When
a stone hits a windshield at high speed it does not break the glass; instead
the composition of the windshield is such that the rock causes the glass to
splinter into myriad tiny fractures, rendering it impossible to see through,
but preventing glass from shattering in the faces of the occupants. It’s a
trade off of sorts—damage control really—making the best of a bad situation,
preventing accident from upgrading itself to tragedy. As if the glass in some
almost-sentient way knows how to protect those behind it from its own sharp
barbs, even when their vehicle may be hurtling towards the abyss.
This
is precisely what happened when a speeding car passed them, sending a small
stone into their windshield from under its tire. None of them had seen it coming; one moment
they were driving, the next, their windshield was as impenetrable as a jungle,
and the passing car raced on, oblivious, into the oscillating heat haze of the
Spanish plain.
Ruby
let out a high-pitched scream. The boys in the front seat were mute, their
bodies tensing as Tommy, eyes sternly ahead of him, applied the brake, punched
at the hazard button on the dash board, and calmly brought the station wagon to
a standstill on the side of the road.
“Jesus!”
Said Frank, after the dust had settled . The intricacy of the fractures was
mesmerizing, but it was easy to see how the whole edifice could collapse at any
minute, protected, as it was, only from immediate explosion, not from
subsequent entropy.
They
all got out of the car and surveyed the deserted road, a two-lane pitted
highway which they had taken all the way from
They
lit cigarettes and sat on some boulders by the side of the road discussing what
to do. Fank, ever the map reader, already had his head in it, looking for a
town nearby where they might find a garage. His feline body curled over the
paper, brow furrowing under his close-cropped hair.
“Nothing,”
he said after a few minutes, drawing on his cigarette and putting his sun
glasses back down over his eyes to look along the road. “Nothing for miles.”
“Shit.
What are we going to do?” said Tommy, the only one of the three who could
drive. Frank had no license, had never needed one in
Frank
took out his rolling papers and a large lump of hashish, carefully put a match
to the resin and watched it for a second as it began to smoke, then he blew on
it and sucked the smoke back into his mouth, crumbling some of the hash onto
the Rizzla. He ran his tongue along a cigarette and opened it so that the
tobacco fell out onto the paper, like spilling the guts from a fish. When he
had finished rolling the joint he twisted the paper at its end and offered it
up to Tommy. Tommy looked up and down the road again, and took the joint,
lighting it, waiting for the twisted paper at the end to burn and fall off, and
the tobacco and hashish mixture to ignite, before inhaling deeply. He then lay
back on one of the black rocks which littered the side of the highway, and
groaned.
“Well
we don’t have much choice,” Frank said. “We’ll just have to drive ‘til we get
somewhere where they can fix it.”
“I
don’t know if I can do that,” Tommy said. “I mean, there’s going to be a
hurricane blowing in our faces.”
“We’ll
just have to go slow then, won’t we?” Said Frank, grinning serenely. Tommy stood up and walked down the embankment
beside the highway. At the bottom of the hill was a lake, set in a rocky,
barren basin a mile or two square, with a small island in the middle atop of which
perched a ruined tower. Frank and Ruby wandered after him, and they continued
to pass the joint back and forth as Tommy took off his khaki pants and T-shirt
and waded into the water.
After
swimming they dressed, headed back to the car, and set to work picking the
fractured glass out of the windshield and pushing it out onto the hood. Then
they brushed it off the hood, using towels wrapped around their hands. Fragments of the shattered glass lay all over
the side of the road, small green emerald nuggets which crunched under their
feet. Every so often a Mercedes or BMW
with German plates roared past, buffeting the old station wagon, then the plain
would revert to its natural deep silence. When they had picked as much glass as
they could out of the rubber trim which had held the glass in place, Tommy
started the engine and they moved back into the road. By the time he was in
third gear he and Frank were being blasted by the hot, dusty wind coming into
the car. Tommy pulled over and took out a bandana which he tied around his
head, keeping his thick brown hair from flying into his eyes, and he fixed his
dark glasses firmly onto his face. Then he pulled out again and they
re-commenced.
