The Red Bikini

by Lauren Christopher

  “Still a date.”

  “Well, we’re not engaged,” he said. “And I feel like I was leading some folks to believe that. I don’t want to lie.”

  “Then don’t.” Fox shrugged. “You brought a beautiful young woman here who makes you nervous, who probably gives you a hard-on every time you look at her, and who you’re clearly starting to fall in love with. . . . No lie.”

  Fin laughed. “Starting to fall in love with?” That was the only part he could argue with.

  Fox smiled but didn’t answer.

  “So we’re not talking about business tonight?” Fin changed the subject.

  “He might pry a bit—you know how he is. He’ll ask about your dad. He might ask about Jennifer. He’ll probably get you to share some of your glory days—he loves that kind of stuff. But no, he’s not going to grill you about the contract or ask you why you haven’t won a fucking competition since last July.”

  A wave of guilt swept through Fin.

  “It’s all right, man.” Fox clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m just fucking with you. You’ve had a rough year. But you’ve got to stop the self-destructive shit, okay?”

  Fox wanted to buy Giselle her Moscato, so Fin let him while he studied the handwritten blackboard menu himself. He didn’t want to drink tonight—something told him he needed to be alert—so he ordered a pinot noir he didn’t like and planned to leave it untouched.

  “Actually, I might have something else in mind for you,” Fox said.

  Fin frowned and put a tip in the tip cup. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking over.” Fox swept his two plastic wine cups off the table and nodded for Fin to grab Giselle’s.

  “What is it?”

  “How about if we get together after this? I think the show ends at ten—we can grab some beers at Javier’s Cantina or someplace and I can run this idea by you.” As they approached their table, Fox’s voice dropped to a mumble. “Mr. Makua doesn’t know about it yet.”

  Fin nodded. “Sure.”

  The guitarists on the grassy stage struck up a Simon & Garfunkel tune, and Fin mulled over what Fox might be talking about as he handed Giselle her drink. “From Fox,” he admitted.

  She bent her neck in an elegant gesture toward Fox, and Fin felt a ridiculous jolt of jealousy.

  Through a sort of fog, he heard someone say their reservations were ready, and he helped Giselle out of her chair. He took a deep breath before walking toward Mr. Makua’s questions. He didn’t want Giselle to hear about his father, or about his parents abandoning him for Bali, or about his impoverished past, or about Jennifer dying right before his eyes. Although he didn’t know why. It didn’t matter. He’d never see her again after this week unless she came to visit Lia. But, even so, he didn’t want her to see what a mess he was.

  He headed toward their reservations as if walking toward the gallows.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  • • •

  For dinner, they were seated on an outdoor patio among the bougainvillea. Mini-lights hung above them, strung through the eucalyptus trees, and stained-glass windows hung from sycamore branches, illuminating jewel-toned fish, flowers, trees, and surf. Giselle stared at one that had a wave on it and smiled at Mr. Makua, who nodded his head in appreciation.

  Tamara wriggled out of her sweater, sending her colorful art-glass necklace clinking against the china place settings. “This place is so romantic. They have lots of weddings here, you know.” She threw a smile at Giselle. “Have you guys talked about a wedding?”

  “Tamara,” Fox warned. He leaned across the table toward Giselle and Fin, and dipped his head apologetically. “She loves weddings. And how-you-met stories, despite how private they may—or may not—be. Don’t encourage her.”

  Tamara lifted her menu. “Oh, Fin doesn’t mind. Do you, Fin? I was going to ask how you two met. I feel like I’ve heard a couple of different stories.”

  Fin twisted his full wineglass at the stem. “We’re not—”

  “Better yet, your first kiss,” Tamara said, leaning across the table, her glass beads forming a pool on the tablecloth. Her jaw dropped in an actress’s openmouthed surprise, a smile tugging at the corners.

  “Tamara,” Fox warned again. “I’m having the pork chops. Fin?”

  Fin rubbed his eyebrows. “I’ll, uh—have the fish.”

