Sunburn Read online

  Her solitude became unbearable. She was constantly out on the town, going to the discos, drinking and sleeping around. She wouldn’t have him think that he was anything special. Yet she found that she couldn’t leave town.

  Then one day she met him in the street. The season was just beginning in earnest, and the streets were more crowded than they’d been, or she’d have seen him and ducked out of his way.

  “You’re avoiding me,” he said calmly. He didn’t seem the least bit upset. “I just wondered why.”

  “I haven’t been home, is all.”

  “I noticed. I came by twice.”

  He steered her into a café and ordered.

  “Why should I be home, then?”

  “You shouldn’t. A young and attractive girl like yourself should be out getting all she can.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I know. Just an observation. Do you want me to ask you for a date?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Enjoy your coffee.”

  He got up and left, never having raised his voice or lost his smile. She nearly jumped from her chair to follow him.

  “Sean.”

  He stopped and turned. She ran up to him.

  “I’ll be home Thursday night.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “If you want to come by . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I’m busy Thursday.”

  “Well, pick a day.”

  “For what?”

  “Goddamn you, I won’t beg.”

  “Neither will I. How about today?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Today. Right now.”

  She couldn’t change, try as she might, and he didn’t become any more insistent. When they were together, they either fought or made love. There was no repetition of the peaceful joy they’d taken in each other on that first night, and yet it was that first night that had brought them back together again and again. In some undefined way she knew that, and knew that it was true for him too. Still, she was not able to rest. She was more promiscuous than she’d ever been.

  Occasionally, after they made love, they’d go out to dinner or a cabaret. Sean would drink too much. Even when they weren’t angry, their words took on a sparring quality. He would never spend the entire night with her. She never went to his house.

  Then, in early July, after he hadn’t called on her for a week, she was sitting at a table outside a small German café just in front of the church, and Sean drove up in his black Peugeot and parked in front of her. Getting out, he walked to her table and sat down.

  “This has got to stop. I want you to come live with me. If you don’t, I won’t see you again. And if you do, make no mistake, it’s the end of your fucking around.”

  As she looked at him, she once again saw that clarity in his face, a look of nearly total uninterest in her. He’d made up his mind. If she didn’t go, he was gone. She finished her pastis.

  “Help me pack my things.”

  After Douglas left the courtyard with the dead chicken, she turned to Sean.

  “Why don’t you kick them out?”

  “I like them.”

  “Just now?”

  “So what? Doug’s pissed off. It happens.”

  He was embarrassed, and disgusted with her for the moment. She watched him walk into the house.

  “Where are you going?”

  He stopped in the doorway. “To do some writing, then clean up. Tony’s coming over for dinner.”

  “All right. I won’t bother you then.”

  “Good,” he said. “Don’t.”

  Despite their greater intimacy and half a year of living together, things between them had declined. Nothing really had changed since she’d moved in. At first they’d had quiet times—nights sitting before the fire, finishing off their dinner wine, talking, or just lying watching the flames. But always, the next day, she would provoke him, and the fighting would start again.

  She’d lived constantly hoping that he would throw her out, or that she would tire of him, and terrified that one of these things might happen.

  When his sister and brother-in-law had come, she had wanted to run away. It had not been so much that she had disliked the visitors as that she had resented their intrusion. Before they arrived, there seemed to be endless time to work things out, to change slowly to suit each other, and though it hadn’t worked, she still felt hopeful that it would. But when they’d come, she’d felt, in a real sense, back in society.

  Sean had begun having parties, and their private lives had stopped evolving. They became victims of their friends’ expectations.

  There had always been in her a need to appear consistent in front of others. This was why she’d always changed locations before she’d changed her actions. She couldn’t explain why this was true, but it had always been so. And Doug and Lea had arrived when she and Sean had been fighting and challenging. They’d both fallen into their public roles, and their already tenuous private lives, which had brought them together, were buried under this hail of momentum.

  Still, she couldn’t stop herself. Though she knew it was poisoning all that was good between them, she continued to taunt and belittle him, while he remained detached and, realistically, on guard.

  At least she had been faithful to him. Other men didn’t interest her, though she pretended otherwise, and she knew that here Sean would draw the line, as he’d said.

  But now, as she watched him enter the house, she felt physically sick. She turned and looked at the surrounding woods, and slowly walked out through the gates into the trees.

  She had gone too far. Douglas had been right. She’d been pushing too hard for weeks now. Leaving the road, she walked back between the trees, which were beginning to turn for autumn. She kicked at scattered leaves on the ground, then leaned back against one of the trees. Her stomach felt hollow and she crossed her arms and leaned over. Suddenly, she felt her frustration like a force moving up from her stomach. She began to cry, at first softly, and then threw herself headlong on the ground and sobbed uncontrollably.

  After a time, she stopped and lay quietly. Then she got up and walked back to the house, through the front room, and back to their bedroom. She took a shower and put on a terry-cloth robe, then walked back through the house to Sean’s study.

  He sat in his chair in front of his desk. His right hand cradled his head and covered his eyes. He might have been sleeping.

  “Sean.”

