Killer of a Mind

by Valerie Albemarle

  They arrived at Samantha’s friends’ house in the early afternoon with a bottle of wine bought at a roadside general store where they were followed around by a stubby-tailed and impossibly cross-eyed cat with friendly and persistent manners. It was unusual to see such a well-fed and outgoing animal in Mexico, and Samantha suggested that it had been left behind by some gringo. Her friends’ house, or casita as it was called here, was one of hundreds of similar duplexes in the settlement of Nopolo, built in the adobe style and painted in pastel colours. In the ceiling above the kitchen stove was a strange feature they’d seen in many buildings in this part of Mexico: a red brick dome. Before this they’d only seen round domes; this one looked like the inside of an Egyptian pyramid whose apex became a chimney-like shaft leading to the roof patio. It was meant to pull away the daytime heat of summer and the smells of cooking, and to let the cool air descend at night. The house was rich in open spaces, the front door opening onto a courtyard with a little rock garden and a staircase leading to the second level with a rooftop dining and sitting area. Between the houses were neatly groomed gravel paths and small tidy gardens with fountains, so peaceful and pleasing that only on the next morning Samantha and Mario realized how many dying grasshoppers and butterflies they’d seen. It was because of the poison meant for cockroaches, the oversized and repulsive creatures who climbed out of the pipes at night if you forgot to plug the sink or bathtub. Samantha was very saddened by the dying butterflies and said that visiting this place was all well and good, but that she’d never want to live here because if she did, she might discover that it was a sort of Stepford for expats. Mario laughed and said that this was precisely its purpose, and Samantha agreed with an embarrassed little smile. Climbing down to a more level moral ground, she mused that when they too were retired in some tropical paradise, they might not fret so much over the passing of butterflies if it spared them the abomination of cockroaches; older people could be selfish that way because they’d earned that right. Mario was warm with joy because she’d hinted at their growing old together.

  While Samantha was bent on seeking out natural bodies of water to swim in, and collected such experiences the way some people collect coins or stamps (she’d counted all the places where she’d taken a swim over her entire life), Mario wasn’t above a dip in a chlorinated swimming pool. Their hosts had gone visiting; Samantha had stayed in the casita to sunbathe on the roof while Mario gave the pool a try. He was the only one using it. He moved in circles in the impeccably clean water like some aquatic pony, and the monotony of his movements drove him into daydreaming. He reflected on how he’d mellowed down since that swim from the fishing boat to shore in Tulum just over a year ago. So much lifetime had fit into the six months since they’d met, even if “met” was a bit of a misnomer. When we’re told that people meet, we imagine their paths crossing like the flight paths of butterflies, not like those of a tracker and his quarry. After his meeting with Ryan in Vancouver Mario followed Ryan’s car to see where he lived, then checked into a hotel. Early the next morning he parked a polite distance from Ryan’s door and sat waiting, wearing a newly-purchased baseball cap and a generic t-shirt the colour of mice. He’d switched his shades for ones he deemed appropriately cheap-looking. In this fancy dress he trailed Ryan for two days before he saw Samantha. He was struck by how ordinary she was, and it frightened him to think that if this had been his first vision of her, he might not have given her a second glance. She was preoccupied, and it robbed her of the lively beauty he’d loved for these six months. He watched them part in the parking lot and for a moment he resented Ryan for not being more of a rival to him. He followed her from the park to a Starbucks where he stood behind her in line. She ordered a latte which would take heaven knows how long to prepare. That was very good, because once he ordered an Americano they both found themselves in the nebula of people waiting for their drinks at the counter. For the last two days he’d resisted preparing a pick-up line, knowing that he was bound to overthink and overdo it, that it was better to improvise when the time came. But the time had come and he didn’t have the slightest idea or inspiration. He knew he looked strange and perhaps even scary with his shaved head and the scar, but there was no way he was going to put the fedora on top of that: that would make him downright freakish. And that loathsome redneck baseball cap was out of the question. Then he realized with relief and without any pride that he was safe no matter what inane gibberish came out of his mouth: a woman would never slam the door of her attention on a man who had so obviously suffered. Through no virtue of his own, he was guaranteed an audience.

  He waited for her gaze to travel in his direction, and smiled. She smiled back, perhaps out of nothing more than courtesy and benevolence; but it seemed to him that she was glad to see him there. There was nothing pitying or apprehensive in her smile; it held a hint of curiosity, a pleasure to know more.

  “I wasn’t abducted by aliens,” he explained as he tapped his scar, “but the world does look different afterthis. I’m Mario,” he offered.

  “Samantha,” she accepted with the same curious and welcoming smile, in a hurry to say nothing and content to let him lead. Now he could see the carefree and happy woman in the picture.

  “When our coffees are ready, would you like to go for a walk?” He scanned the area outside the door. “I don’t see any free tables outside or in.”

  “Then it was meant to be a walk,” she replied without coquetry, with the same glow of anticipating something good.

  But once they were out in the sunlight, that smile became mischievous. “You’re not big on small talk, are you?” she said in playful challenge.

