Only Best In Very Small Doses
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Alice found me the next morning by the pool, a still infinity drop that veered inexplicably into the ocean; from the loungers on the patio you could almost pretend that they were the same body of water. I was reliving the awkward exchange I’d witnessed between Emmett and Edward here yesterday, pondering over the vague hints Edward had dropped when she appeared almost as if I had summoned her.
“Hi.”
She stepped up to the lounger beside me, a pretty, sheer blue robe draped over her shoulders and falling nearly to her ankles. Her boobs were struggling to free themselves from her tiny purple top and I wondered if this was the suit she had been talking about in the dressing room. Just the thought of the way Edward’s face had looked superimposed in the mirror as he eyed us standing nearly naked in front of him, starved and wanting, made my skin flame.
“Hi, Alice.” I flapped my hand in front of my face to try to cool off, but it was impossible.
“Edward is off with the guys. I think something’s up with the boat dock.”
“It extends too far,” I nodded. Jasper had finally filled me in last night, pacing around the villa until I’d fallen asleep watching him bounce back and forth while he ranted, shirtless and agitated. “They’re going to have to shorten it. Something about public domain.”
“Mind if I join you? It’s sort of boring without company.”
I motioned at the lounger beside me and she smiled as she curled herself up on it, tucking the robe around her legs and laying her hand over the tattoo on her neck, staring pensively out over the perfectly still water of the pool. She’d cocooned herself so effectively that I could only see shadowed indications of the ink on her skin through her robe, the diamonds at her eyes the only obvious sign of devious tendencies. I wondered just how those diamonds were set into her skin, imagining the worst combinations of metal to skin but still sort of fascinated.
“You’re staring.”
I snapped out of my daze to find her eyebrow perked in my direction and a placid smile on her face, as though she was expecting this. I tugged my eyes off her face and mumbled through an apology that sounded halted and fumbled, even to me. Alice waved me off with a grin and her hand through the air.
“I’m used to it. You’ll get used to it too.”
“Will I?” I eyed her skeptically, pretty uncertain that I’d ever reach the point when I wouldn’t feel the compulsion to examine her. As it were, I found something new every time I looked and the girl was turning into a practical treasure map. Through the transparent fabric I noticed a bright green and blue snake that was curled around her right thigh, enormous black marble eyes and tail spiraled delicately around her knee cap.
“Yes, eventually. But . . . even when I think that someone has finally gotten used to me, I still catch them staring,” she mused. “I guess it always surprises me, even though it shouldn’t. Like Edward, he’s seen it all so many times but he still stares. It’s strange.”
Part of me was oddly jealous of her, the object of his errant gaze during dinner last night. Another part of me now knew that he probably wasn’t staring at her tattoos but watching her for clues and the unwelcome vision of an ashen baby in a dead, sunburned field flitted in front of my eyes.
“He told me that you’re a midwife,” I stuttered.
“I am. Nothing like a battle between life and death to keep you on your toes.” She winked at me as though it was funny, diamonds sparkling around her eyes and again, I was left scrambling to find the punch line. This girl had a strange sense of humor.
“Did you meet him in Africa?”
“No, we met a long time before that. The desert sings, you know?”
“It sings?” Was it just me, or was that a drastic change in direction?
“When the wind hits the sand dunes, they hum. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” Her voice had gone calm and dreamy, cooked down to a thick, buttery version of its usual syrupy sweetness.
“It sings here, too. Over the water.” I waved toward the waves and the far off keening the wind let go when it grazed over the water.
“It’s not the same,” she sighed. “But it’s close.”
“It sounds like you miss it.”
“I do.” Her eyes dropped to her lap and she fingered the tie of her robe. “But I don’t know that I’ll ever hear it again.”
“You’re not going back?” I knew the answer before I’d even asked. I only had a vague conjured vision in my head, Alice surely had the actuality permanently seared into her brain and that baby in the field was enough to keep me away forever.
“Not unless Edward goes. And right now, he refuses to even speak of it.”
The boat dock turned out to be a shit-storm of legal loopholes and mounds of paperwork, all four of the guys holed up in their offices behind the lobby, punching numbers and yelling into phones. It was going to have to come down, a new one built in its place and as usual, they weren’t thinking small. It meant a lot of work on their part, or lots of standing around and overseeing the people actually doing the work, depending on how you looked at it. Early and late and everything between. It was normal enough for me, so common that I’d come to expect it but Alice seemed thoroughly disappointed. I watched Edward cup his hand to her face when her lips pushed out in a pout and just when I thought he was going to lean down and kiss her, his eyes met mine from across the room instead.
Trapped me for what felt like an eternity until Jasper broke the spell.
Judging from the attention Jasper lavished on me before he allowed us to leave, my exchange with Edward hadn’t gone unnoticed. He pressed a few soft kisses to the corners of my mouth and whispered a handful of garbled words as he stroked my face, ever mindful of competition and making an example of me.
