Greetings from the Vodka Sea Read online

  Monica and Bruce carefully forked their pâté and sweet-breads — they hadn’t the courage to try the whale brochettes — and hung on McGuffan’s every word.

  “At one point, it all lay underground in a subterranean cavern, isn’t that what the tour guide said, Alice?” Mrs. McGuffan, who was midway through a long sip of claret, snuffed her agreement. “The whole thing acted like a natural still — the minerals in the rocks, the vegetative bog, the salt water, all compressed and contained for millennia — until one day the earth above collapsed, and the Vodka Sea was left exposed to the world. It’s a geological wonder but not as uncommon as one might think, what with the Argentine Gin Flats and what-not.” It was McGuffan’s turn to test the claret. A rather portly Aussie who’d made his fortune in industrial plastics and, more recently, lost half his nose to skin cancer, McGuffan and his wife had been coming to the Vodka Sea for a decade.

  “The first time we came it was a collection of rustic cabins, and that’s being generous,” Alice was saying as the waiter served their entrées.

  “The room had snakes and these giant blue spiders. Remember those, love?”

  McGuffan nodded. “You don’t see the spiders anymore. I wonder what happened to them.”

  “Yes.”

  “They were attractive in their way. A most wonderful blue hue, right, love?”

  “Yes. Deadly.”

  “Deadly’s overstating it, love. Paralyzing. Coma-inducing. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d actually died . . .” McGuffan’s voice faded into another glass of claret. He smacked his lips and dove into his whale fillet. Monica and Bruce looked meekly at their mutton and new potatoes in a light grape-shrimp coulis.

  “Fancy a bite?” McGuffan offered a forkful of whale to Bruce. “It tastes just like chicken, only saltier, with a hint of — what’s that flavour, love?”

  “Vodka, dear. I believe it has a hint of vodka.”

  . . .

  The Vodka Sea hadn’t been their first choice. Spain. Spain is what Monica’s parents decided, and her sister and Anthony, Bruce’s best man, concurred. But Spain seemed so . . . Spanish, so done before. And besides, the spicy food didn’t sit at all well with either of them. France, of course, and Italy were options, but didn’t everybody who didn’t go to Spain go to France or Italy? Mrs. Perkins, across the hall, had been to Berlin on her honeymoon, but that was eons ago and her husband was, after all, a survivor of Dresden. Who goes to Germany for their honeymoon? You might as well go to Iceland. They asked Barbara to find them something different, something completely off the map. It would be their only holiday for quite some time; they wanted to make it memorable. Barbara looked at them for a whole minute before speaking. She was a handsome woman, middle-aged, in a crisp grey dress boldly bordered by a pearl choker. She looked more like a head-mistress than a travel agent. “I’ve got something perfect, I think.”

  Bruce and Monica had to lean forward to hear her. Barbara got up and closed her office door, then chose the yellow key from a small coffee cup, souvenir of Barbados, at the side of her desk. She unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out a single file folder. She removed a brochure and held it out for Bruce and Monica, without actually letting go.

  “Have a look at this,” she near-whispered. “But I must ask you to keep it to yourselves.” Bruce and Monica looked at each other, and on her signal, he took the brochure. “The Vodka Sea isn’t for everyone, and we want to keep it that way.”

  Louise was not impressed. Monica told her about the Vodka Sea (she hadn’t meant to, it just sort of slipped out, it’s hard to keep secrets from your sister) and showed her the brochure. But Louise could not understand. “Why go someplace no one’s ever heard of? Why take the chance?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Is this one of his money things?” It was a common theme in her family, Bruce’s thriftiness. “It must be the Scot in him,” her father would say, glad, for once, to see another familial male taking the heat.

  “This isn’t about money, Wheeze. It’s the perfect place for us. It’s so unknown.”

  “Everything’s unknown until you get to know it.” She wore an earnest smile with her blue and green pantsuit. She looked more like a travel agent than a sister.

  “That’s deep. Have you been listening to Tracy Chapman, then?”

  Louise rolled her eyes and laughed. “Am I being a bitch?”

  “You most certainly are, sister. I mean, it’s our honeymoon . . .”

