five
Across the table, over the cups of bad coffee and the plates of food, Liz found it hard to maintain eye contact with the man opposite. As they spoke, his attention was strongly focused, his gaze slipping away only momentarily from time to time, before resettling on her.
More uncomfortable still was the fact that he said very little, preferring instead to ask her questions, which she tied herself up in knots trying to answer. As much as possible, she told the truth, because she hated the nauseating wave of shame that came from having to lie. At one point, she was almost gave in to the overwhelming urge to scream, 'Get away from me! Can't you see what a horrible, despicable person I am?' But then he would most certainly leave and never speak to her again, and she'd miss his soft voice and his warm, steady brown eyes.
Instead he nodded in friendly silence as she pushed out fabrication and half-truths. And he was such a nice man, she felt. He really didn't deserve to meet someone like her.
Had she been a truly honourable person, she would have thanked him for breakfast, told him she never wanted to set eyes on him again, and closed the door on what might have been. But she wasn't honourable, was she? And his voice, his eyes, his peaceful hands that lay with such stillness on the table, they were the personification of a safe port in a storm - exactly what she most yearned for.
When he asked her if she'd like to go to sightseeing with him, after a momentary bout of self-loathing, she accepted. She hadn't seen much of the island, but it wasn't the lure of sightseeing that had her accepting; she wanted the comfort, the calm he inspired. She wanted to forget everything but the tone of his voice, and to her surprise, when he suggested that they go to Hell, she said yes without hesitation, only to get clarification later.
The day had become uncharacteristically overcast, but the thickening layer of clouds tempered the heat, and so they ended up walking along Bay Road, following along Church Street, to the small village of Hell. They walked in peaceable silence, each commenting to the other only occasionally, and only when there was something worth saying. So many people, Liz thought, felt they had to talk to fill up space; it was nice to meet someone who didn't.
The village itself was buried in the middle of tropical urban sprawl but delineated by a small collection of clapboard houses that looked out over a broad field of nasty looking rock formations. It spread out before them like a dark gray blight on the land.
"Is it lava?" asked Liz, as they got nearer.
Jack pulled a folded brochure out of his back pocket and glanced at it. "Seems not. It's limestone."
Something in his voice gave Liz the distinct impression that his perusal of the brochure had been pretense - that this was something he'd already known - but why on earth would he do that? Most of the men she'd encountered invested a great deal of effort in trying to look knowledgeable of things they knew nothing about; why would Jack pretend the opposite? She gave herself a mental kick in the ass for being such a paranoid.
The warm, formal hand resting politely on the small of her back, as they navigated their way past the post office and onto the wooden decking that overlooked the strangely textured landscape, made it all the more difficult for her to maintain her feelings of suspicion. He was the sort of man most of the women she had worked with dreamed about finding. Solid in himself, independent, quiet and modest, and well-mannered in a way that had all but disappeared in the state of New York. Too good to be true, she thought, her paranoia returning.
No, it was her guilt that was making the world around her and everybody in it seem duplicitous. Well, she thought wryly, isn't it always the way? We always suspect in others what we've already found in ourselves.
And this, she mused, as they approached the wooden rail that bounded the viewing deck and looked over the jagged rocks that appeared as if fire had been caught within stone, is what you have to run barefoot across when you get to hell. Liz had never been religious - never believed in God or heaven - but, quite inexplicably, she did believe in the other. The devil was particularly real to her ever since she'd met her ex-employer. After all, he must have modeled himself on someone. And she suspected, after what she had just done, there was probably a hell waiting for her. One unlikely to have a post office.
She felt his palm settle once again at the small of her back as they followed a lazy line of tourists into the little white post office building. People were penning frenzied missives on postcards to send back to wherever they had come from, stamped and postmarked in Hell.
Liz fingered some of the cards in the rack distractedly. Again his hand: this time on her shoulder to catch her attention. "Who are you sending yours to?" he asked casually.
What would it say about her if she told him she had no one to send one to? He would think she was pathetic. She picked a picture of the limestone panorama and, fishing a pen from her purse, looked back at him and lied. "An old friend from high school."
Standing at the counter, feeling nauseous, she scrawled the words, 'Look where I've been!' It took her a moment to think up a plausible addressee, but she did. She only hoped that there was no Marcie Brooks at 498 West 49th Street in Brooklyn. It was just lucky she could remember a vaguely Brooklyn postal code.
Only as she finished addressing the postcard that would never have a recipient did she feel the tips of his fingers burning into her bare skin. "Aren't you going to send one?"
He shrugged and looked away, the wistful, distant smile on his lips dying slowly. "I don't really have anyone to send it to."
His utter honesty disarmed her. A wave of shame rode over her, and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. There was nothing to do but perpetuate the lie. She took the card to the counter and got it stamped.
Walking back to the main road in silence, Liz revisited the image of herself as an unforgivable, lowlife coward. Well, perhaps for each abject loser in the world there was someone out there who could redeem them?
While Jack's attention was elsewhere, she slipped her hand into his.