"Where are we going?" the woman asked.
"Where do you wanna go?"
"I don't know."
"Then let's have an ice cream."
She eyed him incredulously without slowing down. She looked at her wet skirt and sandals covered in sand, glanced at Marco's sneakers and the cuffs of his pants in no better condition, and shook her head.
"We can't go inside an ice cream parlor dressed like this."
"What importance can appearances have in the face of death?"
Stepping onto Ocean Drive, the two brushed the sand from their clothes and shoes. Their destination was an ice cream parlor at the end of the street, a compact establishment with white ceramic floors and Formica tables. While she left to wash her face, Marco placed an order at the counter exuding the odorous colors of childhood—electric blue, apple-green, succulent orange, the sentimental red of cherries dozing in translucent honey. Outside, the sun shone in yellow and the world was about to collapse.
Marco waited for the woman at one of the tables and, suddenly famished, attacked his sundae starting with the cherry. After a few minutes she came back with her makeup retouched, hair combed, the skirt and sandals still damp but clean. The woman took the seat opposite to him, venturing a smile.
"What's your name?"
"Marco."
"Thank you, Marco."
She didn't clarify if she thanked him for the ice cream or for preventing her from accomplishing her intent. Initially she stirred her sundae in a perfunctory fashion but gave in to Marco's insistence and ate with increasing gusto.
"Feeling better?" Marco asked when she finished.
The woman nodded and stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Scrutinizing her, Marco guessed she must be around his age, maybe a few years older.
"You know my name and I still don't know yours."
"Judith."
"Why, Judith?"
She averted her gaze to the window with a nervous giggle.
"That was nonsense." She looked agitated and reached for her purse hanging from the backrest of the chair. "I need to go back to the hotel."
But he retained her with a firm gesture.
"I don't think it's a good idea for you to be alone. Why don't you tell me what happened?"
Releasing the strap of her purse, she straightened up and sighed.
"I lost everything. I wanted to at least die in a sunny place."
"How about living in a sunny place? All that is lost can be rebuilt one way or another."
Judith disagreed vehemently, spitting her reply with such bitterness that for a moment it contaminated the beauty of her face.
"I lost faith in life and, without it, it's impossible to rebuild anything. I don't have dreams anymore, my future is now. An eternal now, a vegetative state, a burden. To live for the sake of living. What's the point to this waste? I'm already dead inside."
She was from Holland and her only family had been a younger brother and her husband Bert. The previous year the brother had succumbed to a seven-year battle against cancer. Judith quit her job to take care of him, encouraged by her husband. Months after she lost her brother, Bert left her for a younger woman, defenestrating a decade-long marriage. They didn't have children because they waited for the right moment and it never came.
She had been tossed onto the collective fate of women who'd lost their sparkle upon growing older. Whereas gray-haired men were celebrated for their life experience and could easily exchange a forty-year-old woman for two aged twenty, women's life experience meant nothing. The world was for them a merciless mirror reflecting only their lost glow. Judith no longer had the energy to fight that reflection.
"It's funny that you should mention mirrors. I was thinking about them," said Marco, and at her puzzled expression, he continued: "We're stronger than we think. All we need is the occasion to present itself. You can still remarry, have kids, find another job."
And, once again, Judith fiercely objected. She wanted to do relevant work, and her brother's illness made her question everything. She realized her job as an executive secretary had no relevance whatsoever, it was mere scheduling and cancelling and rescheduling until the end of times. Judith didn't know how to do anything else and her savings were already dwindling, life being reduced to a jumble of preoccupations and bills with no joy or peace.
She had wanted a man to love her and suffered one disappointment after another. Her first fiancé said one day he'd never loved her, it had been a mistake. Her second fiancé left complaining Judith didn't love him enough because she shielded herself. And her husband, just look at what happened: the man who sworn love in sickness and in health took off leaving a note where he pondered the imponderable in a bunch of meager, ridiculous lines.
"Imagine, a note. That's how he ended ten years of marriage, treating me like garbage." Her lips tightened, their generous curve vanishing into a stern dash. "I don't believe in love. It's a perverse cocktail of hormones and neediness, nothing more. It lasts while it's convenient and when it dries out not a single drop remains. What was the use of dedicating my life to that marriage? I always dreaded being alone and for one year now I've been alone. For one year, I've been living my worst nightmare."
Marco understood. He had also been face to face with his worst nightmare since the day Lorena left—the afternoon fading on the street and inside his chest, her suitcases packed, not even a note. Whereas Judith sought refuge in relationships to escape fear, he had repelled love for the same reason. In truth, the two of them pursued the same goal through opposite routes. There was, however, a great distance between avoiding pain and being happy.
He thought of the dance of souls and the contracts they signed to forge spiritual evolution before coming into this world. A soul would help another overcome inherent difficulties, sometimes leading it to a tranquil road, others to a rugged, steep path, whatever was required for learning. People came and went, some cured, some hurt to purge toxins, always propelling growth.
Marco asked himself the meaning of Marisa in his life. Woman and girl, little baggage, the sweetness of abandonment in his arms, the way she managed to interpret him sometimes better than he did it himself. If it weren't for Marisa, he would probably have continued to find relief with women that—like him—didn't want anything besides the kind of pleasure that failed to nurture because the thread of sex was interrupted at the height of the navel, without reaching the heart and the spirit.
He found himself on his own again, back to the starting point. Or not. He had walked the path with Marisa. Where to, he didn't know. He had got here—but what was here?
Marco studied Judith across the table, her eyes with tiny marks on the corners and irises clearer than the ocean, hands twisting and unpolished nails, a force threatening to erupt from within her at any moment and already emerging now that Judith had done the unthinkable twice: seek death and then turn back toward the greater terror of confronting life. It was just a matter of time. Marco questioned what her soul had come to teach him and what they had to learn from each other.
Why that woman, why precisely that day?
While he mused, Marco said out loud: "If loneliness is your worst nightmare, maybe that's the reason why you're alone. Because you fear loneliness. Those men came into your life to teach you to be self-sufficient. We all need someone. But the most important person we need to win over is ourselves with our fears."
Judith remained grave, ruminating. She seemed to find solace in his explanation.
"You're a coherent and sensible man, Marco."
"I feign well."
"Are you with someone?"
"I was. We just broke up."
"Please don't tell me you left her with a note."
"No, we talked. Or argued, what do I know."
"Have a proper talk with her. Go full circle with nobility. It's the least you could do."
"You're right. Go full circle before starting a new cycle."
Marco scraped the bottom of his dish with the spoon. There was nothing more depressing than the leftovers of melted ice cream, he thought, and felt the turbulence surfacing from within his chest. He dropped the spoon.
"We have the whole day to discuss that, Judith."
"You can call me Judy."
"What do you fancy doing now, Judy?"
She reflected for a moment and replied a bit self-consciously: "Shopping."
"You know that's just a palliative, don't you?"
"In this case, it's more than that. I want to give myself a present."
"Let's go, then."
"Are you sure?" Her tone was skeptical. "My husband didn't like shopping. Do you?"
Marco grinned and stood up.
"I hate it. Now let's hit the stores. Where are we going?"
_______________________________
So where are they going and where does the story go from here?
I would like to ask you a huge favor. If you haven't voted for the chapters yet, please vote for a couple of them. The more, the merrier, of course, but one vote alone already counts!
The voting rate has been incredibly low. Hopefully not because the majority of readers hated the story but because they didn't have a chance to vote.
Please be an angel and help me out now. I poured my heart into this story and had hoped to have RED 2 on the Hot List so more readers would have access to it. If everyone votes a little bit, RED 2 still stands a chance with the Hot List.
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Nicole
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