a bit on the side

by Cooper Clarence

By the time she finally got up from her stool and came over, she had been trying to attract my attention for quite a while. I guessed that normally it wasn’t hard for her—she had black eyes smoky enough to ensure that no man could go long without noticing her across a bar, no matter how dark or crowded, and this one was both—but for reasons of my own I’d avoided meeting her eye.

She leaned into the bar, pressing against it until the fabric of her pale cotton dress pulled taut against the curves of what was underneath, and set down her nearly-empty glass. Piña colada. Amanda’s favorite. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she looked like her, too—same thick eyebrows, same oval face and tanned, almost brown, skin. Hidden in the fold of her dimple, she had a mole the size of a pencil eraser.

“You know,” I said, peeling the label off my sweating beer, still not looking at her, “they say the piña colada was invented by a Puerto Rican pirate, Roberto Cofresí, in the eighteen-hundreds. Supposedly he came up with the recipe in a dream, and when he mixed up a batch the next day it had such a mighty effect on his crew that he had to keep it a secret—so secret, in fact, that when he died the recipe was lost. He’d never told anyone else. It was too powerful, you see. In the wrong hands, who knows what damage it could have done?”

I finished detaching the label and laid it down on the bar, soggy but intact. Taking my time, I pressed out the wrinkles with my fingers, and only when it was totally flat did I look up into those smoke-black eyes.

“I don’t believe it, though. Otherwise how’s this bartender know how to make one?”

Silence hung between us for a heartbeat. Then, tipping her head back, she spilled a throatful of sparkling laughter into the air. With a grin she looked at me and said:

“Is that all you have to say?”

I paused to think about it.

“You look like my wife.”

She snorted. “Buy me a drink.”

I motioned to the bartender, who brought us two more. We sat quietly and drank.

“Tell me about her. Your wife. Do you love her?”

“Very much.”

“How much?”

I thought. “I bought her a diamond bracelet last summer in Paris, at the Galeries Lafayette.”

She laughed. “That’s a bad example!”

I shrugged. “She didn’t seem to mind. It had a very long price tag.”

She snorted again and sipped her drink. The straw made a sucking noise against the bottom of the empty glass. This time she waved down the bartender.

“Rum,” she told him. “Dos, con hielo.”

He came back carrying two very full glasses. We clinked and sipped. She put her glass down first.

“Does she love you?” she asked.

I held my rum to my lips, buying time. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, finally.

“Fine, we won’t. Here, let’s start over. I’m Marina.”

She stuck out her hand. I shook it, smiling.

“Lance,” I said. She giggled.

“Is that really your name?”

“Sure. Lance, uh…McMaster.” She laughed harder, and I smiled. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s a cute name. I like it. So what brings you to San Juan, Mr. Lance McMaster?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t thought this far ahead—I couldn’t very well say I was here with my wife.

“Race,” I blurted. Marina’s eyebrows arched.

“Race? What are you, a sociologist or something?”

“Racing, I mean. I’m a driver.”

Her lips danced a little salsa, stepping forward and back and then forward again, but never quite breaking into a smile. “Racing, huh? Tell me about that.”

I shrugged. “It’s not that interesting.” I raised my glass but discovered it was empty. I put it down again.

“Oh no, too late to be modest now! I want to know. Tell me.”

Stupid, I told myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What did I know about race car driving? The drink had made me say it. That and her eyes, those smoke-colored eyes that didn’t seem to blink as much as normal, that skewered me like a martini olive on a miniature plastic sword. It had been years since I’d been looked at like that by eyes like those.

I told her what I knew about race car driving and she nodded her way through my explanation, widening her eyes in all the right places, looking scared when she was supposed to look scared. Halfway through she ordered us more drinks. I’d lost track of how many I’d had but I didn’t care and I sipped it gratefully. I didn’t care—couldn’t care—about very much while in the grip of those eyes.

“Listen,” I said, when I got to the end, “you haven’t told me anything about yourself.”

“Would you like to know?”

“Very much.”

She took a step closer, pressing against me. Her body through the fabric of her dress was warm. Suddenly all kinds of ideas forced their way into my thoughts.

“Closer,” she said, beckoning.

I leaned in.

“Closer!”

I leaned in more. She stood on tiptoe, holding onto my arm with the tips of her fingers for balance, and brought her lips to my ear. Her breath was warm and heavy with rum. Over the rum I caught the smell of something, a shampoo or a lotion maybe, something that reminded me of strawberries.

“We can stay here and I’ll tell you,” she said, the words exhaled into my ear, tickling the skin, “or we can go upstairs and I’ll show you.”

