Clancy Martin is a contributing editor at VICE and Harper's. He is also a novelist, essayist and philosophy professor. His forthcoming short novel, Love in Central America, is about a woman, a writer, who finds herself at a crisis-point in her life and responds to it by having an affair and resuming her self-destructive drinking. "It is loosely based on a disastrous year in my own life. I chose the excerpt for you guys because—with allowances for some gender-switching and other fictional devices—it, the excerpt, really happened."
Annons
Our hotel didn't have a pool, and later we went to thepool at a property Madonna owned or had owned and Iordered Eduard a drink so that we had a right to swim.A couple who had rented a cabana told us we could lay in theirdeck chairs. I was tan all this year—it was almost exactly a year,now, since Eduard and I had started—but I needed some sunon my skin. My upper lip had broken out in tiny pimples like amoustache. Eduard drank his mojito, I drank my Coke Light. Idid not want a drink. We watched the fat, burned white peopleand ripped Asian boys and skinny haughty boys in sunglasses.One girl with shoulder-length glossy black hair that hadn't beenwet yet stared at Eduard through her aviators. She was standingin the water at the end of the pool with the sun showing on hertight body. Her swimsuit was expensive, red with an orange stripe,and snug. She was drinking cognac from a snifter."Do you want to get in the water?" Eduard asked."Sure."I watched him perform in the pool for this young woman. Hewent underwater and tossed his head back when she came tothe surface. He swam laps then stretched his arms and back. Hedid a backflip off the diving board. I might have done somethingsimilar if a beautiful young man were admiring me. Still I wasirritated. I stood on a small fountain in the middle of the pool.I was out of the water to about my knees, and I saw that, in thewhite bikini shorts I had bought, you could see everything.
Annons
"Honey," Eduard said. "Come back into the pool. Let mehold you in the water.""I will," I said. I thought, How do you like it?He had put his sunglasses on. Everyone looks ridiculous whenthey wear their sunglasses in a swimming pool. But Eduard waswearing his sunglasses in Madonna's swimming pool."Maybe we should have bought black shorts for you,"Eduard said. "Or coloured ones. The white ones are a littletransparent now that they're wet."I glanced down. "They're fine. You are so paranoid. Besides,you're the one who's showing off.""Hey, I'm missing you down here," Eduard said. MissAsian Perfect Body was still watching him. Other people hadnoticed me. I saw women talking quietly to each other andmotioning with their chins the way they do.I got back into the water. Eduard carried me around the pool."You're being silly," I said.I went and got his mojito from our pool table. Now mostof the people there noticed my transparent shorts."Pool drinks," I said when I got back to Eduard. It was ajoke that Paul used to make.When we got out of the pool, the couple had taken theirdeck chairs back."Sorry," the man said. The woman regarded mewithout an expression. Eduard wrapped me in a towel, thenput one around himself.The beautiful young Asian woman hadn't moved from herspot. But now she was eyeing someone else's man.She'll learn, I thought.Then I thought, No. As long as there's a market for it,people will always be looking at each other, and enjoying
Annons
being watched. In the god realm, the Mayans said, they makelove by exchanging glances.Paul's mother told me once, "The worst thing about growingold is that you become invisible." Only a beautiful womancould know something that awful.
I said, "I want to take you out tonight. You're always paying.Let me buy tonight.""You could buy drinks before dinner. How about that?""You choose a place."He chose the Ritz, which was a good sign. We hadmade love very gently and for a long time before we wentout, and we were happy. We walked along the edge of thesea in the dark. He carried my heels and we held hands.There was no moon, and the water was quiet. From thebeach the Ritz-Carleton looked like the nicest hotel inCancun, but the bar was empty except for three discouragedmiddle-aged women. They looked like businesspeopleor corporate saleswomen of some kind, but there is nobusiness in Cancun.The pools of the hotel were illuminated and the lightsshone across the bar and gave the air an underwater feeling.The women could have been holding their breath, or theirgills might open, or they could be drowned, I thought. Theylooked at Eduard with frank appreciation.It is exhausting dating a sexual man. Every time you walkinto a bar or restaurant there they are, all the predators whowant to take him from you."I want a whiskey," Eduard told the bartender. "With justone cube of ice. She'll have a Coke Light."