  And that’s when the waterworks started. The whole pressure of the wedding hit Monica like a monsoon, and large pituitary-gland-shaped tears tumbled down her cheeks. Louise reached out and hugged her and rocked her back and forth and understood completely, like no man, no husband, ever could, the emotional maelstrom swirling inside her little sister’s heart. “There, there, Monkey. It’ll be all right. Everything will be fine. He’s a fine man. A fine, good man.”

  Things were no easier on Bruce. Dr. Welsh, head of OBGYN, offered his villa (in Spain, no less) free of charge and rather angrily rebuked his young protégé for turning it down.

  “You shan’t want to go portside in Chocko with no bullets in your backpack,” he said, or words to that effect; in moments of high emotion, Dr. Welsh often reverted to an incomprehensible public school patois. Bruce calmly held his ground (the cool head went a long way toward explaining his meteoric rise through the hospital hierarchy: thirty-two and already Senior Fellow) and said both Monica and he were quite comfortable with their choice of venue. Dr. Welsh, who was one for the parry but not the thrust, spent the week lunching on his own and didn’t entirely return to form until after Bruce had made him a present of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle on CD.

  It was only through such machinations and breakdowns that Bruce and Monica were able to go to the Vodka Sea with more or less everyone’s approval (his mother was a problem, but that went without saying). Dr. Welsh even called up and made sure there were roses and champagne waiting in the room for them when they arrived.

  . . .

  McGuffan had cautioned against drinking the water. Not that there was anything wrong with it, per se. It was just the thirst it caused. The salt, he supposed, combined with the vodka. You could drink and drink and drink, he said, and never be quite satisfied. But Monica wanted to taste it just the same. Their second day on the beach, and already they were feeling more daring. They’d woken up at sunrise with the vipers and birds and invisible blue spiders and made love on the bed (and loveseat and floor) without bothering to shut the blinds. It was early, she said, setting her tongue on the skyline of his belly. No one was up to see, and damn them if they did. She took him in her mouth (which silenced the last of Bruce’s half-hearted concerns) and led him from bed to loveseat to floor to the kitchenette (Bruce resisted the passing urge to put the clean cutlery away in the drawer) and back to bed again before bringing him to what just might have been the loudest single orgasm in English history. He looked at her afterwards rather sheepishly, which is when Monica suggested they go down to the sea, in part so he could escape his ear-shattering embarrassment but mostly because she wanted to.

  The sea, smoother than a freshly shaved patient, beckoned to Monica. They’d already been through the question of the tides. Monica believed that the sea had its moods, its highs and lows, its empathy with the moon. Bruce did not. He wasn’t forceful or even particularly rude, just dismissive in that matter-of-fact way he had. No. The Vodka Sea was not tidal. Entirely landlocked, no bigger than a dozen of your smaller football stadiums, Stamford Bridge, say, or Upton, pushed together — it didn’t seem practical that the moon would have a discernable effect. They’d asked around, but no one had a definitive answer. McGuffan wasn’t sure, and Ricki, the treacly hotel manager, had never been asked before. Even the brochure was silent on the matter, which rendered it, to Bruce’s mind, a non-issue. But before entering the morning sea, Monica mentioned the idea of tides again, perhaps because she believed in them, or perhaps, and she was surprised to find herself even thinking t
his, because she wanted to get a rise out of her newly minted spouse. He could be so flat, so constant, so damned reassuring (and again, she only became aware of these feelings at that moment, as she stepped into the Vodka Sea, the taste of him still in her mouth, the unwashed morning smell of him on her hands and face).

  “It’s definitely tidal. You can see the line where it came up to.”

  Bruce looked. In truth, there was nothing there.

  “It is rather unlikely, Peachtree. But maybe you’re right.”

  Monica took another step. The water did not cover her ankle.

  “I wonder how deep it gets.”

  Bruce shrugged. “The manager said it doesn’t go much deeper than ten feet.”

  “That was McGuffan.”

  “I think it was the manager, dear.”

  “I’m sure it was McGuffan. He said so only last night.”