She stepped back and looked up at me, eyebrows raised, lips dancing their salsa. I swallowed. My throat was very dry.

In the elevator we stood next to each other facing the doors, not touching, watching the illuminated numbers tick up to eleven. It was very quiet compared to the bar, very quiet and very bright and the quiet and the brightness made us both shy. Without thinking, I started playing with my wedding ring, twisting it in circles with my thumb and pinky.

Marina put her hand on my sleeve.

“Is she beautiful?”

I nodded.

“Very beautiful?”

I nodded again.

“You’ve gone all quiet now. I said the wrong thing.”

“No.”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about her and now here I am, running my mouth.”

“No, really. It’s fine.” I twisted my ring.

“Let me see.”

I pulled the ring off and dropped it in her palm. The skin there was soft and paler than the skin elsewhere, paler than the back of her hand, for instance, or her forearm. The tips of my fingers lingered there. That wasn’t my fault. They decided to do that on their own, without help from me.

The dull, reddish-brown circle sat on that perfect patch of skin and she peered at it.

“What’s wrong with this—why’s it that color?”

“Because it isn’t gold.”

“What do you mean? What’s it made from, then?”

“Bronze.”

“Bronze? You got a bronze wedding ring? What are you, some kinda cheapo?”

“I didn’t ‘get’ it, I made it.” I shrugged. She didn’t say anything, but I needed to explain. “It felt more real that way, I guess. What does it say about your marriage if you start it off by buying yourself a piece of jewelry to be the symbol of your love for the other person? Where’s the substance in that? Anybody can go out and buy something—but making it? From scratch? That takes time. Effort. Commitment. Things you’d want to see in a marriage.” I shrugged again. “That was the theory, at least.”

The elevator dinged. We stepped out into the eleventh floor hallway and she held my ring up to the light, cradled in her slim fingers. A crude thing, chunky and imperfectly hammered, it had never looked beautiful but it did now. She rubbed the edge of her thumb along the inner edge and it came away green.

“That’s oxidization,” I said, explaining again. Babbling. “It’s a natural process that happens when bronze gets exposed to air. Over time it develops a greenish patina. You can clean it off, but everyday handling will keep it from building up. See?”

I held out my left hand and showed her the base of my third finger. A pale green tattoo circled it, like the ghost of my ring.

“Soap and water will get that bit off your thumb, but wear it long enough and the oxide stains your skin permanently, like mine.”

“So that doesn’t come off ever? Not even when you wash it?”

“Nope. I like to think of it as a feature—this way it’s always with me. Even when it’s not. So I can’t forget.”

She gave me a strange look, someplace halfway between sadness and happiness. She handed my ring back and I took it and slipped it on my finger, hiding the other one.

“Your wife is a lucky woman,” she said.

I shook my head.

“Luck has got nothing to do with it.”

In the room, the air conditioning was going full blast. Marina shivered and hugged herself, goosebumps breaking out on her upper arms.

“Can we open a window instead?”

I shut off the AC and slid open the glass door to the balcony. A screen kept out the light-seeking moths and mosquitoes but allowed the ocean breeze to pour into the frozen tomb of the room, melting it, softening it, bringing the air inside back to life. Carried in on the breeze came the sound of those chirping frogs they have in Puerto Rico. I could never remember their names. Amanda would.

“Better?”

“Much.”

She crossed to the closet and opened it. Inside hung a row of garments—dresses, blouses, skirts, everything Amanda had brought with her—and Marina reached for them, pouring them through her fingers like water as I watched. She selected a gown, green silk with a pattern of blue and orange and purple butterflies embroidered across the front. I’d seen Amanda in that dress many times. The plunge neckline showed enough, but not too much. The leg slit was dangerous and just a bit slutty. I knew it was showy and loud, borderline too much, but somehow on her it managed not to be.

“No looking,” she said. I obeyed, putting my hands in my pockets and turning away.

When I turned back around, she had the dress on and was turning this way and that in front of the mirror. She held it up in the front with her arms, and in the back it hung open down to the small dimples in her lower back.

“Zip me up.”

I did. The dress fit perfectly, like it had been made for her.

“What do you think?” She stepped away from me and did a spin.

“Beautiful,” I said, and meant it. The fabric shimmered like bottle glass on the beach in the sun, wet with water from the ocean.

Marina stood in the center of the room, head cocked, eyes closed, still hugging herself but not with cold anymore. “Hear the coquís? Co-quí! Co-quí! Hear them? I love that sound.”

Coquí! That was it, the name I hadn’t been able to remember. I sat down to listen in the armchair by the door. She was right, there was something nice about it. Amanda had pointed it out to me dozens of times over the years, whenever we’d come for a visit, but I don’t know that I’d ever really listened before.

