fiction: Desiree Dighton

Little Known Fact

 

Little known fact: Tulum is the yoga capital of Mexico. Alistair told me this, because his is a world of facts, of black and white, but I knew almost nothing when I decided to go there, only what I’d read on VisitMexico.com and once when I clicked on the live web cam,  mile after mile of beach and rather gray skies, a snag in my view of paradise, but an anomaly I chalked up to the camera lens and not the elements. A lone woman strolled along the expanse of gray, so alone she might have been on the moon, her face turned away from the camera towards the sea. Tulum had plenty of empty space where you could fill in your own happiness or romance. The closest big city is Cancun, but the two couldn’t be more different. I didn’t want to party in Cancun, but I wasn’t going to Tulum for the yoga either. I might have had I known. No, I was going for the whale sharks.

Tulum is one of the few places where whale sharks mate. These white, polka-dotted behemoths converge in the shadow soaked depths and clasp together. After this momentary embrace, the males go off to wherever they go. Phuket, Thailand would be my guess, and the females stay behind, growing miraculously larger for fifteen months. If you are lucky enough to find them, you can hop overboard and swim along. They’re harmless, even though they’re sharks. Even though, considering whale sharks only mate every three to five years, there’s a lot at stake. You might think a little privacy would be called for. But despite our ogling, goggled eyes, whale sharks don’t get defensive. They don’t throw their six-ton weight around. They see you swimming there next to them, this pathetic little creature pestering them with your underwater camera, and they remain stoic and determined. Maybe their gigantic brains allow for more tolerance. Maybe they know their significance dwarfs us to near nothingness. Or maybe they’re simply focused, single-minded. Their eyes, and what passes for a nose, even their ears, every shiny inch is honed for the one whale shark they’ll see fit to mate with. They’re simply love-blind to everything else.

When I decided to go to Tulum, I’d been dating my boyfriend Alistair for three months. After finishing the research internship that had brought us together at a PR firm, we spent the week waiting to hear if we’d be offered permanent positions. We spent evenings at my house, since it was slightly larger and homier than Alistair’s and had a nice view of the woods from my back porch. I’d sit with a cup of tea, while Alistair paced, and we both pondered our future. Neither of us were even sure we liked PR, but we didn’t know what else to do with ourselves either. One night, Alistair said, “Let’s go somewhere, anywhere you like.”

“Anywhere?” I asked, and blew steam from the skin of my hot tea. I loved to travel, and because Alistair didn’t, I decided it was love, or at least infatuation, that caused him to take hold of the balcony banister behind my house and say, “Anywhere.”

I took him at his word, and by the end of the week, I had booked two flights to Tulum on his credit card. A word about Alistair: you might say he’s bookish. Some people have gone so far as to called him reclusive, the term has a nice literary ring, and a few of my girlfriends, advocating a breakup and my returned devotion to them, knowing a good pathology is worth a thousand limp put-downs, have even called him certifiably anti-social.

I preferred to call him a scholar. I chose to believe he had higher pursuits than our occasional 4 A.M. tavern sessions, scholarly, with a splash of recluse. But if you think this dulled the attraction, you’d be wrong. In my mind, his solitude was a rejection of the superficiality and cruelty of the social world. His self-isolation made him intense, even edgy, in an intellectual, un-tattooed way. To me, Alistair was a lone wolf. A kind of visionary, like Che Guevara or Bob Dylan. I knew, even then, he wasn’t likely to lead any revolution, but a passionate conversation on my apartment floor, his arms gesticulating, lips moist, and a large pile of books between my legs was more than enough to make me swoon.

 

A few weeks before we left for Tulum, I made phone calls to Tulum and typed up an itinerary to share with my family. I didn’t, however, book us a room or a whaling excursion. This wasn’t an oversight. I didn’t make the arrangements on purpose. I didn’t want to stay at the Radisson or the Marriott, and I didn’t want to go looking for whale sharks with fifty other tourists in a boat captained by college students. I wanted the real deal. Alistair would say I was obsessed by the “authentic.”

