Marisa careered across the hallway while he called the elevator. Her voice ricocheted on doors and walls.
"Marco!"
She covered the distance separating them and handed him a sheet of paper.
"What's this?"
"The surprise I had for you. It's a ticket for a session in a surf park in Miami. It has artificial waves."
He smiled. So did she. They exchanged a luminous look that transported them back to happier days. Marco examined the sheet and, folding it, slipped it into the pocket of his shirt.
"Thank you."
She hesitated.
"Do you know what day is today?"
"I do."
"Do you really know?"
"Today it's been two years since we officially started dating."
Then his gaze waned, the elevator arrived and Marco disappeared.
His body, his suitcase and next the metallic door closing.
The deserted and white hallway, a light smell of floral disinfectant, outside a distant murmur and a rumba playing on the beach.
For an instant, Marisa had the hope Marco would stay. And yet she knew him well enough to sense he wouldn't make any concession. In contrast with his controlled and rational posture, Marco lived his emotions to the extreme. If he didn't have love, he was left with hate, which he rejected. His comfort would be coldness.
He wouldn't come back.
Marisa returned to the room—empty hands, empty eyes, empty heart.
Marco considered going to Miami, somewhere far from that place. In other circumstances, he would have already booked a room before disembarking, but he was tired of making plans. He advanced on the sidewalk through the tunnel of bar awnings, parasols and tables, surrounded by the mist of humidifiers and the music that kept shifting along with the colors of the awnings and tablecloths. Further ahead, tourists rollerskated, idled, flirted while he drifted away.
He was adrift in an enigma of infinite possibilities—an infinite prison. He could do whatever he liked or nothing. That engendered an unsettling lightness as though he didn't have substance. If it weren't for Marisa, he would stay in Canada. However, during the months following the New Year in Brazil, it became clear she wasn't happy in Toronto and would never be. Marco then had idealized their life in Brazil with his school and perhaps even her participation in the project if she was interested. A home, children. Everything he had planned until the previous day involved Marisa.
In Toronto he worked under the weight of the demands he imposed on himself. He demanded of himself performance because he entertained ambitions and wouldn't allow himself to fail, especially in the eyes of Marisa. It was also true he felt responsible for taking her away from her home and wanted to make sure her needs were met. He had resources, the initial hardships he shared with Lorena would never happen again, and still he lived under the dread that they might. That was a classic example of how the fear of making a mistake entailed as an offset the opposite mistake. There was something else behind it, though: by providing for Marisa, he exerted control.
Deep inside, it all boiled down to the trauma of an unmanageable marriage and the shock of divorce. But he could have devoted himself more to Marisa, sent more messages, given more flowers to show her he was present and cared for her. Presence didn't need to be physical and gestures counted, even remotely. Above all, remotely. Reexamining his behavior for the past year, Marco realized how much he had neglected Marisa in his eagerness to provide and control. Her estrangement wasn't gratuitous, it was inserted in a context.
A partner was a mirror. Now Marisa rendered back an image of him that didn't please Marco.
Marisa traversed the street to reach the boardwalk along the beach. She needed to fight the lethargy that impelled her to shut the curtains in the suite and bury herself in bed for the next three days. She wondered where Marco was and searched for his face in the procession of tourists on the boardwalk. Without him, she navigated through an uncomfortable anonymity—no one there knew her and she meant nothing to the strangers crossing her path.
Her march became furious and dispelled her melancholy, bringing to surface anger at the way Robert manipulated her. She felt violated as if he robbed her of something—her faith. Had Eliana not warned her, she would let herself get ensnarled and would spend the next years living with a monster on the high wire, without realizing where she had set foot: a golden cage of sorrow. At this thought, Marisa shivered.
Robert was a good actor and almost fooled her—or maybe he believed what he said? His promises suggested to an informed observer a caricature of sentimentality. He exhibited the well-tended appearance of someone determined to seduce, his surgeon's precise gestures at the service of the hunt. His tormented look wasn't triggered by passion for her but rather by predatory hunger and fear of loneliness.
Marisa's anger subdued. If she were to be honest, she'd have to admit she was even grateful to Robert, who in a warped way helped her remove one more veil of illusion and self-deception. In truth, the anger directed at him was a diversion from the anger directed at herself for her own naiveté, an anger that paved the path to remorse. It was sad but true: you only valued what you have lost—and how painful it was now to look back and see so many wasted moments.
The infatuation with Robert, her complaints about Marco, all seemed futile and irrelevant from that perspective. What leaped from the drawer of her memory was an evening in Toronto during her first week there. Marco came home from work bringing a bunch of cherry blossoms for her and a variety of delicacies. Along with a bottle of Merlot, he carried an armful of assorted bread, cheese, cold cuts, an apricot pie and tropical fruit.
"What's the occasion?" she inquired, pleasantly surprised, as she helped him unload the groceries on the kitchen counter.
"Your arrival has already brought me good luck. Today the school won a sponsorship and I managed to solve a number of pending issues."
