Miami Beach
Marco marched along the hallway on Deck 10, knuckles sore, breathing still erratic. His pace dragged as he approached the cabin, and it was with reluctance that he opened the door. The sight of Marisa, more than hurting, saddened him as on her face years seemed to have accumulated rather than days. It saddened him for those features belonged to a stranger that had nothing to do with the woman he fell in love with, the woman he had trusted without reservations. Everything in her was familiar yet foreigner, her brusque movements while closing the suitcase, the pursed lips, the machine-like hands.
They rolled their suitcases through the corridor with other passengers on their way to the elevator, many of which, like them, carrying luggage. They endured one queue to reach the packed atrium and another to retrace the inverse route of embarkment. Finally, they descended the ship's ramp to the cemented expansion of the port, the smell of salt mixed with engine oil, the rough and faded floors watched by smooth clouds in the sky. With a surreal sensation, Marco saw himself and Marisa arriving there full of enthusiasm and curiosity. It seemed like another life.
The passengers trickled down the ramp in an Indian file and spilled out at the bottom of the ship, meeting friends and family or heading for the taxi stop nearby. Marco and Marisa merged into the second group and took a cab to South Beach. They kept quiet paying attention to the route, first McArthur Causeway escorted by palm trees on an expanse of silver waters, and then Miami Beach with its skyscrapers covered in glass capturing the colors of the sky. The taxi crossed the picturesque streets in pastel hues of the Art Déco District and stopped in front of Hotel Victor on Ocean Drive.
Marco instructed the driver to remove only Marisa's luggage from the boot. She panicked.
"Aren't you coming?"
"No. I'll find another hotel. You can stay here and enjoy the next couple of days until departure. The room is paid off. I'll see you at the airport."
Marisa's devastated expression almost touched his heart.
"I need to speak with you. Please, Marco. Let's talk."
She didn't wait for a reply and jumped out the car, asking the driver to pick up his suitcase too. Marco left the taxi vexed and accompanied her. They paused at the reception for the check-in—the banality of polite answers mocking their state of mind. Then the quick elevator ride, the suite on the third floor.
Marco remained by the door while Marisa moved to the sofa. Seeing her there with her grayish clothes against the sunny backdrop of the window, Marco thought of a sloppy photomontage. Marisa urged him to seat with her and he acquiesced, already aware that the conversation would be brief. Marco conceded her few words, barely registering what she said. It was just sentences repeated since immemorial times that would continue to be repeated until the end of times. Like those cheap soap opera lines. Thus was love—a heap of clichés.
I love you. Forgive me.
She had turned their love into a cliché. For a lapse, Marco loathed Marisa. Nothingness ensued. Marco didn't know what he was doing there. It was useless. He stood and headed for the door. Before opening it, he laughed and faced Marisa.
"You see the irony? If we had gone for the other ship, none of this would happen. But you were right. It was an unforgettable trip."
"Why are you torturing me like that?"
Marco didn't reply, and Marisa disarmed him momentarily:
"If we had chosen the other ship, we would have a pleasant and fun cruise. You'd surf on your artificial wave and I would sunbathe by the pool. We would enjoy all the attractions on board, I could even read a Steinbeck book and we would be back here exactly how we left, with the same problems swept under the carpet. We'd return to Brazil and our relationship would go on as dissatisfying as in Canada. Is that what you wanted?"
"Maybe you should read more Steinbeck."
"It was just a kiss, Marco."
The statement, so simple and straightforward, enraged him.
"You know it wasn't just that, Marisa. It was a kiss that would lead to another, to bed, to clandestine trysts and lies. It was a door you opened. Each of us has a self-image and follow a script according to it. But that image and the script can be modified. It suffices to take the first step."
"I don't get it. What—"
"You can bet Lorena's affair with Rafael started with a kiss. You believe you're incapable of cheating, right? This is the story you repeat to yourself. If a man invites you to bed, you refuse because that doesn't match your story. On the other hand, if a man asks for a hug, you won't refuse. From there it's easier to move from hug to kiss. After the kiss comes the caress and after that, sex. At each deviation from the script, your brain adjusts the plot. Then what you once considered unconceivable becomes the rule. Those are the lies we tell ourselves."
