| |
|
|
Story
from OPEN CITY
SURREAL
When a drifter named Arturo, who is half-Peruvian and
half-Costa Rican, flirted with an American painter he
met at the pension where they were staying in San Jose,
neither one had any idea that several days later they
would wind up at the same time in a hard-to-reach coastal
village across the Gulf of Nicoya and, within a few
hours of their meeting, would be screwing under the
stars on a broad stretch of beach outside of town.
Had she not been trying to cure herself of her obsession
with a man back home her therapist described as wild
and dangerous; and had she not seen the film Kafka with
Jeremy Irons earlier that evening in the health food
restaurant in this so-called "remote little fishing
village", which is how her guidebook described
it, she never would have gone off with this pock-marked,
kinky-haired man, even though she thought he was sexy
when she ran into him briefly that afternoon on the
beach, where she was hating herself for having come
to a place with, of all things, a health food restaurant
and a projector to show American films, so college kids
from the States, here to surf on winter break, could
feel as though they hadn't left home.
In early evening, having run into her again, after learning
that Chico's Bar & Restaurant, where he had expected
to bartend for the season, had hired someone else, he
invited her to have a beer with him and his pals, but
when she accepted his invitation, he tried so hard to
seduce her that she could only escape, as she saw it,
by running off to see the film. Afterwards, however,
she surprised and possibly scared not only him but herself,
by returning, as she did, to the bar, which now looked
as blue as the blue-tinted film, and saying to him in
an ominous tone in front of his friends, "Let's
take a walk."
On the beach, when Arturo raised himself off her still
clothed body, he was unable, even with so many stars,
to see the campers behind them in the bush - gringos
he presumed - but he knew, having heard their hushed
voices, that their tents were pitched behind the trees.
He looked nervously in their direction before sliding
off her shorts and underpants and tearing open the packet
containing the condom he had pulled from his pocket
when she announced that they had walked far enough from
the village, and choosing this spot, away from the sea
and close to the bush, lay down without hesitation on
the sand.
"It's okay," she said, impatiently, not caring
about the campers, waiting for him to unroll the condom,
which he did, sliding it on slowly, his eyes still nervously
searching for signs of movement, while she, still obsessed
by the blue tint of the film which made everything surreal,
wished, nevertheless, that he'd hurry up, as she lay
there still hating herself, not only for choosing to
come here, but also for seeing a film, which was against
her rules while traveling, despite her fascination with
the blue, which had seeped through her being - as she
would later describe it to her therapist - the moment
when she saw it on screen, long before the bar and the
sand and the ocean foam and her skin and rumpled clothing
and Arturo's chest, which she glimpsed only when his
shirt flew open in the breeze, turned that same beautiful
shade of blue, an indigo blue with deep red in it, the
same blue she sees now bleeding like ink across the
endless blotter of the sky. As she fastens her gaze
on the blue, and the stars in between - hot and blinding
as lights on a movie set - the sky wraps around her
and the ocean's rhythm becomes her own, while the campers
in the bush smirk and snicker, and Arturo, moving faster,
unaware that she is part of the blue, lets out a low
moan at the moment of release.
|
----
|
|
|
