“Okay.”

“So long,” she tells Catherine. “I always love seeing you.”

They hug and give each other little kisses. Catherine kisses Tatum.

I say “Goodbye” to them both, and Catherine and I board the plane.

“She’s great, isn’t she?” Catherine says when we’re settled.

“She’s okay.”

Catherine pouts. “Well, she likes you anyway.”

“I don’t see how. I didn’t say half a word to her.”

“You always have to behave like such a fucker, don’t you?”

“Not always,” I whisper back, and lean into her ear. “Sometimes I behave like a fuck-ee.”

12

“What are you doing?”

“The dishes,” I say.

“Come and keep me company.”

“No. Let me finish.”

“Come and keep me company,” she demands.

I follow her into the living room. We sit opposite each other in peacock chairs but do not talk. She eats dried pineapple from a bag, dried bits of pineapple that look like rubber.

“Want some?”

“No. I’m still full from dinner.”

“Amanda, you always leave us.”

“I can’t just spend my days here, Catherine. I have a life, too, you know.”

“Yeah, but you never talk about it though.” She waits. “That’s a hint, kid.”

I reach into my pocket and take out the aspirin bottle. I uncap it, fish underneath the cotton, lift one of them out. I no longer hunt for water. I chew and swallow the aspirin like a piece of candy.

“Those little fuckers,” she says.

“What?”

“Those little fuckers you take. Why is it that everyone has to have their little fuckers? Something to try to fuck themselves up with?” she asks. “It seems harmless, but even too much aspirin can be toxic. Do you want to get bleeding ulcers or something?

“We know all about them, you see, because Ernest did an article on them, sent me a copy—’The Dangers of Over-the-Counter Medicines’—that had a whole section on aspirin, which he starred.

“Do you want to get acidosis?”

“What are your little fuckers?” I ask, popping the cap back on the aspirin bottle and putting it in my pocket. When I don’t take them my head aches and I’m nauseous. Addict’s symptoms.

Her seaweed-green eyes. Have you ever seen a brown woman with green eyes? It’s wild. She won’t answer.

“What are Ernest’s little fuckers?” I ask, because I know the answer to that one.

“He’s got only one little fucker.”

“What?”

“Me.”

On the terrace, Catherine rubs my back and shoulders with olive oil. We have just finished breakfast and Ernest is sitting at the table with us, reading a Spanish newspaper.

I have the back of a crocodile. If I don’t put oil on it every morning it flakes. In some countries and times, I would have been sacred. They would have called me “crocodile woman.” I would have had the back of the crocodile god. But now it’s only a nuisance. Now the doctors’ only clue to its cause is “nerves”: Now there are no keys to some source in a supernatural world. It’s a malady, pure and simple. Malaise of spirit?