  “Perhaps it was both, then. It’s hardly worth arguing over.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  Bruce thought to say something, then shut his mouth, which annoyed Monica more than just about anything he could have said. She wanted to be mad, but those eyes, those eyes of his, caught her and lifted her up. It was the eyes, the eyes that had first attracted her. Bruce was really not her type. Far too angular, too milky, too British. Monica liked men with a dash of pigment in their skin, a hint of something other than public schools and holiday motor trips south and skin that burnt and peeled at the mere memory of sun. When he’d first asked her out (she was Anthony’s sister’s boyfriend’s neighbour; it was a much-brokered deal) her inclination was to say no, doctor, as she told her sister, or not. But then she caught a flash of those eyes. Very dark, a black, black chestnut, almost evil, somehow rather American. She liked that. She liked those eyes. And when he fixed them on her with a sexual confidence that surprised her, she said yes. Their first date was antiseptic: luncheon (that’s the word he used) in the hospital cafeteria (an emergency compromise), Bruce on his cell the entire time, shards of perfunctory conversation. She’d figured that was that. But at the end he apologized and asked for a chance to make things right. Part of her wanted to take a pass — she was definitely the kind of girl who could turn a man down — but those eyes, those eyes engulfed her, and she granted him his second chance. Was he conscious of the power of those eyes? Did he (an only child, whose mother was, in the most charitable term, difficult) understand English women so completely, understand their need to find a sliver of darkness beneath the facade? Or was he simply a sexual savant, a self-absorbed, hypercritical, handsome head in a jar? He’d shown his passion: on their second date, an Irish concert and then the pub, he’d kissed her at just the right moment in just the right way with just the right amount of force and just the right amount of discretion. It was not the chaste kiss of a woman’s romance (she was far from virginal, after all, but not too far), and she and he allowed their hips to slide together, and he pushed with little force on the small of her back, drawing her in even closer, and she allowed herself to press into him and felt how big he’d already become and looked again into his dark, dark eyes, into nothing but more darkness. And that’s how love was born.

  Monica waded out several feet, until the water snuggled her hips. She wanted to wash her face, get the smell of him off her; she wanted to take a drink, get the taste of him out of her mouth. She bent down and cupped her hand, but as she raised the water to her face, a dwarf whale surfaced and spouted inches from her head. Monica jumped back, bringing her hand across her chest. And then she laughed. She threw her head back and brayed in delight.

  “It startled me!” she cried, when she’d caught her breath. “Aren’t they just the cutest . . .” And she dove in head first, quickly bobbing to the surface and rolling to her back. “It’s like flying! You float, you float without the slightest effort.”

  “It’s the salinity,” Bruce said, but what he meant to say was that Monica had never looked more beautiful to him than she did at that moment; he had never been more in love. That’s when she did it. She turned her head and drew a mouthful of water, then put her head back and spouted a mist of vodka water into the air.

  “Thar she blows!” he called, as playfully as possible, resisting the urge to caution her against drinking the water. Monica turned her head again and took another draw, not as long as the first. She seemed to be swallowing this one, closing her eyes as she did. She scrunched her face.

  “Yuck. That’s awful.”

  “Remember McGuffan’s caution, love.”

  “It tastes like . . .”

  She turned her head and took another drink. “Cor. That certainly doesn’t hit the spot.”

  Bruce was watching his floating bride and inching out himself when Ricki, the manager, appeared, holding two yellow towels.

  “It’s a beautiful morning for a swim, sir. Of course, sir, it always is.” Ricki smiled and handed the towels to Bruce. They were still warm from the laundry.

  “The water, is it safe to drink?” Bruce asked.

  Ricki looked almost insulted. He stumped his pinkie finger into his hairy ear and corked it around, evidently composing himself. He had a large oblong head, like those mystery men of Easter Island, and rounded, bulky arms and legs, simian. Rumour was that Ricki had fought on both sides of the civil war that had ravaged the countryside in the decades before. (Alice said she’d heard the International Tribunal at The Hague had a standing warrant for his arrest, although McGuffan, in the most comical manner imaginable, pooh-poohed her. They really were quite a couple.)

  “I can assure you, sir, no one has every come to harm . . .”

  “McGuffan said . . .”