Marina opened her eyes and let out a long breath. She crossed the room to the open balcony door and stood in it, silhouetted against the light of the moon and stars reflecting off the water.

“Do you know the story of the coquí?” she asked, looking back at me over her shoulder.

“Tell me.”

“Many years ago, long before you or I were born, there lived a chief, and this chief had a son. Back then, nighttime on the island was quiet, and so Coquí—the son—used to wait for sunset and then walk deep into the forest to sing. He had a beautiful voice, so beautiful that all the animals would gather, spellbound, to listen through the night to the beautiful song of the chief’s son. Among the creatures of the forest his favorite was a teensy-tiny frog, just the size of the tip of his little finger. This frog had no name and no voice, but he loved to sit and listen to the songs of the son of the chief.

“Anyway, one night when Coquí was singing, a goddess happened to hear him. ‘What’s this?’ she thought, sailing down out of the sky. She followed the sound of the beautiful voice until she came to the clearing where Coquí stood, surrounded by the animals of the forest, singing to the stars, and with one look she fell in love.

“After, as the goddess and the son of the chief lay with their limbs entwined, they swore each other eternal love, to live always as man and wife—but when morning came to chase away the darkness the goddess departed, with promises to come again the following night.

“All day Coquí waited impatiently, taking no rest and eating no food, for he was in love. And when night came, he slipped out of the village and walked deep into the forest to wait for his lover. He came to the same clearing and stood in the same place and sang the same song, but unbeknownst to him an evil spirit, the goddess of storms, stalked the island that night. Juracán, she was called, and she bore spite in her heart for all things brave and bright and beautiful, and Coquí was all three. The spirit heard the man and, out of hate and jealousy, swept down and snatched him up and bore him into the sky. All the animals of the forest ran away in fear, all except the little frog, Coquí’s truest friend, who clung to the foot of the frightened singer until Juracán, seeing him, swept him away with an arm made of wind and sent him hurtling back down to the ground.

“When the goddess finally arrived, it was to a scene of utter destruction—blasted trees, shattered shorelines, flooded lands. Amidst the chaos she searched for Coquí, but found only the poor little injured frog. In desperation she nursed him back to health and with her divine powers gave him the gift of speech, but all he would say, over and over and over again, was the name of his friend who had been stolen: ‘Co-quí! Co-quí! Co-quí!’ All night long until the sun rose, trying to call him back again. But he was gone.”

Marina stopped talking. She didn’t look at me. She looked out the window.

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged. “That’s it. That’s the whole story, the way mamá used to tell it to me and my cousins when we were little, and probably her mamá told her, and her mamá told her. All the way back to Coquí’s mamá, maybe. Who knows?”

She turned and looked at me. She was crying, black makeup tears from her smoke-black eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping away the tears. “I don’t know why I’m crying, it’s just a story. It just makes me sad.”

“It’s a sad story.”

“Yes. Yes, it is a sad story.”

“I’ve never heard it before.”

“Yes, well…” She trailed off.

A gust of breeze blew through the window and ruffled her hair and pushed her dress against the backs of her legs, billowing it out in the front. When it died the fabric fell back again. She saw me looking and smiled, her black eyes sparkling and wet with the remains of her tears.

“You’re not going to let Juracán take you away, are you?”

“Not tonight.” I gestured out the window. “No clouds.”

She stepped away from the window, toward me where I sat facing her in the chair, and slipped a hand under the strap of her dress. With a twist and a tug the strap came down and the dress cascaded to the floor, pooling around her ankles. She stepped out of it, looking as young and beautiful and divine as the goddess herself.

In the morning, I slept until the wedge of sunlight slanting through the window moved from my pillow to my face and woke me up. I rolled over and looked out. By the position of the sun I guessed it was still early. Next to me, the woman from last night lay sprawled on my wife’s side of the bed, one leg bare to the hip where she’d thrown it out from under the blanket. I couldn’t remember what name she’d given me, but I remembered the story she’d told about the frogs. The coquís, they were called. And what had happened after, the part without words, that too I remembered.

I stood and padded around the bed to use the bathroom. When I came out again she was awake, sitting up in bed and looking at her phone. I walked around and slid back under the sheets beside her.

“The sitter texted last night,” she said, frowning at the device. “Olivia’s got a cold. And James was being difficult about his math homework. Should I call her? I’m going to call.”

I smiled. Reaching out, I pushed the phone away from her ear.

“Put down the phone, Amanda. We’re on vacation.”

BIO: Cooper Clarence is a New England-based librarian and writer. He loves reading, the great outdoors, and fighting the good fight.