I knew Alistair wouldn’t be comfortable with my faith in spontaneity, so I waited to explain we didn’t have a place to stay until we’d arrived in Mexico. We had taken a cab from the Cancun airport to Tulum, consulted a map, frowned at the foreign pay phone and started off on foot down a seven-mile road, something like a hotel district, although the roads were made of dirt and boulders and all the cabs were going the wrong way.

We stopped when we came to what we suspected were inns, and I abandoned the luggage I’d borrowed from Alistair’s mother, a pink set that rolled uncertainly behind me, while he lugged two oversized duffle bags and my carry-on over his shoulder.I left my luggage propped against a palm tree near the road or leaning against Alistair’s leg while I trekked down lane after lane to inquire about a room. Each time I returned to Alistair’s silence, his erratic eyebrows the only indication of hope, or irritation. By the seventh or eighth try I returned to his back.

“Can we walk a little farther?” I asked.

Perhaps you’ve been here before. Vacations can turn the best of lovers into a pair of squabbling children, and the viability of the relationship seems to hang tenuously to every minor decision. This was like that, only Alistair had never been angry with me before, and his face, in anger, was a different man’s. It’s hard to describe, other than to say that looking at his eyes and his shoulders, I worried that the girlfriends who called him pathological had been right.

He would not accept my apology. We had been walking for a couple of hours, and it was somewhere around a hundred degrees, and the bags probably weighed nearly fifty pounds. Maybe it would have been all right to make a hotel reservation, but I had been on other trips, ones where I had made reservations, and then stumbled upon the perfect spot, one that would never have had a website.

I attempted to take Alistair’s hand, but he jerked away from me, like he would rather smack me than have me touch him. I was trying my best, but I couldn’t find any place for us to stay. There wasn’t anything I could do. If I chose something, just to choose, it would be a disaster. I could feel it. We had had to wait so long that it had to be perfect.

Alistair picked his bags out of the dirt and began to walk.

“I can carry those if you want.” I reached for the bag around his shoulder, his T-shirt sweaty underneath the strap.

He sniffed in disgust.

“Are you crying?” I asked

“No, I’m not crying. I’m sick.”

“Give me those bags,” I said, and dropped the handle of my luggage and reached out my hand. Alistair hiked the bags on his back like a pack animal and began to walk on.

I found a room that was nearly $700 a night, one that was a yoga retreat with all vegetarian food and classes every morning, but, as far as I could see, not a single man on the premises. I took one look at Alistair sweating through his T-shirt, his arms through the straps of his duffel bag, like a backpack, and knew he could not handle bunking with a bunch of women. The next sign led us to some shanty-like cabanas next to trailers and a few tents where drunk American hippies were stumbling around, making lunch over an open fire. We didn’t speak, or make eye contact. The two of us turned around and walked on, panting, red dirt covering Alistair’s mother’s suitcase and half way up my sweat-streaked legs. Nailed to a wooden gate, mostly hidden by red, blooming bougainvillea, in hand-painted letters, the next sign read “Shambala.”

We made it to Shambala. That was truly the name of the cabana hotel. Maybe you’ve never heard the song by Three Dog Night, or read much Tibetan Buddhism. Shambala is a place like heaven, except people really go looking for it, or at least they used to, but it’s so well hidden, a place that’s no place, a town no one’s who’s ever found has ever made it back from. Maybe it exists behind the clouds of the Himalayas, and people who live there are enlightened, at peace with each other. Alistair rolled his eyes, and started to rub his shoulders where the straps were surely pressing down like the weight of the world.

Without a word we dropped our bags and turned into the gate, both of us this time, leaving our luggage near the road, where, as far as we were concerned, anyone who wanted it could have it. We headed toward a pavilion where we heard voices, clinking of glass, laughter, and some Sting song piped through outdoor speakers. Under the pavilion, in a kind of breakfast nook, flower petals were scattered on a buffet table set with chafing dishes, and guests, a few young American tourists like us, and a chic European couple, sipped herbal tea and munched on fiber-rich cereal or whole pieces of fruit. We peered in at them, and they looked up, smiling sublimely at Alistair and me, hunching our heads under the awning with dirt-smeared faces.