"You're ignoring an important detail, Marco. What was the underlying reason for that kiss?"
Her gaze, up to now irresolute, steadied whereas his retracted into dithering.
"No one knows the answer better than you. What was the reason, Marisa?"
"I told you. I'm not perfect. I'm human and I was confused. I thought you were in love with Eliana and no longer wanted me."
"And a mere supposition gave you the right to lie?"
"I didn't lie."
His exasperation translated into an audible sigh.
"Okay. You didn't lie. Let's use a euphemism. You omitted. Omitted that you already knew Robert, that he tried to kiss you on the first day of the cruise and wrote you a romantic card and declared his feelings on the island. And I ask why you omitted all of that."
Listening to him, her behavior sounded disloyal. Marisa had no reaction. How had it all started again? Ah, with a minor omission to spare Robert and Eliana.
"Robert was drunk when he pulled me for a dance on the first day. Later he apologized and asked me not to tell anyone so to avoid further problems with Eliana. I figured if I kept quiet I'd also avoid creating an awkward situation for you since she's your friend," Marisa defended herself with sudden eloquence.
"And afterward? Why didn't you tell me about the card and what happened on the island?"
"I was going to tell you."
"Quit the lies, Marisa. Who are you trying to fool? If that didn't mean a thing, you would have spoken out. The question is not the kiss or what you hushed. The question is what transpired in your attitude." Marco grew exacerbated. Given her silence, his voice soared: "How would you feel if you knew I kissed Eliana and decided to live with her?"
Marisa couldn't articulate a reply. Her throat tightened, her mouth dried up.
"You did that?" she stammered.
Marco's expression became cruel. His eyes invoked wells of darkness.
"I'll answer your question with the wisdom of Camões. He defines love as a life of discontent contentment." Here, he smiled harshly. "No, Marisa. I didn't do any of that. Even if I was confused. Even if I felt excluded. I respected our pact."
Camões warned: Love is loyalty for that which kills us. And Fernando Pessoa: The heart, if it could think, would stop. Marco's had stopped the night before. It beat without feeling, contained and locked within itself. It even rejoiced in reciting poets to self-validate, but not for the usual reasons.
Love was circumstantial, so his heart reasoned. Always. It spread out in the good winds of passion, in the indomitable ardor of passion, in the excitement of novelty, in the transgression of the forbidden, and it lasted until the coming of stability that ironically destabilized it, making it wither in apathy or rotten under the tempest of rancor. And that was it, later it encountered another propitious meadow to flourish and reinitiate the eternal cycle. In the heat of exaltation, love believed in the truths it weaved with utter conviction and abandonment. I love you, I want you forever, you can count on me. But such truths weren't more than circumstances—no more than circumstances, like the trivial oscillations of the time for sowing, like the infallible inconstancy of the wind. Like life.
Time passed by and there was no way for one to remain the same. The couple changed, love changed, each party gradually transforming before the other, an imperceptible transformation here and there until the sum culminated in a sharp turnaround of thought, attitude and aspirations. If their curves of transformation didn't point to the same path, the lovers found themselves on a collision route or following opposite directions. It was hence that one day—with shock, disillusion, immense pain—you woke up next to a person suddenly turned into a stranger that contradicted the image you had of them, a person capable of skewing as if it were nothing the whole script written up to that point. It was hence that one day you took a cruise.
Restraining his mounting irritation, Marco gripped the door knob.
"You said in a relationship one partner is the mirror of the other, Marisa. Maybe you don't like the reflection I'm showing of yourself. Take it as an opportunity for learning. Relationships help us grow. They don't merely happen, they're built or destroyed day by day. It doesn't make sense to insist on a relation doomed to failure. Ours is over. It should serve as an experience for the next."
And, with that, he opened the door and left.
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With this chapter we reach 90% of the story. So, 10% of 40 chapters... we still have 4 chapters to go. Quoting Marco, things change...