The
sun was beginning to descend, and the lake in which they had swum continued
along the side of the road for several miles, turning a shade of purple in the
twilight. Soon they had left the plain behind them and had entered a different
landscape altogether. Here the road twisted and turned, rose and fell, and
Tommy, hair pinned down with his bandanna, sun-glasses smeared with dead bugs,
face taught and parched with sun and dust, drove the old station wagon like a
sports car, shifting up and down, double-de-clutching around corners and on the
crests of hills, swinging it around bends, causing its aging axles to groan and
creak, and causing Ruby to remonstrate from the back, where the movement was
most noticeable. Frank sat silently enjoying the ride. He stared out at the
changing scenery, occasionally glancing at the map to see if he was missing
anything.
“Is
there anything left to see on that map?” Tommy said.
“There’s
always something more to see on a map,” said Frank. “Its all about information,
you see. The more you know, the more control you have in a situation. That’s
what traveling is about. And maps are kind of like deep textured things, you
know? You can’t get everything just with a casual glance. You’ve got to
understand the lay of the land, figure out the contours, the distances, the
symbols.”
“Knowledge
is power,” Said Ruby, lying along the back seat and sticking her feet out of
the window.
“Right,”
said Frank. “That’s why dad became a professor. He’s into power, ultimately— he
has to have the last say. He’s full of this socialist bullshit, you
know—equality and fraternity, but that’s an intellectual game; in the end, what
really counts for him is who’s more macho; there’s a physical side to that, but
you’ve also got to have it up here,” he tapped his forehead with the end of his
pencil.
“I
dunno about that,” Ruby piped up. “I think he just doesn’t suffer fools
lightly. I mean he’s into the whole equality thing.”
“Bullshit,
Bee,” Frank said, using their family’s baby name for his little sister. “You
can think that if it makes you feel good, but dad’s an intellectual bully, an
intellectual snob, and to some extent an elitist. He doesn’t instinctually
believe in equality—of anything. Everything’s a finely graduated scale,
of quality, of skill, of strength—in end of power.
The physical manifestation of that is brute strength, and dad respects that. Why
do you think his favorite author is Hemingway?”
“Because
he’s a great writer? Because he’s a master craftsman, a genius wordsmith?” said
Ruby.
“Oh
yeah, sure, he is all those things, sure,” said Frank. But more importantly
he’s a man’s man; he’s a hard-drinking, woman-loving, big-fish catching Man,
and his intellectual prowess just mirrors his musculature. But what’s ironic is
that deep down dad is insecure. That’s why he has to throw his weight around,
that’s why he has to prove things all the time. Why do you think he married
someone who wasn’t his equal, intellectually?”
“Oh
come on. She is his equal. Anyway,” said Ruby, “you’re just experiencing an
oedipal thing.”
“Right,
Bee,” said Frank. “And you’re still stuck in the late-adolescent haze of daddy-worship.
You always were his little girl. But when you grow up you’ll begin to see him
in a different light, trust me.”
As
they argued Tommy drove faster, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to
the music on the stereo.
They
had left their parents at the Madrid airport from where they had returned to
Cairo. Every summer Frank and Ruby’s parents rented the same house in
Languedoc, near Montpellier. The greenery was a blessed relief from Cairo’s
unbending dryness and its scorching summer heat. This year they’d bought a
friend’s car, which Ruby and Tommy had driven down from London to meet them.
The professor had driven it like a maniac up and down the twisting mountain
roads between the house and the nearest village. He didn’t want Tommy to be the
only one to drive—he didn’t get to drive enough in Cairo, and he liked to hear
the screech of tires as the wagon slewed around bends, raising the hair on the
back of Tommy’s neck and making him wonder if this was going to be his last
memory.
The
professor had stockpiled the house with an enormous quantity of food
and—especially—drink on the first evening there, severely depleting the stocks
of the giant French hyper-marche, and for several days thereafter was in
a sour mood at the memory of spending so much money. In the evenings he took
his large glass of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes and sauntered down to the
side of the lake with a fishing rod, and stood at the lakeside, casting, as the
gnats flitted around his head, in and out of the cigarette smoke. The fish
didn’t bite that year, but that didn’t matter, it was the ambience that he
craved.
Frank
came to join them after a few days, arriving by train in Montpellier. The
professor went to meet him with Tommy, taking the wheel himself, to Tommy’s consternation.
Frank had stepped off the train wearing a neatly-pressed gray linen suit.
“Who
are you traveling as this time?” The professor asked, kissing him on both
cheeks in Egyptian style.
“I thought I’d try Tintin,” said Frank, using the French pronunciation.
“Cigars
of the Pharoahs, perhaps?” said the professor.
