Such a Pretty Fiction: Chapter 3
This is the third chapter of my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 2 is here.
I woke to the sound of the shower. Morning streamed through the curtains. I took my phone off the floor, stretched down into the warm covers, and smiled at how it all felt familiar. Sophie in the shower, the sound of the world outside. Buenos Aires or Valparaiso, this appeared to be our life together.
Candace had emailed me for an update. There was no way to ignore her. I stuck to specifics and kept it short. Yes, I had met Soledad. We were starting on Monday. No personal details, though I knew personal details were what she wanted. She’d taken it well when I broke things off, but the situation was a mess. When we’d gotten together four years before, I had no idea things would be so complicated. She needed a job and wanted to start a company. I agreed to help her with the engineering. It turned out that she was an incredible businesswoman. I quit and focused on the company. We had a dozen employees.
Sophie stuck her head out of the bathroom. She was wrapped in a towel. “I have heard from Muriel! She gave me the address of the yacht club. We will go to her for breakfast!”
“Great!” I stretched under the covers. The sheets felt good on my skin. “What was going on last night?”
Her face fell. “Oh, Logan.” She shook her head. “Muriel’s life, it has not been easy.”
I worried I wasn’t going to like Muriel. Her life had been so difficult that she couldn’t pick up a phone. I knew the type. A few summers on a sailboat with her parents, tempers flaring, and now Muriel could pretend she was interesting.
We took a taxi. Sophie told the address to the driver. He was surprised. She assured him we knew where we were going. He shrugged and pulled away from the curb.
It was Saturday. The sidewalks were crowded. We drove south on a freeway that followed the coast along the shoreline. Huge ships were anchored at a distance, their decks stacked with blue and red containers flecked with white lettering. Lines dropped out and away into the waves. Tiny fishing boats were dotted between the ships. On their bows, silver drums were wound ragged with nets and floats. There was one sailboat, its sails open and full with the wind.
The coast was rocky. Ahead, a long, low black pier stretched far into the water. It was massive. One of the container ships was tied up alongside it out at the end. Buildings lined the edges over the water.
We pulled off the freeway into a parking lot at the base of the pier. The driver said something to Sophie.
“He says this is the address… A strange place, no?”
Set back from the road was a pair of metal gates, rusted and standing open. The black wood of the pier stretched out to the blue sky over the sea. It looked like a dark arm pointing at the horizon. Under the scent of saltwater I smelled tar.
We picked our way across the parking lot. Men shouted in Spanish. Forklifts zipped between the buildings, loaded with white crates. We passed through the gates onto the pier.
The space between the buildings was wider than it had looked from the parking lot. I felt out of place, but no one gawked at us or asked what we were doing. The men were too busy to care.
The buildings stood open like warehouses. Inside they were high-ceilinged and cavernous. The first was a seafood market. The floor was a maze of crates, some open and filled with water, others sealed. Men stood next to them, haggling.
As we moved away from the parking lot, the buildings changed. They were smaller and had rolling garage doors. Those that were open showed workshops, sparks flying, the blue flare of a blowtorch. Some had fishing nets piled on the floor and draped along the walls.
“Logan!” Sophie pointed at a wooden sign hanging between two net sheds on the south side of the pier. It was painted a bright, clean white that stood out against the dingy walls on either side. Across, in navy blue, was the name of the yacht club over an elegant depiction of a sailboat.
“Wow, good eyes.”
“It is very well hidden, no?”
We waited for a truck to rumble past, then darted into the passageway. The buildings on either side blocked out the sun. A column of blue sky waited for us. I could see the tops of white masts.
When we reached the end, it was like we had stepped through a secret passage into another world and discovered a hidden marina. A metal ramp sloped down to a network of docks and hulls on the water twenty feet below.
To our left a door opened onto a restaurant. From the front it had looked like a nondescript net shed. Rows of tables ran the length of the building, keeping the dining room narrow and leaving space for the kitchen in the back. The wall facing the marina was a bank of articulated windows. They were tucked up above the rafters, and the sun poured onto clean tablecloths. Waiters bobbed between the tables in white shirts and black vests.
A hostess, a girl in her twenties in a smart black dress, stood at a podium inside the door. She saw us peering in and gave a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
“Oh!” I hadn’t expected her to speak English. I stepped inside far enough for Sophie to follow me, feeling out of place with my giant backpack. “We’re meeting someone.”
“Do you have a name?” She held a pen over a list of reservations.
“Muriel.”
“Your name is Muriel?” She furrowed her brow.
“Oh, no… I’m not Muriel. Muriel is who—”
She broke into a wide smile. “Yes, we know Muriel. The American! She is dining with us this morning.” She gestured toward the row of tables nearest the windows. Sophie stepped past me to scan the dining room.
