“Don’t you want to know the truth?”
The truth. Do I want to know the truth? Somehow, I always thought that I did. I wanted to be completely inside of Fran and know everything that she knew, feel everything that she felt. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, though, I don’t think I want to know more. I don’t know why I find it so easy to accept that I could somehow take my mind into my dead girlfriend’s head and see what she was seeing in her last moments, yet can’t wrap myself around the possibility that she was truly communing with aliens. Still, I have what I needed. I had to know what I could have done differently on that day to keep her alive and I realize that there’s nothing. Nothing at all.
“Dana? Did you hear my question?”
“I heard it.”
“Well?”
“Esmé, I hope you find peace with yourself now that we’ve done everything that we are going to do to put Fran’s memory to rest.”
“We haven’t. There’s so much more we can do!”
“If you need to keep searching, please do. You’re just not getting anything else out of me.”
She pauses. “Well, are we going to see each other again?”
Thinking about it, I absently reach out to scratch Frank’s furry head. He blerts at me before looking pointedly in the direction of the kitchen. “One minute,” I mouth at him. “Esmé, of course we’ll see each other again. It’s a small island.”
“That’s shit.”
“I’m sorry. I had a great time with you the other night, but that whole situation came out of our crazy experience.”
“By situation, I assume you’re talking about us making love with each other.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t wonderful. It was. I enjoyed it a lot. I needed it and I think you did, too.”
“We had a connection before the sex,” she says.
“I’m not saying we didn’t. I’m just saying that I’d like for us to be friends.”
“Whatever.”
“Look, Esmé, I’m sorry.”
No answer. “Esmé?”
I turn to Frank, incredulous. “She hung up on me.”
He ignores me and jumps off the bed, looking toward the kitchen again. Tossing my cell down on the bedside table, I follow him down the hall. He jumps on the counter while I fill his bowl and give him a couple of cat treats as a reward for his patience. While the coffee is brewing, I sit at the counter and watch him eat. I can hear my phone ringing in the bedroom, but the idea of talking to Esmé again suddenly has me exhausted. Besides, she’s not who I really want to talk to. Filling up my mug with coffee, I say goodbye to Frank and head out the door.
Roxanne is in her garden when I approach her house.
“Hi,” she says, smiling.
“Hi.”
“Do you want to walk today?”
“No, I want to stand here drinking coffee and talk to you.”
I set my coffee down on the top of her fence and hold my arms open. Leaning her shovel against the wall, she walks over and gives me a hug. I collapse into it, putting my arms around her and holding her tight. She feels firm, but soft and a little sweaty. Pressing my forehead against the side of her face, I breathe in deeply.
“You smell lovely,” I tell her.
“Stop it.” She pulls away a bit to look at me. “I smell as if I’ve been working in the garden for three hours.”
“So what are you working on here?”
“Replanting the coconut palms you gave me.”
Whenever I find coconuts on the beach with roots starting to sprout, I bring them home and plant them. Even though it will be years before I’m getting coconuts, I still love to plant them. A few weeks ago, I brought several to Roxanne for her yard. They grow fast in the beginning. A couple of hers are already up to my knees.
“Before you know it, we’ll be sitting under the shade of one of them, sharing a glass of lemonade or something.”
“I don’t think so,” she grins. “Besides, we don’t want to risk getting killed by a falling coconut.”
“Life’s full of risk.”
Releasing herself from my arms, she reclaims her shovel and finishes digging the last hole. I bring her the coconut and we nestle half of it into the ground, patting the dirt gently in around it.
Clearing my throat, I look down at the coconut in the ground. “So, Rox...”
“Don’t,” she answers. “We really don’t have anything to talk about.”
“See, I kind of think that we do.”
She leans against the shovel and rests her chin on top of her hands. “Dana, you don’t owe me any explanations. Nothing has ever happened between us except a kiss in a vulnerable moment. I have never laid a claim to you and it doesn’t matter who you date.”