“Or
the Land of Black Gold,” Frank replied.
Tommy
watched from a couple of steps away, as the professor and Frank exchanged
greetings, and then he shook Frank’s hand, feeling his piercing, intelligent,
blue eyes scrutinize him. Tommy knew the books, and understood that those
particular titles had Middle Eastern setting, but beyond that there was
something going on between the two men that he didn’t get, a father-son
familiarity that he wasn’t quite in on.
Frank was very confident. He seemed to move easily between continents
and cultures, his French, when he spoke briefly to a porter, sounded competent
and practiced. On the way home the professor let Tommy drive so that he could
talk to Frank, his only son. Tommy busily occupied himself with the task of
driving with a nineteen-year-old boy’s pleasure in that activity, while the two
older men talked. They chatted about the goings on at home, about Frank’s
work—as a journalist—and the stories he had been covering. Frank asked Tommy a
couple of questions about his journey down, about how Ruby was doing, what they
had been up to in England, or as Frank referred to it, “that miserable, rainy
little island.”
There
had been a lot of talk about Tommy within the family, as it had been a while
since Ruby had been seeing anyone, in fact it was arguable whether she had ever
had a serious boyfriend. Ruby herself had been busy talking up her catch,
endlessly, to her parents and anyone else who would listen. None of this was
lost on Tommy who came prepared for intense scrutiny from the entire family.
Luckily Ruby’s mother was a somewhat genteel English woman who was an easily
recognizable type of human being for Tommy, and he was able to win her over
quickly with his native charm. Ruby had told him that her father would take to
him because he was more physical than his only son Frank, who was great, as far
as the egg-head part of her father was concerned, but had never amounted to
much physically. Ruby’s anxiety about her parents’ approval was matched only by
Tommy’s because he had been led to expect that he would have to work to earn
it. So far it had been easier than expected because Ruby’s parents were both
keen to relax and soak in the verdant French countryside.
When
they arrived at the house, Ruby was sitting out front with her head in a novel,
wearing blue-jean cut-offs and one of Tommy’s cotton shirts, tied at the waist.
Her mother was sitting in a garden chair a few feet away, knitting. Ruby
squealed as Frank got out of the car and ran over to him, jumping into his
arms.
“Look
at you, all dressed up in your suit, aren’t you the grown up!” she said,
stoking his lapels.
“And
aren’t you a little flower child with your cut-offs and long hair—and your fancy
new boyfriend!” Tommy got out of the car and stood a few paces away, grinning,
and shifting his weight from one foot to another. The woman who owned the
farmhouse was sitting chatting with Ruby’s mother, a middle-aged, well-dressed
resident of the local town. When the Professor introduced her to Frank and
Tommy, she appraised them with obvious amusement.
Looking
at Frank she said, “Ah. You have the eyes of a spy! What do you do, Frank?”
Frank
laughed. “Actually I am a journalist.”
“Aha!
I was right,” said the woman. “All journalists are spies at heart.” Then she
turned to Tommy. “Such a good looking young man! How old are you?”
They
spent a week or so all together, taking long walks in the mountains, cooking
large dinners, drinking and playing endless games of Hearts. When the parents
had gone to bed the three younger people stayed up drinking, sometimes running
down to the lake to skinny dip. The Professor had given the kids the use of the
car after they left since they couldn’t take the it to Cairo, as long as they
returned it to some friends’ house in a neighboring village, ready for the next
year’s vacation.
After
several hours, and after the sun had well and truly set, Frank directed them
into the center of a small town. They cruised the streets looking for a pensione, and eventually came across a
one-story stucco building with a sign outside suggesting the possibility of
lodging. They emptied the car of everything and parked it on a side street, not
bothering to lock it—they would not be able to get the windshield fixed until
the next morning anyhow—and checked in. Frank did the talking, and negotiated
for them a large room with three beds, which was all that was available, and
they dropped their luggage on the beds and began the process of cleaning up
after their three-hour drive with no windshield. Their hair was caked with dust
and their faces were several shades darker where their sunglasses had not
protected them.
After
dinner in a small restaurant nearby, they returned to the hotel. Frank commenced
rolling a joint as Tommy settled on his bed with a book. Tommy’s bed was near
the bathroom, and there was a small passageway towards the front of the room
and the other two beds; a door opened onto a small balcony.
“Well
kiddo,” Frank said to Ruby, lying down on his bed and crossing his arms under
his head. “When are you going to get yourself into university?”
