A Tale of Unease at Christmas: Kelda, part one

 

It started on the balcony of the hotel.��One night��a woman named Kelda sat outside a room she was sharing with her husband and child��and smoked cigarettes she kept hidden in the inner lining of her purse. The balconies were small, close together, each accommodating only a table and two small metal chairs. She thought when she sat down, the man sitting on the balcony next to theirs would go back inside his room, his privacy now invaded by her presence, but he stayed and the ice clinked inside his glass and she guessed the amber liquid was Scotch, what her father drank at five every afternoon, single malt. The way he held his glass reminded her of him as well, held his glass like him. He didn���t say anything to her and neither did she. It was a relief to be quiet sitting outside under the moon and above the palm trees and because the swimmers down in the pool had gone in for the night there was only the stone fish statue in the middle of the pool, chlorinated water spewing from their puckered lips, their tails up in the air, fanning out, bellies together.

She didn���t say anything but liked the look of him and that he was quiet and left her alone.

The next day at the pool, she saw him again. Her daughter Abbie was in an inflated pink ring and she, standing beside her, as stone-like as the fish, felt him pass along the pool���s edge. He wore navy swim trunks and a white towel around his neck. He was as old as her father and she was thirty five.

Abbie did not know how to swim, but wanted to play with an older girl who was there with her parents. The girl could swim out into the middle of the pool and climb onto the stone fish, though when the lifeguard was there, he blew his whistle. Abbie pointed at the girl, and she hung onto her child���s pink tube, the French braid in her hair becoming sodden, the tendrils of her hair trailing. She wondered if the man was looking at her.

���Where are you going?��� her husband had asked her that morning. He was making their cups of complimentary coffee. They were there for a city planning conference. Architects and engineers were pitching their designs at a conference room.

���I don���t know,��� she said. She had felt a stab of guilt when she picked up her daughter from the crib. It is doubtful her husband knew she sat outside the night before communing wordlessly with a stranger. He sleeps every night, without fail.

There were more children out now and Abbie started to fall apart, to whine and point to toys she wanted to play with, toys that belonged to other children. Katinka needed to take her in for her morning nap, but the desire to make eye contact with the man again, to be near him for just a moment, plagued her. He had been sitting on a lounge chair, ordering drinks, and he laid back, his face toward the sun, his chest bare. The smell she imagines surrounding him is that of booze soaked skin. She pushed through the water to his side of the pool, keeping the back of her head to him, but she feels his eyes on her, she is sure of it. She pretends she has crossed the pool to retrieve her child���s toy.

���That���s mine!��� says a tiny child with her ringlets.

���Oh, I���m sorry!��� says Katinka, not sorry.

���You came over here, and you stole it!���

Katinka handed it to her.

The man had a deep, rasping chuckle. Heat rose on Katinka���s neck. She moved with Abbie out into the center of the book to feel the cool splash of the spitting dolphins. She helps Abbie climb up to the podium supporting the fish and they sit together, stretching their hands out into the spray. Katinka has done this for him, is sitting in this way but she does not look at him only enjoys his cool gaze.

Her husband is not in the room when they return. He is in a meeting. She dries Abbie���s hair with a clean towel and puts her in her nightgown. She brushes her hair and kisses her plump cheeks and puts her into the crib, covering her with the blanket they brought from home.

He is still out by the pool. He looks at the dolphins and smokes. He is wearing a shirt now and he is quiet and still as a stone. She looks at him through the sheers so he will not be able to detect her should he look her way. The scene below appears muted through the soft fabric, the sun shining golden through the plume of water, she watching him as though watching an actor on stage through a scrim. A waitress comes by to take his drink order. She appears to be telling him something else. She shifts and points to the hotel. He puts his cigarette out in a glass but then he asks her something and hands her money. She nods and leaves. He lights another cigarette.