The Isle of Youth: Stories

by Laura van Den Berg

  “You’ve got quite a collection of beauty products,” I said.

  “I used to work at a salon, before the band,” Sylvia said. “But you wouldn’t know about that, either.”

  She held a mirror in front of me. In the half-lit kitchen, it was like looking at myself in a carnival mirror: my face was slimmer, my cheekbones higher, my lips swollen with color, my bangs stiff with hair spray and curving over my left eye. My sister crouched beside me and squeezed her face into the frame. We looked identical. I brought my fingers to my mouth and Sylvia batted my hand away, saying I would mess up my lipstick.

  She put down the mirror and kneeled in front of me. She touched my bangs, almost tenderly. “The hair’s easy. Just brush your bangs to the side while you’re blow-drying in the morning, then spray, spray, spray.”

  “How will I remember all this on my own?”

  “I thought of that already,” she said. “I’ll write out instructions for you tomorrow.” She told me there was an envelope that had everything I would need to know, from directions to the club and the names of her co-workers to the description of the woman who had been following her to lists of what she usually bought at the grocery.

  “You’re being very organized about this.”

  “I love a good scheme,” Sylvia said. “I would have been a great criminal mastermind.”

  “What about when I’m at your job? What if I forget someone’s name or make a dumb mistake?”

  “People are used to me making dumb mistakes,” Sylvia said. “That’s the last thing that would make anyone think you’re not me.”

  At two in the morning, the electricity came back on. We blew out the candles and turned on the lights. The apartment was a mess: wax drippings, newspaper pinned beneath the stool in the kitchen, brushes and compacts and tubes on the counter, boarded windows. Sylvia said we would worry about cleaning in the morning. She put on cotton pajamas with martini glasses printed on them and tossed me a pair with flamingos. I had brought a T-shirt and sweatpants to sleep in, but didn’t protest; her pajamas were soft and smelled like perfume.

  She asked if I wanted to sleep with her, like we sometimes did when we were young, when our parents were shouting at each other and we were afraid. I said okay. In her room, she cleared away a mound of clothes and yanked out a trundle bed.

  “This is where I would make my boyfriends sleep when I was mad at them,” she said.

  We got into our beds. Sylvia turned off the light. It was hot in the bedroom. I pushed the sheets down to my waist. I could still hear tree branches slapping the building and a terrible, tearing wind.

  “When the weather’s nice, I have drinks on the balcony,” Sylvia said. “There’s vodka in the freezer. You can do that, too, if you want.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

  We were quiet for a while. I couldn’t relax, couldn’t even think about sleep. There was an electricity in my body unlike anything I had felt in a long time.

  “I jumped off that balcony once,” Sylvia said. “About a year ago. I landed in the bushes. I broke two fingers. I got a concussion. I had to spend the night in the hospital.”

  I rolled toward her. On the wall, I saw the shadow of her raised arm. “Why didn’t someone from the hospital call me?”

  “I told them I didn’t have any family,” she said.

  “I would have helped.”

  “I couldn’t be sure, seeing as you told me to disappear the last time we talked.”

  She was referring to the time she phoned to say she was in love with Mark, and that she was going to tell him so, and that she thought there was a chance he was in love with her, too. I’d told her she was a sickness and I was cutting her out. After the call, I asked Mark if he was having an affair with Sylvia. He said “no” then and he said “no” later, in the office of our marriage counselor. But still I just had this feeling. Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe I wanted someone to blame. I was willing to entertain those possibilities. What I didn’t understand was why I couldn’t do anything more than stand around in pain.

  “You told me to stay away,” she said. “So I did.”

  A week after the balcony, Sylvia tried to hang herself in the bathroom, but the shower rod broke. She said that she didn’t even go to the hospital that time. All she had to show for her efforts was a ring of bruises around her neck.

  “I have the worst luck sometimes,” she said.

  “Some people would say you were lucky.”

