Interesting Women by Andrea Lee (7 ebook reader txt) 📗

where kids have tongue studs and Prada running shoes and get alternating lectures on the importance of getting into the right college and of avoiding STDs. However, when it comes to matters other than sex, ambition, and controlled substances—small matters like distinguishing honest people from charlatans—Basia is still as innocent as custard pie. Now she is openly hoarding the specious information we are exchanging. And I feel a flash of alarm that changes to annoyance at her presence. Later, back at our bungalow, I will scold her unfairly, poor baby, for butting into adult conversations.

The rain comes on, cooler than the water where we are sitting. The three of us raise our arms and turn up our faces to the hard drops that rattle down as if someone were tossing handfuls of coins. Up from the lagoon, as if in response, leap entire schools of tiny silver fish. In a minute, the sun pokes through; the daily rainbow bridges two dark banks of clouds, and, on cue, a fashion shoot appears on the beach in the distance, as it does every morning and evening: photographer, dressers, models, minions, trunks and tripods and diffusers. Tonight it’s the two male models in long bathing trunks: a sculptural blond with a strange, chopped haircut, and a black guy with a shaved head and a body that makes one realize that sometimes just a body is enough. “Look at that,” I say.

“Don’t stare at him, Mom!” begs Basia.

“Oh, he doesn’t mind being stared at,” says our new friend. “He’s used to it. It’s an element. You learn to breathe in it, and then, if you’re not careful, you have to have it. It used to be part of my life,” she goes on after a pause. “People turning around to look. Now that phase is over. It’s not important anymore.”

Basia looks so inclined to take this statement as a pearl of wisdom that I rise abruptly from the water and say that I’m chilled to the bone. I grab my reluctant daughter, and we head off to shower, leaving our new acquaintance reclining in the sea. Before departing, I introduce myself and ask her name. “Silver,” she says.

“Is that your real name?” I blurt rudely.

“One of my real names.” The voice drifts out of the darkness, which in tropical style has fallen like a sudden curtain.

At dinner, predictably enough, it is Basia who defends Silver while I roll my eyes over that ridiculous New Age alias. “I think she’s cool,” says Basia, taking a tiny spray of green peppers out of her milky soup. “She’s really, really mysterious.” At the tables around us, people with careful, moderate tans are wearing pale clothes and sitting over hurricane lamps whose amber glow makes the dining terrace look vaguely like a shrine. A real shrine sits nearby, under the mango tree, a tiny spirit house that is a replica of the hotel, with candles, fruit, and flowers around it. The hotel, recommended by my editor, has been a disappointment, I think: pretentious; arrogantly overpriced; hardly any kids, and none Basia’s age. Instead, it’s a perfect hideaway for upscale lovers: without turning around, I can count two honeymoon couples, an enamored pair of Englishmen, and a German businessman with his young mistress.

“Mysterious? Oh, please, sweetheart,” I say. “She’s the classic kind of woman who is very beautiful and lives for that, and then the beauty fades, and she goes and gets spiritual. Like Bianca Jagger.”

“Who?”

“Bianca Jagger was one of the most beautiful women back in the seventies. Way back before you were born. Now she’s not so beautiful, so she’s involved in saving humanity.”

“Silver doesn’t want to save humanity.”

“She wants to save her soul. Same difference.”

Basia giggles and crunches the ice from her Diet Coke. “But I thought you liked her. Why are you trashing her?”

“I am not trashing her,” I say untruthfully, and I wonder why I am bothering to be malicious about a woman I’ve just met, who seems more like than unlike me. That’s it, of course. That and the fact that I revealed a great many intimate facts of my past to a complete stranger down on the beach. Why, I wonder? Am I becoming an embittered woman of a certain age, maddened at the sight of romantic couples, and driven into serial episodes of pathetic self-revelation as my daughter flowers into maidenhood? For a second, I wallow in gloomy speculation.

Basia stares across the candlelight at me. She is wearing a green tie-dyed dress and her round, seraphic face is deeply tanned, an irritating fact that reminds me of our daily battles over sunscreen and hats. It is Simon’s face, but my eyes look out of it, and whenever she turns those eyes directly on me I experience an eerie jolt of total recognition. “Mom? Are you missing Daddy?” she asks.

“Not right this second,” I reply, with bravado. But suddenly I do miss Simon. He would have added a bit of male ballast to the unbearable lightness of this female vacation. He would have fussed about the price of drinks and worried about hepatitis and bilharzia and insisted on renting mopeds for horrible family excursions. He’d have insisted on daily screwing at siesta time—not such a bad idea, that—and at least once he would have attempted to amuse both of his girls by turning on MTV and dancing around in a pareu, imitating Cher. He would have laughed at Silver. I take a forkful of rice and try to think of something wise and maternal to say, but Basia has stolen most of my lines. “We’ll call him tonight,” I mutter.

One of my weak points, as Simon continually tells me, is my untrammeled curiosity. The next morning, when I should be horizontal under a palm tree, reading disguised literature, I agree, in a moment of wild perversity, to share a taxi into town for a morning’s shopping with Silver. At breakfast, with Basia out having a half-day diving lesson, my new acquaintance