  Tamara looped her finger through her necklace and smiled coyly. “You all don’t have to get so uncomfortable on me—it’s fun. I played it at a party once. Fox loves to tell these stories.” She hit him on the arm.

  “With you. In private.” He shot her a chiding glance, but it was clear he adored her. He turned toward Charlene and Mr. Makua. “Seriously, ignore her. If you encourage her, she’ll get worse.”

  “I’ll play,” Charlene said in a rolling Hawaiian accent.

  Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. “Kai first kissed me . . .” She turned and grinned at Mr. Makua, who was blushing but smiling. “Hmmm, on a boat dock. It was on our third date. Third! I thought he would never move faster.”

  Giselle laughed with the others, but a rivulet of perspiration ran between her breasts. She glanced at Fin. He seemed more amused by Tamara than afraid of her question, and was sitting back, running his fingertips along his wine stem, smiling at Charlene while she told the rest of her story.

  Giselle couldn’t hear the story due to her pounding heart. It was hard to tell lies.

  “Giselle?” Tamara prompted when it was her turn.

  Fin leaned forward. “I first kissed Giselle in a parking lot.”

  Giselle let out a breath of relief at the interception and brought her water shakily to her lips.

  “A parking lot?” Tamara scowled. “Oh, Fin, you could’ve done better than that.”

  “Yes,” he said, stealing a glance at Giselle. “I think I could have.”

  “I bet you regret that.”

  “I regret the location, but I don’t regret the kiss. I mind-surfed it for days.” Fin smiled, his eyes still on his wine stem.

  Giselle fluttered her menu to her face, which she could feel turning bright red.

  “I hope you made up for it,” Tamara said.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Giselle took a tentative peek at him from behind her menu. He chose the same moment to draw a heavy-lidded gaze at her that could have held a promise or a question. She darted back toward the salad selections.

  “For us, I was the one who kissed Fox first.” Tamara grinned, leaning into the conversation.

  “I’m sure everyone’s shocked,” Fox said dryly.

  “We were on a boat, too, Charlene,” she continued. “I thought he was attracted to me, but I wasn’t sure, and I just got . . . impatient.”

  “Can I take your order?” the waiter interrupted.

  Throughout the rest of the dinner, they talked about boating, and art, and traveling to Belize, where Charlene had been twice, and where Fox and Tamara had just returned from an anniversary trip.

  Fin relaxed as the dinner went on, leaning back in his chair, laughing openly, especially when the conversation shifted to Tamara and Fox. Giselle stole a few glances at him during dinner, and caught him staring at her. Instead of lowering his eyes again, though, he smiled.

  When the talk turned to his father, however, he stiffened.

  “Yep, he’s doing great,” he answered toward Mr. Makua as he shifted forward.

  “You said he’s still surfing every day?”

  “He is.”

  “Did he ever get that company off the ground? You mentioned he might start—”

  “No.” Fin shook his head. “He’s happy with where he is. Have you ever surfed Padang Padang or Uluwatu there?”

  Giselle glanced up. Fin was trying to st
eer the conversation away. She wondered again about the tightening in his jaw when anyone brought his parents up.

  “Yes, Uluwatu!” Mr. Makua said, pleased. “Those reef breaks . . . Like a dream.”

  “Is that where your parents live now, Fin? In Bali?” asked Tamara. “I didn’t know that.”

  “They live in a small fishing village, on the eastern side. But Uluwatu.” Fin gave a groan of approval. “Those reef breaks—perfect barrels.”

  Mr. Makua nodded, seeming to drift back on a memory. He turned toward Charlene. “You should see Fin doing the long barrels. He still has better form than any newcomers. They all want to do airs now—flying into air over the top of a wave. But Fin still does amazing long rides through tubes. He goes into the hollow, and the wave is crashing all over the top of him, and it goes on and on for miles; you can’t see him anywhere. You think he went down with the whitewater, but then—there he is! Riding out to the left!” His grin took up his whole face.