"This definitely calls for a celebration. I'll set the table."
But he lifted Marisa in his arms and spun her in the air.
"No need for that. Do you remember that picnic we were supposed to have at Carmo Park when the cherry trees flowered?
She stared at Marco puzzled.
"You want to go out for a picnic? It's twenty-three degrees outside."
"We can improvise one here, Mari."
The two of them spread a tablecloth in the middle of the living room, where they arranged the flowers and the food. Their picnic didn't provide the open sky and birds singing. But it offered candlelight and the soft Gymnopédies by Erik Satie. They drank to the successes of the day and loved each other right there on the carpet.
They had been that couple once upon a time.
Where was that couple that no longer was?
Nostalgia invaded her and she understood Eliana's words: Toronto. The cold nights warmed by Marco's proximity. The white days hinting at the promise of the future, no matter how difficult the present was at times, for the snow would melt sooner or later. Sooner or later, always. The secret was to flow rather than march through life. Impatience, frustration and fear had blinded her. She demanded from herself an infallibility that dazed her, therefore everything felt arduous and complicated. She had wanted to look strong for Marco, ignored her own disquiet and ended up imploding.
Blaming Marco for neglecting her had been but an excuse so she wouldn't venture alone beyond her comfort zone. When Marisa told Robert that Marco and she completed each other, it was a lie, no more than a beautiful phrase. She knew no one could complete anyone and a relationship wasn't built over filling gaps. A relationship that was whole required people that were whole, not halves. In Toronto, because she was unable to complete her own self, because she ran away from herself, she had been just a half for Marco.
Now, at a distance, under the inclement sun, sweaty, sore, angry and confronted with the definitive absence of Marco—she could see that, too late.
Marco didn't plan to go inside that hotel one block away from the Victor neither did he pay attention to the establishment's name. He decided to stop at the cafeteria to drink a tonic water and clear his head. From there, his footsteps took him to the reception at which he queried if there was a room available. Yes, there was. Marco dumped his suitcase in the hotel and walked away. When he realized, he caught himself in front of the Victor and, unsettled, made a point in crossing the street toward the beach. The melody of the sea called him.
He followed the boardwalk by the expanse of sand and, reaching a deserted point, steered away to the beach and sat near the water. A strange euphoria took over him. In a way, it was liberating not to fear losing Marisa anymore. He had already lost her and didn't need to fight for a vanishing love. At this thought, the injury diligently anesthetized opened in his chest.
She wasn't perfect. She was human. She had been confused. She would forgive. When Marisa had talked like that, he refrained from shaking her and telling her to swallow up the commonplaces and leave him alone.
The scenes began rewinding at a vertiginous speed as if he pressed the button of a memory player. The player paused in one scene.
He and Eliana waiting for Robert to finish his spa session on board. The two returned to the solarium and sat on the edge of the pool with their feet dangling in the water. They chatted about one of his favorite subjects: literature. While they discussed John Steinbeck's allegories and the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, a flash sparkled within him with the glimmer of another reality. The sun filtering through the glass dome darted on the metals, drew slithering rays in the water and gilded Eliana's face. On it, Marco found vestiges of the tension she had been harboring.
"How are things with Robert?" he probed.
"Unstable."
"Did you talk to him about rehab?"
"Not yet. I decided to wait until we're back to San Diego."
"What if his problem isn't sexual compulsion?"
Eliana did not respond. Instead, she pointed at a potted plant on the other side of the pool: "Look what a beautiful bromeliad."
The leaves were stiff, and in the center the red flower made Marco think of a heart meticulously torn apart. He caught himself recalling the conversation he had with Eliana when he first met her on the ship. She let the steam out with no restraint. She even talked about sex. Robert closing his eyes or burying his face in her neck during orgasm. But there was this one time when things played out differently. They were in an erotic hotel, wedding anniversary, a room full of mirrors. Eliana underneath him. The movements filling her, emptying her. She noticed Robert's gaze fixed on a mirror. With an enigmatic smile, he admired himself in action. His gaze was a synthesis of their marriage. I felt like a hole, said Eliana. That night she understood the diffuse loneliness that, without a definite focus or specific grounds, oppressed her when she was with her husband
Now Marco detected on Eliana's face all the bitterness he himself had tasted one day. A foolish thought assailed him: he could erase the sadness from her face and make her happy. He ached to kiss her lips and feel her mouth. He imagined the two embracing, skin against skin. It was such a strong impulse that Marco gripped the edge of the pool with both hands to restrain it. And the impulse died away. It was when he recognized in Eliana's gaze the same sadness shading Marisa's gaze. Marco realized he was losing her irredeemably. The realization tightened his muscles until converting each fiber into twisted iron. It was as if he had been injected with poison.
Meanwhile, Marisa had disappeared. She was increasingly elusive and Marco no longer knew how to approach her. He waited for her in the cabin, and her prolonged absence—her indifference—incensed him. At that point Marco started to suspect Marisa waited for the return to Brazil to break up with him. He wasn't counting on Robert.