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Marisa stepped out the shower, closed all curtains and hunted for headache pills in the suitcase thrown in a corner. She shoved two into her mouth and swallowed them at once without water. Tossing away her towel and the pillows decorating the bed, she crawled under the sheet and there remained in fetal position. Soon her eyelids grew heavy and her sore body capitulated.
She dreamed she was with Marco on the ship, the two of them laying in the cabin after the day spent on the island. His warm breath caressed her neck and this time Marisa turned to welcome him in her arms. They rolled across the mattress, skin sliding on skin, legs entwined, mouths united in the same craving.
His head rested between her legs, her face against his thighs, their hands and lips set to explore the most intimate of pleasures in a game of give and take. They moaned and rocked and heaved. They smiled in the dim. He took her from behind, groping her hips, cupping her breasts, biting the nape of her neck. In one fluid motion he entered her and retreated slowly, slowly advancing again to reach a new depth. Hard flesh in soft flesh, wet flesh slipping inch by inch with a languorous spin. She arched to meet him halfway. They traveled to a boundless space where everything and nothing coexisted. Gliding, flying, dissolving into each other. Their pace changed, rawer and faster, urgent and heightened, a leap to ecstasy.
Floating. Floating down to earth. Sated, flushed, tingling flesh collapsed across the bed. Skin sliding on skin, legs entwined, mouths united in shared bliss.
As it should be.
Amid a sigh, Marisa woke up to the insistent knocks on the door. She groped across the bedstand to turn on the light and, for a second, couldn't tell where she was. The plenitude of the dream faded abruptly in the starkness of the empty suite. She plummeted and crashed into the cold. It must be room service, Marisa thought as she teetered to wash her face and rinse her dry mouth. Her headache persisted, she should really eat something. She pulled from the suitcase a crumpled pink dress to cover herself.
Only upon answering the door, while she still finished tying the bow of her halter dress, it dawned on her she hadn't ordered anything from the hotel kitchen. Marisa blinked a couple of times and knew it was a delirium: she had just woken up from a dream within a dream. Marco stood before her, one hand against the door frame, hair damp from the shower, black jeans and an incongruous red polo shirt that seemed to burn his face with its reflection. He didn't wait for an invitation, and Marisa instinctively yielded when he came in.
The diffuse clarity of the beaded lamp sprinkled drops of light on his features. His nearly black eyes sequestered Marisa's with their feverish spark. He retrieved a case from the pocket of his pants and opened it, proceeding to hurl it to the floor. It was a rapid move that Marisa couldn't decipher. Alarmed with Marco's commotion, she retreated one more step. He gripped her wrist, his fingers closing around her flesh like a steel manacle. She felt the cold metal against her skin.
"What is this, Marco?"
"What does it look like?"
Speechless, Marisa reviewed their entire relationship, from the day she fell in love with him in the classroom until that exact moment of shock. Or maybe to view was not the appropriate term. She rather felt. She felt the fulgor of happiness and the dark desperation when everything disintegrated in the past few days. Until that exact moment. Then something within her broke. The iron ring, the one she had placed around herself to prevent a collapse, gave in.
Marisa contemplated her left hand. On the third finger sparkled a gold ring.
"Is this a proposal?"
"No. It's an order."
Recovering from the shock, she smiled, and all the tension in her body melted away. Her euphoria was almost painful.
"Is that how you propose to your women?"
"You said yourself that I'm controlling, didn't you? When we're back in Brazil we'll take care of the ceremony."
He drew her closer and their lips met. From her closed eyes flowed tears, and from those tears flowed a plethora of days, the Marco from the distant past who enchanted her but who in fact she didn't know, the Marco from the recent past with his scars whom she finally got to know, and now this Marco without the ghost of Lorena, without the shadow of Eliana, totally open for her with his heart in plain view carrying her marks, hers alone and no one else's. Marco tightened his arms around her, comforting, anchoring. Marisa stared at him.
"Forgive me." And sobbed against his chest.
"I already did, my love."
They remained like that, in the fusing warmth of their bodies, feet firmly planted on the ground. She straightened herself, sniffing as he caressed her hair.
"You were right. I wasn't indifferent to Robert's attention. He promised me the life I've always wanted. The life I've always wanted with you, Marco. But without realizing I distanced myself and ended up pushing you away. I didn't appreciate your efforts in Canada. I only thought of myself."
"We're quits. I didn't acknowledge your needs and believed it sufficed to give you material security. I only thought of my own issues. Afterward I took upon myself to sooth Eliana's pain because it was mine too."
"I was afraid, Marco, I was so afraid you wanted to be with her because you got disappointed with me. I dropped out of college and didn't adapt to Toronto. I'm inexperienced and I was an obstacle to your career—"
Marco silenced her, pressing his forefinger to her lips. They sat on the unmade bed.
"You were never an obstacle, on the contrary, you brought joy to my life and encouraged me to progress. I'm content to be returning to Brazil. Life is made of many paths. Your experience is enough for me, Mari. You'll see that as years go by and we get used to the world, it becomes less and less interesting. Your capacity of marveling at things is still intact and nurtures me. We'll learn together. That's what matters."
"Two mirrors reflecting many moons."
"That's it. Until now, we've fallen into traditional roles because they're the models we know: the strong man and the fragile woman, the provider and the mistress of the house. But they impoverish our essence because they are straitjackets. Limited, limiting. We're both equally strong and fragile, independent and dependent. Let's start all over again without straitjackets."
