programmed to love. Someone young and lovely. The women on Spanish television with big boobs and a tiny waist like they’ve been twisted three times. The trophy wives eating lunch at the Waytansea Hotel.
The words on the walls say: “. . . you people with your ex-wives and stepchildren, your blended families and failed marriages, you’ve ruined your world and now you want to ruin mine . . .”
The trouble is, Angel says, we’re running out of places to hide. It’s why Will Rogers used to tell people to buy land: Nobody’s making it anymore.
This is why every rich person has discovered Waytansea Island this summer.
It used to be Sun Valley, Idaho. Then it was Sedona, Arizona. Aspen, Colorado. Key West, Florida. Lahaina, Maui. All of them crowded with tourists and the natives left waiting tables. Now it’s Waytansea Island, the perfect escape. For everyone except the people already living there.
The words say: “. . . you with your fast cars stuck in traffic, your rich food that makes you fat, your houses so big you always feel lonely . . .”
And Angel says, “See here, how his writing is crowded. The letters are squeezed together.” He snaps a picture, cranks the film, and says, “Peter’s very frightened of something.”
Mr. Angel Delaporte, he’s flirting, putting his hand over hers. He gives her the flask until it’s empty. All this is just fine so long as he doesn’t sue her like all your other clients from the mainland. All the summer people who lost bedrooms and linen closets. Everybody whose toothbrush you stuck up your butt. Half the reason why Misty gifted the house so fast to the Catholics was so nobody could put a lien against it.
Angel Delaporte says our natural instinct is to hide. As a species, we claim ground and defend it. Maybe we migrate, to follow the weather or some animal, but we know it takes land to live, and our instinct is to stake our claim.
It’s why birds sing, to mark their territory. It’s why dogs pee.
Sedona, Key West, Sun Valley, the paradox of a half million people going to the same place to be alone.
Misty still tracing the black paint with her index finger, she says, “What did you mean when you talked about Stendhal syndrome?”
And still snapping pictures, Angel says, “It’s named after the French writer Stendhal.”
The words she’s tracing, they say, “. . . Misty Wilmot will send you all to hell . . .”
Your words. You fucker.
Stanislavski was right, you can find fresh pain every time you discover what you pretty much already know.
Stendhal syndrome, Angel says, is a medical term. It’s when a painting, or any work of art, is so beautiful it overwhelms the viewer. It’s a form of shock. When Stendhal toured the Church of Santa Croce in Florence in 1817, he reported almost fainting from joy. People feel rapid heart palpitations. They get dizzy. Looking at great art makes you forget your own name, forget even where you’re at. It can bring on depression and physical exhaustion. Amnesia. Panic. Heart attack. Collapse.
Just for the record, Misty thinks Angel Delaporte is a little full of shit.
“If you read contemporary accounts,” he says, “Maura Kincaid’s work supposedly brought about a kind of mass hysteria.”
“And now?” Misty says.
And Angel shrugs, “Search me.” He says, “From what I’ve seen, it’s okay, just some very pretty landscapes.”
Looking at her finger, he says, “Do you feel anything?” He snaps another picture and says, “Funny how tastes change.”
“. . . we’re poor,” Peter’s words say, “but we have what every rich person craves . . . peace, beauty, quiet . . .”
Your words.
Your life after death.
Going home tonight, it’s Will Tupper who gives Misty the beer in the paper bag. He lets her drink on deck despite the rules. He asks if she’s working on any paintings lately. Any landscapes, maybe?
On the ferryboat, the man with the dog, he says the dog’s trained to find dead people. When somebody dies, they give off this huge stink of what the man calls epinephrine. He said it’s the smell of fear.
The beer in the brown bag Misty is holding, she just drinks it and lets him talk.
The man’s hair, the way it recedes above each temple, the way the skin on his exposed scalp is bright red from the cold wind, it looks like he has devil’s horns. He has devil’s horns, and his whole face is red and squinting into wrinkles. Dynamic wrinkling. Lateral canthal rhytides.
The dog twists his head back over one shoulder, trying to get away from her. The man’s aftershave has the smell of cloves. Hooked on his belt, under the edge of his jacket, you can see a pair of chromed handcuffs.
Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown.
Holding his dog’s leash, the man says, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
And Misty tells him, “Trust me, I’m not dead.”
“Maybe just my skin’s dead,” she says.
Stendhal syndrome. Epinephrine. Graphology. The coma of details. Of education.
The man nods at her beer in the brown paper bag, and he says, “You know you’re not supposed to drink in public?”
And Misty says, What? Is he a cop?
And he says, “You know? As a matter of fact, yeah, I am.”
The guy flips open his wallet to flash her a badge. Engraved on the silver badge, it says:
TABBI AND MISTY, they’re walking through the woods. This is the tangle of land out on Waytansea Point. It’s alders here, generations of trees grown and fallen and sprouting again out of their own dead. Animals, maybe deer, have cut a path that winds around the heaps of complicated trees and edges between rocks big as architecture and padded with thick moss. Above all this, the alder leaves come together in a shifting bright green sky.
Here and there, sunlight breaks through in shafts as big around as crystal chandeliers. Here’s just a messier version of the lobby of the Waytansea Hotel.
Tabbi wears a single old earring, gold filigree and a haze of sparkling red rhinestones around a red enameled heart. It’s pinned through her pink sweatshirt, like a brooch, but it’s the earring that Peter’s blond friend tore out of his ear. Will Tupper from the ferry.
Your friend.
She keeps the junk jewelry in a shoe box under her bed and wears it on special days. The chipped glass rubies pinned to her shoulder glitter with the bright green above them. The rhinestones, spotted with dirt, they reflect pink from Tabbi’s sweatshirt.
Your wife and kid, they step over a rotting log that’s crawling with ants, stepping around ferns that brush Misty’s waist and flop on Tabbi’s face. They’re quiet, looking and listening for birds, but there’s nothing. No birds. No little frogs. No sounds except the ocean, the hiss and burst of waves somewhere else.
They push through a thicket of green stalks, something with soft yellow leaves rotting around its base. You have to look down with every step because the ground’s slippery and puddled with water. How long Misty’s been walking, keeping her eyes on the ground, holding branches so they don’t whip Tabbi, Misty doesn’t know how long, but when she looks up, a man’s standing there.
Just for the record, her levator labii muscles, the snarl muscles, the fight-or-flight muscles, all spasm, all those smooth muscles freeze into the landscape of growling, Misty’s mouth squared so all her teeth show.
Her hand grabs the back of Tabbi’s shirt. Tabbi, she’s still looking down at the ground, walking forward, and Misty yanks her back.
And Tabbi slips and pulls her mother to the ground, saying, “Mom.”