  Fin’s cheeks grew ruddy. “But the airs are where it’s at now, Mr. Makua. The new judges—that’s what they’re scoring highest.”

  “Jennifer, too,” Mr. Makua added, ignoring the comment about the judges. “She does beautiful barrels.”

  Fin nodded. “She did.”

  A pause hung over the table as everyone stared at the tablecloth, lost in their own thoughts about the lost Jennifer.

  “So you’re heading to South Africa?” Mr. Makua said, breaking the silence.

  Giselle glanced around the table. To her surprise, Fin nodded.

  “Two days,” he said.

  She tried to keep the shock out of her face. He was leaving in two days? He hadn’t mentioned that. . . . Although, on the other hand, why would he? But the thought made her strangely sad. She had hoped she could finagle more time with him. She liked the way his voice softened when he spoke of the sites in Bali; she wanted to hear more about South Africa; she wanted to know more about his father and what was going on there; she wanted to see more of the laugh lines around his mouth when he talked about reef breaks. She also wanted more of the shivers he gave her when he fixed her with that heavy-lidded smile.

  Fox chimed in about South Africa, and how one of the tour surfers from Australia was making his home there now. As Giselle tipped her wine and tried to hide her new disappointment, the conversation turned toward food, and then—somehow—art again.

  The dinner came to an end over a raspberry-swirl cheesecake and a molten chocolate cake, which they shared six ways.

  “The show starts in ten minutes,” said Mr. Makua.

  “Now, what is this show?” Giselle said.

  “You’ll like it,” Mr. Makua said, helping Charlene scoot back her chair. “It’s an original tableau: Actors pose in the paintings. They do the lights and makeup to make them appear flat, as if they’re in the painting. They’ve been doing it for seventy-five years. I always come in July to make sure I see it.”

  The show was on the festival grounds, so it took only about five minutes to walk to the entrance. A set of majestic double doors, which were really just archways to the outdoors, opened to red theater seats that rose sharply, stadium-style, as if molded into the canyon. The sky provided the ceiling; the falling dusk and emerging stars counted down to showtime.

  Mr. Makua handed out the tickets while Fin rented binoculars at a nearby booth. Fox stood in line for blankets, and came back with three—one for each couple.

  Fin took Giselle’s elbow and steered her toward their seats. A slight chill hung in the air with a growing mist that was settling in the canyon, cooling the evening sky as the sun went down. Giselle spread the blanket across her and Fin’s laps.

  “You’re going to South Africa in two days?” she murmured.

  “Yeah. Ballito—the Mr. Price Pro. Nice purse—quarter million.”

  She straightened the blanket on her side. Her hands shook.

  “Was that something I should have told you?” he whispered.

  “Well, I figure—being the new lover and all—I should know some of these things.”

  Fin chuckled at her repetition of his line, but his laughter died as he watched her obsessive smoothing.

  “Seriously,” he whispered. “Is this upsetting you?”

  “I just—” She leaned forward to tuck the blanket around her ankle and took a deep breath. She didn’t know what to say. I’m going to miss you? Why didn’t you tell me? It sounded so silly. She didn’t even know this guy. This relationship was fake. “I just didn’t want to mess up your scenario for your boss,” she finally fudged.

  He stared at her for several beats after that, as if about to say something, but didn’t.

  Fox’s voice rang across the row: “Everything okay?”

  Fin turned to respond as Giselle continued to smooth the blanket. The scent of coconut swirled off Fin’s hair when he moved.

  “We’re good,” he told Fox.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the narrator’s voice boomed.

  The show launched into the first act. It was as terrific as Fin and Mr. Makua promised. The theme was “The Muse,” and Giselle brought her binoculars to her eyes for every painting and sculpture, watching in amazement to see whether they were truly real people. The makeup and lighting nullified depth perception, making the actors look flat and helping them blend right into the painting. Sometimes life-sized statues were unveiled in the bushes at the sides of the stage, each posed by a real actor sprayed completely in bronze or gold. The works were accompanied by narration that explained the muse in each painting and how she shaped the work. A live orchestra played between each set.

