3:AM Magazine

By Jean Hannah Edelstein

I am waiting for someone to speak to me. This is my fourth in a series of evenings of waiting, sitting at a dining table that is in the middle of a dining room that is on a platform in the middle of a swimming pool that is in the middle of a six star resort that is in the middle of the southeast coast of Mauritius. Mauritius is an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

To reach the dining platform you traverse a path of flat, white stepping stones that just clear the surface of the bleach-scented azure water; they are like fossilised lily pads. I am also waiting, as a secondary focus of my waiting, for one of the drunken honeymooners to slip and fall and go splashing into the pool in the course of her next tottery trip, a flail of stilettos and silk and rum-spiked coconut milk. When this happens, I am prepared to smirk.

I have made an effort tonight, and all the other nights, to look approachable. In the two hours between abandoning my sun lounger and arriving on the dining platform I have been grooming. I washed the salt from my hair and shaved my legs and smoothed on moisturiser from the complimentary bottle. I dabbed concealer over the uneven patches on my face and smeared on three different shades of eye shadow: inner corner, outer corner, crease, browbone. Liner. Mascara. Blink. Blink. Blink.

I blew the waves out of my hair with a dryer and then applied hot tongs to replace the natural curls with artificial ones. I arranged my breasts neatly in a push-up bra and donned a low-cut dress that had been perfectly pressed by the hotel laundry service. And then I ticked the scent menu, so that the maid could spritz my room with the right flavour when she came to turn down my room (lavender). And then I reflected on the fact that the sheer existence of a scent menu, of people who believe that a varied choice of in-room aroma is a reasonable expectation, kind of made me want to kill myself.

Excuse me, he will say. He will be between five and ten years older than me; wearing a sharp linen jacket; handsome, with kind eyes. Brown, preferably. Grey will also do. He will like to read and work as an academic in some kind of humanities field and also be staying on his own at a six-star resort on the southeast coast of Mauritius. He will not be bald. Or he will be a woman. He will be a human being. I will settle for a talking dog.

Excuse me, he will say (or woof). It’s not often that one sees a woman in her twenties dining on her own in a six star resort on the southeast coast of Mauritius. At the gate at Heathrow I was the only woman on my own; the only one sans a glorious diamond, a platinum band, on my left hand. Mauritius is a popular honeymoon destination for British newlyweds seeking to demonstrate their love for each other through the expenditure of £6000 on a package holiday.

Well, I will say to my interlocutor, as if I have not been waiting six days for someone to ask me that precise question. Well. Funny you should mention that. I will swish the ice cubes in my drink, which is a negroni, an old man drink.

You’re here alone? he will say.

I am, I will reply. My husband — well, my husband passed away a couple of months ago. I will do a wistful gaze past my new friend’s right ear.

Oh, he will say. How awful. I am so sorry.

Oh, thank you. I will say. I will look brave. Thank you. It was very sudden. I told him, Harry, I said, you are eighty-six years old, you don’t have to personally supervise things at the meat-packing plant any more.

Meat-packing? he will say.

Yes, I will say. He was in tins?

Tins, he will say.

Quite, I will say. I will sigh. But he insisted — insisted — on doing it all himself, and then, well, he slipped and fell into a vat of offal…I will choke, I will wipe a tear.

Offal, he will say. This is a hilarious double entendre that I have led him into, because I am clever like that.

And now here I am, I will say. A widow at 27. With a massive inheritance.

Oh, he will say.

Harry always encouraged me to travel, I will conclude. And then I will burst into tears.

I have rehearsed it so many times, even the crying. It will be great. If only someone would just speak to me.

Would you like some more wine? the waiter asks.

Waiters don’t count. I want someone to speak to me who is not being paid to speak to me. I want it more than I want my room to smell like lavender when I return to it, more than I want the ability to select a special hypo-allergenic pillow of medium squish from a menu of pillows, more than I want a woman to silently rub my naked body with warm oil while I press my face into the upholstered hole at the top of a massage table, more than I want a flag that I can stick in the sand next to my sunlounger which summons a man who will bring me an iced glass of fresh-pressed beetroot juice, which I order because it is the most bizarre juice on the menu and everything here is bizarre.

No, I reply. I have had one glass of wine already at a cost of several thousand Mauritian rupees, or twelve euros; and I cannot include it in my expenses.

***

I am writing about conference travel. Conference travel is not something that I really knew existed, but it does, and there are magazines about it. Several magazines. It is an industry. It has acronyms. There is debate over which acronyms are correct; dissent within the industry. This makes it more real.

The editor of this magazine read something that I wrote for a newspaper with a photo byline, and a biography. Helen Loeb is a freelance journalist, the biography said. The photo was taken at the end of an amateur dramatics performance. I was wearing a thick layer of makeup.

