A Great Frigate bird shrieks a mating call and wakes her. She rolls onto her back, rubs her brown eyes, burning from the adjustment to the brightness of day. There are no darkening shades in her one room house in the South Pacific. There is no glass covering the single window, a cut out of the thin wall, which faces the ocean, which reflects the sunlight, which burns her not yet adjusted eyes. Steamy air leaks in through the window, through the fractures around the door edges, through the slight separation between the walls and the tin roof (when it rains the pelting drops of water above her head are surprisingly soothing). The warmth on her skin feels like vacation, but she is not here for pleasure. She wiggles her toes, rubs her skin over the smooth metal surface of her toe rings. The room is teeming with the smell of warm ocean water – salt and fish – humid air, coconuts, and bug spray. Scads of Tongan cockroaches, the size of New York City mice, spend their time in her outhouse. On nights when she can’t wait until morning and there is not a full moon to light her path, she creeps across the grass with a flashlight in one hand, the can of organic insect repellent her parents sent in the other. She makes sure to scatter the creatures from all potential hiding spaces before lifting her nightgown and squatting over the primordial pot.
It is cold in New York. Spring is still several weeks away. He and his yard are pale and unadorned. He stands in the kitchen in his boxer briefs, gray cotton, Calvin Klein. It is dark except for the light of the digital clock on the microwave casting a green glow. He holds a cup of coffee in his right hand while he looks out the window at his backyard. He rubs his left thumb over the vacant ring finger of his left hand.
The elevator. His office. A restroom. Hands. Mouths. Tongues. Pawing. Devouring. Desperate.
She stirs in the bedroom. Her body is warm beneath the goose down comforter he takes allergy shots to sleep beneath. She pushes off the weighty covers and rushes into her flannel robe and woolen slippers. She shivers, clasps her arms around her lean body, shuffles into the bathroom to wash the sleep off her face, brush her teeth. She looks in the mirror. Large pores. Sunken cheeks. Deep expression lines around her mouth, her eyes. Wrinkles in her forehead like a washboard. She sighs, turns her face down to the sink, cups her hands full of tepid water, splashes it over, washes away the image of middle age.
He dumps the end of his coffee into the sink and leaves the mug on the granite counter above the dishwasher. He ambles toward the shower. He turns the water on hotter than he can stand and dances around the stream. His skin reddens, adjusts to the temperature. The water flows over him. He opens his mouth, lets the hot metallic tasting water slide down his throat and run off his tongue.
Eventually, her eyes are all the way open. She stares at the window, glimpsing the ocean as the sheer curtain flutters in and out. Ocean, curtain, ocean, curtain, ocean. She rises, pulls the sheet up over her mattress, smoothes it down. She pushes aside the sheet that hangs from a clothes line, dividing the room by a third, and steps into the living area. She sits cross legged on the small bamboo rug between the two oversized pillows that serve as chairs; one blue with plastic beading, the other lavender with frayed fringe. She blesses herself and begins her morning contemplation. Twenty minutes later, she turns on the hot plate to boil the water for her breakfast then goes out back to her well to wash.
A giant liner looms off shore, slowing its speed, preparing its turn into port. It dispels the ocean life that lingers in its way. It brings to the islands the gifts of civilization: processed food in cans and boxes, words from people far away, all things synthetic.
He reaches for the silver refrigerator door handle, is stopped by the picture of a girl in native garb. She is much darker than he’s ever known her to be. She wears a long tan linen skirt with a shorter brown beaded skirt over it. She told him the proper name but he can’t remember it. He remembers her childhood. She wears a white, loose fitting blouse and brown leather sandals showing unpainted toe nails and shining silver toe rings on each foot. She wears a broad white smile. She is standing in front of a palm tree with a group of smiling native faces. The ocean glistens in the background. He opens the door and grabs a bottle of water. He picks up his briefcase and opens the door to the garage.
She sips tea, reads the letter. It took almost a month to reach her. The news is outdated even though she reaches each new date almost a full day before them. She writes her reply, folds it in an envelope, licks it sealed. She walks to town with a loquacious chaperone who admires the glittering silver rings on her toes.