  Giselle was transported to this world of art she had once loved and lost between Parenting magazine and playdates. Between each piece, she applauded with the rest of the audience, then snuggled beneath the blanket and gazed at the outlines of the canyon, the ocean fog sitting just outside the rim of the bowl, as if it, too, wanted to swirl to the orchestra. The night air smelled clean.

  One of her favorite parts was the work of Frida Kahlo. The narrator told stories of Diego Rivera and Kahlo’s tempestuous marriage, riddled with infidelities. Giselle gaped at the devastating landscape of Frida’s On the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, and could see that the painting could just as easily represent the feeling of being between marriage and divorce, carcasses and sadness strewn throughout the foreground.

  She lowered the binoculars.

  “Land of Make Believe,” Fin whispered in her ear.

  “What?”

  “That’s the one that reminds me of you.”

  A shiver ran through her at his breath against her ear, racing against the sadness she felt for Frida. Her emotions were a cacophony: despair for Frida, sadness about Fin leaving, joy when his thigh brushed against hers under the blanket, hopelessness at the idea of shattered marriages, and sexual jolts when Fin’s breath tickled her neck and told her that works of art reminded him of her.

  Giselle shakily lifted her binoculars to study La Valse, a bronze sculpture by Camille Claudel, and her sadness evaporated—replaced with a warmth that curled her toes. The sculpture portrayed two lovers in a sexy, yet chaste, embrace. The actor was bronzed with paint, shirtless, longish hair, holding the woman in what appeared to be ocean water. The woman leaned in, back bare, snuggling his neck. They weren’t kissing, just holding each other in an embrace of love, safety, adoration. . . . He had his arm wrapped firmly around her waist, as if to keep her cherished.

  Giselle’s breath caught at the beauty of the piece, as it transported her to a memory of Fin this morning—the way he’d held her in the surf, the way she’d felt so safe snuggled against his chest, the way his lips had whispered that warning against her hair.

  Giselle brought the binoculars down. She glanced at Fin’s profile. He was watching this one with interest.

  T
he last piece was The Last Supper, but Giselle didn’t lift the binoculars. Mostly she needed to stop her heart from thundering. The idea of being in Fin’s arms for real, or just having him kiss her once more, the way he had at the funeral, was crowding into her thoughts. She didn’t know what she was allowed to want. Long-term, she wanted a family again. Suburbia. Some sense of normalcy for her daughter. And what Fin had said at the restaurant on the pier made sense: If she wanted all that long-term—the happy family, the suburban life for Coco—then she shouldn’t take advantage of something cheap and easy, like him, short-term. Dismissing the easy thrill was the moral way to behave, the responsible thing a mother of a five-year-old girl should do. When Coco was older, she could tell her that she shouldn’t lust after a man she didn’t have a future with.

  Yet, after years of putting her life on hold for Coco and Roy, her own wants were being unleashed in a chaotic way, powerful as the ocean against her body, ready to knock her down.

  A sudden shuffling was going on at the other end of their row, and Giselle leaned forward to see Fox discussing something in low whispers with Tamara.

  Fox leaned toward the rest of them, his cell phone in his hand. “I have to go,” he whispered. “They stopped the presses at the magazine. I have to see what’s wrong. Fin, can you take Tamara to Javier’s Cantina? I can meet you there after the show.” Without waiting for Fin’s answer, Fox headed out the aisle.

  Giselle glanced at Fin, and then at Tamara, who sat stonily, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

  Tucking the binoculars into her lap, Giselle joined the audience in another round of applause.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  Fin could barely concentrate on the rest of the performance, focused now on how he was going to keep Tamara happy until Fox returned. And how Giselle’s thigh felt under this blanket.

  For a night that had started pretty well, it was sure starting to suck.

  He’d enjoyed the rest of it, though. Although Mr. Makua had been veering into dangerous territory with too much talk about his dad.