“Are you serious?” Alistair whispered.

“What?” I said, although I knew what he was referring to, a slight cult-like vibe.

“It’s perfect.” I said.

“I’m not staying here,” he said, and gestured behind us to the two rows of cabanas, maybe ten total that faced each other. An aisle of sand divided them, rising slightly up a hill that I knew, although I couldn’t see, must open to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Let’s just see,” I said.

By the furious look in Alistair’s eyes, I knew he’d rather strip naked and jump into the ocean. Imagining what another seven-mile walk would do to us, I stepped forward and cleared my throat.

“Excuse me?” I said, and a dark-skinned man in a white shirt looked up from his laptop.

“Yes?” said a man I’d later learn was called Roberto. Roberto’s English was nearly flawless, with a charming accent that was hard to place, maybe because he also spoke Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French. He gave us a tour of Shambala. He sauntered a few steps ahead, his white shirt flapping open in the breeze. When he explained the rooms and rates, he touched my arm. On both sides of the path, burgundy silk hammocks were strung from palm trees. Paper lanterns glowed warm and orange even in the daytime. Beach beds were tucked in bamboo-screen alcoves, strewn with orange pillows and covered in sheets that were bright yellow against the muted sand.

“Wakka chikka, wakka chikka,” Alistair sang, his attempt at porn music, and shook his head, rolling his eyes at the decor.

“Don’t,” I said. “This could be it.”

Outside of the second cabana from the beach, Roberto paused, removed his flip-flops from his elegant brown feet, and languidly rinsed them in the tile basin in front of the door before walking into the dim interior.

“Cool,” I said, and kicked off my own flip-flops.

Alistair looked horrified at the thought of dipping his flesh into the lukewarm tub of water that had washed other people’s feet, little flecks of plant-life and dead insects surfing a small wave.

I had only seen suspended beds in pictures from Travel +Leisure, pictures of places I never thought I’d go. But inside the cabana there was a full-sized bed covered with burgundy silk sheets floating supernaturally above the sand floor. Though it must have been tied somehow to the ceiling, I never looked. It seemed to levitate under an canopy of mosquito netting. The walls of the cabana were made of cherry-stained bamboo, bound together with some kind of rope, and there was a tiny bathroom with hot and cold running water. The bathroom door was more like an “idea”, another strip of white fabric rather than a solid barrier of sticks.

“Did the three little pigs build this?” Alistair said.

“Isn’t it terrific?” I said, and turned away from the bathroom

Alistair was trying to keep up appearances of disgust, but he couldn’t deny how beautiful this place was. I looked in his eyes.

“Find out how much,” he said.

“How much?” I asked.

Roberto asked us what we wanted to pay. This was our place.

 

 

 

*

Whale shark love is a mystery, but I felt I understood. Apparently, you could find guides in Tulum to take you to the whale sharks, but no one has ever seen them mate. Later, you could find pregnant females, and then the huge babies, but no one had ever seen a whale shark give birth, or knew whether they hung those strange embryonic pods to grasses like other sharks do, or gave birth to slippery, live young, like whales. New whale sharks just seemed to appear every four or five years. They thought they were mating in Tulum because it was one of the few places whale sharks could be found together. Normally, they are solitary fish, lone swimmers.

That was what I told Alistair the morning after we arrived in Shambala, because I knew if he had something to study, I just might get him interested in whale sharks, and in me again.

After I gave him my speech, he nodded: He’d consider it. He was reclined on the bed under the mosquito net, reading, while I was unpacking the travel candles I had brought along, lining them up on the dresser in front of the mirror. I could see him behind me, licking his finger and turning the page.

I wanted him to understand this trip was important. I didn’t tell him that I thought seeing whale sharks would be an experience I hoped would marry us, in a way. I wanted us to go through something together that was both frightening and spectacular, something that would bind us together, irrevocably, the way trauma sometimes can.