“Sophie!” A high female voice cut across the restaurant. A girl with sandy blond hair jumped up and moved toward us. She was at a table with a man about my age, dark-haired, in a navy blue polo shirt.
We started into the dining room. Sophie carried herself with more restraint than Muriel, who bounded toward her like a grade-schooler. Muriel met us between the tables and gave Sophie a long hug, unconcerned or unaware that we were crowded against the backs of the other patrons. I smiled apologetically at the people trying to eat breakfast.
“Oh my god, it’s so good to see you!” Muriel said.
“Yes, it is so nice, and such a lovely day.” Sophie came out of the hug. The people at the nearby tables watched us. The dining room had gone quiet.
Muriel didn’t seem to mind. Her arms still rested on Sophie’s shoulders. “I can’t believe the driver couldn’t find it! At least you’re here now. Thank god, too. You’ll never believe what I’ve been going through.”
Sophie guided Muriel back to their table against the window. Conversation in the dining room picked back up. Muriel showed no interest in me whatsoever.
Rafa was exactly the opposite. Turned to face us in his chair, he ignored Sophie and kept his eyes on me, half smirking. Sophie took the seat with her back to the window. I leaned my bag against the railing and took the chair opposite her, facing the forest of white masts.
I stuck my hand out to Rafa. “I’m Logan.” We shook hands.
“Rafa.” He pronounced it like Sophie had, with a Spanish accent. He was clean-shaven and his hair was short, done up with gel.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I hear that you and Muriel have been sailing around Chile.”
“First San Francisco. Then Baja, down to Panama. Colombia, Ecuador, then Peru. And only then to Chile.” He used the same accent to pronounce the places as he’d used to say Rafa. Otherwise his English was perfect, unaccented American English.
“What an adventure!” I said.
“It has been time at sea, lonely and in the wind. Time at port, boozy and all too short.”
I smiled at the rhyme, unsure if it was intentional.
He stared at me with his dark eyes as if daring me to laugh.
“At least you’re making up for lost time.” I gestured at the table. A copper tub gleamed in the sun. It was filled with ice, and resting on the ice was a tray oysters and a saucer of lemon wedges. A bottle of champagne and a pitcher of orange juice were shoved into the corners. A champagne flute sat above his plate. “Mimosas?”
He picked up the glass and raised it in a toast. “It is never the wrong time for a mimosa. Not on a day like today when the oysters are fresh and tasting of the sea.”
I felt like he was trying to make fun of me, but I wasn’t sure how.
“The champagne is making Rafa poetic.” I turned to see Muriel watching him. She was smiling, but there was a coldness in her voice that was a departure from the bubbly girl who had greeted Sophie. “When he has a drink, he starts to think beautiful things, and he tries to say them.”
Rafa raised his flute to her in a toast, threw back his head, and drained the glass. Sophie caught my eye. Her eyes were wide. Rafa put down the flute and pulled the champagne out of the ice.
“So Sophie,” he said. “What have you been doing since Chiloe? Has Santiago been as kind to you as San Francisco?” He brought out his accent again to embellish the Spanish names.
Sophie said she enjoyed her life in the city. As she spoke, Muriel stared at Rafa, an expression on her face that was something between a smile and a grimace.
Rafa ignored her and kept talking to Sophie. “What happened with the Borges?”
Her mouth fell open. “Rafa! I cannot believe you remember my story of the Borges!”
He put down the champagne, picked up the orange juice, and smiled at her. I doubted if Muriel was the first woman to have been taken in by that smile. “I could never forget a story like that, Sophie.” Orange juice crept up to the rim of the glass. “Especially after you told us that story about the shape of the rain.” He thrust the carafe back into the ice, the juice sloshing against the glass.
“Rafa! I cannot believe it! I found the book, but it was not easy. A book of Spanish stories translated into français in a Spanish-speaking country. The bookstores did not like it.” She paused to relive the memory. “Thank you so much for asking.”
Rafa picked up the mimosa and toasted the glass toward Sophie.
Muriel took this opportunity to break into the moment he had created. She turned to me, bubbly and smiling again.
“I’m Muriel. I don’t have any idea what all this is about Borges.” She held her hand out to me. The girl glaring at Rafa was gone. The sun coming through the windows shone on her sandy blond hair. Her blue eyes caught the light.
“Logan,” I said. “Nice to meet you.” I turned back to Sophie. “I’m not sure I follow about Borges either…”
“Yes, I am sorry!” Sophie wasn’t bothered by Muriel’s play against Rafa. Muriel watched him again. He leaned back in his chair, looking at Sophie. “When we were together in Chiloe I was telling them a story from work. I am at the Library Français, you know, and one of the students wanted a book of Borges. Our library, it is not so big, and books from the Spanish are not so popular. But I had a new student from Lyon. He couldn’t speak Spanish but wanted to read a Spanish author. So touching, don’t you think so? For a boy in a new country to be interested?”
