spots?

  Never mind is the convenient rejoinder. Take your petty needs home in the dark and let a beautiful friendship be. “I’m staying at the bungalows across from Taverua.”

  “That’s two miles down!”

  “Yes. On a beautiful night for a walk.”

  “Beautiful? A night with no moon? With squalls coming one after another? I think sometimes a tired brain is a dangerous one.”

  Perhaps psychically, he sees the driving rain windswept to horizontal and himself slouching into the headers, through the downpour, diving for the ditch when cars veer too close. So with last-call rationale, he follows her out, comme ci, comme ça, thinking how enjoyable will be the hours ahead in any direction with so much indifference at hand.

  The rain starts lightly before they reach the bottom step at the end of the walkway leading from the bar. They pause to imagine a difficult walk back to the bungalows across from Taverua. At least the walk back will be easy compared to a few other miles so recently traveled. He breathes the night in long draughts, recalling the inky depths and how he longed to put one foot in front of the other with traction. Well, it would have been like trying to run through a dream, which it was and is and will be — till the rain begins in earnest, and she interrupts his stupor. “You stay at my house tonight.”

  He perks unwittingly at prospects for friendship between two aging candidates. What better can life have to offer? Or is it the foul weather he truly wants to avoid? Either way, this makes sense — or at least a case could be made. “Do you think so?”

  She turns sternly, “Do I think so? I said it, didn’t I? The question is whether you heard me correctly. You can stay at my house. But no funny business. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you. No, no. Please. Nothing funny. Please.” She reaches around his waist and draws him near, roughly, pressing him to her stern warning with the friendship already felt, till he moans from the pressure.

  She concedes, “Mm! I had to do that. You’re so tired, so sad and drunk. And so cute. Viens! Vite!” So they step together up the road hardly three quarters of a mile, a short distance in daylight but a long one in the pitch dark on the rocky shoulder in the pouring rain with passing cars veering close enough to make him flinch. She scoffs at his tense reaction,
chattering all the way over her life and times in this area, from back before the road was paved, when it was a dust storm in dry weather and a mud bog in the rain, to now, when it’s modern, convenient and can kill you much quicker. She’s made this walk many times over the years, many times in worse conditions.

  Yes, he’s familiar with the phenomenon of a world changing for the worse, with dirt going to pavement instead of mud, creating a gravitational vortex in which more cars are spontaneously drawn in.

  At least the road running up at a right angle toward the piton is still dirt. Also pitch black, with puddles, it defies navigation, except of course by one who knows it in the dark. So she grasps him again to better lead, pointing her weak flashlight at their path. She comforts him as if he’s convalescent, and the infirmary is right this way. They’re wet, but warmth is squeezed between them. He likes her lead and assurance, as if arriving at last among friends; she seems so resourceful in her many facets of reflection on the neighborhood and the world. Like extended family, she leads him home, so to speak, one of the myriad kindred spirits walking the earth at any given time, some of whom actually meet and take care of each other. He finds her tactile skills as gifted as her logical views. And he knows that a failing flashlight and dancing shadows tend to favor a seasoned woman in silhouette.

  On the porch she steps out of her slippers, admonishing herself for not leaving a light on, but then who knew it would rain and she’d drag the cat home? She laughs through the door, and he takes one step to follow her in till she reaches the light switch and turns it on. It’s a single, dangling bulb scantily clad in a straw shade with enough light to delineate off to the side, near the door, a pair of boots, size twelve. As if intercepting his doubt she says, “They are very effective, don’t you think? A woman learns these things.”

  Inside is slightly better lit than the dirt road by flashlight. It’s a roof over four walls with the interior space undivided, with a kitchen table and chairs, and a couch that is soon folded down into a bed. She points out back at the salle de bain, advising that if he has to pee-pee he can stand on the edge of the porch pour le w.c. — the edge going to the left on his way out, not to the right — sur la gauche, pas à la droite — where her garden is trying to grow. He would playfully ask if she also makes pee-pee from the left edge of the porch but catches himself on second thought: of course she does. Why wouldn’t she? Then he’s mum as she fritters over no rest for the weary and wet clothing and catching her death, even here in Paradise, where you might be surprised at the care required to avoid such things.