  “No,” he agreed, grinning at the pavement under his feet. “Not when there’s no need for it.” She clearly liked him, and that put him at ease. He took her kind and contented smile as a promise - of what? It hadn’t been an hour since she’d kissed Ryan goodbye. She was clearly glad to be distracted from herself, from the despondency of that other relationship, but was she ready for a new one? And then he reminded himself that he didn’t believe in these mandatory quarantines that treated past love like a disease.

  “So it wasn’t aliens.” She pointed to her own head. “Was it surgery?” She sounded neither nosy nor timid, and this too he liked.

  “Yes, it was. To remove a - growth. I was very fortunate that they found it early and got it all. What happened to me was very rare.” He looked at her and smiled, hoping she understood his double meaning. She understood, and nodded.

  They were walking past a florist and she slowed her pace slightly, peering in the window at the flowers. He liked how she didn’t try to conceal her desire for them. “Let’s go inside,” he said as he opened the door for her. He looked at a cloud of white roses and then at her, but it turned out that her favourite flowers weren’t roses but orchids. She loved orchids for their precision, for their inability to become dishevelled or to wither and rot the way other flowers did, and for the very fact that people begrudged them this eerie purity. She tried to explain this and grew frustrated by the clumsiness of the words that kept shoving their way to the front of her attention, crowding out her meaning and intent. She wasn’t good with words, she said. He smiled to reassure her that this didn’t matter, and said that he knew a place where orchids grew on trees. She found this delightfully funny and laughed like a well-mannered child.

  That was six months ago. Now Samantha was lounging in the sun on the roof of the casita while Mario stood under the shower washing off the chlorine of the swimming pool. He dried his hair; it was growing back quickly. He thought about how Samantha liked to caress the scar that was almost hidden now. He meant to get a bottle of wine for dinner on his way back, but as he opened the door to the wine shop he realized he’d left his wallet in their bedroom. Back to the casita he went; everything in the settlement was only a few steps away from everything else. Walking through the kitchen he was frightened by Samantha’s disembodied voice coming as if from a well or a cellar. His inst
inct of pinning down sounds in space told him to stand right under the brick dome. He realized that Samantha must be beside the miniature pavilion that kept rain from falling down the dome’s shaft. Her voice was more distinct now but still somehow buffered; it sounded like a cloud might sound if clouds could speak. She hadn’t seen or heard him come in. She was telling someone, probably her girlfriend Dee, about—him! About the sacrifices he’d made by moving to a new city and taking a job that essentially made him a public servant, about how no one had treated her like this before and how this filled her with hope for the future.

  Mario hurried out of the kitchen to get his wallet from their bedroom. On the way out he pressed the palms of his hands to his ears. He stepped out of the door quiet as a cat, thievishly guilty for adding eavesdropping to his sin of knowing about her before he met her, silly with happiness and afraid to forfeit that happiness through greed for unnecessary truths.

  “Do you keep in touch with Ryan?” Delia’s voice asked from Vancouver.

  “Not any more,” Samantha replied from the roof patio. “It’s been a few weeks since we talked. He said it was too difficult for him, to talk to me as if we were only friends. Now that I’m in a new relationship. It was difficult for me too.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Samantha replied.

  “It’s normal. Ex-boyfriends always look better from a distance of a few weeks.”

  “It’s really strange, Dee. It’s not like I feel that I’ve made a mistake by ending it with him, but it’s like we still have some unfinished business. I don’t know what it is. I want to see more of him, but I understand why he wouldn’t want that.”

  “So do you regret being with Mario, is that what you’re saying?” Delia was annoyed and made no attempt to hide it. She herself had neither a Ryan nor a Mario to choose between.

  “No! No, that’s just it. I’m glad I took the plunge with Mario. What I regret is that there’s only one of me. That I can’t turn into two people, that I can’t be with both of them! I’m afraid I’m losing something very important by giving up Ryan. And I know I’d feel the same way about Mario, if I’d turned him down.”

  “Hmm, yes, some of us are unlucky enough to be only one person.” Delia sounded more tired than sarcastic. But it didn’t matter, because Samantha ignored the disapproval in her voice and went on.

  “Dee, Ryan is a good man. He’s stubborn, he can be childish and he can be maddening, but he is good. And he loved me. Maybe still does. He wanted to make it work!”

  “You sound like you’re defending him. From yourself?”

  “I feel bad,” Samantha agreed in a roundabout way.

  “Don’t you go there, Sam. What makes you think it would be any different this time?”

  “Losing him is what makes it all different!” Samantha pleaded. “The finality of losing him. Knowing I won’t get him back is what got me thinking it could’ve been different. Should’ve been different.”

  “Are you forgetting that Ryan’s the one who refused to marry you? And that you’re the one who ended the relationship? Listen, I do know what you mean about wishing to be two women at once, because one man is never going to give us everything we want. We have to choose. This is going to sound pompous and snobbish, but here goes: I think you’ve made the right choice. Just don’t ruin it with this nostalgia for Ryan. Too bad he doesn’t want to see you as a friend: seeing him might remind you of why you broke up.”