I didn’t say this, but instead said, “You know there’s Salsa dancing at a restaurant in town tonight.” I wore a red tank top with spaghetti straps, and in the mirror I could see the skin on my chest, damp and glowing in the candlelight. I lit the last candle and wound my hair with my fingers, twisting it into a topknot. I tried to look like one of those bathers in an oil painting. Alistair didn’t look up from his book. I knew he must be able to sense my movements, my bare shoulder blades, and the floating bed we’d yet to use for anything other than reading.

“Hmm?” he said, not looking up.

“Dancing. I think we should go dancing after dinner,” I said and dropped my hair.

“Whatever you want,” he said.

 

 

At dinner, I ordered the strangest item I could find just to get a rise out of him. We were sitting at a table on a patio. In front of us sprawled the ocean and in the foreground a band played music. A woman sang melodious, passionate songs entirely in Spanish, while three men accompanied her with guitars and drums. The patio was filled, every seat taken. Our waitress wasn’t friendly and took a long time coming to our table.

“I get you a drink?” she said, no greeting, no “Hola,” like the Mexican waiters back home. She didn’t smile either. I was on my second margarita by the time our dinner arrived. The waitress slid Alistair’s plate in front of him, a skillet enveloped in a steamy cloud of cumin. My dinner was an entire fish, scales and all. One gelatinous blue eyeball peered up at me over an under-bite with a full set of teeth.

“What did you order, piranha?” Alistair said. He looked skeptically at my plate. “I don’t think I can eat next to that.”

I considered defending myself. I pulled back the fish skin and picked small morsels of flesh from the bones, occasionally stealing bites of avocado and rice from Alistair’s plate.

On stage, a few people were beginning to dance. A man with a mustache circled his arm around a woman with dyed blonde hair, the slick, polyester material of her red dress wrinkled under his hand as their bodies slid back and forth, their steps finding the slightly off-beat rhythm of Salsa music. I always had to say cha-cha cha in my head to find the beat, even though it wasn’t the cha-cha, it helped. I’d never been very good. I found the dance difficult, foreign, whether at a club, or the gym, or a coffee shop, but I kept trying, dragging my friends out or going it alone. I was determined to be good one day.

Alistair also followed the dancers’ movements with his eyes.

“Dance with me?” I asked.

He looked at the ten or so people on the dance floor, shuffling around in various stages of Salsa fluency. The instructors were dressed slightly fancier than everyone else. The man wore tight black pants and a bandelero tie. The woman had on one of those silky dresses like in Saturday Night Fever and a pair of black high heeled shoes. They placed their hands on other people’s hips, orchestrating them into two lines, one for boys, and one for girls. I knew Alistair was afraid to get out there in front of everyone, and I was pretty sure he’d never had a lesson.

“I’m going,” I said.

On the dance floor, I smiled as a stranger put his arm around my waist. He seemed to be a local, or at least he didn’t speak much English, so we just looked into each other’s eyes. He stepped forward, I step backed, cha-cha cha.

It took a full song-length for us to find our rhythm, but when we got it we are swimming across the dance floor, weaving in and out of couples, bumping shoulders, laughing, stumbling only a little. We didn’t communicate well, but he led well and understood how to move my body. His brown eyes looked directly into mine. His Salsa was much more assured and natural than mine, but I knew by the way he met my eyes, nodding and smiling encouragement, and the soft way he held my hand, that I was catching on. I felt loose and happy, like I was finally on vacation in Mexico.

I searched through the sea of tables to find Alistair. He was watching me, leaning back in his chair.

Take my picture, I mouthed.

He crinkled his eyes, not understanding. “Take my picture,” I yelled this time. Alistair picked up the camera.  My partner pressed on my back, let go, and I flew away from him, smacking my hip against the stage. The music stopped and the camera flashed. Alistair gave me a thumb’s up.

Back at the table, I sat down, sweating and fanning my face with my hand. He had ordered coffee while I was dancing. He was shuffling the sugar packets and artificial sweeteners around in the caddy, ordering the blues with the blue, the pinks with the pink.

“What?” I said.

“You just could’ve relaxed a little more.”

“Relaxed?” I said. “Me? Relax more?”

