Such a Pretty Fiction: Chapter 2
This is the second chapter my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 1 is here.
The next day was Friday. Candace emailed me like nothing had happened. It was just like her to pretend I hadn’t told her off five days before. I didn’t reply. Let her wonder.
After meeting Soledad, I wanted more than ever for things to go smoothly with Nosotras. I stayed in the apartment and made sure everything was ready. In the afternoon I met Sophie at the bus station.
Valparaiso was an hour and a half out of Santiago, on the coast. The bus drove west toward the sea. We got out at a station that was nothing but a parking lot and a pair of tall streetlights, perched on a hillside on the edge of the city. The night was cold. Wind whipped up at us from the water. Sophie hugged herself for warmth, and I rocked back and forth, stamping my feet in my shoes. Ours was the only bus.
Cab drivers prowled the perimeter of the crowd looking for fares down the hill into the city. Sophie spoke Spanish, so I let her pick a driver and negotiate with him as we walked to his car. The cab was dull yellow and pocked with dark spots of rust.
“He does not know the marina,” Sophie whispered.
“No?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Muriel said she is at the yacht club, which is at the marina, and that everyone would know it.” She spoke softly for the driver’s sake, even though he couldn’t understand.
“But he doesn’t know it.”
“No. He tells me he is sorry, but he is from Venezuela and he does not yet know Valparaiso well.”
“What’s he doing driving a taxi then?” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. Everything had been easy. First the bus, then a cab, and finally a night on the water.
“Logan, it is the crisis. He is doing what he can.”
Sophie always looked for the good in people. And she was right. Venezuela was collapsing. Migrants were doing whatever they could to send money back to their families. I’d seen the headlines alongside the stories about Soledad. I glanced at the patches of rust on the car and felt guilty.
“Call her,” I said. “I’ll look on my phone.”
It was no good. There were a handful of yacht clubs, but none that I could match to Muriel’s description.
Sophie had her phone to her ear. She shook her head. “She is not answering.”
Headlights roved over us as a taxi rolled toward the city. The driver said something.
“He says he will take us to a hotel.” She shrugged. “What else can we do?”
I watched the cab disappear over a crest in the road, red tail lights glowing in the fog creeping up the hill.
The driver waited patiently. He knew he would get his fare. Sophie spoke to him. He laughed and she took off her pack. I slid into the backseat alongside her, watching the driver in the rearview mirror.
“He seems nice,” I said softly.
“He is nice. Valparaiso is not like Santiago. A city, but not so big.”
The engine coughed before turning over. Blue light from the stereo danced across the driver’s face. A song on the radio ended. The headlights flicked on, freezing wisps of fog as we moved down the road. A new song began, synthesizers building to a crescendo. As we tipped down into the fog, a wave of saxophone washed over us. We wound down the road toward the bleary lights of the city, and a singer crooned things in Spanish I didn’t understand.
Valparaiso materialized around us. It was an old city. Melville had written about it. People were out. A little girl bundled into a pink coat held her mother’s hand and tottered along the sidewalk. Men stood outside in the dark smoking cigarettes.
At the bottom of the hill, the driver took us past tall buildings to a part of town that looked older, more compact. He pulled over in a plaza, turning to talk to Sophie. As he spoke, he nodded toward a row of cabs in front of us and then out the window at a white building. A portico supported by columns sheltered a giant wooden door. It looked like a former colonial house.
“He says this is a good hotel. Nice but cheap.”
“What do you think?”
“I do not know. I do not like that I am not hearing from Muriel. Even if we find the marina, perhaps we cannot find the boat.” She looked out her window at the hotel, then back at me. “It looks nice.”
The driver said something and gestured toward the windshield.
“He says we can ask other taxis.”
I peered over the driver’s arm. The plaza was paved with cobblestones. It was well lit with streetlights and hemmed in close by buildings. “I think this is fine.”
He handed us our bags and we walked up the steps. A small door inset in the larger doors opened onto a dimly lit courtyard floored with worn white marble. A relic of old Valparaiso. A skylight three stories overhead showed the dark sky. In the center of the courtyard a firepit was burning. A mezzanine wrapped around the courtyard at each of the three floors, looking out over the fire.
Reception was tucked into a corner of the lobby. The clerk gave Sophie a skeleton key and gestured toward a staircase. The stairs were made from the same worn marble.
Our room was above the giant doors. Bare floorboards creaked as we entered. There were two beds. I dropped my bag and walked to the window looking out at the plaza. A man in a suit hurried by swinging a briefcase. Young couples sat on benches and leaned against fences wrapped around palm trees. Our driver had gotten out of his cab and was talking to other drivers. Their cars weren’t rusted. I hoped they were locals. Friends for his new life in Chile. The buildings across the plaza looked old. Years ago, maybe someone else had stayed in this room, looked out the window when the buildings were younger, and known that the next day they would be on the sea.