  “Do you know what Ryan said to me when we last spoke? It was after I told him about Mario.”

  “How much did you tell him about Mario?”

  “Everything I know myself.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit cruel, bragging about your new boyfriend to the one you just dumped?”

  “I didn’t see it that way. I thought it was being honest and open.”

  “Right.” Samantha could call it what she liked, but it was still bragging. She’d rubbed Ryan’s nose in his failings by trotting out Mario who had succeeded on every count. “So what did Ryan say when you told him about Mario?”

  “He said, ‘There’s more than one way to kill a man.’ I’m pretty sure that was what he said. It seemed so strange, I thought I must’ve misheard him. I asked him to explain, but he just said never mind, he was babbling and not to pay attention. Then he said, ‘Maybe I’ll tell you someday. Not now. I want you to be happy.’ Tell me what?! HowI killed him by ending it?”

  “Don’t be silly. No one killed anyone.”

  “He never even talks like this, he’s not into drama.”

  “He’s hurt. Getting dumped is no fun. But he’s a grown man, he’ll rise from the ashes.”

  The women were silent for a few moments.

  “I’ve made a decision, Dee. I’m going to suggest to Mario that we move in together.”

  “You’ve been together for what, six months?”

  “Yes. You think it’s too soon?”

  “It’s not too soon if you love him. Do you?”

  “I expect to love him. More. A guy like Mario comes along once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. We can have a future together.”

  “This really isn’t like you, Samantha.” Delia sounded like an older sister.

  “It really isn’t like me to be so happy either. Bring it on, this not being like me.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy. It’s not what I mean, though. I mean that you’re not pragmatic with your feelings, you never have been. Do you expect your heart to obey your mind?”

  “It’s not like that. I do love Mario, just not in the same way I loved Ryan. It’s not the same intensity, there’s no pain involved. Does that make it any less of a feeling? And why should I expect to feel everything I’m ever going to feel for him right this moment? We’re only staring out. Feelings can grow and change.”

  “Then go for it. Move in. Get married. Have a wonderful life,” Delia said in a crescendo of generosity. If she could be truly happy for her friend, maybe good things—good men—would come her way too.

  “I just might do that, Dee!” Samantha laughed with joy. “Love you.”

  Delia put down her phone and picked up her coffee mug. It had gone cold, so in the microwave it went. She watched it go round and round as she thought about how Ryan wasn’t a bad person at all, that he never had been. With Samantha he’d often acted like a twelve-year-old boy; by all accounts he often acted like a twelve-year-old boy without Samantha. Samantha had found this cute and delightful at first, but later punished him for it, and without any warning at that. It certainly wasn’t his fault that the pouty little princess had never learned how to make herself clear, that her only response to disappointment was to sulk in hurt silence. Delia envied her best friend who was out there harvesting the best from every man who came her way, all the while deluding herself into thinking she had a tender and loving heart. The delicate little flower had never really loved Ryan, she’d only pined for some imaginary man with that maudlin nostalgia of hers! She probably didn’t love this Mario any more than she’d loved Ryan, but he was such a fool that he either wasn’t aware of this or didn’t care. In some people such blissful and deliberate ignorance can ferment into a strange wisdom that protects them from hurt. Delia wondered how such a man could have as successful a career as Samantha boasted, and decided that it was not all that surprising. Many men were like that. Harry Selfridge had been sort of like that, except he’d been a philanderer, and Mario was what they called a hopeless romantic. What a stupid, stupid phrase. The man was made of nothing but hope, innocent and brazen hope. Well, the two of them just might end up happy together if Samantha could tolerate being loved.

  The microwave stopped its trundling revolutions and made a little ding to announce the coffee’s readiness. Delia took the hot mug in her hands. Its warmth travelled up her arms and soothed her being; she was magnanimous again, and ashamed of her mean-spirited thoughts about her best friend and this poor sod Mario. She felt bad for speaking so unkindly of Ryan
such a short while ago, and for scolding Samantha in her heart. She was a good kid really, if a bit of an airhead. And Ryan was a good kid. They were both kids, that was the problem. Which was not a problem any more. Samantha had been miserable with him and he with her, and now she’d set him free. He was free to take a chance with a woman who could act like an adult. Delia felt she owed Ryan an apology even if he didn’t know it. And what had he meant about there being more than one way to kill a man? The silly girl had thought he was talking about her; of course she would think that, she thought everything was about her. But he must have meant something else, and Delia determined to find out what. He would be glad to tell her because he wouldn’t tell Samantha, and you don’t say shit like that unless it’s dying to be told. Yes, they would get together for a coffee and chat like old friends, if not always very good ones. But there was time to repair that, all the time in the world. Life was long and winter was short, and in Victoria, where she’d just come from, the first cherry flowers had started to blossom on the trees outside the entrance to the Bay. The first flowers of spring. At the end of December!