What Is Growing Inside Maria
Page 4
Where to Disappear
By Mathew Hope
María and I both knew the tattoo was only the pretense behind going to her hotel. She was staying at the Hotel Ideal, located in an area filled with pawn shops and cheap strip joints. The hotel was what Walt Disney would have built if he lost all his money on cheap acid and hookers. There was a lot of kitsch, from the red plastic lights near the 60’s vending machines to the mermaid guarding a quarter¬-filled swimming pool now flush with fat goldfish. The receptionist sat behind grated metal and a row of old telephones that María told me could not be traced. I have been told that as the money laundering capital of the Americas, Panama has long been the place to disappear, for everyone from the Shah of Iran to Patty Hearst.
She led me by the hand to her room. Before the door to her room swung shut she jumped onto the bed. She stared at me without saying anything and peeled off her pants and underwear. They were still wet from the cave. In one go, she kicked them to the side. Then she motioned me closer. Well below her navel, in the area where there would be hair, I saw a small tattoo of the moon eclipsing the sun.
“The moon is a mirror,” she whispered. “It holds the sun.”
I don’t get girls this beautiful… I should say I have never had a girl like María show interest in me. It was so otherworldly for me that the rest of my memories are faded untrustworthy and surreal:
There was a painting of scene from the States -- you know two mountains, water in the middle. What was home peeking out to tell me in such tactless way? What do you want?
The smoothness of her skin.
And the air conditioner sputtering off instantly sending in the hot humid night.
And the sudden momentum crash just after her orgasm.
And the smell of old smoke and fresh sex.
And listening to the heavy breathing of deep sleep and the screeching and wailing of Panama City’s pawn shop/sex district. Then the sound of heavy rain as I drifted into semi-consciousness.
Unwrapping the paper from around a glass in the bathroom.
Feeding from the tap.
The moon pouring in through a window and seeing María, naked, in the mirror.
Her finger over her lips and then her arms suddenly around me. She sat on the sink and used her toes to slide off my boxers.
And her index fingers sliding between her legs and separating her lips.
She told me we weren’t done.
“The moon holds the sun,” she said again.
And then waking near dawn with the sounds of car horns and buses.
I slowly opened the bedside table and tore out a page of a bible. I moved to the desk and quickly wrote my e-mail address on the limp paper trying not to poke holes in it. And then getting down on all fours and edging toward’ María s jeans that were half under the bed. I pulled at her jeans until they were stretched out and I slowly slid the paper into her back pocket. There was something else there. Another paper. I pulled it out. It was a photograph.
I looked at it in the dim light. At the time I was sure. I stopped breathing and stared and the photo, squinting my eyes. It was a Facebook photo. My Facebook photo.
When I woke next, María wasn’t there and her stuff was gone. I waited a painfully long time. Finally I paid the bill and entered hot steaming day wondering if that really was my photo and why. Or was I going nuts?