That photo is prettier than you are, said my mother when she saw it.

I know, I said.

Will you be my Facebook friend? wrote the magazine editor in an email.

No, I wrote, noting that he appeared to be at least fifty-five years old.

Would you like to go on a free trip to Mauritius? wrote the magazine editor. It’s an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I am the editor of a magazine about conference travel, and I would like to commission you to write an article about conference travel in Mauritius.

Yes, I wrote.

Will you meet me for coffee before you go? wrote the magazine editor.

No, thank you, I wrote.

In exchange for Mauritius, for the six-star hotel, I have to visit the island’s conference facilities. There are, for an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a surprisingly great many conference facilities. A surfeit.

How many chairs fit in this room? I say when I am in the conference facilities.

Eighty-seven chairs, says the group sales director. Group sales director is a job that exists at hotels and conference centres. Group sales directors read magazines about conference travel, I guess, and they know how many chairs are in rooms.

Eighty-seven chairs! I say, because I do not want the group sales director to think that his life is not worth living. Do you also have audio-visual equipment?

Yes, says the group sales director.

I pretend to write this down, not because all of the information is not easy to access on the internet from England, but because I have come to realise that it makes people nervous when they are talking to a journalist who does not write anything down.

This is fucking boring, I write in my special journalist illegible scrawl. I want some more beetroot juice.

Would you like to see the spa? says the group sales director. We just have time. Then your driver will return to take you back to your hotel so that you can enjoy the beach in the afternoon.

Of course, I say. The spa. The spa.

***

I am eating dessert, and I am still waiting, and while I continue to wait I also look. The couple seated across from me are old enough to be my parents, if they had me when they were quite young. Her back is to me, broad deep-tanned shoulders rising out of an expensive linen sundress. Pilates. A sleek, straight bob of processed blonde. The platinum clasp of her pearl necklace glints in the candlelight.

He sits opposite, grey hair and open collar — I am on holiday, therefore I wear no tie — and sport coat that has never seen any sport. Obviously. They wear wedding rings. They eat starters of scallops off small plates crossed with decorous smears of fruity sauce; they sip white wine. She stares over his left shoulder. He stares over her right shoulder. They do not speak.

That is not what I want, I said to Michael the first time we went on holiday together, escaped on the train to the chintzy touristy climes of Windermere because having sex at his parents’ house in on the outskirts of Leeds was not a possibility. Not when his mother was apt to tap on his door to offer us a cup of tea while we grappled with each other’s jeans and jumpers and genitals in the skinny single bed where he’d slept since he was just out of diapers.

I don’t want that, I said; I winced. Promise me that we’ll never be like those people.

Michael looked in the direction of my head nod, at a middle-aged couple who were eating butterflied lamb cutlets (her) and gammon steak (him) and not speaking to each other, not even making eye contact. We had alighted from the train and spent the entire afternoon wildly fucking each other on top of the low-threadcount bedspread at the bed and breakfast. Two hours ago we had agreed that yes, we did love each other. We were 21 years old.

I promise, he said; he nodded. We’ll never run out of things to say. He smiled. I smiled. My heart flipped.

Michael and I talked for the next three years. We talked, and talked, and I only became silent when Michael finally said (sobbed, moaned, howled) I have to leave, I have to leave, and then I rolled over and somehow slept for twenty-seven hours with only two or maybe three toilet breaks and one fifteen-minute interval of wakefulness in which I ate a bowl of muesli with old lumpy soy milk and wept.

I can taste lumpy soy and teary salt again now, looking at this couple who have come to a six-star resort on the southeast coast of Mauritius, an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, to not speak to each other. They are now picking at fruit puddings. They have a brief exchange about the pudding wine.

Surprise me, she says, when he asks her what she wants. Surprise me.

Surprise me. She is South African. South Africa, I have learned today while touring some conference facilities, is one of the primary tourism markets for Mauritius.

You will love this, he says, pointing to something on the wine list while the waiter hovers. You. Will. Love. This.

***

I have never been snorkelling before. Snorkelling is free at the six-star hotel, much like everything else is free to me at the six-star hotel. After the beach, before the dinner, I email Julie back in London. She is a marine biologist.

Julie, I write. Should I go snorkelling? It’s free. But I might drown.

Swimming has never been my strong point.

I check Facebook while I wait for her to respond. Michael Dixon has been tagged in an album, Facebook tells me. There is a photo of him on a windswept vista. He is embracing a girl with long shiny hair. She is younger than me. They are her photographs. Thanksgiving in North Dakota, the photo album is called. I click through them and see Michael at a strange family’s dinner table, cuddling a cat, cuddling the shiny-haired girl. I know the expressions on his face. I cry. I am in a six-star hotel room in the middle of a resort in the middle of an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and I am looking at Michael spending a foreign holiday in a right-wing state with another woman four years after he said I have to leave, I have to leave, and I am crying.