  Neither of us said anything more, though something about my sister’s breathing told me she wanted to keep talking.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she finally said.

  I’d heard that line before, always when I was doing whatever it was that Sylvia wanted.

  “It’s good that you called. Thanks for the trip to beauty school.”

  “Maybe you’ll like my life so much, you won’t want to give it back.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  2.

  My first day as Sylvia began at dusk. From the balcony, I watched my sister slip into a taxi. All afternoon we had been looking for the woman’s car, but the coast seemed clear. After Sylvia confirmed the airport was open and her rendezvous was on, a hushed phone call taken in her bedroom, we went over everything in the envelope, spreading lists of names and work schedules and addresses across the kitchen counter. She had even gotten a fake lip ring for me. It was shaped like a comma and came in a plastic baggie. She picked out an outfit for my shift at the Bortaga, a black minidress and red heels, and did my hair and makeup once more. When it was time for her to leave, we stood in the apartment doorway. I wished her luck. She put her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. And then she was gone.

  After her taxi had disappeared down the street, I went into the bathroom and stood at the mirror. My face was bruised with makeup. My bangs drooped over my eye. I wedged the lip ring on. The metal felt strange inside my mouth. I couldn’t stop running my tongue over the thin silver curve. I studied the photo of Sylvia leaning against a palm tree that hung on the bathroom wall and wondered who had taken it. This man she was meeting? I stared at her toothless smile, her narrowed eyes, and tried out the same expression in the mirror.

  In the kitchen, I poured a vodka on the rocks. I stood on the balcony and watched the sun drop. There was sand on the concrete floor. The air was wet and heavy. I saw palm trees that were nothing but brown stalks and sagging power lines. Everywhere there was paper and glass and spears of wood, like the aftermath of a riot. Sylvia’s building made it through the storm without any damage, but others in her neighborhood, we’d heard on the news, had broken windows and leaks. I heard a rumbling and saw a street-cleaning machine inching down Sixth Street. I finished the drink. The sun was halfway below the horizon, a watery orange orb. It seemed much bigger than the sun in Washington, the heat radiating across the tops of buildings and into me.

  * * *

  I woke the next morning feeling groggy, as though I’d been asleep for days. I rose and showered, using Sylvia’s gardenia-scented soap and her pink pumice stone. Afterward, I put on a silk bathrobe and poked around in the medicine cabinet: a nail file, red polish, an eyelash curler, makeup sponges, pills. The bottle was labeled “lorazepam,” the same thing, incidentally, a psychiatrist had once given me for nerves. I would take one and be immune to anything my husband said, any argument. I opened the bottle and found all kinds: tiny blue ones, round orange ones, rectangular pink ones. I pushed them around with my index finger and took the one that looked the most familiar. I closed the medicine cabinet and watched in the mirror as the oblong pill bled white onto the pink of my tongue.

  I wrapped my hair in a towel, took the bottle of polish from the cabinet, and painted my toenails on the balcony. The streets were a little cleaner. It was hotter than before. The sky looked like a wet canvas someone had smudged with their fingers. I couldn’t remember the last time I had so many open days in front of me. Sylvia worked only three nights a w
eek at the Bortaga. Her next shift was tomorrow. Today was training.

  Later I moved a hairdryer over my toes until the polish hardened. I found some jeans, low-rises with holes in the knees, and a purple tank top in the bedroom. I studied myself in Sylvia’s full-length mirror. My stomach wasn’t as flat and my arms were paler. I taped the beauty instructions she’d left, complete with a diagram of a face drawn in blue pen, to the bathroom mirror and did my hair and makeup. I wedged the lip ring on and looked myself over. The eyeliner was too thick, the lipstick a little heavy, but not bad. A decent imitation Sylvia.

  Before leaving the apartment, I picked up the grocery list and the car keys. My sister had an old Mazda Miata convertible. I was looking forward to putting the top down. In the lobby, I opened her mailbox with the tiny key she’d given me. It was empty.