“Jean, wasn’t it?” Rafa said. “Jean from Lyon?” He affected a French accent to make Jean and Lyon rhyme.
“Yes! Jean from Lyon! Rafa.” She drew out his name and gave him a playful look of reproach, as if he was showing off. “And since Chiloe I have found a copy of the book. El Aleph, which keeps its Spanish name even in the French, and I have given it to Jean from Lyon.” She raised her eyebrows at Rafa as she too rhymed the names. “He has read it and has been happy.”
“That is a nice story,” I said. “And what was Rafa saying about the shape of the rain?” I looked at him.
He said nothing.
“Well, talking about Borges,” Sophie said, “I also told them that when he had been blind—”
“Borges was blind?” I said. “I didn’t realize that.”
“Of course he was blind,” Rafa said. “Everyone knows Borges was blind.”
“You’ll have to excuse Rafa for being so rude,” Muriel said. “Sometimes he forgets that we couldn’t all get degrees in literature.”
“Yes, blind.” Sophie ignored them. “Blind, and he would sit on his porch in Buenos Aires listening to the sound of the rain falling in his garden. When visitors walked up the path to see him, he would know who they were. How could a blind man recognize them, they asked him. And he said that he could tell who was coming from the sound of the shape of the rain.” She smiled and let the story hang in the air.
I imagined an old man on his porch in a downpour, the sound of rain in the garden.
“Yes,” Sophie said. “Borges was an artist. A true artist. El Aleph is a beautiful book of stories. It is beautiful in Spanish. It is beautiful in français. I am glad I was able to find it for Jean.”
A waiter appeared next to Sophie in front of the window. He scribbled our orders in a notebook. Rafa ordered another round of mimosas. The waiter brought more champagne. He inserted the bottle into the ice in the tub and placed a folded towel on the table to catch the cork.
Whatever was going on between Muriel and Rafa started to fade away as Sophie talked about their time in San Francisco. Muriel began to laugh and chime in with details. She had answered Sophie’s ad for a roommate, and they had shared an apartment in the Mission.
“And when you arrived, and I showed you the room,” Sophie laughed, “you thought it was a closet!”
“Well it was my first time out of Boston since Harvard!” Muriel laughed with her. “For that price in Boston, I’d have the whole apartment!”
They went on reminiscing. Rafa was deep in the mimosas, but eventually he warmed up as well. Restaurants they went to. Driving up and down the hills to cross the bridge to farmer’s markets in Marin. Weekends in wine country. I had no idea how they paid for the life they described, Sophie working as a librarian and the two of them squeezed into a tiny apartment.
Our food arrived. Muriel offered us what was left of the oysters. We mixed mimosas. Rafa opened the second bottle expertly, holding it in the towel and letting the foam flow into the tub of ice. The champagne started to get to me. I biased my drinks heavy on the orange juice, but Rafa noticed and topped me up with champagne as soon as there was room in the glass.
By the time the second bottle was empty, I was buzzed. I was glad when Sophie declined Rafa’s suggestion that we order more. He didn’t seem to mind. “We have beer on the boat.”
Muriel came back from the bathroom and stood behind her chair. Rafa stood as well. I was slow to rise. We hadn’t settled the bill. I looked around the dining room for our waiter. He materialized out of nowhere and deftly slipped a small black book into Rafa’s hand. I offered to pay, but he waved me off. He signed without looking and handed it back to the waiter, who thanked him effusively. I understood another reason why Sophie thought Muriel was lucky to have Rafa.
Sophie and I followed them out of the restaurant. The hostess was still behind her podium. “Nice to meet you, Muriel,” she told me, smiling.
We were back in the dim passage between the buildings. After the bright windows of the restaurant, I couldn’t make out details in the shadows. Muriel and Rafa walked down the ramp hand in hand.
“What was that about when we got here?” I asked under my breath. We started down after them.
Sophie leaned close to my shoulder. “Yes, it is very strange, no? They appeared so unhappy, but now they are holding hands. Life is hard on Muriel.”
Muriel and Rafa reached the end of the dock and turned a corner. We bobbed slightly on the water. “Did you find out what was wrong last night?”
“Muriel, she was overwhelmed. She has a deadline soon for her mémoire. The part she is writing, it is very difficult.”
We made the same turn. A hallway of white hulls stretched ahead of us, Muriel and Rafa small between them. He helped her onto the deck of a sailboat, holding her hand to steady her. She stepped over the lifelines and Rafa stepped up after her, disappearing onto the boat.