While Delia looked at the barges hovering in the fog above English Bay, Samantha walked past the swimming pool (no Mario there, he must’ve finished his swim) and the rock garden where she had earlier seen a grey lizard taking in the heat of the sun. Mario was waiting for her by their rental car, reading a map of the peninsula. He looked up and smiled as if she’d appeared before him for the first time. Their mission today was to find a new swimming beach for Samantha, and their attention turned to the already familiar Ligui (which she kept calling Luigi) where they’d stopped to buy wine for their hosts. They came into the general store for water and snacks and hoped to see the friendly cross-eyed cat again; but he wasn’t there. They drove down a dusty road along a stream or little river that widened out as it met the sea. Here were flocks of white egrets and small round geese with dainty beaks. Clouds of small silver fish rustled over the water in a hurry to get away from the approaching car. The beach was empty of people and the sea was shallow, with streamers of sunlight running across an underwater scape of sand dunes. Samantha, of course, made herself get in the water and swim although she said it wasn’t particularly warm. Mario found it downright cold, strangely so for an inland sea, until he realized that the cold nights of December held more power over a smaller body of water while the fathomless mass of the Pacific was still keeping the heat of bygone summer and fall. He didn’t want to swim here. They made their progress along the shoreline, Samantha by water and Mario on foot, around a cliff with a little chapel in a grotto, across rocks on which red-and-blue crabs sat sunning themselves. As Mario approached, the crabs jumped one by one into the water; but instead of submerging, they dog-paddled frantically across the surface and landed on rocks further from his reach. It was an adorable and impossibly funny sight. Mario understood that they were loathe to give up the heat of the sun harvested by their bodies. Every few minutes Samantha squealed and giggled as a tiny and invisible jellyfish burned her skin; the salty water pulled the poison out of the flesh in seconds, and she was ready for the next little sting. After a swim that lasted almost an hour she stretched out to bask in the sun like a lizard and discovered that she’d forgotten to bring sunblock. Again. They got back in their car and drove the dusty road that had brought them here. They remembered seeing a sign for a Mini Super on the way here. They followed it to a very small but clean and new-looking general store with a girl of about sixteen behind the counter, tapping at her cell phone. They exchanged smiles and greetings of hola, giving the girl the mistaken impression that they spoke Spanish. Samantha tried to explain to the girl what she needed, making circles on her cheeks and forehead with her hands and sayingasado, asado. Roasted. The girl was puzzled and shy, but getting more amused as the performance unfolded. He liked how people here were free from the stranglehold of customer service, free to laugh at what they found funny, unafraid to offend. After a few of her attempts and the girl’s offers of tanning cream, toothpaste, then shampoo, Samantha was choking with silent laughter and wiping her eyes. The girl was laughing too, happy to give them reason to laugh. While the two women engaged in this little play about the need to be beautiful, he found the sunblock among tubes and bottles in a glass case at knee-level. He pointed at it to the girl, who gave anahhh of discovery and relief.
“Thank god! I can’t afford to burn,” Samantha told him with an aftershock of laughter in her voice. “I’d look like a boiled lobster, and you’d have to make all the pictures of me black and white!”
He hugged her as they walked back to the car, agreeing that this wouldn’t do at all, that she was too beautiful not to be in colour. She put her head on his chest and said she wanted them to move in together. That night as he waited for sleep to claim him, he wondered what to do with the photograph. He’d left it at home in Vancouver. Destroying it was out of the question. He decided that before she moved in he’d put it in a book on law, something she’d never touch; she had said that the language of law bored her to death. The decision filled him with relief and the warmth of more and better happiness to come, and he slept.
THE END
About the author
Born on the wrong side of the iron curtain, I lived in Soviet Russia long enough to cherish the freedom I found in England and later in Canada where I settled. My thirst for knowledge has led me to pursue several degrees, all of them useful. A former conference interpreter and philosophy professor, I now earn my bread as a veterinarian. My writing is inspired by two great literary traditions and blends Russian lyricism with English refusal to take my characters too seriously. Besides fiction, I write for West Coast Veterinarian magazine on issues of wildlife protection. Valerie Albemarle is my pen name under which you can find me on Kirkus and on Facebook.
I welcome letters at [email protected]
Killer of a Mind Page 14