“Oh
I dunno,” Ruby said. “When the time is right I guess. I don’t necessarily think
its something I have to do. There lots of other things I want. Maybe I’ll go
and live in Greece for a while, you know, on the beach.”
“I
see,” said Frank. “Lead the Bohemian life for a while, eh? Play the field?”
“Maybe.
Perhaps I’ll wait tables and write poetry at night.”
“What
about your piece of man-flesh?” Frank said, nodding his head towards Tommy,
whose head was still in the book.
“He
can do the same thing.”
“So
you’re both going to bum around writing poetry?”
“Maybe.
I don’t think that’s so bad.”
“I
think you could do better. All that education you’ve had. Don’t you want to
achieve anything?”
“I
think achievement is overrated. What’s so great about achievement?” She took
the joint from Frank.
“Are
you an under-achiever, Bee? You never used to be; what’s happened to you?
You’re bumming around in London, temping, hanging out with other bums—no
offense, Tom—yet you’ve had an elite education and some high achieving parents.
I mean if you really think you’re a poet, great, go do it! But are you? Or is
it just a pose? Both you and T.S. Eliot over there, I mean what chance have you
got of making a life of it? What’ve you published?”
“Oh.
It’ll come,” Ruby said. “I’m not cut out for the super-competitive life, its
bullshit. I can eke out my own little existence in my own way; I think I can
rely on my innate brilliance to get through,” she flashed him a grin.
“I
think you’re cowed by your parents,” said Frank. “You’re afraid you might fail,
so you don’t even want to try. I mean,
look at you: since graduating high school, what, two, three years ago— where, I
might add, you showed considerable promise, as we all did in school, you, me
and Lilly—you’ve done very little except cycle through some rather unremarkable
boyfriends. Its as if your self-confidence fled you once you turned eighteen.
Maybe you need to challenge yourself more rigorously, take on something
meaningful, go for broke.” Frank took the joint back from Ruby, “Tom, you want
some of this?”
“No,”
said Tommy, not bothering to lift his head from the book.
“Aw
come on, don’t be polite, you know you do,” Frank said, grinning.
“No,
really, I don’t, Frank.”
“Oh
well, suit yourself,” said Frank, drawing on the joint himself. He walked around Tommy’s bed, then bent down
and turned Tommy’s book towards him so he could read the cover.
“Still
Life with Woodpecker, Hmm. What’s that, some kind of soft-porn?” He
went back to the other side of the room without waiting for an answer and sat
back on his bed.
“You’re
so full of shit, Frankie,” said Ruby. I’ve got plenty of time until I have to
become famous. And I’m sure I will. I’m confident that my genius will not be
restrained.”
“Yeah,”
said Tommy. “What’s the deal, Frank? You get stoned and you lay into your
sister for no reason. She’s doing just fine, thanks very much.”
“Oh,”
said Frank, turning to Tommy. “You think this is just me being stoned? Well
just so you know, getting stoned doesn’t mean the same to me as it might to
you. I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen, and in Cairo it’s a different
ball game. I’m a Hashash. For a Hashash its not about
getting stoned; it’s a life-style, it’s a vocation, its practically a fucking religion.
Hashashin have been using the resin to achieve an altered state of
consciousness since the tenth century. To be a Hashash is like belonging to a
mystical fraternity, not a college fraternity. ”
Tommy
put his head back in his book. Frank jumped off the bed, and gesticulated with
his arms as he maneuvered his lanky body around the room.
“I’ve
smoked hundreds of pounds of the stuff; Lebanese, Moroccan, Pakistani,
Sudanese. Opiated, Black, Brown, red—pink, for Godssake! I’ve eaten it
raw, licked the resin off crackers, I’ve baked it in brownies, melted it in
chocolate, stirred it into falafel mix. I’ve smoked stuff that would make your
head explode. I once bought some from a Sudanese camel-herder at Imbaba which
sent me into a coma for three days. I thought I had gone mad. No, it takes a
lot to get me stoned mister, make no mistake about that.”
He
threw himself back on his bed. Tommy continued reading.
“This
is about you, Bee,” Frank said after a while. “Its about you doing something
worthwhile, about being a presence in the world, about not drifting through it
like a feather, aimlessly, pointlessly, but with a purpose and with an effect.”
Tommy looked up briefly.