“Yeah,” he said, holding out his arms round like a rib cage. “You were just a little,” and he rocked from side to side, “stiff.”

“Stiff?”

“Excuse me, you want something more?” Our waitress looked down at the bill she held in her hand. Alistair shook his head.

“All right then, you go,” she said, handing Alistair the bill and picking up my half-full drink.

“Don’t worry,” Alistair said and patted my hand. “You were great.”

“You just said I was stiff, I’m not stiff.”

“It’s okay,” he patted. “Really, you did great. It was you’re first time.”

“It was not my first time.”

“Well, that’s okay. That’s not what I meant.”

I reached across and grabbed the bill, slapped the pesos on the table under the peppershaker, and hoped the busboy would steal them.

 

 

The next morning, Roberto arranged a whaling excursion, but first he was giving me a massage. Free massage was one of the perks of Shambala. Not only were we privy to beach beds and pillows instead of towels on the hard sand, even yoga lessons on the beach if you were willing to trot down there at sunrise, but our cabana also came with a complimentary message.

The next morning, I slid out from under Alistair’s arm and riffled through my suitcase for an outfit to wear across the sand, one that would be easy to take off again. I was still pissed at Alistair and dressed as if I was going off to meet another man.

“Sure you don’t want to come with? He said he’d give you one too.” I said, and pulled a sundress over my head.

“Tell him you’ll take my massage too,” Alistair had his arm over his eyes.

“Okay, then,” I said, and opened the door a crack.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Nothing. I’ll be back,” I said. “And then we’ll find the whales.”

Even though the sun was bright already, inside the message cabana it was dim. Roberto had his back to me, lighting candles. In the middle of the room was a massage table, same as you would find back home, with a white sheet, a few folded towels.

“Buenos dias,” Roberto said. Sensing me behind him, he turned and one of his small, gentle smiles spread over his face. “How are you this morning?”

“Good,” I answered, fidgeting in my flip-flops. I wasn’t sure where I should be. Should I sit on the table like at the doctor’s office, grab the sheet and disrobe like a pro, or stay standing and unabashedly shed my dress?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, and unfolded one of the towels, draping it over his arm.

“Very,” I’d had massages before, and I’m always a little nervous at the beginning, the awkwardness of taking off your clothes in front of a perfect stranger, but Roberto wasn’t exactly a stranger. I had seen him every morning and every evening for the past three days. I was also very aware that he would see me naked, and I’d have to see him every day for the rest of our trip.

“Take everything off, and I’ll be back,” he handed me the sheet and opened the cabana door.

 

 

The oil Roberto used smelled like fruit. He didn’t have one of those ambient CD’s in the background, but I could hear the crash of the surf a few yards away, the voices outside, saying hello with that mix of morning quietness and optimism. My face was pressed into the doughnut-shaped headrest. When I opened my eyes I could see the sand floor of the cabana, and occasionally Roberto’s brown toes, his toenails glossy as shells. I could feel the weight of his hands, motionless and warm like a blanket. His hands rose and fell with my breath.

It usually takes me nearly the entire sixty minutes to relax, forget I’m having a massage and actually lose myself to it. But with Roberto, within moments saliva dripped from my mouth to the sand floor, and I wasn’t embarrassed. My body lost its solidity. I rippled. That ninety percent of me that was water had overthrown the ten percent that had ruled for so long, and I felt like liquid, like a vast rolling sea rippling under his hands.

I nearly lost consciousness all together until with one fin-like movement, his hand plunged between my legs, once and then again, to parts of my body that had never before been included in a professional massage. There wasn’t anything sexual about his touch, not quite, but it did cross some boundary, at least in my mind, although I couldn’t deny that the sensation put me into an altered state, almost transcendental.

“And now you can roll over,” he said. He didn’t say please. No “if you’re comfortable.” He took for granted that I was, and I wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. I stopped worrying about whether what he was doing was sexual or not, and simply surrendered, like I’d done to my first real kiss, to the first time I read Wuthering Heights, to sleep, to that place that’s no place at all.