  He looked up. She crossed to him and knelt on the floor beside him.

  “It’s not working, is it?”

  He stared silently ahead.

  “Because I want to tell you that we have to start over, and not be afraid to admit or show that we like each other. It’s like we’ve gotten so that anything but fighting is out of the question between us, and I don’t want to fight you anymore. I really don’t.”

  He put his hand on her head and smoothed her hair. He looked impassive, bitter.

  She put her head on his lap and whispered, “It just seems that ever since we started, it’s been one or both of us afraid to be ourselves. I don’t know why. But it’s been like there’s this . . . I don’t know, this force making a travesty of us living together. Like we never really wanted to try, but something made us. You know what I’m saying?”

  He nodded, gently rubbing her neck.

  “But now it’s gotten horrible. I don’t care, now, if you hurt me. If you want to, then go ahead, but I won’t be a bitch anymore. We don’t have to be this way.”

  “I know.”

  “So let’s not. Let’s stop.”

  “What have I been doing?”

  “Hiding.”

  “From what?”

  She stopped looking up at him. “Let’s just leave it at that. There’s more to you than you show me.”

  “There’s more to everyone than they show anyone.”

  “You showed me more our first night.”

  He was silent.

  “Come on. Stand up.” She was smiling now. “Do you want me to help you change?”

  “I can change myself,” he answered.

  “I know. Do you want me to help you?”

  Gradually his features softened. He smiled. “Let’s have a kiss,” he said. “Then we’ll see.”

  Three

  We stayed in bed until the sun had nearly gone down. Below we could hear Sean and Kyra speaking with the guests, who had come up from the town, I assumed. The window in our room looked out over the courtyard and to the trees beyond. It was a beautiful evening. We had dozed and I had wakened before Lea. Lying on my back, I enjoyed the weight of Lea’s head as it rested on my chest, her leg thrown carelessly over mine. Sean’s earlier foolishness was forgotten. I even felt kindly disposed toward Kyra.

  Berta rang what we called the half-hour bell, telling us when dinner would be served, and I pulled gently at Lea’s hair.

  “Food,” I whispered.

  “Uhhh.”

  “Dinner bell just now.”

  I took my arm from around her and sat up. Automatically, it seemed, she reached out and scratched my back.

  “God, I’m lazy.”

  “So it seems.”

  I got up. “Coming?”

  “Minute.”

  The upstairs showers had been installed the previous spring, but had not been connected to the water heater, so showering was more of an ordeal than I’d been used to, but I was getting to like it. At least it was impossible to emerge drowsy.

  While I spluttered and groaned, Lea came in and sat on the bidet, which was, if possible, colder.

  “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “Clean living,” I said. “Hand me a towel, huh?”

  She shivered. “Still
.”

  “Should I shave? Sean tell you who’s coming?”

  “You know anybody with a white Citröen?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t know.” She had a towel wrapped around her hips, as a man might, and combed her hair abstractedly. She looked at me in the mirror. “Don’t shave. You look good.”

  We dressed together, husband and wife, talking like it, and went downstairs.

  Of the three guests, I had met Tony before. He was getting a doctorate somewhere in Spanish literature. He’d been up to the house several times before, and I liked him. He wore dark slacks, loafers, an open shirt. A handsome Spaniard, he was olive-skinned, slim, with a woman’s hands, and yet not effeminate, but somehow rugged. His voice was abnormally deep. I remember having been surprised when I’d learned he was a student, so far was he from the scholarly type. The last two times he’d been by, we’d all gotten drunk and told filthy stories. Now, when Lea and I entered the room, he rushed to embrace us both, laughing contagiously.

  “Come,” he said, “meet my friends. Tonight we’ll be more sedate, eh?”

  “He means under sedation,” Sean put in.

  The woman was young, possibly not yet eighteen, and very pretty, dressed in a white shift and sandals, medium-length dark hair surrounding her face.

  “Marianne is just in from France. She studies anthropology. And this,” said Tony, presenting the other guest with a smile, “is Michael Barrett, our chaperon.”

  “He is not that,” said Marianne. “We don’t need a chaperon.”

  Tony winked at us. “Ah, innocence.”

  We all laughed politely and began making small talk, but shortly I noticed that Michael had sat back in his chair, seemingly content to be left out. He was an American, from Seattle originally, who’d been in Europe for several years. Somewhere in his early twenties, I imagined. He was rather tall and well built, with dark hair that was long but not unkempt.

  I thought it odd that someone so young should be so reserved. It might have been shyness, but there was more a brooding quality about him—an inner quietness, maybe even a sense of solitude. When he did speak, he was, to my mind, forcedly polite, and in Sean’s relaxed front room it was out of context, leaving a tension like an unresolved chord.

  Lea must have felt it, too. She was in a positive hurry to help with the drinks.

  Of course we all had gin and tonics. No other drink, even sangría—especially sangría—is so typically Spanish. We drank from tall glasses filled with ice and a wedge of lime. Outside, it still hadn’t completely darkened, and a slight warm breeze came through the open front door.