“You
can tell a lot about a person by their friends” Frank continued. “Look at Norma
and Liz for example! Wastrels. And you realize that you’ve never had a
boyfriend for more than a month. Mum and Dad were talking about this.”
“Oh
so you’ve been discussing me with them?” Ruby said.
“You
spend two weeks with people on vacation. You discuss everything. What else were
we supposed to talk about?”
“You
could’ve talked about yourself, Frank. That seems to interest you,” said Tommy.
“Very
funny. Look, I mean no offense Tommy. This isn’t about you—really. I’m just
looking out for my little sister here. Perhaps you didn’t know who you were
dealing with when you met her. Just saw a blond head and a nice rack.”
“Actually
it was I who seduced him,” said Ruby.
“That
figures,” said Frank. “And in fact
that’s part of it; you see, you go out and get what you want, that’s how
directed you are. Maybe you’ve lost sight of what you want.”
“God!”
said Ruby. “When did you turn into such a goddamn bully?”
The
next day was hot and airless. They loaded up the old wagon again and drove
several miles to a garage where the hotel owner had told them they could get a
new windshield. Tommy was quiet, sullen, even, and drove a little too fast
around town. They found the garage and negotiated in broken Spanish to have the
work done. Frank took the lead in the negotiations, making direct eye contact
with the mechanic and smiling widely.
Later,
when the windshield had arrived at the garage, the mechanic chipped it on one
of its corners, prompting Tommy to complain, using mostly sign language and
repeating the key phrase Muy peligroso, until the man understood that he
was not satisfied with the workmanship.
“Drop
it,” Said Frank.
“But
its dangerous, for Godssake!” Said Tommy, raising his hands in the air, keen
not to let anyone take him for a ride. “And he broke it, therefore we should
get another one.”
Ruby
sat by the door on a three-legged stool, smoking a cigarette quietly behind her
dark glasses.
“Look,”
said Frank. “We’re in the middle of nowhere; we’re not going to find anyone
else to do it, at least not today; I don’t think we’re in a position to argue.”
He turned to the mechanic and moved his hands around in some Egyptian-style
hand language, and repeated, tranquilo, no problemo, several times, patting
the man on the shoulder. Tommy went and sat down next to Ruby, lighting a
cigarette, and staring out at the empty street.
By
lunchtime they were on the road again, heading south towards the sea, passing
buttes and outcrops and small villages scattered around the plains. The trees
were growing progressively shorter, small stubby pines of some sort, bulbous at
the top and thin at the base.
“I
think I can sense the sea, you know what I mean?” Ruby said, sticking her nose
out of the window as Tommy sped along at seventy down a stretch of straight
road. Frank looked at the map.
“You
could be right there. I think we’re only about ten miles away,” he said.
“Its
just over that rise up ahead, I think,” Tommy said, having been silent for most
of the journey. “At least this place isn’t going to be the Costa del Sol. All
those people lounging around the beach, waiting for death.”
“I
like that,” said Frank. “Waiting for death. That’s very good.”
“I
don’t see why you should be surprised, he’s a poet!” Said Ruby.
“Oh
yes, I forgot. This boyfriend of yours. You see, usually he’s like an old Chevy
engine: High intake: low output.”
“Hey!”
said Ruby. “He’s not gonna take that? Are you babe?”
“Don’t
worry. I can take more than that,” Tommy said, eyes glued to the road.
“See,”
said Frank, putting his feet out of his window and pulling on his cigarette as
he leaned his seat far back so that he could see Ruby in the back seat. “He’s a tough guy. He can take it.”
“Yeah.
But you’ve gotta learn to be nicer,” said Ruby. “You’re not as civilized as you
used to be, Frankie. Living in Cairo’s doing your head in.”
“Oh,
I can be as civilized as I need to be, believe me. You’ll see. Wait `til you
meet Carmen and Andreas, they’ll tell you. I just hope they managed to find the
place; I haven’t heard from them in a week or two. They should be at the
hotel.”
Soon,
just as Tommy had predicted, they caught a glimpse of the sea. It still came as
a surprise because they had been driving through semi-desert scrub for the last
three days, and it was beginning to feel as if they would never see the blue of
the Mediterranean after all. But once they crested the hill they saw three or
four miles ahead of them the sparkling waters of the ocean, and in front of it
a fringe of white sand stretching for several miles in both directions.
