by Lisa Polisar

"You’re an islandophile," Hildy argued, her rabid mouth frothing. "What in the world’s so bad about being landlocked?"

Jarrett, instead of the wounded look this time, cast his gaze way past their table and past all the other tables on the crowded boardwalk, focusing on two ardia cinereas pecking at each other’s feathers at the sandbar not far from shore. He sensed her clumsily spreading jam on the burnt toast but kept his eye on the water, as water had sadly become his salvation.

"Take your eyes off that stupid grey heron." She paused. "Maybe look at me for once."

"Stupid is strictly a human attribute," he corrected, knowing full well that she loathed such displays of superiority.

The thin, painted lips were dotted with crumbs and globs of jam. "It’s not true."

Jarrett set his fork down. "The very word implies not a lack of intelligence but the absence of it."

"Same thing."

"I beg to differ. Lack means never having it in the first place, like in the case of your brother for example. But the absence of intelligence, or stupidity as you say, is less of a psychological designation and more of a character trait."

Her shaking head betrayed a lingering inebriation from the midnight martini frenzy. Hell, he thought, she probably spiked her tea with gin. He felt sick watching her. But the water kept him straight – the solid blue wash endless in its truth, yet a symbol of something more surreal.

"So you’re going then?" he asked, his voice both sullen and buoyant.

Hildy opened her mouth to speak and a few crumbs of toast fell out the side of her mouth. "Oh damn," she said, brushing them onto the wood decking. She glanced at Jarrett with an embarrassed grin and three tears escaped from her right eye. It was the eye that always cried first. "Why won’t –" she caught the tremolo in her voice and covered her mouth.

"I told you," he replied. "Manchester’s too far north. And too cold for my bloodless body."

"But what about the sightings?" she argued.

"What about them?"

"We’re talking once in ten years, Jarrett, for the Montague’s Harrier and the same for the Cirl Bunting."

"What’s so great about a ha--," he shook his head, "and why not Wellington, or Auckland for that matter? You’ve always wanted to venture south."

"There’re no birds there."

"Rubbish. There’s the Kiwi, Papango, the Black Robin and Cattle Egret…"

"But none that we’re currently studying. Wellington’s no place for an ornithologist."

A daftly clad waitress set a basket of rolls and freshly filled teapots in the center of the table.

"Name one good thing about Manchester."

"I can name ten," she said, crudely gulping the tea.

"I asked for one. And not just a thing," he said waving a finger. "A good thing."

Hildy smiled at this, and he could tell it was what she loved most about him. He had always thought it was not humor itself that peppered a relationship, but the placement of it, the surgical implantation of a word, phrase or inflection into the precise moment. Hildy was crying again, but there was a smile behind her swollen eyes.

"Well?"

She sighed and let her head fall back against the hard chair. "The Canal Festival in July."

"Canals are smelly, stagnant water."

"The Strawberry Festival then."

He chuckled. "There’s no Strawberry Festival up there. Besides, I don’t like red food."

She laughed at this, a bona fide laugh distilled in the comfortability of long cohabitation. "You’re not fit for civilization. You know that?’

I never claimed I was, he thought.

*

He had taken nearly the whole London flat with them, or at least all of the equipment or whatever would fit in the small bathroom of the bungalow. Hildy had already started writing the grey heron article while he was still assembling all the pieces of the makeshift darkroom. She sat uncaring on the sofa pretending to read Tolstoy while he lugged in cartons of liquid and powdered chemicals, lengths of string and clothespins, the easel, filters, timer, safelight and plastic trays. Jarrett Ryder knew he was not a passionate being, not in love or lust or work or religion. But stealing photographs of unsuspecting animal subjects at play in the freedom of their own secret world provided him with unearthly pleasure, a temporary insanity almost, which left a longing taste on his psyche. He felt about taking pictures what he had once felt about studying birds, before he became bored with the whole thing.