Without straitjackets.
It was true, she thought. Those roles restricted each one's essence—an essence pure and unique that no formula could encompass—and impaired the most profound intimacy of a couple with a power play that didn't belong to them nor had been of their choice. They were stanched models condemning a relationship to reproduce generic ideals. The two of them didn't need those arbitrary molds to be man and woman.
This is what he proposed: that they formed a cell from two essences, not two molds. They would be King and Queen of their own selves and live happily ever after. No: they would live happily and unhappily ever after. Unhappiness was the other side of happiness, the door that opened up to questioning and new horizons. It would strengthen Marco and her, deepen their bond and teach a more authentic happiness. The happiness Robert had waved at her was shiny yet false. The one Marco offered was real.
Marisa felt a jolt there, right where her heart was. Their relationship had had its share of marvel and hurt for sure. One day a gypsy told her every relation went through little deaths in order to consolidate. That was how blind passion transmuted into deep love. Passion was a state of illusion; love, the encounter with reality. Each brought its quota of wonders and pitfalls.
But there were moments when passion and love merged to create a miracle. And, like any miracle, it showed up unannounced: a lover would say a word or make a gesture, or quietly bear the gift of companionship. It was as simple as that. Then the light fell upon their face from a different angle making it glow, and their touch would be infused with electricity.
In that instant, Marisa gazed at Marco and saw in each of his dark irises a full moon surrounded by minute stars. They invited her to faraway galaxies, which she revisited with a surge of awe.
All thought ceased. She didn't move. Didn't even blink.
In that instant of suspension and perfect balance, when reality carried the magic of illusion and illusion came rooted in reality, time and space blurred to reinvent passion. It happened to Marisa that night. That night, she fell in love again.
Marco looked at her with the same enthrallment.
"You know, Mari, loving is a skill we learn. It involves attention, practice and slips along the way. I've failed too and ask for forgiveness."
"No, Marco, I was the one who failed you."
The gaze they exchanged kindled a sparkle of comprehension.
"Are we arguing already?" he teased.
And now, the gaze they exchanged kindled the sparkle of the game.
"So it seems," she replied.
"Wrong answer."
"I forgot the right one."
"It's 'No, Sir.' Repeat."
Marisa pretended she was going to say it and eluded him. She dashed to the bathroom and tried to close the glass sliding door. She wasn't fast enough and Marco pushed it. Marisa jumped back, colliding with the marble bathtub, and ran to the shower box in the farther corner. She never reached it. Marco caged her against the wall. She felt his breathing on her face, and her own breathing accelerated.
"The answer, Marisa."
She said nothing.
"You're wearing my patience thin." Marco's voice sounded sharp in the dimness barred by the street lights. At each word, he pressed his thigh harder between hers.
Her silence remained as obstinate as her posture.
Marco lifted Marisa in his arms, and she ceased all resistance. She softened, rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. Marisa only opened them when Marco lowered her to the bed and leaned over her. The atmosphere changed, the game dispelled. His fingers grazed her face, collarbone, the valley between the breasts, moving up again to nestle in her hair. She half-rose, laced both hands around his neck and sought Marco's lips. Then, letting her head drop on the mattress, she stared at him for a long while.
"I still haven't heard the answer," he whispered.
Marisa's eyes acquired a liquid luster that poured across her face, making it resplend with an ethereal luminescence.
"I give you my body, my heart and my soul, Marco. Without reservations. Now I want what's mine. We need two rings to create the infinite."
He had longed for that answer. Fumbling in his pocket, he produced a gold band. Marisa held his left hand and slowly slid the ring in his third finger. She placed a kiss on his palm and laid it against her chest.
Marco looked into her eyes, those eyes the color of amber radiating vertigo.
"My body, my heart and my soul you already have, Marisa. If we failed, we'll correct our failures. And we will fail again because that's inevitable. But each mistake can be a step toward making it right.
"Then we must forgive ourselves, Marco. I forgive myself. How about you?"
The question took him by surprise. He wavered. Marco was generous, understanding, tolerant. But he knew how to be harsh with those who hurt him and, foremost, with himself.
Marisa pressed his hand.
"If I can do it, you can too."
Marco assented.
Time quietened because there was no more need to rush. There was time to spare for planning or simply playing by ear. A massage with aromatic oil. A candlelit bubble bath. Wine and strawberries coated with chocolate. Delicious, wonderful clichés. Outside dusk emblazed the sky and spread its wings over the sea, a sea singing a duet with the wind. In the suite, the air turned lighter and perfumed. The lightness and the perfume, however, didn't emanate from the fine oil, the white bubbles or the candles: it emanated from the two of them.
In no hurry their hands mingled and in no hurry their mouths met. The hands then parted, fluttered, alighted. The clothes dropped piece by piece until only the exposed flesh and raw soul remained.
They were free to surrender, and they surrendered because they were free.
***
Life is a mirror.
Love is a mirror.
All that's left for us to do
Is seeing.
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Dear readers, thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I hope you had a good trip. RED 2 was an intense work that consumed 9 months of nights, weekends and holidays. It was also a challenge, a pleasure and a therapy. A labor of love about love. I hope it had served not only for entertainment but also for reflection.
If you have any comment or question, post it here and I will love to read it and know what you thought of the ending. Was it what you expected? I feel like asking the classical question: ahem, was it good for you?
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God bless you all, and many thanks again for your support. Words aren't enough to express my gratitude.
Love,
Nicole
xoxo