  “I understand, sir. Mr. McGuffan has shared his concerns with me. But they’re folk tales, really, to amuse the peasants and their children.” Ricki’s voice faded, politely. His gaze fell on Monica, who was standing again. The sea had pasted her t-shirt to her bra, and in the cool sunlight, Bruce could track the gravy-coloured outline of her aureoles and the harsh stubs of her nipples (hard, Bruce assumed, hoped, from the cool morning breeze). He glanced at Ricki, and had he been a jealous man he might have thought that the manager was giving his bride the once-over. It’s funny. Bruce had never thought of Monica as particularly beautiful. Not plain, no. Louise was plain, in that flat-chested, horsy-faced, hospital-cornered British-matron way. Monica had a certain virginal sexiness, an attractive middle-aged nunnishness (Sister Grace, for example, Nursing Head of the chemo ward, who turned a resident’s head or two). But this morning, in the cool sun, with stubbing tits all glisty wet, her fleshy cheeks peeking out from her bikini bottom, that orgasmic smile, that don’t-give-a-damn glaze to her eyes — this morning she was a bit of something. Ricki held up his arms.

  “Towel, ma’am?”

  Monica took a towel and rubbed her hair, messing it up in such a way that she only looked sexier. Ricki extended his hand and helped her out of the water.

  “I’ll think you’ll enjoy the breakfast today, Miss. Strawberries, fresh from the fields, and local blood oranges — better than the Italian. And Monsieur Langour was up very early preparing his apple-almond croissants. I’d suggest you try them with yellow pepper marmalade: spicy, sweet, a house specialty.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” she said, as Bruce drew the other towel around her shoulders (trying discreetly to cover her visible nipples) and led her by the arm toward the mango grove.

  “He’s an interesting man,” Monica said.

  “Yes. Hairy, too.”

  “Yes, indeed. Hairy.”

  . . .

  That afternoon they took the boat tour across the Vodka Sea. McGuffan and Alice joined them, although they’d taken the tour a dozen times before. McGuffan was the sort who’d interrupt the tour guide to offer his own by now much-practiced insights; the Australian was quickly losing his lustre. Likewise Alice’s calculated hee-hawing and endless slogging had worn thin. (Bruce had quickly come to hate the sight of her lips as they snarled over yet another bottled
vodka spritzer.) They were like two tireless party guests who refuse to leave even as you stand there, hats and coats in hand, yawning and blearily eyeing your bedroom door.

  “Is it true that, at its deepest point, the Vodka Sea is barely ten feet deep?”

  (Objection, your honour! Counsel is leading the tour guide.)

  “Yes, sir. Even at its deepest point, the Vodka Sea rarely exceeds ten feet.” The tour guide, they called him John, for convenience, smiled at McGuffan, calculating, Bruce supposed, his tip.

  “Remarkable,” McGuffan declared, although there was nothing remarkable about it. He turned to Monica, beaming, and raised his eyebrows like an excited ten-year-old auditor who’d just found a KitKat amongst the debits and credits. Monica smiled back and tilted her head in a motherly fashion, then she shifted in her seat slightly, adjusting her dress. She wanted to give Bruce, sitting directly across from her, a better view. She wanted him to see that, under the crepe sundress, white, translucent, she wasn’t wearing any panties. She’d done that for him, she supposed; she’d thought about it for a long time as she readied herself after lunch. She stood in front of the mirror with panties on and panties off and panties on and panties off just to get the hang of it. She felt so free without out them, but did she dare? It’s not the kind of thing a nice woman, a decent woman such as herself, did, walk around in a crepe sundress (it hardly hid anything, and in any case, concealed only as a roundabout way of revealing) with no panties and no bra (her nipples were clearly visible, if she looked hard enough) in broad daylight. But every time she made up her mind to go with them, she slipped them off again, the soft fabric brushing her soft skin, bikini-waxed at Mercury Spa not four days before, just to see if she could dare go without them. It wasn’t a matter of comfort, because she felt more comfortable with her panties on. It just seemed different, like something she would never do and may never do again.

  “And the tides? Our friend here,” McGuffan nodded toward Bruce, “was wondering about the tides. What about the tides?”