punta del este

Im staying at a cold beach house a couple blocks from the ocean. I walk up and down the sidewalks, theres no one here, the shops have dusty displays from last years season fixed to the floor with dried water, salt crystals, and an uncut inside air taught as a ribbon at the finish line. I think about sagaponic and other indian names. I think about long blond hair, flat screen tvs, white plaster walls rewarded with a diamond coat, olives, canvas couches, and glass block partitions. duran duran sings rio, in some adolescent quadrant, and I feel a proximity to exclusion that only a dark sky over the ocean can transmit. "I want flowers all days year, and a orange tree, for my husband he can make me juice" Ma-Ho, short for maria jose is flipping through a special notebook she travelled to the next city to buy, her fingers dawdle on sketches of cement block sheds that she pristinely mimmicked with her untrained hand, following the blue tiny graph squares, etched into the paper. On the next page scratchy curved wiggles denote a fengshui inspired flower garden. The same grid tattoo from the previous page agast from snubbery, stands mouth open, hands in pockets tuxedos taught over printed blue floss, looking apalled as they helplessly witness the twombly crayon trampling theyre metered gala. Im looking over her shoulder at the desk by the check in counter, in front of the window, where the cold water peaks over the asphalt hill, one street back from its curb. the day is over, but the sun is slow to leave. she smells like garlic from the kitchen. I havent told her anything about me yet, I havent told her I want to build a house one day, the way my grandfather did. she said it first. " I need a house", she said out of thin air, unprovoked, while I was standing there not knowing her, quietly looking out the window. she said it like a declaration of war against the lonely village that surrounds us. then she went to her room and brought out the notebook, that she opened on the check in desk. the sun was finally gone when I had looked at the last page. "whats this" I ask. Another page sewn into the swell, next to her research on winter plants, and a page she ripped out of a gardening magazine that lists flowers that grown in low light pasted onto the graph paper with glue stick that wrinkled the glossy thin sheet. After 5 pages of private dreaming I am used to the pictures of ceramic bowls for cleaning dirty hands, measured 2 boxes back from the rear door. I havent told her I want a wife that can be happy without me sometimes, or that the man I am now grew up running down the beach, in front of the house my father built with his father. I havent told her anything. "oh, thats another silly dream for decaration" I want to erase myself, so that I can see her from above, like a bird, I want to be an anonymous voyeur, but one who can play an instrument somethng better than dead. "tell me" I say, she looks at me now for the first time. like she was dancing by herself in a room alone, and realized someone was watching. I touched a hooker the other night who was framed in the doorway of a rent a room by the minute house, she was pumping in a mirror to a heavy drum beat, and when I put my hand on her waist she looked right through my head out the other side, the way only a child can do, some young part of her too strong to die. she was powerful and I wilted under her hip, like a man struck down by polio
"these are words for the mar, in every language, french is mer, ocean or sea. this is german, this is hebrew" her fingers were like brancusi delineating marble from wood. I felt the heavy brass orb, under my tongue. My father had collections of things that he would stack on a bookcase in the hall, there was a brass ball the shape of a quaille egg that I used to put in my mouth.
"where" I say
the hooker swiveled on a lower vertebrae, her head never moved, and her eyes stared straight like a compass bobbing in a glass jar¨
"I will paint them on the wall"
she has started dancing again but now she knows Im here, the lobby of the house is small but a door through the kitchen leads out to a glass veranda, with six big square windows that face the ocean, it was dark now, but I watched her dance around the tables, and pick up dishes. she had a blue halo around her body, a cerilean blue that didnt really have any reference to the night skies, Ive only seen that color in the waters around anafi, a small greek island that I stayed at for 2 weeks when I was 18, the cerrilean halo followed her in trails, all around the veranda, leaving ever table and chair blue, or with the remnants of blue...like a stain. I watched her there cleaning the tables getting the house ready for hot season. If your gonna be a voyeur you have to play an instrument