Ss nina, p.1
SS Nina, page 1
IAN R. MacLEOD
NINA-WITH-THE-SKY-IN-HER-HAIR
The man who sold the sky came to see Max when he was finishing breakfast at the
Corienne. It was after nine, before ten; his favorite time of day. The promenade
below his balcony was still in shade. Everything was fresh and cool. Even Nina was out of bed after staying on at the casino late last night long after he had
left. He could hear her singing in the shower.
Max picked up the hotel phone almost as it rang. A gentleman to see him, the maitre d' said. Business, something to do with the sky. Max saw to it that business never reached him here at the Corienne, but still his curiosity was aroused. He told the maitre to send him up and finished his coffee, watching the
white parasols, listening to the sea.
The visitor was small, dressed in a khaki suit that might once have been cream,
holding a panama in both hands and turning it around by the brim.
"If you're selling," Max said, mopping up the conserve with the last of his croissant, "I've probably already got it."
"I understand that you are a connoisseur."
"Of what?"
"Of everything."
Max grunted a smile through the crumbs on his lips. It was true enough; when you
ran out of specific, individual things, everything was all you had left. He said, "I warn you, if you want my money, you'll have to see my accountants. If you want advice you'll need my lawyers. And they'll both charge."
"I've come to sell you the sky."
Max scratched the gray stubble on his chin. He'd met his fair share of crackpots
over the years. But crackpots were like the rest of the world; good, bad --
and
mostly indifferent.
"That's impossible."
The little man shrugged and made to turn back toward the door.
"Hey!" Max pushed away his breakfast trolley and lifted himself to his feet.
"Don't take it like that. I'm all ears. Really, I'm all ears."
"I have a sample," the little man said, and reached into his pocket.
As usual, Max and Nina took lunch that day at the bistro down in the square.
Max
much preferred the dining room at the Corienne, but Nina liked to sit in the splashes of shade thrown by the olive trees. Sometimes they argued about it, but
-- as with everything else when it came to Nina -- Max always gave in. It was a
typical day here on the island. Every day was typical. The sea was shimmering blue between the white angles of the houses and the pavement was hot enough to fry, but still the young ones came and went with their jeeps and scooters, shaking the siesta by its sleepy tail. They always waved at Nina, and Nina waved
back.
Max squinted at the finance pages, half eaten bits of squid gleaming like wet paint on the tin table.
Nina, sunglasses stacked on the billows of black hair, the straps of her halter
white on deep brown skin, asked, "Darling, what are we going to do today?"
Max gazed at Nina. He dreaded that question. Every day, had to think up something new to keep her entertained, then try to keep up. The alternative was
that she went off with the other young people, and he couldn't face that.
Peeling off his cotton sunhat to mop the freckled top of his head, Max suggested
they visit the viewpoint at the top of the island. He said, "Won't that be great?"
"Since when . . ." Nina lifted her glass and twirled it to make the bubbles rise
". . . since when have you taken to using silk?"
"Silk?"
She nodded toward his lap. "Blue silk."
It was still crumpled in his big hands, the cloth he'd used to soak up his sweat. It still felt cool. He let it unfold in his palms like a flower, wondering what it was, some napkin he'd picked up. Then he remembered the little
man in khaki that could once have been cream or white, the card he'd been given,
and had instantly thrown away, the way he did with all business cards.
"Just some guy came this mornings" he said, pushing the cloth back into the pocket of his baggy shorts. "Trying to sell fabric, I think. He gave me a sample
and I sent him away." Max didn't add that Nina had been singing in the shower at
the time, that seeing her coming out gleaming wet, all perfection in the bright
perfect morning with a towel around her hair, was always enough to make his heart ache, that it was a sight he wasn't prepared to share with any other man.
Max watched Nina. He knew there was no way of telling her how much love he felt
without sounding like a fool.
Nina's hazel eyes were drawn away from his and across the square by the barp of
a scooter horn.
The young man pulled up. He killed the scooter's engine.
"Good morning, Sir." He flashed a smile at Max, his shorts showing the muscles of his thighs. His name, Max remembered, was Vernon.
Vernon turned to Nina. "You got back all right from the casino last night?"
"Of course. But it's sweet of you to ask."
"You know, Sir," Vernon said to Max, "You're the luckiest man on the island.
You
have the most beautiful wife."
"I know," Max said. He hated it when Vernon called him Sir.
"Sir," Vernon continued, "you should have stayed at the casino last night.
With
your beautiful wife. A great time was had by all."
"Sure," Max said, folding his paper. "But we'll look after our own lives, thanks."
"Do you have anything exciting fixed for today, Sir?"
"Well, of course," Max said. "We're off to the viewpoint, the top of the island."
"Not to be missed," Vernon said, smiling widely through his tan. He started up his scooter. "I'm sure you'll both have fun."
That evening, Max sat on the bed at the Corienne, exhausted. The guide book for
the island said that there were native lads with donkeys to get you up to the viewpoint from the carpark, which there had been, but they only took you half the way. You had to walk -- climb -- the rest. Max sighed, remembering the way Nina had scampered ahead. How the native lads had ogled her thighs.