"Cepphus Grylle or Black Guillemots, a variation of a penguin," he whispered in quiet narration in response to the three specimens twenty feet away and then heard a twig break somewhere behind him.

His neck craned to the side to speak into the microphone, his arms poised forward holding the camera, he watched the guillemots tote around clumsily from one rock to another searching for stray bits of food while scoping out shelter from the oncoming storm. Behind them, a beautiful constellation of dark granite rocks glistened with the slick black dew of seawater, and back even further were the hills shaping the shore of the peninsula. He loved it here, the mild climate, well-preserved landmarks, and even the eroding shoreline that, every year, had been incrementally swallowed up by the hungry tides.

He wanted to turn around and see if children were playing in the sand, or perhaps an old man walking on the moist ground or seagulls foraging. And then he heard it again. He brought the camera up to his eye and peered through the tiny lens, carefully lining up all three guillemots within the parameters of the viewfinder. Inhaling as much air as his lungs could hold, he felt for the soft button on the top of the camera and—"

"He-llo!" a voice bellowed from behind him.

"Blast," he said with a violent jerk. His finger pushed the black button just as the camera lens flopped forward from the thrust of his body. "Now I’ll have a splendid photograph of rocks."

"I’m sorry, dear. It’s starting to drizzle and I brought you your poncho and awning." Hildy held out the bundle in front of her as proof that she had come for a specific reason.

A quick stab of irritation shot through him. He couldn’t decide whether to peck her on the cheek or strangle her. "I need to develop these, see if I got anything worth saving," and he walked off toward the bungalow.

Three hours later.

"Jarr-ett? Are you dead in there or what? Your corpse will take on that dreadful smell if you don’t let me find you."

"Nearly," he mumbled.

"Well please don’t die in that squalid little hovel. Now are you coming out for lunch?" She started banging on the door with her flat palm. "Please, Jarrett."

He opened it a crack. "Yes yes, all right, come in."

"What’re you doing in here?"

"I’ve found something," he whispered, almost too frightened to say the words.

"Where?"

He pointed.

"That little white speck?"

He removed the photograph and replaced it with a larger, grainier version of the same image. "Look again."

Hildy paused, brushed strands of her light brown hair from her eyes and bent down. "So it’s a larger white blob now." She sighed. "This is what’s kept me from my Pacific red snapper?"

Again, he replaced the photograph with another and pointed.

She crouched down. "What is it?"

"Not what," he replied. "Who."

"Someone in a bit of trouble it looks like." Hildy looked up at him. "Maybe they’re just playing around?"

"For God’s sake," Jarrett snapped, "look at her face. Her eye’s nearly swollen shut and the man has his arm raised above her."

"Very pretty. Don’t suppose you noticed."

"Jesus." Jarrett sighed and wrung his hands. "I’m more concerned with a damsel in distress than an encounter."

"Damsel?" Hildy laughed. "She looks like a Piccadilly tart."

He shoved past her through the narrow doorway. "I’m going to sniff around the center and see if anybody else saw her or the brute she was with."

"He’s likely her husband, you know. You’ll just embarrass yourself. Besides, lunch is ready. You should put some food in your stomach."

Jarrett moved the fish around his plate with the sharp fork tines while Hildy expanded the parameters of ceaseless chatter. Lumpy bed, drafty cottage, lack of available hairstylists. He would have paid her a million dollars to go away, go to bloody Manchester if she wanted it that badly or just to shut up.

"What about it?" she asked.

"What about what?"

"Manchester. You said Manchester just now."

My God, he thought. Can she hear my thoughts now?

"Never mind, then. How about that movie game we used to play."

Jarrett looked across at the light blue eyes and followed the red rings around them. On ceremony, he clanged his fork down on the white plate. "Fine. You start."

"Good. There’s not enough game playing in the world anymore. All right, um … Robert Redford. They’re showing one of his old flicks in the square on the lawn tonight. Do you want to go?"

"I’ve got transcriptions to type. Besides, all his films were directed by that Pollack fellow anyway."

