All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [36]
Back to the bar, Tara and Lucy are still at the table, their heads resting on their arms on the table. I tap them, and it takes a few minutes for them to register my presence. “There you are,” says Tara, rousing herself.
“Did you go for a little swim?” Lucy asks. “Did the surfer make you all wet?” Lucy laughs, but Tara notices my pale face and straightens up.
I locate my beach bag and go into the restroom, where I rinse my face and cup my hands to drink as much water as I can. I change into my sarong, clean again.
“Let’s go,” I say, back at the table.
“School tomorrow,” Tara says, struggling to her feet, giving her head a shake to get rid of the drunkenness.
Turning to leave, I remember something. “My sunglasses!” I search the table, my bag, and turn to Lucy. “Did you see my sunglasses? They were right here on the table.” Those were my favorite sunglasses. I found them in Rome, paid more for them than anyone should pay for shoes, much less sunglasses, but they’d been worth it, they were cool, women stopped me on the street to ask where I got those sunglasses. And now some drunk fa’afafine bitch has them hiding in her pockets. “Fuck!” I say, and Tara looks away, embarrassed.
It is not Tara’s fault. Forget it. But my favorite sunglasses. They’re gone.
“Let’s go,” I say, wishing we could leave Lucy behind. We speed back toward Lucy’s plantation and drop her off without saying good-bye. I slow down when it’s just Tara in the car, and she’s apologizing for the glasses, for their drunkenness, and I reassure her, no, no, it’s all fine. When I get to Tara’s village, the open-sided house, I can see the sleeping forms of her mother and father in the corner on the mats. I say good-bye to Tara, and then offer her the wet dress in my bag, which I never want to see again. “It needs a wash,” I say, “but it might fit you.”
“Fa’afetei,” says Tara and gives me a gentle hug.
WHEN I FINALLY get out of bed in the morning, I stumble as I stand up. I rub the crease where my hip meets my leg, tender and sore deep inside. I must have strained it somehow. My head is pounding. I stand under the lukewarm shower until I am as awake as I’m going to get.
Coffee will help. I walk over to the main house and sit on the porch. The view of the waves is soothing.
A van of surfers pulls up. The driver’s tanned arm, leaning out the window, has a tattoo around it. My stomach jumps. The Samoan surfer climbs out of the van with some tourists, chatty New Zealanders, who are climbing the stairs to the porch. I want to bolt, but there’s no way to leave without walking straight past them. I put my head down and hide my face behind my coffee cup, wishing for my sunglasses. I will myself invisible as they settle into their table. I think I’m safe and then sense something or someone standing in front of me. The waiter with breakfast. I lift my head, and it’s the surfer. I cover my face with my hand and pretend it is a bad hallucination that will go away.
“I’m sorry,” I hear him say, and I cannot speak. I’m frozen, still as an animal whose only defense is to blend into the background. After a couple of beats, he moves, I hear him go down the stairs, and then, in the distance, the van door opening and closing.
I get up to settle my bill. I can’t eat breakfast, I have got to catch my plane. In a moment I’m driving away.
When I climb the stairs to the plane, my hip twinges sharply. I take my seat in the cramped plane and suddenly feel there isn’t enough air, the space is too enclosed. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. After the plane takes off, I peer out at the island, at its sultry greenness, and at the Falealupo Peninsula, the edge of the earth, entrance to the underworld with its evil spirits.
Home from Samoa, I unpack my bag and gather my clothes to throw everything into the laundry. When I touch the green flowered sarong I wore the last night on Savai