I took Alice to the greenhouse, the only place I could without ruining my traditional exploration-day with Esme. She’d probably kill me and dump my body in the ocean if she found out I went wandering around without her. We spent an hour inspecting every leaf on every plant and I counted seven different kinds of moss creeping up the trunk of that old gnarled tree. It was currently dropping pink petals and littered us both as we stood underneath it, making me nearly as colorful as Alice.
She talked my damn ear off.
Which was fine by me because I was a much better listener than I was a talker and I let her ramble through the greenhouse, telling me a surprising number of random stories in great detail. Some of them were personal, childhood experiences in word form, but most of them were about Africa. She talked in a language that put me right there next to her, standing in the middle of a dusty, colorful, chaotic marketplace instead of the greenhouse with its quiet hum of dripping water.
A third world country, rather than a private island.
“The dirt there smells like something old, really old. Like centuries of knowledge. And when the wind picks it up and it blows by you, it’s almost like you’re standing in the very middle of the whole world. Right where it all began, and the dirt knows every story there is to know.”
“The women look like giant butterflies, all wrapped up in fabric that they dye in every single color you could imagine. They carry all their stuff piled on their heads and their babies strapped to their backs, and I swear to you, their smiles are brighter than anywhere else in the world.”
“They scar their babies, these patterns that fan out across their cheeks and down their necks. I thought it was horrible at first, until I found out why they do it. Babies are a hot commodity out there in the desert, more of them die than survive, and it isn’t uncommon for one tribe to steal from another to replace lost generations. They cut these beautiful patterns into their faces that tie them inextricably to their families, so they can’t be claimed by someone else. That’s when I started to find the beauty in it. Suddenly, something that I thought was repulsive and crude became attractive.”
“Once, Edward had to stitch up my foot because I stepped on this piece of metal, somewhere in Niger, but we were low on supplies because we hadn’t gotten a delivery in so long that he did it with thread from his shirt and one of my earrings. It was amazing!”
Sure enough, the girl had a ragged scar on the bottom of her foot that looked vaguely like a question mark, puckered by long-gone thread.
An earring? Seriously?
As we were leaving, a pink-flowered plant near the entrance caught Alice’s eye and she stopped beside it, fingering the petals. “Devil’s Claw,” she murmured, looking a little lost and barely breathing.
“You know it?”
“Yes, it grows in Africa. They use it somewhat like aspirin. A pain reliever.” The flowers were large and deep throated, burning yellow at the center and haloed with a ring of dark green leaves. She fingered something on the underside of the plant and produced a seed pod that obviously leant itself to the name. It was small and oval shaped with two large hooks protruding from one end just like a pair of horns. “These get tangled on an animal and carried away so that the seeds can spread.”
Alice touched a fingertip to one of the sharp horns, a pearl of blood appearing in its wake. She smeared the blood thoughtfully into the pads of her fingers, sounding as though she knew all too well what she spoke about.
“But it’s dangerous too. Only best in very small doses.”
We ended up at the hotel bar, drinking ourselves thoroughly trashed on shots with strange, touristy names. We vetoed two, one that tasted like coconut dipped in battery acid and another that turned our mouths an unpleasant shade of brown. Just as the bartender was supplying another tester, this one pink and sugared around the rim, Jacob appeared with a heavy black leather purse in his hand. Alice had left it in the spa and she gave Jacob a kiss on the cheek that he shuffled uncomfortably away from with more of that rosy brown blush. It seemed as though he wanted to ask me something, eyes darting nervously to me several times as he accepted Alice’s praise, but he never worked up the courage.
“You were at the spa this morning?” I asked as Jacob scurried away, palm to his cheek. Alice was probably playing the same role for Edward that I did for Jasper, dutifully trying out certain parts of the experience that he either didn’t have the time or desire to do himself. Sugary shots being somewhere on that list, spa treatments near the very top.
“Yeah, they put this yellow stuff on my face that I didn’t like at all.” Alice scrunched up her face in disgust. I totally agreed.
“I know, they did that to me too. It was terrible.”
“We should go back tomorrow and try out that weird foot massage. The one with the little fish and the papaya. I’m intrigued.” Alice slung the purse onto the back of her chair, a delicate clanking sound of metal littering the air around us as she did. There was something hanging from the thick leather handle, what looked like a bunch of giant keys.
“What are those?” I touched the jumble of metal, thin rods that ended in a sharp T shape, flattened at the other end into a fan paper-thin fan. There were three all together, each a different length, the metal twisted into a spiral between the ends.
“My Kissi Pennies,” Alice fingered the cluster. “They used to be a form of money a long time ago.” She untied the string and plopped the whole pile of metal onto the bar top in front of us. “The longer the rod, the more it was worth.”