Nina wandered out from her shower, her brown body gleaming. She was smiling, singing to herself, some popular tune with words and a rhythm and that he was too old to understand. Soon, it would be time to go out to the casino again.
Max
was already two thirds dressed, in his dark suit and trousers, his tie still loose. Getting ready for anything, he needed a good half hour's head start on Nina. He stared down at his shoes, wondering whether now was the propitious moment to bend down and lace them.
Nina opened the windows on the balcony to the cooling air. Max could feel the draft dragging at his skin, getting down into his bones. The sky outside was lavender pink, lavender blue, delicately serrated with clouds. Remembering, Max
took out his handkerchief, the sample. He was surprised to see that that too had
changed color with the darkening evening. No longer blue. He could feel the play
of bruised light on his eyes and face. Perhaps there was something in what the little man had said after all -- he made a mental note to get it analyzed when he got back to the mainland.
"What's that?" Nina leaned over close to him, pushing back wet strands of her hair, droplets forming at the tips of her breasts, enclosing him in her soapy scent.
"Just the thing I told you about earlier, sweet," Max said, resisting the temptation to tuck it back away in the grit of his pocket like some guilty secret. "The guy that came this morning, he said it was a scrap of the sky."
"That's impossible."
"That's what I told him."
"But it's neat, isn't it? Don't you think it would go well in my hair with the silver gray dress I got down at Mario's?"
"Sure," Max said, although he hadn't the faintest idea what particular dress she
meant. But it would look good. Everything looked good on Nina.
"Let me."
He didn't resist as she took it from his hands. She held it up to her shoulders,
her face. "It smells like . . . like evening. Like alleyways and the seashore, flowers closing for the night, seagulls up in the air. Sunset, almost."
Max shrugged. "If you say so."
"Oh, I do. I'll definitely wear it this evening. It'll drive all the other girls
wild."
And what about the other guys? Max thought, watching her as she did a little twilight dance. Everything with Nina had to be new and fresh --she threw stuff out when she'd hardly even had time to use it, when the scent of her skin had hardly settled on the cloth.
Max made an effort. He stooped down to lace his shoes. But he could still see Nina's perfect brown feet. He loved the curve of her arches, her easy grace, the
twinkle of her toes. Was she really getting more beautiful as he got older, or was it just some kind of mist that was settling on his eyes? Twenty, thirty years ago, no woman had lasted more than a season. But now, he was down to one,
and that one was -- just had to be -- Nina.
Oh, Nina. Sweet, bittersweet, bitter Nina. The silk chemise settled over her shoulders and breasts as she dressed. Max calculated the moment to stand up.
Waiting for the aches to settle, he looked himself up and down in the mirror, the stiff black evening suit that enclosed all the looseness inside. Now that
put on and tie around your neck like a shell. Pity that all the clinics still couldn't get the rest right.
Max watched Nina put on her stockings, effortlessly smoothing them up her smooth, effortless legs. What he wouldn't have given for one imperfection, something he could have in common with her. What he wouldn't give, at the end of
the day, for her love. Her love. Yes, that was it, straightening his tie in the
mirror as though anything would make a difference, would stop him looking as old
as the moon. Her love. And, yes, he knew that inside that sultry casing she was
grabbing, vain, stupid, uncaring. But he was like all the old men. For some extraordinary reason, now that the years screamed back at him from the mirror, he wanted love.
They drove to the clifftop casino where there was already music and the promise
of another unforgettable night. Nina wore the scrap of sky tied back in her hair. Walking across the carpark with the salt breeze lifting from the faintly glowing waves far below, Max saw that it was now deep purple, playing off the soft gleam of her lips, the rosy cast of the skin. The first thing you came to through the high porticos inside was a wall of mirrors. Max tried to look away from himself as Nina turned.
"Darling." She surprised him with her arms and a warm kiss.
Max hugged her back, feeling a lifting and tightening inside his whole body that
was more than anything the surgeons had ever managed.
"This thing you gave me." Nina's hand reached to the back of her head. "It's quite marvelous."
Max nodded. She was right. The cloth had the texture of velvet, dark and endlessly deep. The tips of his fingers disappeared as he touched it, were swallowed by the prescience of night.
"Let's dance," she said.
In a happy daze, he followed. The music was the same music they played here every night. The band was the same band. But tonight it was all new. Max was only used to watching from the bar, the ridiculous effect it had on the trim bodies, the graceless contortions. Now he was part of it. Nina twirled. Her dress fanned out and her body drew him into the beat. The sky in her hair grew darker as she twirled. It began to glitter with stars.
What, Max wondered, had ever been the problem with this music? The beat was straight, hard, inevitable. As he danced, he turned in a breeze that carried the
scent of Nina's shoulders, her breasts and her hair, the dark open spaces between the stars. And when Vernon came up, his muscles sliding inside his suit
as he called Max Sir and asked Nina for a dance, Max didn't have to say a word,
Nina simply smiled and waved him away. That was the best moment of all.
