Holiday
Dahlia had grown fond of her oversized hat and the way it turned her into Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I watched her stomp the cakey shore like a tourist adamant about having a good time, while the evening blinked ahead of us and resembled a Beach House music video. The sand made me imagine how the French cottages beyond the avenue would look if they crumbled to a fine powder. The black birds anchored in the listless sky dragged themselves home, and a muted ferry drifted along the horizon towards its sanctuary of ships.
The coast was like the tundra when it lost sight of the sun. The winds yanked the boats out of their nests and made us feel cold despite the heat. We reclined into the corpselike mud and observed the landscape like a movie. The beach was deserted and Dahlia was listening to Helpless by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. She told me about the time she drank two bottles of Chenin Blanc and called up the Heinz customer care. She had rambled about Fanny Mendelssohn’s piano compositions and her Criterion Collection of Márta Mészáros’ DVD’s that she didn’t want to watch by herself.
That evening, we spent many hours in the Vintage Inn lobby, strolling out to the porch until dinner was served. Dahlia lingered by the lawn on the cliff overlooking the sea, she refused the garlic bread that came with the salad because she was on a new diet. When she returned, she was in a better mood and finally looked around the lanternlike hall and its antique cabinets, pale crockery and crusty colonial journals. There was a print of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party hung tastelessly over a Persian carpet and a meat safe with a row of pickle pots, biscuit jars and National Geographic magazines inside.
Dahlia explained that the painting portrayed aloofness and inhibition amongst the adult bourgeoise. The youthful characters sitting around the table and the besotted girl by the railing represented innocence, sensuality and freedom. The women demonstrated a vivid awareness of their emotions while the men in the background talked about themselves, or lingered awkwardly in the corner. Impressionism was novel for its unique brushstrokes in the 1800s; but modern research had become preoccupied with the underlying narratives of art and their alignment to contemporary discourse. I sat there dreaming of Canción Mixteca from Paris, Texas, Super 8 reels and Rhonda Cams.
That night Dahlia made love to me like it was a driving test. Her thrusts and caresses exceeded their natural duration, as though her intention was to assess their theoretical significance. She would stop abruptly and ask me to repeat my moves, studying me with nonchalance. Our frosty encounter reminded me of the socialites clustered in Renoir’s painting. She posed and looked through the French windows to watch the lighthouse revolve around the bay. Its soft golden beam dressed the blankets, the baked walls and her long body as I waited beneath her and tried to paint her Black Diamond Apple fragrance into my memory. Her eyes were large and still like an animal suddenly aware of extinction. The lithograph of Ferdinand Magellan above the bedrest peered downed at me while the Roman pillars in the yard with their curly white locks and flatheads deflected the rain perfectly.