"Not all of them," she replied in a know-it-all voice.

"Here we go –"

Hildy giggled and wiped her mouth. "What about," she tapped her finger on the table, "that heartbreaker movie. ‘The Way We Were.’ "

"Sydney Pollack, of course."

Hildy scowled and tapped her fingers again, this time harder. "Jeremiah Johnson."

He tilted his head back. "Like I said, all his movies were dir—"

"Aha!"

"What?"

"Inside Daisy Clover."

Jarrett peered at some bare branches brushes against the far window. "I don’t know who did that one. Probably Pollack."

She snapped her fingers. "The Iceman Cometh – Mr. Sidney…Lumet!"

"You got me." He said wiping his mouth. "Let’s have a swim before the sun goes down. Shall we?"

From the bedroom closet where she was no doubt changing into that dreadful swash of tacky blue fabric she called a swimsuit, he heard her yelling for him.

"What was that?" he asked.

"All-The-President’s-Men. Not Pollack, not Pollack."

He arrived in the bedroom dressed in swim trunks, a stretched out red t-shirt and a towel round his neck. "Who then?"

"Alan Pakula!" she squealed.

"Too smart for me," he politely replied.

And even though Jarrett Ryder loved the water and hated Hildy’s swimsuit and the bulges in her body from sitting and eating all day long, even though he felt these things as urgently as he felt about nature photography, he wasn’t really there at all, at that moment or for any of the other moments that followed. His mind was with the damsel in the photograph.

The woman’s name was Suzanne. Not from birth and not from marriage, and not because he knew for sure, but because he decided right then, looking at her picture for the thousandth time and knowing that sometimes a face simply belongs to a name. Suzanne – beautiful North Country nymph enslaved by a wife-beating husband.

*

It wasn’t hard to find her, really, given all the clues. Because that’s what photography does – shows one what the eyes can’t naturally see by taking a millisecond of life and setting it in a permanent, gelatinous deep freeze. Behind the rock cluster where the guillemots had congregated earlier was a resort complex set into the side of a grassy hill. From the photograph, which he’d blown up several more times by now and stared at its negative projection on the bathroom wall, he could make out distinctly Mediterranean features – almond shaped eyes, narrow bridge of the nose, angular cheek bones, tiny chin and a tall forehead ornamented by a tousled mop of blondish hair, probably dyed. From one particular angle and even despite the black eye sustained from her lover’s fist, she looked like a subject from a Modigliani painting. Okay, he thought. An Italian woman staying in Grange-Over-Sands. How hard can it be?

At half past seven that night, Jarrett Ryder entered the main lobby of the Grange-Over-Sands resort and asked the concierge if there was an Italian couple there on holiday in one of the seaside rooms.

"May I ask what your interest is in them, sir?" the man queried.

"Oh," thinking quickly, "I’m staying in one of the condos at the bottom of the hill, and I think the woman left something on the beach that I wanted to return."

After a split second’s hesitation, the concierge directed him to bungalow six, the temporary residence of Mr. and Mrs. Spinoza. Bungalow, Jarrett laughed to himself as his eyes took in the ten-room monstrosity. So there he was, knocking bravely on their door armed with nothing but humility and a tall tale.

"I believe I found your purse on the beach," he said to the face in the doorway, utterly unprepared for what came next.

"Mi scusi?" the woman said, clad in a long, pale yellow shift.

God, he thought. At least Hildy speaks English. "Your purse? Pocketbook? I think you left it on the beach. I found one there last night, you see, I’ve got it back at my condo, and if you’re the one who lost it, I’ll go and fetch it right away."

For more than a minute she regarded him with squinted eyes, seeming to translate his words and simultaneously weigh the validity of his story. "Come in," she said finally in perfect English, the corners of her mouth contracted. She motioned him to a loveseat in the living room. He stood in front of an armchair with his hands in his pockets.

"Jarrett Ryder," he said extending his hand.