  Outside, the car I’d been warned about was the first thing I saw: a beige Lincoln Town Car parked next to the Mazda. As I passed, I saw a woman with shoulder-length hair and sunglasses staring through the windshield. I started the Mazda and rolled down the top. I was a little drowsy from the pill and the sun hurt my eyes. I found rhinestone-studded sunglasses in the glove compartment and put them on. I headed to the grocery on Creston Avenue. The beige Lincoln followed.

  At the grocery, I parked and rolled up the convertible top. I pushed a cart toward the entrance. The woman trailed behind me, picking up a small basket inside. She kept her sunglasses on. She followed me up and down the aisles, never more than twenty or thirty feet away. In the frozen foods section, I kept an eye on her by looking at the reflections in freezer cases, like I once saw a character do in a detective movie. Her basket stayed empty. She dragged one of her ankles slightly. I went about my business and by the time I’d checked out, she was nowhere to be found.

  After the grocery, I stopped at Coco’s, a café on Miami Avenue. I wanted to keep practicing being Sylvia in public. The café had blue walls and a dusty black floor. A window was covered with plywood and a sign that read COCO VS. FLORA was taped to the sheets. I peered into a glass pastry case, trying to decide between a cupcake and a muffin. I went with the cupcake and a coffee because I thought that was what Sylvia would want.

  “So the hurricane was named Flora?” I asked the woman behind the register. She had drawn-on eyebrows and cropped hair.

  “That’s what they call it on the news,” she said. “I call it something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Magdalena. After my mother.”

  I took a table facing the entrance. I scraped the icing off the cupcake with a plastic knife and ate it, just like Sylvia did when we were kids. The ceiling fan moved in lazy circles. I was finishing my coffee when the woman who had been trailing me came in and sat down. When I first saw her, I almost let the mug slip from my hands. In the grocery, she’d kept her distance. I expected her to wait on the sidewalk or in her car. I didn’t think she’d come so close.

  She took the booth by the covered window, facing me. She didn’t order anything; her sunglasses were still in place. She folded her hands on top of the table. I took my time finishing my coffee. The last few sips were bitter and thick.

  After the coffee was gone, I put my own sunglasses back on. I was worried the woman might detect a difference in my eyes. Then I went and sat across from her. Her brown hair was streaked with blond, her skin freckled and tan. She smelled like coconut oil. She wore a white T-shirt and jeans and a thick gold watch. I wondered if my sister had even gotten this close to the woman before. I liked the idea of being braver than Sylvia.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “My husband never told you?”

  “Never.”

  “I’ve been following you for a month and you’ve never said a word to me.” She crossed her arms, holding on to her elbows. “Why today?”

  “I want to know why you’re following me.”

  “You know plenty.”

  “I want to know when you’ll stop.”

  “I could hurt you. Right now. I really could.” She pressed her fingers against her forehead.

  “I’m going to the video store next, just to give you a heads-up,” I said. “It feels like a Hitchcock kind of night.”

  I left her sitting in the booth. I wasn’t sure she’d followed until I walked out of the video store, where I’d used my sister’s card to rent Vertigo, and saw the Lincoln in the parking lot. I waved to the woman before driving off.

  That evening, as I watched the movie on Sylvia’s TV, the phone rang. I ignored it, as I imagined Sylvia would. When I heard her voice on the machine, I paused the film. She was calling to give me the number of her hotel on the Isle of Youth. She said the island was split into two sections, the north and the south, and that a large swamp ran through the center. She said it was even hotter than Miami. There were green iguanas on the rocks and black coral in the ocean and if you dove at Los Barcos Hundidos, you could see the skeletons of sunken ships. She said it felt good to be seeing different things. Thank you. Sylvia paused. I heard bells in the background. I owe you big.

  * * *

  For my first night at the Bortaga, I put on the outfit Sylvia had given me and prepared my hair and makeup with extra care. At dusk, I drank a vodka on the balcony. The Miami skyline was a wall of pink light. Before leaving, I took a pill. In the car, I practiced saying my name was Sylvia.

