Sunsets of Tulum. Mr Raymond Avery Bartlett
to the Grand Medallion Cancún,” said the driver. “Let me get your bags.”
“Finally,” Laurel said, as they got out and entered the lobby. “I will be so glad to get into the pool.”
As the young man at the desk handed them two freshly minted keycards and a lovely young lady brought them each a welcome margarita in an ocean-blue, salt-rimmed glass, Reed felt a sudden ache for something undefinable, as if he were a caterpillar feeling for the first time that inexorable yearning for wings.
Day Three
The Third Girl
Reed found Laurel on the far side of the pool, a straw sun hat partially covering her face, one leg up on the chaise longue in a supermodel pose, her skin already a deep bronze in just three days. A tall glass of something pink and fruity was on the table next to her, and a dog-eared novel hung in her left hand. Nearby was a bowl of salted peanuts and an ashtray made out of a shell. A twenty-something waiter with chiseled biceps melted away from her as if a sixth sense told him that a husband was near.
Reed sat in the chair next to hers and for a while neither spoke, even though it was clear from the lack of turning pages that she was not reading anything anymore. An optimistic seagull was hanging in the sky above them, riding a micro thermal, as immobile as if it were a toy tied to a string. Only its head moved, the sharp eyes scouring the cement below for crumbs.
“I was looking all over for you,” Reed said.
“I’ve been right here.”
“You could have said you were going to the pool.”
“You were already in the shower.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d almost say you’re avoiding me.”
Laurel looked at him. “I know what you want this to be,” she said. “I’m sorry. We’re not there. Or I’m not there.”
“What’s that mean? What do I ‘want this to be’?”
She sounded more philosophical than sad. “This. This vacation. And it was a nice thing you tried last night. Getting the waiter in on it. I was touched.”
“Not touched enough to actually dance.”
“Because it was embarrassing.”
“Not as much as being the guy who couldn’t coax his wife up onto the dance floor. After all that. In front of all those people.”
“You should have told me. Given me some kind of warning.”
“So you could say ‘no’ right from the start.”
“Probably true,” she laughed. “It was sweet, Reed. That song will forever take me back to—” She stopped.
Reed smiled. “It’s like our little time machine.”
“Except, Reed, we’re not who we were back in college anymore. Sometimes I don’t even like hearing that song. It makes me sad.”
“What’s sad about it?”
“You’re hoping I can be who I was back then.”
“No, I want you to be yourself.” He wanted to be in the helicopter, soaring up like the seagulls that were forever above the pool, high enough above the world to see the big picture and not worry about the little details. “I just want that person to also be wanting the same things in life that I do.” He reached out and took her hand. “That’s not impossible, right?”
“I don’t think having kids is possible. Adopting, I mean.”
“People juggle kids and a career all the time.”
Laurel put her book down and looked out at the pool. “You know how it is. The moment an anchorwoman gets pregnant they’re out. It changes everything. God, I still get butterflies thinking about how that felt when I got that promotion. It was a dream come true. I don’t want that to crumble.”
“I still get butterflies thinking about you,” Reed said quietly. “But it’s pretty easy to tell it’s not mutual. Hasn’t been for a while.”
His wife stared out at something far away for a long time, then nodded slowly. “It’s hard to think about…about disappointing you. Hurting you. But I’m not in that place right now. I’m not sure I ever was, but I’m not there now. I know you want me to be there. I’m just…my heart’s not in having kids anymore. If it ever was.” Laurel kept staring out, past the pool, past the seawall, somewhere far out where the blueness of the Caribbean met the mapping of her own mind. She started to say something and then stopped, tried again, then slowly stood up.
“Weren’t you going to learn to swim this time?” she asked. “No, wait, you were going to learn to ‘enjoy it.’?” She sounded tired.
“You’re changing the subject,” Reed said, trying to make it sound like he was laughing, but his chest felt as if someone were sitting on it. “Like you’re onto the next news story. And I’ve always wanted to swim. I didn’t say it like that.”
“Enjoy it. Those were your exact words.”
“Honey, there’s a lot more that we could be doing here than just sitting by the pool.”
“Sure. We could swim in it.” She walked to the edge of the water and bent her knees.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Reed couldn’t help admiring her dive: Barely a ripple, as if she’d sliced the surface with a blade and slipped inside. He watched the white patch of her swimsuit as it shimmered in the blue until she came up for air nearly three-fourths of the way across the pool, and he wondered what it would be like to enjoy staying underwater that impossibly long. She continued in a leisurely backstroke to the opposite side, then pulled herself out in one fluid motion and walked to the bar.
It took Reed a few moments to realize that the conversation, maybe the biggest one they’d had since getting married, was over. His hands were shaking.
“A drink, Señor?” asked a young waiter with “Carlos” on his name tag.
“Sure,” Reed replied, sinking down onto the still-wet nylon webbing of the chaise longue. “Anything, just make it strong, tall, and cold.”
No doubt Carlos was trained to watch for such situations and defuse them quickly with attentiveness and alcohol. Reed imagined that the boy had seen a thousand discussions just like this one, a hundred thousand hopefuls pinning their marriages on a week in this or that brochure’s paradise pages. In a day or a week or a month, the actors would rotate, new actors flying in, the same little dramas would play out and end in divorce or sex or bitterness or reconciliation or something in between. But it wasn’t like a week anywhere could wipe a slate clean, turn back time, or conceive miracles any differently than had the two stayed home.
Reed stared back up at the seagull, envying it the effortless non-mechanical loft. No rotors to worry about, no gravity that it couldn’t handle, no pilot to send it plunging earthward. As the waiter left behind a stand of coconut palms, two young women appeared at the stairway railing, looking around at the pool. Hesitancy was the only thing that gave them away as non-guests.
The first was tall, five feet nine or so, with straight, honey-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, and an affable, friendly smile. A blue bikini top with strings tied in little bows on the sides barely covered the tan, curvy torso. The other girl was a peroxide blonde, a head shorter, pudgy, with a chiseled nose that looked too cookie-cutter perfect to not be surgically crafted. A black vinyl camera bag hung from her wrist, studded with what could very well have been real diamonds.
Reed was about to turn his attention back to the abalone shell and its mysteries when a third girl appeared. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was tied in a low pony tail, quick and careless, as if the only purpose was to keep it from tickling a neck as long as a sea lion’s. Unusually bright lips