With the unexpected combination of a gentle touch and rough leathery skin, the woman took his hand and held it a moment rather than the more customary jerking up and down. "Jackie Spinoza."

"To me you’re Suzanne," he heard himself say and then plunged his head into an imaginary bucket of water. Idiot, he thought. Don’t scare her away. Not yet at least. But she looked anything but scared. She looked brave, vibrant almost, wearing her makeup-covered bruise like a badge and scrutinizing every line and curve in his face.

"Really?"

He sat down. "I don’t know why I said that. Forgive me, please. I’m an ornithologist – I’m no good with people."

"I can think of worse names," she kindly replied, wiggling an empty glass in her hand. "Drink?"

"Yes, thank you. Anything. Whatever you’re having."

"Perrier for the moment. I’ll bring it in."

While taking a minute to survey the posh interior, his thoughts naturally found their way back to Hildy and what she would be doing now. Drinking, most likely, sitting in that overstuffed chair with her bare feet hanging crudely off the end, martini in one hand and a book in the other. But she would not be reading this book, nor would she be the least bit attentive to the Maria Callas CD that would be playing in the background. He pitied women like Hildy Simone who could forever lose themselves in the illusion of another life – in cell phones, art openings, plays, concerts, expensive clothing and affected speech. For Hildy’s shallowness punctuated the same myth over and over – that she cared about things. Of course she cared about whether she looked like she cared to other people and what their precise impression of her was at any given moment. But as far as the actual caring was concerned, feeling sympathy, inner struggle, isolation or fear, it was not within her. And Jarrett, on the other hand, knew he could be happy spending three weeks alone in a simple cabin with nothing more than a notebook and a stack of birding magazines.

He watched Jackie Spinoza move around the kitchen, bending down, reaching up, turning her slight, elegant body left and right in perfect fluid motion. And when the testosterone surging through his body caused a departure from acceptable thoughts to the less acceptable, he immediately transported himself back to Hildy, her empty martini glass and dangling feet.

"Thank you," he said taking a glass from her hands. His finger touched one of hers in the process, and detected an incredible furnace of warmth coming from her small body. The gibbering small talk that usually flowed from his lips during uncomfortable situations stunted itself on the recurring premise that whatever he said would come out all wrong. And yet her inviting face denied all his expectations.

The silence between them, not awkward, was not even uncomfortable. He wondered about the right moment to ask about her husband.

"Are you traveling alone?" she asked swirling a finger around in her glass.

"My my my wife… Hildy," he stammered. "She’s on the other side of the beach. We’re renting a condo for two months. Doing research, mostly."

"Oh really? You’re both ornithologists?"

"We met in college."

"And what species are you studying?" she asked, and he noticed again her almost flawless English.

"Right now the Grey Heron. I’m studying their feeding behavior, mostly, and Hildy’s observing their breeding rituals." He stopped talking, instinctively waiting for her to yawn or leave the room or turn on the television like Hildy would do in a similar situation. Anything to avoid communication. But Jackie’s face suggested nothing of the disgust and resentment that his pontifications usually garnered. "They’re really quite extraordinary."

"I don’t know much at all about birds, especially here, but I’ve always felt rather drawn to Blue Herons. Are they very different from the Grey?"

"Oh yes," Jarrett said inching to the edge of the loveseat. "Actually Grey Herons are formidable predators. They kill their prey by stabbing them with their beaks. It’s a violent display, to say the least." He hadn’t meant those precise words to come out of his mouth, but so be it. That’s why he was there, wasn’t it?

Jackie Spinoza lowered her eyes and leaned back against the chair cushion. "I know who you are."

There was one chance to use ignorance to possibly get out of it, though changing course midway was not his social custom. "Yes, I’m glad to meet you as well."

She looked into his eyes, searching, and then looked down again. "Don’t you understand? I saw you. The other night, photographing those penguins."

"Guillemots, actually. A distant cousin. I’m trained as an ornithologist but I’m really much more of a bird photographer. I take pictures, you see, and Hildy writes most of the articles, and we publish them in nature magazines."