“They’re not considered money anymore?” I touched the metal myself, surprised at how worn smooth it was.
“No, not for a long time. Now they’re used for ceremonies. Rituals. I got these two from a Bande Chief after I delivered his granddaughter. The mother, his sister, didn’t make it and the Elders think that the pennies can hold a piece of someone’s soul. He wanted me to carry a part of her with me.” Alice picked up one of the shorter rods and pressed her lips gently to the fan shape on the end, the metal forming the perfect oval for her mouth. I watched her throat clench, diamonds at her eyes glinting as she squeezed them shut and wondered if she was trying not to cry.
“Edward found me this one.” She batted her eyes furiously, confirming my suspicions and plucked the longest rod from the bunch, the metal starting to rust around the edges. “It’s really rare, like a thousand dollar bill.” She fingered the fan at the end and chewed on the inside of her mouth for a moment.
I didn’t have to ask. I knew just by looking at her that this penny was for that dead baby.
“He cares about you a lot.” I spoke around my own clenched throat, surprised by my observation and the fact that it fell out unhindered.
“I know he does. He just has a strange way of showing it.” She finally looked up at me, still cradling the pennies and pondered me seriously for a moment. “You know, Jasper stares at you the same way Edward stares at me.”
“How is that?”
“I don’t know exactly, but there’s something different about it. Like he’s seeing you for the very first time. Or . . . he’s trying to remind himself to forget something.” She took a sip of her drink and eyed me ominously. I ground my lips together and shrugged, unable to respond because this tiny little girl covered in a never-ending mural was right on the brink of reading my mind.
“How did you meet him?” She asked with another sip and when I gulped my own, the liquor and lavender combination did nothing good together.
“I sold him a pair of shoes,” I spluttered.
Alice’s eyebrows perked. “Shop girl, huh? Me too, at one point. He does have amazing taste for shoes.”
“Most of that is Rose,” I played it off even though her comment sent my heart fluttering, head spinning, and I swirled the tiny sword in my drink. “She dresses me, too.”
“Rose? As in ‘Moonflower’ Rose?”
“One and the same,” I chuckled, knowing full well that if Rose knew we were all calling her Moonflower, she’d flip her shit. “His twin sister. She also has an amazing taste for shoes . . . and a flair for treating me like her grown up Barbie Doll.”
Alice gave me a once over, her head nodding slightly the entire time. “The blonde from the dressing room? She knows what she’s doing.”
“That’s why I let her continue. But it can torturous, all the parties and dinners.”
“I haven’t had a reason to wear anything pretty for a long time, so this has been sort of fun for me. We ended up looking just like the locals.” Alice rummaged through her giant purse and emerged with a battered notebook, the cover clad in colorful fabric with a geometric print of black and white and blue. The pages looked worn around the edges and she flipped haphazardly through it, flashes of frantic writing and patient drawings appearing just as fast as they came.
“Here,” she held out the book, a photograph taped crookedly onto a page and drawn all around with ball point pen, a halo of blooming flowers. There was a group of people seated on a woven straw mat under the shade of a wiry, wilted tree. The desert draped out behind them, a stretch of sand that disappeared far off in the distance, bleakly empty. The group was all wrapped from head to toe in black fabric, the pale soles of their feet poking out and weathered hands folded into their laps. A mere slit in the fabric exposed their eyes.
“They don’t like to have their pictures taken. They think it takes a part of them away,” Alice twittered and pointed to the smallest figure in the very center. “That’s me.”
I glanced at the shadow she was indicating, recognizing her eyes from the obscurity wrapped over her face, but I was stuck on the person seated in the far right of the photograph. Edward, staring directly at the camera, traditional garb pushed back around his shoulders. Hair wild and jaw line covered in a scruffy beard, the only one with his face uncovered.
Thin and tan and smiling.
“Ok, this is me.” Alice stopped beside a plaque that was a full number before the bungalow I was pretty sure she was staying at, mid-afternoon naps beckoning to the both of us before we were supposed to meet up with everyone for dinner. Esme was arriving this evening and we would be sampling the menu at the restaurant again, a full-on family affair.
“I thought you were staying there?” I pointed down the path toward the next lit up sign, my own villa just beyond it. It had been that particular villa’s beach that I’d seen Edward march across to toss her into the water on our first afternoon here. I knew we hadn’t drank so much that Alice would forget where she was staying, but she was so tiny, maybe it all went straight to her head.
“That’s Edward’s.” She flapped a hand in that direction and dug her toes into the sand.
“You’re not staying together?”
Alice looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before a smirk crawled across her face, diamonds sparkling. “Oh, Honey. We’re not together. And as beautiful as he is, it would take a lot more than begging for me to allow him back into my bed.”
She winked and scampered off down the path leaving me ankle-deep in warm sand, wondering just where the fuck I’d gone so far off the trail.
LOVING EVERY WORD!
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