After the Hurricane(16)
She manages two more hours of sleep before she concedes to the fact that she is awake, now, for the day, and peels herself off the couch, and strips off her clothing. She finds a towel in the bathroom, and tries not to think about when it might have last been washed. There is a dried-out bar of soap in the shower, and nothing else. She washes quickly, scrubbing her scalp with the soap, knowing it, and the humidity, will make her hair a crow’s nest as it dries. She dresses quickly, a pair of shorts and a top from her bag, lightweight garments sure to mark her as not from the island, where natives wear jeans and slacks and long-sleeve shirts for these chilly winter days in the low eighties. She brushes her teeth, and struggles with her hair. She thinks of everything she needs to buy just to make this house livable, making a list in her head.
She checks her phone, and sees an email from her boss, Terrance. She responds, giving him the information he needs, and she is surprised when her phone buzzes a minute after she hits send. He’s calling her.
“Hello?” It’s still early, she wouldn’t have thought he would have been up.
“How are you doing, babe?” he asks, his tone dripping with sympathy. She hates men who call women babe.
“I’m fine, I just emailed you back—”
“Did you get a chance to look at those rental agreements for March yet?” She is technically on vacation. They told her she could have this time. And they barely have anyone checked out and ready for a March move-in yet, everything in New York is down to the wire.
“I haven’t, no. I’m sorry.” She wishes she hadn’t said she was sorry. Why does she always do that? There is silence on the line.
“Can you look at them today?”
“I, I don’t know if I will have time, actually,” she stammers out. More silence.
“Tomorrow, then.” It’s no longer a question. She should remind him he told her he could have the time. She should ask him to have someone else do it.
“Absolutely.” God, she’s a coward. The call ends and she contemplates all of the things she is afraid to do. She can’t even stand up to her boss. How the fuck is she going to look at those agreements on her phone? She doesn’t have Wi-Fi in the house, perhaps she can find a café, but there is so much else she needs to be doing. She needs to talk to Gloria, ask her what happened. But she does not want to see Gloria, does not want to see what time has done to the woman she knows and still loves, does not want to explain away her absence, does not want to ask her if she knows anything more about Santiago. She knows the answer will be yes, that Gloria will know far more about him than she, Elena, might ever know, and that knowledge of her perpetual ignorance weighs on her. She will not be able to carry anything back from the market if she is carrying that, too.
So she, coward, doubly coward, walks first to the Plaza de Armas, taking Calle San Francisco, instead of Calle Sol, to avoid where Gloria lives and works. It is early, and she knows Gloria, a large and placid figure, will be busy cooking, and that on the days her business is open she rarely steps much out beyond the luncheonette, behind which she has her apartment, all on the first floor of the building so she doesn’t have to deal with steps. It is Gloria’s kingdom, that corner, that block, but for Elena today it is enemy territory, and she skirts it, moving fast. She passes the hardware store, still there, yes, but closed, opening soon. She reaches the plaza, an oft-visited area with a large gazebo in the middle. She can remember being a child, her father posing her in front of the ornate hunter-green structure, a large hat on spindly legs, and crying because the pigeons of the square, accustomed to being fed by passersby, wouldn’t leave her alone, flying against her body, their wings brushing her hair. She thinks of how her father wouldn’t let her leave until he got the picture he wanted, how he had laughed like it was a great joke as she swatted at the birds, miserable. Where had Rosalind been? Her father had framed the photo, keeping it in his office for years, and Elena wondered whenever she saw it, How does he not see that my smile is fake? He always laughed when he told the story. It was one of the scariest moments of Elena’s childhood. Elena wonders where that photo is now. She hasn’t seen it for years.
She skirts the pigeons today, which, despite the hurricane, despite everything, gather in large numbers, a conference of gray bodies with wild red eyes. She enters the one supermarket in San Juan, and finds, to her relief, that it is not completely without food, but of course it isn’t, she thinks, San Juan is pretty, it is where tourists come, it must not be permitted to be a disaster, that’s for the places non-natives don’t see. She makes her selections, milk, eggs, fruits, bread, wine, raids the limited home section for light bulbs (the hardware store is on the route she will not take), cleaning agents, trash bags, goes to pay. She smiles feebly at the apathetic clerk, whose crop top reveals soft sections of bronze stomach skin, whose eyebrows reveal her to be a brunette despite the brassy blond of her hair, whose nails are longer than Elena can understand. Elena bags up her things in tote bags, which she has brought from the house, where she found them stashed exactly where Rosalind used to keep them years ago, has he used them since? She trudges back, the sun already punishing, the humidity already swelling the air. She avoids Gloria once again, her heart hurting over her own lack of courage, and lets herself back in, that sticky lock groaning.
Where to begin? She cannot stay here, cannot begin to try to find her father, if this house is unlivable, more dust than rooms. Besides, this might be hers, she must find out if it is, maybe there is a hall of records or something, and even if it is not, it will be hers someday, she might as well start maintaining it. She will start with her room, preferring the idea of staying there than staying in what she still thinks of as her parents’ space. Or worse, her father’s space, soaked in boozy male sweat, marked by his body. She turns on the lights, noting anew which bulbs are out, replacing them. She opens up the windows on the first floor, leaving the door sections of them closed, letting in light but not the whole outside world.