  Lea was over talking to Sean, Kyra was in the kitchen getting more ice, and Michael, now Mike, sat sipping his drink. Marianne harangued Tony about something in French, then got up from the couch and crossed to where I stood, near the liquor cabinet. She really looked enchanting.

  “Why are you standing over here alone?” she asked.

  “I’m an observer,” I said.

  She turned and looked at Mike, now talking with Tony. “We have too many of them here already. Come over and talk to us.” She reached out her hand to me—cool and very small—and led me over to the sofa.

  “What shall we discuss?”

  “Anything you like,” I said.

  Tony stood next to her and put his arm around her waist.

  “Would you get me another drink?” she said to him. Then, to me, “No one seems to pay much attention to the women here, n’est-ce pas? ”

  At that moment, Kyra came back in from the kitchen with the ice. She was wearing a floral print which fell loosely from her neck to the floor. It was open at the sides, clasped by a pin just above the waist, and she wore nothing under it. She was a fine-looking woman, if only she would not flaunt it so blatantly. She walked over to Tony, who was fixing Marianne’s drink, and hugged him from behind. Lea and I looked at each other and shook our heads, and when I turned to continue talking with Marianne, she had crossed over to Tony and stood possessively clutching his arm.

  I sipped my drink and joined Sean and Lea. Mike had gotten up and now the younger people were standing in a group and talking.

  “Have you known Mike long?” I asked Sean.

  “We were just talking about him, too,” said Lea.

  “Met him a few times. There is something about him, though, isn’t there?”

  Lea stared at him. “He seems a bit . . . I don’t know. I can’t place it at all.”

  Lea took my hand and squeezed it.

  “He works at a bar in town,” said Sean. “I’m not sure if he’s the bartender or waits tables, but he’s a nice enough guy. Plays a hell of a game of chess.”

  “So you do know him.”

  He shrugged. “The way one knows people here. He happened to be having a drink with Tony when I ran into them and asked them up.”

  “He seems perfectly normal now,” said Lea,

  “but just when he was sitting there, so quietly, it was . . . it was eerie, I suppose.”

  Sean laughed. “It’s this Spanish twilight. Alters all the shadows until they’re not quite recognizable.”

  “Or creates shadows out of nothing?”

  He remained smiling. “Maybe. But that’s the romance of this place. You sense a shadow, a mood, a mystery somewhere, but when you examine it, you find it was either the sun, or the heat, or the gin.”

  “There’s no real romance here, then?” I asked.

  “Depends on what you mean by real. It’s all real enough at a distance, so the trick, if you’re after romance, is to keep it there. If that movement in the bushes seems somehow strange, don’t walk out to the woods and find out it’s a bit of cloth dangling from a branch. Stay by your window and believe it’s a demon watching you.” He took a long drink. “Also depends on what you want to see.”

  Lea spoke. “So we imagined whatever it was about Mike?”

  “Just what was it you might have imagined?”

  “Well.” She paused. “I can’t really put my finger on it.”

  “Doug?”

  “I don’t really know, either.”

  “There,” he said, “you see. But go on believing anything you want. It makes life so much more interesting. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go hurry Berta.” He bowed, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Lea looked at me. “I suppose he’s right, but it did seem . . .” She stopped. “It seemed, whatever it was, real enough to me.”

  Four

  He turned out of the rutted backstreet and into the main road. Beside him on the seat was an open bottle of tinto, and from time to time he’d tip the bottle back as he raced along the curving road. He was anxious to get to the main road that ran out of Blanes, and get to his destination near Perpignan before daybreak.

  Already it was nearly four a.m. The bar had closed up late, and Victor, their singer, had stayed around to drink and swap songs for nearly an hour. Mike finally had to get him drinking Pernod laced with illegal absinthe, so that he’d get drunk and leave. Then there’d been the usual checking up to see that the graffa bottles were corked and ready for tomorrow. Luckily, it had been a quiet night. No one had been exceptionally drunk or obnoxious.

  That, at least, had been a relief. When he’d last gone to Perpignan, he’d spent all his closing time cleaning vomit from the floors. This cheap liquor really wasn’t the best thing to get drunk on. He took another swig of the tinto, and the trees whizzed by.

  Occasionally he’d see lights approaching and have to slow down. He didn’t know whether he preferred the private cars that tended to drift over into his lane, or the taxis that would always turn on their brights as they came closer, leaving him half-blinded as they sped past.

  He was no slouch behind the wheel himself. Even with the oncoming traffic to contend with, he made it from Tossa to Blanes in around twenty-five minutes. Then he hit the autoroute and really began to move. The white Citröen compact wagon quickly got to cruising speed; then he set the throttle, had a long drink of the wine, and lit a cigarette. Looking at his watch, he smiled. Should make it now, he thought.

  When he reached customs at the French border, the eastern sky was already light gray. There were no problems, of course. He got out his passport, and had it stamped, talked to the guard briefly and was passed through and into France. He drove a few more miles, then turned off the autoroute and up away from the sea flats into the foothills. On either side of him grew carefully tended stretches of vineyards. The sun came up behind him and lit up the countryside before him. Here and there patches of mist hung over the vineyards, and already he could see the workers moving in the rows.