  On the road, it was too dark to see if the Lincoln was following. I put the top down and let the wind roar through my hair. The bridge that led to Miami Beach was lit gold. I saw dark water below, heard music coming from party boats. My husband always said Sylvia was more fun, more freewheeling. I wondered what he would think if he was riding beside me, if he would be frightened when I hit the gas and screamed around a corner, if he would be surprised, if he would know who I was.

  I took a wrong turn near Española Way and got to the club late. I touched up my lipstick in the rearview, then gave the valet my car. I walked past the line outside and the black-shirted bouncers, trying not to wobble in my heels. When I entered the club, I was hit with cold air. A stainless steel bar stretched down one side of the room; on the other, a staircase spiraled into the darkness upstairs. In the back, DJs stood on a stage and people danced beneath streams of flashing light. The lights made the dancing bodies look fragmented and strange.

  I walked up to the woman sitting on a black stool and stamping the hands of people entering. She was pixieish and scowling. Her silver dress showed the dragon tattooed on the tops of her breasts. Her name was Lydia, according to my sister’s notes.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

  “You’re always late.” She jammed the inkpad and stamp into my hands, then drifted over to the bar, where she sat for a minute before disappearing into the mass on the dance floor.

  My sister was right about one thing. Her job was easy. The people knew to stick out their hands, palms down; all I had to do was press on the phosphorescent stamp. I listened to the music. I thought about Sylvia on the Isle of Youth, with the black coral and the iguanas. I imagined my husband watching the news in our living room. He liked to turn all the lights off when he watched TV. He felt so far from me, now that I had slipped into this other dimension, this crack in the earth. All the questions that had plagued me on the flight to Miami—Does he want me to stay? To go?—felt remote, like background noise.

  I’d been stamping hands for an hour when I spotted the woman who had been following me. She wore a dress with a scoop neck and long sleeves, which looked out of place in the sea of naked bellies and shoulders and thighs. In the line, she looked straight ahead and held out her hand. I rolled on the stamp.

  “Won’t your husband wonder where you are?” I whispered.

  “He could care less.”

  She went to the bar. The bartender brought her a drink without being asked. She didn’t seem to be watching me very closely, which I took to mean she’d been to the Bortaga enough times to know what my sister did.

  I was looking
at the woman when I felt a hand on my shoulder. A man in a gray suit stood over me. His hair fell to his chin and his eyes were different colors, one of them blue, the other hazel. He leaned down and pressed his lips against my ear.

  “Meet me upstairs in five,” he said.

  He went up the spiral staircase, vanishing into the darkness above. I was gazing upward when a bouncer called my sister’s name and pointed at the small group waiting for me to stamp their hands. I spotted Lydia and waved her over. Sweat had beaded on her temples.

  “I need you to cover me,” I said, handing her the inkpad and stamp.

  On the staircase, I put my hand on the cool steel railing and started to climb. What had my sister failed to tell me? It could be anything. That I knew.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a dark hallway with doors at each end. I could tell from the flat sheets of light shooting through the bottoms. The growl of heavy metal came from behind one of the doors. The man in the gray suit was waiting in the shadows, leaning against a wall. I stood next to him. My palms were damp. I felt on the verge of being exposed. Up close, would I sound like my sister, smell like my sister? I was grateful for the darkness.

  He moved in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. He asked if I had it.

  “It?”

  “What we discussed.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean, I will.”

  “Sylvia.” He moved his hand over my face, closing my eyes. Then his fingers went down my stomach. I leaned into the wall, unsure if I was supposed to be frightened or enthralled.

  He said my sister’s name again. I asked what he wanted. I kept my eyes closed.

  “I need to know that you’ll be there,” he said.

  “There?”

  He pulled his hand away. “Don’t act stupid. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “With what we discussed?”

  “Right. With what we discussed.”