Roberto filled his hands with warm oil, circled my navel in concentric motion, like the moon orbiting the earth.

“You should use more moisturizer,” he said, “you’re skin is so thirsty, it gulps.”

 

*

Later in the afternoon, Alistair and I searched for whales. We bounded along next to each other to the boat, looking froggish in our fins and goggles, Alistair’s eyes bulging from his mask being sealed so tight. I pushed mine against my face, rubber sucking my skin, but the mask fell off again and drooped forward on my nose.

“Here,” Alistair said, and pulled it over my head, taking a few hairs with it. He licked the rim of my goggled and stretched the mask back over my face, pressing it sealed. “There,” he said, and it stuck.

We whizzed by the shoreline, the hotels and houses, on our way to deeper water where the whale sharks returned every year, supposedly to mate. Four other people clung to the side of our small, mostly open skipper, which looked remarkably like the boat from Jaws. The captain slowed, and the boat glided to a stop. The water was calm and deep blue, the white rim of our wake clapping against the sides of the boat.

Our guide brought his hands together around his mouth, like a makeshift bullhorn. “While you’re underwater, remember, don’t touch anything. You might see a school of fish swimming so close, you think, I could touch them, but don’t. You never know, they might be barracuda, or have poison ink or sometimes quills. These fish have to keep from being eaten, you know? And do not swim over there,” he pointed to an amorphous area behind us, gesturing somewhere into the blue.

“There are some shallow spots with big rocks over there, and the current can push you against them, and we won’t be able to get you out, understand? The water is warm and calm today, but if you have trouble breathing, come to the top and wave your arms, don’t panic. Take your oxygen out and breathe, all right? I’ll come and get you. Our radar is empty, but the other boat radioed. The pods are moving south, which means in our direction.” He looked at his watch, “They should be here in about fifteen minutes. When you see the whales, just let yourself glide, don’t try to touch them or grab onto them for a ride. They weigh five tons and you don’t want to get too close, yeah? Okay, have fun.”

The other divers made their way to the bottom of the boat, where a door opened to a metal staircase leading down into the sea. One by one the divers put their oxygen in their mouths and lowered themselves into the water, becoming shrimp-like and disappearing beneath the boat.

I looked at Alistair, black rubber flippers on his feet, a tube hanging from his mouth like an emaciated elephant. The pink vulnerability of his bare chest made me want to cry. I imagined spiny fish and poisonous coral piercing his skin.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’ll go first,” Alistair said.

He placed one finned foot on the second step, one fin in the water.

“Chilly,” he said. He brought the oxygen to his face, closed his teeth around the mouthpiece and continued to climb down the steps. I wanted to stop him, to tell him we didn’t have to do this, that he had been right: This wasn’t a good idea. It was horrible and dangerous. My stomach cramped. I thought I might vomit into my mask. Alistair’s head slipped under.

The moment of choice had passed. I had to go down after him. My head went underwater, and I began to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe. We had no business being underwater, like we were trying, ignorantly, at being fish.

Amid the bubbles, I made out a squirming black sliver of a person: Alistair, his hair standing up around his face, treading water, looking from side to side, searching for me. He motioned for me to come on, and I swam to him and grabbed his stiff fingers. In front of us, the other divers were swimming ahead, disappearing into the black depths of the sea, in the direction the captain said the whales would be.

We could have stayed there, hovering and waiting for the others to return, or I could have just as easily pulled him toward the metal staircase, the safety of the boat deck, and we could have stretched out in the sun for an hour. Instead I leaned forward, my body becoming pointedly horizontal. This was my chance, maybe not a very good one, but if I’d really been one to weigh risks I would never have put on flippers, or wandered down the road in Tulum. I held tight to Alistair’s hand and kicked as hard as I could into the darkness, where somewhere whale sharks tangled.

 

 

DESIREE DIGHTON has been a contest finalist with Glimmer Train Magazine and American Short Fiction. Her work has appeared recently in Prime Mincer, and she is assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University, and currently teaches writing in Raleigh, NC, where she’s been known to eat far too many biscuits.