Nightmare in Pink (17 page)
Sometimes we moved to other coves, other beaches. Always private. We had no need for anyone else. She could sleep in my arms and sense the looming presence of nightmare and waken me, quiet me, soothe me. And little by little they went away. There was laughter aboard. And a vastly diminished laundry problem. Clothes were for when you got cold, or thought you heard a boat coming, or when you had to go ashore.
There were a thousand permutations and combinations of love. By day and by night, very quick and very lengthy, comical and saddened, bawdy and spiritual, simple and complicated, mild and stormy. It seemed that we could never wear away that hard enduring edge of need, that the pace would never slacken.
But at last of course it did. A little less compulsive magic, but more of something else. The product of love and of the ten million words of history and revelation we spoke to each other. One day there was the unspoken awareness that we had to get back to the world.
On a trip to Key West she had purchased, almost apologetically, tools of her trade. She began to do a little more drawing each day. And her lust for bonefish dwindled.
We sat topside one evening, holding hands, watching a vast fiery sunset. She was silent for a long time.
"Trav?"
"Yes, darling."
"I don't want you to think… I mean, I don't want to seem like…"
"Hush," I told her, and raised that small and valuable hand to my lips, kissed her fingertips and palm. "We'll take our time getting back to Lauderdale. How about five days?"
"How did you know?"
"The same way you knew it was time."
"And two days there, and then put me an a plane, darling. And don't let me look back, because if you do I won't be able to leave you. You knew I would?"
"When you were ready. Yes."
"I'll always love you. Can you understand that?"
"Yes, but don't ever try to make anyone else understand it, Nina."
"It will always be too private to tell."
And so it was an April magic, going back. Hauntingly sweet, because we knew this was the end of it. There was nostalgia in each caress.
Perhaps those weeks of us were, in one sense, a memorial. People have built imposing structures out of far meaner materials. I cherished her and celebrated her, and we restored each other.
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23/08/2007
LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/