I turned back to Sophie. “This place is fantastic. Muriel might have done us a favor.”
She was on her phone. “I am sending her a message. I do not want her to be worrying.” She came to look out the window. “And now? Are you tired? Shall we sleep?”
“Not especially. I could go explore a bit. You?”
“I am hoping nothing is wrong with Muriel.”
“You think something’s wrong?”
“Oh, I do not know. Just because she is not answering. Things do not always go well for Muriel.”
I assured her everything would be fine. Phones die. Things come up. Maybe a walk in the city would take her mind off things.
We bundled up against the wind and the fog and headed back out into the plaza. We found a bar called Posada de Angeles, tucked off a narrow alley that fed into the square. A wooden carving of an angel jutted out above the door. A halo of tiny lights encircled her head.
Inside, the decor was old-fashioned and run-down. It was snug, like being below deck on a ship. Lampshades of stained glass were mounted on the walls and perched on the bar, making everything warm and colorful. A bearded man in his twenties sat on a small stage in the corner, plucking a classical guitar and singing in Spanish.
It was crowded enough that we had to look to find a table. When we sat down, a man in a tie and wrinkled white shirt came over with menus. I ordered a pisco sour and a pair of empanadas. Sophie got a bowl of steaming soup and a glass of red wine. We ate without speaking and watched the musician.
Most of the other patrons were couples, sitting with arms around each other, watching the show. The empanadas were good. My drink was tart. The guitar resonated off the walls. I was glad Muriel had been a flake.
I ordered another drink. Sophie sipped her wine, smiling at me when I caught her eye. The warmth of the liquor rolled through my body, and I wondered why we hadn’t ever thought of being together. I remembered the first time I saw her in Buenos Aires. I responded to an ad online and came to look at the apartment. Her eyes were bright in a way that caught my breath in my chest. I asked her questions. Yes, she lived there. No, she wasn’t the landlord. I moved in and we grew close like siblings. Weekly chores. Dirty dishes. And now we were together again, sharing a room in another country.
The musician finished his set. Sophie was down to the tail end of her wine. Canned music came on over the speakers. A woman’s voice with a flute and sparse drums.
“Any word from Muriel?” I hoped the answer was no. I liked the way the evening was ending.
Sophie sighed and shook her head. “Life has not been easy on Muriel. So much difficulty. She is writing a mémoire, did I tell you?” She pronounced mémoire with a French accent, thick and curvy.
“A memoir? How old is she?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Seems young for a memoir.”
“Logan, she has lived such a life! And she writes of it so beautifully. She grew up with her father on a boat. They sailed to places all around the world. Ever since she was a little girl.” Her voice became deadly serious. “All this time on the boat, he abused her Logan. And the mother, she did nothing.”
I opened my eyes wide.
“Si,” Sophie confirmed, feeling the wine.
“On the boat? What did he do, beat her? Worse?”
“I do not know everything. In a mémoire, some things are not appropriate. But the stories that are there… That it should all happen to one person. While she was at Harvard, her boyfriend… No. Muriel likes to tell her own stories. And she tells them so beautifully. She will enjoy telling you.”
“You’ve read it then?”
“I read it when I was with them on Chiloe. But it is not complete. She is still writing. It is close. She has an editor. So powerful to read what she has overcome to be where she is today.”
“What’s she doing now?” I asked. “Got a boat of her own and kept sailing?”
“No. The same boat. It is not a boat of luxury, but it is enough for Muriel.”
“The same boat? Isn’t it too much with the memories?”
“I think not. Especially with Rafa. She has been so lucky to find Rafa.” Sophie pronounced Rafa like the Spanish, rolling the r.
The guitarist climbed back up onstage. He began to sing softly over the nylon strings, and Sophie told me how Muriel met Rafa.
When Muriel was twenty-five, she sailed with her father from Sydney. After her time at Harvard, she felt prepared to face him again, but on the boat it had been the same. When they reached San Francisco, Muriel was beside herself. Her father flew back to New York and left her. She answered an ad and moved in as Sophie’s roommate.
Muriel met Rafa. He had been born in Spain, in San Sebastian. Rafa let Muriel be strong again. Sophie had seen it herself. He encouraged her to write down the story of her childhood. They moved onto the boat to be together, and Sophie moved to Santiago. As Muriel wrote she became stronger. They sailed south.
“For a year they have been sailing. Rafa and Muriel on the boat together. All the time Muriel is writing. I went to see them in Chiloe. I read the mémoire. I told her it was beautiful. And now they are sailing north.”
A song finished and the room broke into polite applause. Sophie looked at the stage. “Logan,” she smiled at me. “I am glad that we have found the Posada de Angeles.”
We finished our drinks and walked to the door. Another song ended, and the applause followed us into the alley. We drifted back toward the lights of the plaza. The wooden angel stared after us.