Carmen
and Andreas were waiting for them at the hotel when they arrived. Carmen worked
for the Italian embassy in Cairo, where she had spent most of her childhood as
the daughter of a diplomat. Andreas’ mother was also Italian, married to an
Egyptian businessman. They had all attended classes at the American University
in Cairo in their early twenties. They had told Frank about this town, which
they had discovered the previous year.
Later
in the evening they all drove through the town, weaving their way through
narrow streets, between short white stucco houses, towards the beach, Ruby
sharing the back seat this time with the two Italians. The houses soon gave way
to scrub, and then sand dunes, which stretched several hundred yards to where
the sea came rolling into the beach in long, heavy waves. The restaurant looked
out over the dunes, sitting up above them on stilts. They found a table on the
balcony, and Carmen set about ordering for the whole party: a bottle of Manzanilla,
several types of olives, jamon, some local fish deep-fried whole and
several other dishes of small omlettes, calamari, and quails eggs. Andreas was
tall and thin, with a shock of black curly hair and a long pointed noise, and
looked every inch the musician that he was. Carmen was slender and, as Tommy
and Ruby immediately noticed, attractive in what Frank would have called that
French-speaking, dark-skinned Mediterranean way.
“The
last time I saw you,” Frank said, talking to Carmen, but including everyone in
his sweep of the table, “I’d gone to visit you one day—what was it, a weekend?
Because you weren’t at the embassy—and you gave me these pain-killers because I
had pulled a muscle in my neck.” He paused to chew on a piece of toast with ham
on it.
“I
thought they were your ordinary, run-of-the-mill pills, you know? So I pop a
couple as I’m leaving your place. I get in the taxi to go back to Dokki, and by
the time I reach the Sheraton I can sense a numbness in my ankles.” Carmen was
giggling into her glass of Manzanilla.
“What?”
Andreas said, with his heavy accent, then, “Ehh?” reverting to his native
Egyptian Arabic. “What did you give the poor guy, Carmen?”
“Whatever
it was,” said Frank, “it started at my ankles, and within a minute the numbness
had crept up the back of my legs, immobilizing me from the waist down.”
“Oh
my God!” Squeaked Ruby. “What the hell did you give him?”
“Then,”
said Frank, “it began to rise to my upper body; my stomach became numb, then my
chest, then a cold hand gabbed my back, and finally I could hardly move my
shoulders. When I arrived at my apartment I had to get the driver to call the Bawab
and he practically carried me out of the cab, and up the stairs. I spent the
rest of the afternoon on the sofa staring at the ceiling and wondering whether
that was how it was going to be for the rest of my life.”
“But
the pain left your neck, yes?” said Carmen, eyes glinting, as she stared across
the table, smiling at Frank.
“I
will grant you that, Carmen,” he said. “The pain entirely vanished.”
“For
that you have to thank the ingenuity of the Cairo pharmacies,” said Carmen.
They
ordered another bottle of Manzanilla, and then a couple of bottles of Rioja.
“I
can’t believe that you are Frank’s little sister,” said Carmen, looking at
Ruby. “How come we haven’t met before, anyway?”
“Ruby
was bad so we sent her to London for her education,” said Frank.
“Very
funny,” said Ruby.
“Where
she met her beau,” Frank said, gesturing to Tommy.
“A
handsome man,” Carmen said. “I didn’t know that the men in London were so good
looking.”
“They
aren’t,” said Tommy. “I’m the only good looking one.”
“In
England? You’re probably right. Good heavens!” Said Frank. “That island is like
a freak show. With the exception of Adonis here, of course.”
“I
don’t know about that,” said Carmen. “I think he looks a bit like a young
Robert Shaw.
“Hey!”
Said Ruby. “He’s mine. I may have left a while ago, but I know what you Cairene
women are like: Man eaters, all. Tommy, what are you smiling about?”
“Well,”
said Tommy. “There you are, you see. You can’t take anything for granted.”
“Right,”
said Carmen, “You’d better not let this one out of your sight, you never know
what might happen!”
“Don’t
worry,” said Frank, “Bee has got him corralled. She doesn’t look like much, but
she’s a man-eater too. There’s no question who wears the pants in this
relationship.”