She hears the car start, hears him drive up the street, slow at the corner stop sign, fast around the turn toward the highway. She dresses and moves downstairs to the study. She sits down at the hulking mahogany desk and turns on the computer. She is surrounded by built-in shelves overgrown with trinkets meant to remind her of places she has been, places that her mind runs together. Was this seashell from Spain or Australia? Which one was the food poisoning and which one was the jelly fish sting? She taps her unpolished fingernails as she waits for the computer to warm up. She logs onto her email account. Her inbox is empty of new messages. She opens the envelope resting beside the keyboard, re-reads the report of youth ministries and recycling campaigns, admires the photo of a dark smiling girl standing before a palm tree with the ocean to her back. She twists her wedding ring, so tight it leaves her marked.
The sun is hot, more than usual. The village is pregnant with people. The giant liner moves closer. The ocean is inviting. Her chaperone is telling her to take off her rings before swimming. She is daydreaming.
There is traffic on the Southbound Cross Bronx Expressway. The air is so dirty it is visible. The smell of tar from road work sits on his tongue. He moves forward an inch. He switches on the button for filtered air but the feeling of suffocation is strong. He sucks on his inhaler. He moves forward another inch.
The backseat of his Lexus. A deserted parking lot. Fumbling like adolescents; hurried, scared, unsure, anticipation building. Long blonde hair tickles his face. Bodies writhe together shrieking against the leather seats.
She puts his dirty coffee mug into the dishwasher, wipes away the circular stain it leaves on the granite, puts his soy milk back in the refrigerator, picks up his dirty towels, drops them into the laundry basket. She fiddles with the ring so tight on her finger it is paler than the others on her hands.
She is wearing a bathing suit beneath her skirt and blouse. It is modest, a brown one piece with a high neck line in front and back and matching shorts landing at mid-thigh. She slips off her sandals and squishes the sand between her toes. It tickles where it sticks between her toes and her toe rings. She dips her feet in the water for a rinse. The ocean is warm like bath water. She hasn’t had a bath since she came to this island a year ago. She hasn’t had a proper shower, either, just a sponging off with well water in a bucket behind her house and a weekly dip in the ocean.
Their hands grope each other’s bodies, greedy from starvation. He sucks the air from her lungs. She pants. The room is a fantasy where they can take their time. His ring slides down a sweaty finger; in the moment, unmissed.
She scrubs the kitchen floor. Black and white tiles. She can never get the white white enough or the black black enough. She is on her knees, both hands gripping the scrub brush, her teeth gritted, her arms, hips thrusting back and forth, moving around the dirty sudsy water. She swats an unruly chunk of brown hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand. The telephone rings. She drops the brush into the bucket of water and picks up the receiver. Her hands drip dirty sudsy water all over it.
The liner is back out to sea, slinking along the horizon, small in the distance like a toy ship. She bobs up and down in the water, her toes only touching the sandy ocean floor when her chin is submerged. She pushes off into a breast stroke aimed for the liner. How close can she get before exhaustion forces her back? Her silver toe rings shimmer under water, wink an invitation to a hungry sea.
She listens to the voice on the telephone. It crackles and echoes and disappears. She drops the phone.
She feels a sharp stab in her ankle; a fierce tug pulls her under. Her mouth opens. She takes in water. She struggles to reach the surface. She kicks, is released. She reaches the air, gulps it in, screams. She is surrounded by her own blood. She turns, sees a fin behind her, circling. It dives down, disappears. She screams again, louder, tries to swim. Each kick feels like her foot is separating from her body. Steely teeth sink into her thigh, drag her below. She looks into cold, vacant eyes. She watches her blood swirl around and mix with the warm ocean water.
He fingers the empty spot where his wedding ring once resided.
She stands over the sink, left hand to her mouth, right one keeping her steady. Tears fall down, pelting the metal basin like rain drops on a tin roof.
A local boy carries a lifeless mangled body to the shore gathered with gaping people. Later, the remnant of a foot floats in, a toe ring glistening in the light of the rising full moon.
He sits in his Lexus in traffic going North on the Cross Bronx Expressway. He sucks on his inhaler.
She turns and faces the refrigerator, sees a suntanned face smiling at her from beneath a palm tree. She blinks.