"So you have more than just a marriage then. A marriage of passion and common interests."

"I’m not sure of either of those right now."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Geographical distance."

"It’s better than the alternative, I assure you. I’d do anything for a bit of geographical distance from Manolo."

"I saw what he did," Jarrett ventured. And in that instant he made himself two vows: he would not ask her about her torment and was even more determined not to woo her away from her husband. That was assuming she was even woo-able and that he possessed such powers. Which he probably didn’t. "I’m sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"You don’t need to say anything more. We both know the truth of… what I saw. You know I found no pocketbook on that beach."

The woman sat completely still, but this action was more than just motionlessness. It was a practiced behavior, he was certain - an exercise in invisibility, in not being seen or heard or felt or sensed.

She sipped the Perrier gently. "Influence is everything."

"I wouldn’t know," he said, "as I don’t recall ever having any."

"That’s not true. Your pictures –"

"What of them?"

"Magazine editors pay you money for your pictures. Why?"

Jarrett shrugged with a cast off glance, privately flattered by her using him as an example. "I suppose because they believe people will buy their magazine because of them."

"Why?" she persisted, her palms facing up.

"I don’t know."

"Photographs transport us out of the pain of the present. They either remind us of who we once were, or of who we could be. That’s influence. I still remember a photograph I saw in a book when I was a little girl. It was taken on a narrow, cobblestoned lane in Sicily, and portrayed two old ladies running down a rainy street holding hands with matching red umbrellas. They were running toward the camera, so I could see that they were laughing. I cried when I saw it. I was only eight."

"What did it mean to you?" Jarrett asked reaching across the space between the chair and loveseat to touch her hand.

She closed her eyes and seemed to disappear for a moment. "I’ve wanted to live there all my life. I wanted to feel the cold cobblestones on my bare feet and the spitting rain on the crown of my head. And I wanted even more to be photographed and have a smile like that on my face. Not out of poise or prompting, but as a reflection of my own heart."

"What about your husband’s influence?"

"Ha," she gasped, shook her head and fell back onto the chair cushion with a thud. "That goes way back. I’ve known him all my life. He’s much older than me, nearly my father’s age."

"So he knows all your secrets then."

Her eyes widened just as lights from outside reflected off the back windows of her bungalow. Good lord, he thought. Hildy. He’d nearly forgotten her. By now she would have probably set fire to the condo and swallowed a whole bottle of pills. His stomach tightened.

"That’s it! You understand…"

But he didn’t really. Didn’t know what he was doing there to begin with, felt intellectually out of place and had no business listening to a strange woman’s problems.

"He’s a politician you know. Or you would if you met him."

"Well no wonder, then," Jarrett replied.

"What?" she asked.

"About influence. The very crux on which their jobs are based is persuading people to do things. Vote, not vote, think a certain way." Ah, he thought catching himself in time. Two vows. It was more Hildy’s style to gossip and pry, but to do it in such a way that it seemed like something else. Concern, sympathy, even compassion.

Jackie stood and slowly walked to the windows, her stylish, thin heeled shoes clapping against the tiled floors.

He could see the outline of her body through the fabric of the dress.

"When it comes to Manolo, manipulation is the least of my worries."

"It gets worse?" he asked and flinched. Vow number one.

"He’s made me his Pavlov dog."

Shaking his head, he said, "I’m a simple man with very few desires. I don’t know about mind games or manipulation. But I know that animals generally treat each other better than humans do."

"They also eat each other’s young," she replied, and he laughed at this comment. She laughed along with him, tilting her head back in a way that told him she was, somehow, in spite of Manolo, comfortable with the sound of her own laughter. He thought of the old women in Sicily now and wished he had his camera.

"What’s today?" she asked suddenly.

He was confused by the question.

"Quick. What day is it?"

"Uh, Friday I think. It’s hard to keep track on vacation. Why?"