When
they were done with dinner they left the restaurant and wandered down to the
dunes. Half way between the restaurant and the beach, Frank produced a large
joint and sat on the sand to light it. It was dark by now, and by the faint
light of the moon they could just make out the white line of surf on the beach
about 100 yards away. The lights of the restaurant were behind them, some 200
yards away, and occasionally the dunes were illuminated by the sweep of a car’s
headlights arriving or leaving the restaurant’s parking lot. There were no
other lights for a good half-mile, until the feeble street lamps of the town to
the east of them, and to the west there was nothing at all. For a while they passed the joint around. The
wind was rising, bringing with it the warmth and smell of Africa from across
the straits, and with the increase in wind came an increase in noise, as the
waves grew and threw themselves on the sand with an agitated gravity.
“Lets
go swimming,” said Carmen.
“Skinny
dipping?” said Frank.
“Andreas,
are you coming?” Said Carmen.
“No.
You go ahead.” Andreas said, lighting his own joint and lying down on the sand.
Tommy
and Ruby were the first to take off their clothes, and they ran through the
dunes whooping, racing for the water. It was a longer run than they had
anticipated, and the going was rough over the dunes because of the thick,
coarse grass which grew over them. Finally, after several stumbling falls, they
made it to the beach and ran down to the water, a hundred yards from where the
dunes ended. Behind them it was difficult to discern their path, or the
whereabouts of the rest of their party, except by reference to the lights of
the restaurant. They hit the water, and plunged under, the roar of the waves in
their faces now, in their ears, the sand that had been stirred up in the surf
mingling with their hair. They swam out beyond the surf line and Tommy came up
underneath Ruby, grabbing her thighs and pulling her towards him, then holding
her in a slippery embrace, feeling the smoothness of her legs wrapped around
his buttocks and the swell of her breasts against his chest. They floated together for a while, then Ruby
wriggled free and lay flat on the water’s surface, asking Tommy to put his
hands under her back to keep her up. She lay like that for several minutes and
they stared at the stars and the waves lifted them up then dropped them down
again. Tommy broke free and caught a wave which he surfed in to the beach, and
emerged from the breaking wave spluttering and shaking his head. For several
minutes they both body surfed, riding waves in to the beach, and swimming out
again, past the line of breaking water.
Carmen’s
head appeared next to them, bobbing on the water, her face barely perceptible
in the darkness, but the white of her teeth showing as she smiled. They trod
water for a while chatting, before Ruby headed in, claiming she was getting
cold. Frank reared up out of the water next to Carmen, and, doing something
underwater, made her scream. Tommy swam out beyond the surf line again and
continued riding waves in, whooping when he caught a good ride.
In
the dunes Ruby had forgotten where their improvised camp was, and where she had
left her clothes. She headed for what she assumed was the restaurant, but the
restaurant was closed now and most of the lights had been shut off. Stumbling
through the coarse grass, she headed east for a couple of minutes, and then
turned and looked towards the beach where she thought she had left the others.
She could make out the shore line, but could not see the others, so she turned
and headed west through the dunes, shivering slightly now in the cooler night
air. The wind was still freshening, and in its increased strength it had picked
up sand from the exposed beach, which stung her naked flesh as it struck.
Some
ten minutes later, Tommy, tired of surfing, and wondering what had happened to
the others, dragged himself out of the water and, surprised at the strength of
the wind, began to run for the cover of his clothes, which he remembered were
some way into the dunes. After some confusion he came across a small pile
consisting of his T Shirt and shorts which, thankfully, had the car keys in
them, then he looked around for signs of the others. The sand storm was making
it not only difficult to walk, but also difficult to see, and he ran back
towards the noise of the breaking waves.
Before
he reached the beach, Ruby came hurtling out of the darkness ahead of him,
sobbing and incoherent, wrapping her arms around his chest.
“I
got lost, and ran into two German guys…” she wailed. “I thought they were going
to rape me…”
“Whoa,”
said Tommy, looking around at the gloom. “Where are they?”
“I
dunno, I ran. I didn’t know where the fuck I was—and where the fuck were you?
You guys all disappeared. I was so fucking scared. They just stood there,
looking at me naked, then they started saying shit in German, like hey baby,
come here…”
They
sat down in one heap on the dunes, while Ruby sobbed some more, and the sand
continued to blast their heads. Then they heard screams and laughter from the
shoreline, and standing up they peered at what looked like Frank and Carmen by
the water’s edge. Frank was holding out a towel for Carmen, who turned around
and backed into it. In the moonlight their naked buttocks shone like neon
buttons. To their right Andreas was stumbling across the dunes heading for the
beach and the spectacle of the couple there. Frank seemed to have managed to
wrap himself in the towel together with Carmen, then he dropped the towel and
they could see his naked, luminous buttocks pumping rhythmically, back and
forth, their muscle contractions creating dark hollows of shadow in them. Ruby
and Tommy stood holding each other, watching for a few seconds until it became
clear what was happening on the beach.
