Still Life in Shadow Ch. 02

Maybe the fact that I was 55, and she would turn twenty in just three weeks time. Maybe the fact that I had stood by her father at her christening, that I had cheered her on while she played soccer in middle school, or that I had watched as she graduated from high school just a year ago. That perhaps my life would soon all be in the past, while so much of hers had yet to unfold.

She was a friend, I wanted to say, and I wanted to ignore her past, my past, the past that said she was still a child in so many ways. I wanted to cling to the woman I saw before me, to love the life I had never known, perhaps never could know, without her.

She was so beautiful there in the sun.

Was I really so blind?

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Latham was sick, sicker than he knew. He had decided to leave, to return to the Bolero and return to the sea from which he had just come, to resume the journey he had decided to make back in Washington. I couldn't help but admire his choice, though I understood all too well the personal implications he faced.

Could I, I wondered, face the prospect of dying alone on a little boat at sea? In pain, with no one to help me, no one to console me?

Was that the only choice available to him?

I went to Maria, went to tell her of David's choice.

"I suspect most of us confront this choice," she said, "though perhaps not in such extreme terms as his."

"Well, I wonder about what happens when he gets out there, and the pain really settles in. Then what? Does he call for help again? Do people run to his rescue, perhaps get hurt trying to get to him, or worse? I keep wondering if there isn't an alternative."

"Such as?"

"Hell, he could stay here. Sail around here, visit the islands, come back here when he gets too weak to continue."

Maria seemed to consider this for a while. "Well, as long as the boat is his residence, he can stay here for eighteen months without any problem. I don't think time's going to be an issue. Have you talked to him about this?"

"No, not really."

"Do you want to, or would you think it better if we both talked to him?"

"Why don't we talk to him tonight?"

And so we did.

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David decided to remain in the Azores, and he decided to live on his boat down in the harbor. He seemed content with his choice, and managed to get by on the regimen of mild pain killers that Maria prescribed. He cleaned up his little boat, then started stripping the teak down to bare wood. He began to varnish the wood. Everyday I walked down to the harbor I found him hunched over the wood, babying it, coaxing all the beauty out of the wood that he could. At first Bolero looked simply gorgeous, but as the summer days grew shorter the boat began to glow. Visitors to Horta arriving by ferry walked by her and stopped and stared at the boat, and at David as he worked away on her. He could often be heard down below, an electric sander whining in the confined space, and occasionally he would pop up through the companionway, his face and hair covered with honey-colored dust before walking away for lunch or dinner. Soon it became apparent what he was doing.

He had no child to leave behind, no lasting works to bequeath to the world, save his little Bolero. He had decided to turn her into a work of art, into something so beautiful that all who came upon her would stop and marvel at her beauty, and perhaps, wonder about the man who had tendered such a gift with his passing.

As September came, I too decided to remain in the Azores. I didn't contest my wife's divorce, and I signed everything I owned over to her, left her all of my money. I simply wanted to be done with her, done with her evil intentions, done with the sickness she had given me. The hospital managed to take me on permanently, Jennifer continued to reside with Maria, and the inevitable happened.

I fell in love again.

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Perhaps it would have been a simple tale after all, had I told Jennifer that she would grow out of her love for me, that as she experienced the world - out from under the sheltering wings of her father and mother - she would soon take to that world, begin a journey of her own.

It was not to be. This was not to be such a simple tale.

I came to Maria's house one afternoon and found them in the bathroom. Maria was brushing Jennifer's hair, and their was tenderness in her eyes. Perhaps affection would be a better word. They both looked at me in the mirror, and our eyes held on to the moment for an eternity. I shook inside at the thought, the thought that Maria and Jennifer were lovers, and that was when tall, staid Maria took Jennifer by the hand and led her to the nearby bed.

So that was why she had left Switzerland, why she had left the bright lights.

I watched as Maria lay my Jennifer down on her bed and parted her thighs. I watched as Maria's face disappeared between Jennifer's outstretched legs, and as Jennifer held Maria's face to her need.

Had I truly been so blind to everything unfolding around me?

I was shaking. I wasn't angry; I was simply overcome. The end of a marriage, coming to terms with my love for Jennifer . . . I had no word for the emotion that pulsed through me now as I watched these two women making love before me. Jennifer, her auburn hair strewn across white sheets, her face rocking from side to side, her legs arcing magnificently in the current charged air, her feet laying on Maria's back. Lust. Lust filled the air, and I didn't know how to respond. This was unknown territory to me.

"Come here," Jennifer said to me. "Come be with us . . ."

I went to the bed, sat on the edge, and Jennifer turned to me and undid my belt, unbuttoned my slacks, and took me in her mouth. Maria didn't miss a beat, she slid up between my legs and joined Jennifer. The sight was mesmerizing; two women in my lap, their tongues working on me in helpless rhythms defined by needs so ancient, so forgotten . . .

Then Jenn was on my face, Maria on my lap, and I could feel them kissing above me.

My world, the world I had known all my life, was dissolving in the air above us.

But suddenly everything felt indescribably beautiful.

Pt III pending