Driving back, his hands and his thoughts easy on the wheel, just enough drink to
make the tires slide smooth and easy along the white road through the dark plantations, Nina's hands were smooth and easy too. Around his shoulders, on his
lap. She pressed close to him and the scrap of sky brushed his face. She whispered in his ear about all the things she would do to and with and for him when they got back to the Corienne. A thousand promises. And every one of them turned out to be true.
Late next morning, Max and Nina sat in their usual place at the bistro beneath the olive trees. And in the usual heat, although Max hardly noticed it. He felt
both fresh and tired. Like he'd been for a swim and fallen asleep without drowning. Nina was humming beside him, her fingers playing absently with her blue scrap of sky, shredding it with sharp little tugs. Max watched her, breathing slowly. Her sweetness was still on his skin. I'm just an old fool in love, he thought, smiling.
The food came. The bread was fresh baked, still moist inside the crust. Max ordered more wine to go with the coffee, knowing he could drink what he liked and never get drank, feeling this way. As the waiter uncorked the cool dark bottle, Max heard the putter of an approaching scooter. It was Vernon.
"Good night last night, eh, Sir?" Vernon said, dressed in his usual shorts, his
thighs tensing and untensing still letting the engine rev.
"Not bad," Max conceded, trying not to swallow the dust the tires had kicked up,
telling himself that Vernon and his kind were no longer a threat.
Nina-with-the-sky-in-her-hair had given him the brush-off. "I've known worse and
I've known better."
Vernon looked at Nina. "Say, you left a bit earlier than you used to."
Nina smiled and crossed her legs, leaned her chin on the palm of her hand. "Me and Max, we had things to do."
"That right, Sir?" Vernon's grin grew broader. So did Max's. He was thinking of
Nina, the way she . . .
"Tell you what, Nina. The lads and I -- and a few friends -- we're having a party up in the pinewoods. All day, up where it's cool. That's if you don't mind, Sir."
"Maybe we'll drive there," Max said. "Later."
"Pity of it is, Sir, you'd never get a car up that way. Now Nina, she could just
hop up on the back here. And off we go. Holding tight on the hairpins, Of course."
Max was looking at Nina. Nina was looking at Vernon. Vernon gave his scooter an
extra rev.
"That would be great," Nina said. She jumped quickly up from her chair and straddled the back of Vernon's scooter. She slid her arms around his waist.
"You
don't mind, do you, Darling?" she shouted over the increasing sound of the engine.
"Sure, I don't," Max said.
Vernon and Nina pulled off. They disappeared amid the white houses and the sleepy noon. Max stared at his coffee, the untouched bottle of wine. Lying there
on the bright tin table were the remains of the little scrap of sky, shredded the way Nina always ended up doing with anything that got in her hands, from silk scarves to beermats. A faint breeze was coming with the fishing smells up off the harbor. As it tugged at the fleece of blue threads, they tumbled one by
one across the square, snagging in the dust like thistledown, in the patches of
donkey dung on the splinters of the bare wooden shutters.
Max intercepted the maid and rummaged in the bin back at the Corienne to find the card from the little man in the grubby suit. He wandered the back streets of
the port in search of the address. Even in this grim siesta heat, he knew what he was after. The thought kept him busy, kept him from worrying too much about Nina and Vernon.
When he found it, the sign said, SOUTH OVER EAST, TAILORS FOR THE DISCERNING.
NIGHT AND DAY WEAR A SPECIALTY. It was hanging askew from one hook over a peeling door.
Max went in. The doorbell rang, then fell from its mounting and rolled across the gritty linoleum toward the counter. The place smelled both sweet and leathery, vaguely like the breeze that came out from the doors of the sweet shops that Max had never been able to afford to go into when he was a kid.
"I remember you," Max said, pointing at the same crumpled man in the same crumpled suit standing there. When he was doing business, this was one of Max's
greatest compliments.
"I recall visiting your hotel suite only yesterday," the man said.
"I'm here to do a deal," Max said, brushing some of the dust from the counter and leaning his elbows down. "That, er, sample of the sky you gave me yesterday.
I've decided I want a whole lot more of it . . . not," Max added, fearing he was
in danger of losing his usual financial cool, ". . . that I haven't got other suppliers. But I happen to like you, and I like the quality of the stuff I've seen so far. Believe me, this is the big break you've been looking for."
"Indeed." The man gave the smile of one who has been straight through and out the other side of many big breaks. "How much exactly do you wish me to supply?"
"I'd like enough to make up a dress. And you're a tailor, aren't you? Perhaps you could do the whole package, although I could always get my usual people in for me if you can't be bothered."
"I'm sure I can manage anything that you'd like," the man said.
They began to talk price, and when they had settled on that, the tailor asked Max about Nina's size, which for all his knowledge of Nina's figure, Max didn't
know.
"Tell you what," Max said, giving up shaping an imaginary body with his hands.
"You're a guy like me, aren't you. Not queer or anything?"
"Not, I think, in the way you mean, Sir."
"Then do you have a vision of a perfect woman?"
"Of course, Sir. Why, long ago on the ferry between the islands I saw --"