“Oh
my god,” whispered Ruby.
“What?”
said Tommy.
Without
a word, Ruby detached herself from Tommy. She hurtled, naked still, towards the
couple on the beach. When she reached them, at about the same time as Andreas,
she grabbed hold of Frank’s shoulder and pried him off Carmen. Then she started
pummeling him with her petite fists, yelling.
“You
asshole, what the hell do you think you’re doing? What are you doing?”
Frank
staggered backwards, a persistent grin on his face, and Carmen wrapped the
towel around herself as Andreas arrived, pausing on the threshold of the small
group, his toes digging into the sand to stop him going any further into the
invisible boundary encircling them. As Ruby pushed Frank down the beach,
drumming on his chest, his shoulders, his stomach, and assailing him with
rebukes, Andreas gingerly moved towards Carmen, still busying herself with the
towel.
Tommy
made for the car back in the restaurant’s parking lot. He started the engine
and turned on the lights, flipping them onto high beam, and he advanced as far
as he could towards the beach where he could see the silhouettes of his party
playing out their drama by the shoreline. There was a kind of donkey path
leading out of the parking lot and he navigated the car down it until it was
only a hundred yards or so from the beach, then he honked the horn several
times and flashed his lights. He watched as Ruby stopped her assault on Frank,
and turned, and then he looked at Andreas and Carmen; Andreas had managed to
wrap Carmen in a towel, and he had his arm around her, and they were turning
towards him. They stopped to gather their clothes, and came towards the car,
their shadows lengthening along the sand behind them. After a minute Ruby and
Frank started towards him also, Ruby keeping several yards between her and her
brother.
The
calm silence he had been enjoying in the car was broken when they opened the
doors and the noise and wind, and motion which accompanied them entered the
car’s interior. Frank sat in the back with Carmen and Andreas. He was still
smiling, and exchanging jokes with Andreas and Carmen, neither of whom seemed
concerned about anything that may or may not have happened on the beach. Ruby
sat in the front next to Tommy. Her face was black, the light mascara she had
applied before going to the restaurant that night was streaked across her
cheekbones like Amazon war paint, and she was clutching a pile of her clothes
and a towel, covered in wet sand. Her face held the kind of black expression of
a thwarted toddler.
“Home,
Jeeves,” Frank said, “if you know how the hell to get there…I certainly don’t.”
Then
they spoke in Arabic for a while in the back seat. From time to time Ruby
glared back at them and muttered something in Arabic, which made them laugh.
Then, out of the blue, following a lively exchange in Arabic, Ruby said,
“You’ve always got to be so entertaining Frank, you get away with everything, no
matter how wrong. Why don’t you tell your friends what you used to do to me
when I was eight?” There was a moment’s silence before Frank responded.
“My
sister is a live wire,” Frank said in English for Tommy’s exclusive benefit, it
seemed, “with a puritan’s sense of drama, and a baroque imagination.” Then he
reverted to Arabic and within several seconds he had cracked some joke and the
three occupants of the back seat were guffawing again, and the conversation
became easy, excited. Every so often Ruby interrupted them with a “Fuck you,”
or “you asshole,” directed at Frank, in English, making them giggle even more,
or eliciting a sympathetic cooing from Carmen.
Tommy
drove fast, his lights on high beam, his foot working the clutch smoothly,
taking turns randomly in what he felt, for no particular reason, was the right
direction, the wagon shifting seamlessly through his changes, his eyes focusing
narrowly on the road ahead, concentrating on the task at hand with the
consummate skill of a natural, accelerating out of curves, making the occupants
of the back seat fall into each other’s laps, and giggle some more. They passed
white stucco buildings, mostly unlit, darkened store fronts, vacant building
lots; stray dogs lumbered across the road, or sat on the sidewalk watching
their carnivalesque progress through the streets of the quiet town, and
to their right, in the south, the darkness of the beach, and beyond it the
crashing waves below the sand-filled wind, and beyond that still, the buoyant
Mediterranean and the giant, slumbering land mass of the African continent.