"Manolo’s gone till Sunday." Her face relaxed as she stared at the empty spot on the loveseat beside him. "So we can talk as long as we want."

*

He woke very early the next morning after lying awake all night, and combed the beach with binoculars, scoping out possible specimens for future study. Hildy was passed out cold with a bottle of pills by the bed – only Tylenol but she had taken six. He’d begun to monitor her obsessions lately – her drinking, brooding, chattering on about things that didn’t matter to anyone, let alone her. Breakfast included coffee, eggs and toast. He clunked the large tray down on the dresser.

"You look like a damned bus boy," Hildy moaned with her eyes barely open.

"So I’m a bus boy then."

"Don’t be so agreeable."

Ignoring her, he set the plates and cups on the little round table by the window and motioned her over. "How’s the article coming?"

"It’s no fun to write and nobody would want to read it." She looked away quickly. "So where were you last night… until eleven o’clock?"

But she knew already, didn’t she? She very likely knew where he’d been and knew what he had been doing, or done, or had nearly done. "Just walking on the beach clearing my head. I seem to have gotten a cold, though. I think I’ll stay in and rest today and leave the transcription till tomorrow."

"There’s a bus tour of the entire peninsula today. I’ll tell you how it is later."

"Did you see the Redford film last night in the square?" he asked, scared suddenly that she’d given up too easily. Did she really know about Jackie Spinoza and her problems and the lilting inflection in her voice just before she came over to the loveseat, or was it that she no longer cared? He knew he needed Hildy for something right then, maybe just the humdrum companionship of enduring familiarity, or maybe he loved her after all. And he also decided in those moments that he would move to Manchester with her, knowing it meant sacrificing the mild climate of the Cartmel Peninsula. Even in her rumpled pink nightgown, she looked pretty; prettier even than he had ever seen her. She caught his expression and seemed revolted by the gesture.

"I was too tired." She got up and went to run the bathwater, leaving a plate full of food.

*

And so he walked around and around under the bleak gray sky in a small loop along the beach and then a larger one up and down both sides of the peninsula, thinking of Manolo Spinoza and his persuasive speech and large, maniacal fists. When he got tired of walking and thinking, he just walked, the way one walks when in the process of forgetting. He imagined that his mind was a great, vast and empty cauldron that could be filled with any number of potions. When he got to the farthest tip of land poking out over the green Atlantic, there was another small jetty perpendicular to the larger body and hanging down like a grotesque, swollen appendage. He sat on the ground here and outstretched his legs, removed his over-worn huaraches and let the warm salty air brush the soles of his feet.

The Espinoza bungalow was empty now. Not vacated, though, as he could see through the bay window various items that he’d seen the night before – a bathrobe draped across a chair, two white satin slippers under the coffee table and a half-filled teacup on the glass table by the sofa. It was, this vision, a symbol to him of something had and gone, of the fleetingness of true happiness.

He returned to his own bungalow with the sad curtains and the creaky front door and found a note from Hildy on the table. His hands started sweating as he picked it up. It was not sealed in a fine envelope like he half expected; not even folded in half to conceal its contents. Instead just a sheet of the cheap, white writing paper from the tablets provided by the front desk. "J: Someone left this for you this morning after you went for your walk. I don’t know who it’s from and I haven’t opened it. Should be back from the bus tour by eight or so." He breathed a sigh of relief and opened a small envelope paper clipped to Hildy’s note. And inside was a photograph that had been cut out of a book. He stared at the contents for a long time, maybe an hour or so, before turning it over. And on the back was written, "Keep a lookout for old Italian ladies with matching red umbrellas."

Lisa Polisar is a mystery writer from New Mexico. Her debut thriller, Blackwater Tango, was published in 2002 (Hilliard and Harris), and her second mystery, Knee Deep, was published in December of 2003 (Port Town Publishing). Lisa is a Fiction Editor for the 12 Gauge Review and writes book and art reviews for five magazines. Read more about her work at www.lisapolisar.com. 

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