Page 101 of Two Chances With You

One of the many paintings set in the sand like giant colorful seashells, left to dry in the open air. We choose it together, amused to notice that we were both captured by the same one.

“We certainly are simpatico, aren’t we, Step?”

“Yeah.”

I pay the man five dollars, he rolls it up, and we carry it home with us to our bungalow at a slow and leisurely walk.

“I’m worried.”

“Why? About your belly? It’s early for that.”

“You jerk! It just seems strange to me. It’s been ten days, and we haven’t fought once! All day, every day together, and we haven’t had a single quarrel.”

“Well, then, wouldn’t it have been better to say: ‘All night, every night together and we’ve always, unfailingly…’”

Gin whips around. She gives me a tough, grim expression.

“Made love! Don’t get mad at me. There’s no reason to glare at me! That’s exactly what I was about to say. All night, every night together and we’ve always, unfailingly made love.”

“Yes…yes…certainly.”

“Even though…” We continue walking. “Sorry, Gin. But ‘we’ve always, unfailingly fucked’ just seems to me to be a more accurate description.”

I start running. “You jerk. Then just say it, that you want a quarrel!”

She starts running after me, trying to catch me. I quickly open the front door to the bungalow and slip inside. She arrives a short while later.

“All right then…you’re really looking for a fight.”

“No, look…” and I point to the window, “it’s almost dark. It’s late now, and if we’re going to fight, we fight in daylight!” I pull her close to me. “Because at night…”

“At night?” Gin replies.

“At night we make love, okay? We can say it however you prefer.”

“Okay.”

She smiles. I kiss her. She’s beautiful. I hold her a little distance away from my face. I smile back at her. “But now let’s fuck!” She hits me again. But it only lasts a moment, we get lost between cool sheets that smell wonderfully of the sea. And we make love, fucking.

***

We’ve spent a number of days on the island. And it’s true, we’ve never once quarreled. Quite the opposite. We’ve had our fair share of fun. I’d never have thought it could be like this, and with someone like her…The other evening, I found myself lost amid the ocean waves. They seemed so sweet, warm and soft, in that shallow water, without strong currents. Or maybe it was all because of the beauty and simplicity of that kiss we exchanged. Just like that, in silence, looking into each other’s eyes, embracing in the moonlight, going that far and no further. We laughed, we chatted, we remained in that embrace. The beautiful thing about an island like this one is that you have no appointments. Everything you do, you do purely because you feel like it, never because you have to. Every night, we eat dinner in a little restaurant. The whole place is made of wood, and it’s right by the water’s edge, I mean, you walk down three steps and you’re already in the water. We read the menu without any real idea of what’s actually written on it. In the end, we always ask them to explain. The people who work there are all very courteous, and they smile a lot. And after listening to their explanations, generally pretty easy to understand, consisting of hand gestures and lots of laughter, we decide to try a different dish for each meal. Maybe it’s because we want to try them all, more or less, because we’re hoping that, sooner or later, we’ll like at least one. But especially because we’re happy.

“And listen, this is important, without any strange sauces, without anything on it. Nothing, nothing…”

When they hear us talking like that, they always nod their heads. Invariably. Even when we say absurd things to them. In the end, we never know what they’re really going to bring us. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes, not so well.

I try to give Gin some advice. “Anyway, if you go for roasted ‘pescado’ you’ll never be sorry.”

She laughs. “My God, you’re already an old man. The fun of it is to try lots of new things, to try everything.”

I look around. There’s practically no one else on this island. At a small table some distance away, another couple is dining. They’re older and quieter than us. Is it normal that as you grow older, you have less and less to say? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I’m in no hurry. I’ll find out when the time comes.

Gin, on the other hand, just talks and talks, about this and that, about amusing and interesting things of all sorts. She makes me aware of aspects of life that I would never have known about, much less even imagined, if it hadn’t been for her. And I listen to her, as I gaze into her eyes, without ever losing track of each other. Plus, she always has a thousand ideas about what to do next.

“Listen, I just have a wonderful idea. Tomorrow, let’s go to an island just across the water, no, even better, let’s rent a boat and go out fishing, no, no, better still, let’s do some trekking on the interior of the island…Huh, what do you say?”

I smile. I don’t tell her that the island has a total diameter of barely a kilometer. “Certainly, a wonderful idea.”

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