Thomas Trofimuk - Waiting for Columbus

The first thing that struck her was that Columbus had almost white hair, yet he was not so old. He hunched a bit, like he carried a great weight across his shoulders. She loved him instantly when he spoke. That dark-blue voice could have convinced her to do anything. Just the intonations of his voice charmed her.

Columbus looks at her. There’s some sort of Celtic symbol tattooed on her thigh. One of the lines of this tattooed design has come loose and wrapped itself around her entire thigh. “Connected?” he says. We just met, he’s thinking.

“Yes, there seems to be something, um, old-between us.”

“What?”

He sees her as a dream, an entire tapestry-a woman with an aura in the dim light of the room. Her eyes are dark green and continually searching. They look for signs in other humans like a good navigator reads the sea. But tonight they project determined lust. Her eyes want.

He’d taken her to the dinner party, where he held court on all things oceanic-kept the other well-heeled guests enthralled-and at the end of the night collected support in the form of three hefty checks. The dreams he wove of faraway lands. The romance of sailing into uncharted territory. The lure of gold and silver and spices at the end of the day. He performed and Cassandra bought it all, without question.

When the towel slips and she is as beautiful as he thought she would be, he lives that moment. Breathes deeply. Recognizes vanilla scent. Can smell something spicy above the vanilla. He tries to hold this image of her: the full curve of the bottom of her breast, and the way the light touches her face; the loose strands of her hair at her shoulder, and the shadow between her legs-he wants all of this fixed in his memory. A phone rings somewhere in the villa, in another room. She offers to drag the loud thing down the hall so he can do something with it-stop the ringing sound. “No,” he says, “don’t worry about it. If it’s the queen, I can always call her back tomorrow.” “How will you know?” “She’ll leave a message,” he says. Cassandra wants to ask how the queen will leave a message but she feels she’s exposed enough of her ignorance. If Cassandra loved him before, this dismissal of a queen on her behalf caused a rising up of love in her that was not measurable. This was it. This was the man of her dreams.

The phone has prolonged the juxtaposition of skin against the stone texture of the wall for a few seconds longer. Columbus quietly blesses whoever it is that called. This is the conclusion they’ve been slipping toward.

They are both old enough to highly value restraint. They luxuriate in not touching, the almost-nibble, the withheld kiss, the pulled-back caress. They almost surrender to loving for three blissful hours. Tempt from room to room. Share stories. Slowly unfurl feelings meant to capture the other. Taunt each other. They do these things in the context of their conversation. When they finally give in to desire it is the result of consuming three bottles of thick wine. The wine, and the question. The unspoken question. Do we surrender to this? The question itself is something to love-it becomes a tangible thing. The sound of the leaves rustling beyond the courtyard. The unexpected moon barely above the horizon, big and golden and damaged.

She stands up, naked except for her black pumps. They entwine each other in a dream state of drunkenness and lust. White silk floats above them. Flickering candlelight against a rough stone wall. Mozart’s Requiem plays from the stereo. They smooth and caress and become gentle with each other. They…

“What did you just call me,” Cassandra says carefully. Columbus stops. Her voice is a cold wire that cuts the room.

“I… I was remembering something.”

“I think you called me Selena.”

“Why would I call you Selena, when clearly your name is, and always shall be, the beautiful combination of consonants and vowels that make the name Cassandra?”

“You’ve confused me with someone else! Goddamnit, Columbus, at the very least you could get my name right.”

Columbus remembers what Juan said about sticky situations with women. When you feel backed into a corner, always tell the truth enthusiastically and they’ll likely not believe you.

“I saw Selena two days ago.”

“And did you share this with her?”

He pulls away from her in the bed. Seeks her face in the darkness. Breaks from the dream.

“Several times. She is an incredible lover. Such enthusiasm and she’s so young. Touching her was like touching a flower that begins to bloom in spring rain.”

Cassandra peers at him. Reckons him. She weighs what she knows is true and what she wishes were true. She thinks she can see what he’s doing.

“Several times?” she says.

“Many, many times.”

“Well then this shouldn’t be a problem.” She leans toward him and kisses hard. Her loving pushes into recklessness, becomes violent. She is determined to make him pay. She’s not certain he slept with this Selena, but she will punish him for calling out Selena’s name while he was with her. And now? Now he will never go back to Selena, of course. Columbus is hers. Hers in love. She rakes her fingernails down his back, digging into his skin, bites and sucks at his neck, marks her property.

“So this Cassandra is the one you… but then how does Selena fit into all of this?” Consuela sips at her coffee. It’s too hot, so her sip is more a peck at the surface. She’s confused. “Is Cassandra the one you cheated on Beatriz with?”

“I never married Beatriz. I should have. But I did not.”

“And that’s an excuse for cheating on her?”

Columbus takes a gulp of his coffee, which has been cooled by copious amounts of cream and four big spoonfuls of sugar. He looks evenly at her face.

“And what about Mozart?”

“Mozart? I don’t know.”

“Because his music was playing in your story.”

Columbus shrugs. “What difference does it make? I don’t remember saying it. Don’t know anything about it. This is a story about obsession and discovery, discovery and obsession.”

“And a lot of making the fleshy union, I’ve noticed.”

Columbus shrugs again. “I’m frail. I get lonely. I love women. I love all women.”

“I see,” she says.

“And I love wine. There is nothing like a good bottle of wine.”

“I see.”

“And being at sea. I love being on the ocean.”

She nods.

“And I love the Moorish influence on the architecture in this place. Oh, and I love fishing.”

“Moorish influence?”

“Like you didn’t know. It’s everywhere. The horseshoe-shaped arches, the courtyards-how many are there? four? five?-and the ornate ceilings, and the repetition of geometric and nature-based designs.”

Why do you know this, Columbus? she thinks.

Columbus finds a table in a corner of the cafeteria, as far away as possible from the chaos of the institute-the crazies with vocal agendas, the wall knockers, the head bangers, the nonstop talkers-the TV constantly droning, never loud enough for anyone, and other rooms with banal, calming music that Columbus finds infuriating. He places his pen at an angle on the notebook, corner to corner. He looks up and across the room to an arched doorway that leads to another room with an arched doorway, and eventually to a small courtyard with a fountain. This fountain is broken. The plumbing is gone and it is a big job to fix it. So it is a dry fountain. Columbus looks down at the pen and paper, then watches with fascination as his hand moves to pick up the pen and begins to write.

But he does know about Mozart. He remembers listening to music in a dark room and the name Mozart is connected to this music. There was someone else in the room. He thinks he remembers feeling safe, loved. The sound of the oboe and of French horns building to a powerful chorus, but all within the scope of sadness-the low male voices first, then the female voices joining. A lone female voice extends into the melody. He leans back into a soft couch. The music washes over, through him. Is that a woman over there at the desk in the window, across the room, writing in a journal? Maybe she is writing with a fountain pen because it is what she has always done. The ink is sepia-colored. Perhaps later on, during the same piece of music, she will push the cap onto her pen, join him on the couch, and lean into his shoulder-float with him for a few minutes.