Do it, Julie writes back. Go snorkelling. But be sure to wear a t-shirt or you will get a sunburn on your back.

I update my Facebook status. Helen Loeb is going snorkelling in Mauritius, I write.

There’s a little speedboat waiting for us on a boat launch on the beach. It’s me, and an Israeli couple, and a guy driving the boat, and our snorkelling instructor, Sebastian. Sebastian has his name tattooed on his forearm. At first I think that it might be a memorial tattoo but then he says, ‘Hello, I am Sebastian’ and I am aware that it is, in fact, his own name.

I have never been snorkelling before, I say to Sebastian. I’m sorry.

Sebastian looks annoyed.

OK, he says. I will take you. He shouts something in Mauritian Creole to the man driving the boat. I do not know the driver’s name because his name is not tattooed on his forearm.

We get in the water. I have forgotten my t-shirt. Sebastian shows me how to blow air out of my snorkel. He shows me how to defog my mask.

OK? says Sebastian.

OK, I say. It is totally not OK. I am going to die in the middle of the Indian Ocean and no one is going to know it is me because I do not have my name tattooed on my arm, or anywhere on my body. But I go underwater anyway because I do not want Sebastian to be any more annoyed.

The coral is just below our flippers. I pause, and crunch a piece underfoot. I think that this is a very bad thing to have done. A school of shimmering fish swoops past. I am in a nature documentary and it is so beautiful that if I wasn’t already immersed in salt water, I think I would cry. Maybe I am crying. All I can hear is the oceanic swish. Sebastian dives to pick something up from the ocean floor and then comes back up to me. He presses a piece of coral into my hand. It is exquisite. I smile and flap flippers and hands and my right breast pops out of my bikini top. Another reason to wear a t-shirt. To correct it, I surface for a moment and see the distance that we are from the boat. It reminds me of swimming lessons when I was small, when my teacher would tell me to swim to her and then back slowly away as I spluttered. The revelation of her deceitful nature made me terrified to let go of the edge of the pool. That is why I am not good at swimming. That is why the distance of the boat makes me panic.

I have to go back, I say to Sebastian. He follows me. I wrap myself in a towel and feel sheepish.

We pick up the Israeli couple, eventually, and the boat sputters back towards the resort.

My friends and I are going out dancing tonight, says Sebastian. There is a club just down the beach.

Oh, I say. Oh, thank you, but I have an appointment. I am busy. I am not busy, of course. There are no conference facilities to view in the evening. But I am not sure about going dancing with a man whose name is tattooed on his forearm and who has already seen my breast.

I am still clutching the coral.

Oh, says Sebastian, seeing it in my fist. That is still alive. You are not supposed to take it away. He looks at me. He frowns.

I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry. I throw it over the side of the boat.

Sebastian regards me, silent. I feel like I have killed Mauritius.

***

Dinner is over. I make my way back over the fossilised lily pads. I climb the flight of stairs back to my room. It smells of lavender. One of the beds — there are two — is turned down, and there are deep pink orchids scattered over it in an orderly fashion. The bed is ready for love.

I remove my makeup. I wash my face. I moisturise my face. I go to the toilet. My shit is bright red and I see it and my heart pounds. I am haemmoraghing. I have colon cancer and I am going to die in Mauritius. Do they even have hospitals in Mauritius? I have not seen any hospitals. I sit on the edge of the bathtub and put my head in my hands. I am dizzy. Now the swish in my ears is my own blood. I am due to fly home in two days. Can I survive for two days? I want my mother. I want someone. I want Michael. I want to tell Michael that I love him. When he hears that I have died of some kind of terrible bowel perforation in Mauritius, will he cry? Helen Loeb is dead in Mauritius, Facebook will tell him.

And then I remember my two glasses of beetroot juice and that I am actually in robust health. I take some deep breaths.

I brush the orchids on to the floor. I climb between the sheets. I lie back on the special hypo-allergenic pillows of medium squish. I switch off the light. It is only ten o’clock. But the only thing to do in this six-star resort on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean at this time of night is get drunk or have sex or go dancing with your snorkelling instructor. I do not want to get drunk on my own. I have missed my chance with Sebastian. I think that I might as well have an orgasm. I slide my right hand down my stomach, between my legs. I hear voices through the wall.

Fuck me, a woman says. Her accent is South African. Fuck me. Fuck me.

You fucking love this, a man says. You. Fucking. Love. This.

I decide I will just go to sleep.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jean Hannah Edelstein is an American-born, London-based writer.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Saturday, February 20th, 2010.