Annons
The bartender poured him four fingers of whiskey inthe glass. I saw him look at the bartender—she was a tinything, my size or smaller, she couldn't have weighed ninetypounds—and she moved on down the bar.It was one of those half-inside-half-outside bars they haveat resorts in the tropics.Eduard took two long sips of his whiskey. He waswearing a linen suit that he knew I loved. I wiped off my lipstick witha cocktail napkin and kissed him."I love you," he said. "I really want us to be together."They were playing old American country music. Eduardfinished his drink in three big swallows and ordered another.The bartender poured it the same. He drank it down, andordered a third."What's gotten into you?""Let's get in the pool. Come into the pool with me," hesaid. He got a fourth to carry with him."I'll watch you.""You're no fun," he said.He took off his shoes, rolled up his trousers to the knee,and walked between the bar pool and the larger infinity pool.The two pools were connected by a shallow, underwater ledge.Walking along it, the water reached Eduard's calves. He took histrousers off. He wore yellow silk boxers with elephants printedon them. Both pools were illuminated and the blue light shoneup on him from below. He took his shirt off and dipped in thewater. The women had perked up. I took pictures with myphone. Eduard took his underwear off, and threw them towardsme in a ball. They landed in the pool and floated conspicuously.
Annons
A husband had arrived and he gave me a questioninglook. Even the bartender raised his eyebrows at me.Eduard was singing in Spanish, in his strong soprano, withhis penis flapping around, but he wasn't slurring his words.It was a love song he was singing to the night.I picked up my Coke Light and moved to a table closerto the pool. It had been raining earlier and I brushed offthe cushions before sitting. The cushion soaked the ass ofmy dress."Come on, come out here!" Eduard shouted. I smiledand waved. Just a week ago this would have been the timeto drink half of his whiskey, I thought. But I didn't want it.It may have been stubbornness. No alcoholic, no matterhow practiced, whether she's had twenty relapses or never hadone in twenty years, can explain why she doesn't take a drink.He was dancing a tango with himself. I didn't know whatI would do if he fell the wrong way. Presumably one of thehotel staff would rescue him. I'd never seen him truly drunkbefore. He seemed larger. At last he came back to sit withme. He put his clothes back on carefully. He looked aroundfor his underwear, which had at last sunk into the pool.Without getting up, I looked around for his shoes. He walkedaround barefoot. Then he sat, and quickly stood up again.He wobbled, held the arms of the chair, and sat back down."This chair. Got my pants wet." He took a sip of his whiskey."Did you like my song?"I showed him the pictures. He laughed. He looked handsome.
Annons
Drunk and bold and blue in the pool lights and silly.I showed them to him again the next day, performing a postmortemof my own, and he still loved them."Hey, Julio Iglesias," I said, "who's the exhibitionist now?"And he laughed and said, "What's good for the goose."We borrowed a convertible from the Mercedes dealer intown—he was a friend of Eduard's—and drove to a house at theend of the peninsula. That night there was a storm and whenwe woke the ocean and the seaside had been swept clean. Thehouse was down on the sand, and the glass doors of our bedroomopened to the beach and the sea not even fifty yards away."Let's get in the ocean," he said."Okay, in a minute." No one was up yet. Further downpeople lived on the beach in little straw huts, and cookedfi sh, rice and plantains. You could walk across a channel intothe grassy jungles of Belize.Before Cancun I had told him that everything could bealright with me, again, if I could swim in the ocean withhim and see the sun on his skin. When I was sober, thisseemed both impossible and true. If I had three drinks Isaw it wasn't a dream at all, it was simply going to happenthat way, it would all work out, if we were patient, if wecould both be kind.
When we swam the water was too salty and we didn'tstay out long. "You're supposed to dive into thewaves," he told me."I know. I like to swim over them."When I was a kid in Florida my mom said she liked to
Annons
watch me go into the surf. I clenched my fists like I wantedto conquer the ocean. I still prefer to stand in the waves andtry to jump over them.The way Eduard swam it was like he was trying to gosomewhere.Like a surfer swims in the ocean, but he wasn't headedfor a break.He held me in his arms, rolling up and down with theforming waves, cradling me and trying to get me to laugh,but it was like we were doing it because we had agreed wewould, and it didn't work.Taken from Love in Central America by Clancy Martin, published byHarvill Secker in August. Copyright © Clancy Martin 2016.