Page 46 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FORTY-THREE

ON THE NIGHT OF the Full Moon, the town is so full it could burst at its bulwark walls.

The evening is sweating through its pores, the faint smell of alcohol evaporating from the throngs of people that move no faster than a sailing ship in a dead sea.

Sardines are grilled on various corners near konobas and cafes, the sizzling sound of their flesh against flame igniting a savory hunger.

Asier and I settle in Varo?, where we’re supposed to meet Marina and Vlaho.

Varo? is the quaintest part of the old town, where streets are the narrowest and the buildings huddle together like gossiping old nanas.

It’s the most authentic part too, and I have the need to show it to Asier, to make him a part of it.

Everywhere, there’s music and chatter. Older men with round bellies and ruddy cheeks stand next to cauldrons of fish brudet and seafood risotto. In their hands, glasses of bevanda—half water, half red wine—are drained slowly, sip by sip.

They talk and laugh, and then without warning, one of them hums the beginning of an elegiac Dalmatian klapa song.

The other men stop talking, their gazes softening into the distance, and they join their voices a cappella.

They sing about long-ago times, the solace of drinking wine in konobas with friends, the haunting sadness of olive groves no one tends since Pape fell asleep.

It’s tender, and beautiful, and as I imagine what it might evoke in Asier, exposed to it for the first time, I feel another surge of pride in my country.

The men’s song reaches full volume, and the whole street full of people start singing along, the words that have been sewn into us from before we can remember, a silent identity that works its way from the inside out.

The song ends. Asier is barely breathing. We’re pressed together, and he watches me as if I’m making more sense to him now.

“For a moment there, I thought it was a flash mob,” he says, and I laugh, lightened by his wit.

“Hey, you two.” Marina tugs at our connecting arms. “Had anything to eat yet?”

We turn to face her. Vlaho is standing behind her, hands deep in his pockets.

He’s wearing a military-green T-shirt, knee-length beige combat pants, and Converse All Stars, and it touches a place inside me no bigger than the tip of a needle, to see him like this, looking young, looking so much like Kurt Cobain, which is why I bought him that T-shirt almost fifteen years ago, and then ripped it off him as soon as he’d tried it on.

Asier’s torso against mine now feels scalding hot, and I step back.

“No, the line for the sardines is insane.”

Drinks flow in abundance, and no matter how many sardines on bread we eat, the alcohol gets to our heads.

We talk, but yelling is the only way to do it, the street pulsing around us, and that makes me tired fast, so I sip my beer while Marina does her thing, animating everybody, especially Asier, who’s taking it all in wide-eyed.

Before I know it, she’s got him to promise to come back to Zadar at the end of September, so she can take all four of us out to Kornati National Park with her sailboat.

A prick of alarm goes off in my body when I picture the four of us in such a confined space, half-naked in our swimwear for a whole day.

Hanging out with Marina and Vlaho with Asier has turned out better than I’d expected, but a full day on a sailboat might be pushing it.

I glance at Vlaho as she announces this.

He seems disinterested, more focused on the crowd around us.

Marina notices his aloofness too, and she tousles his hair, the way she sometimes does their son’s, and then she plants a kiss on his shoulder.

She’s tipsy, sure, but her gesture still gives me pause.

She has never been very affectionate with Vlaho, and neither has he with her, at least not in front of me.

They probably didn’t want to make me feel awkward.

But now that Asier is in the picture, she’s obviously becoming freer herself.

As we continue to stand there, drinking and chatting, I notice more of it.

Her hand on Vlaho’s forearm. A brush of her fingers down his back.

Something protective about it, but also tender, and it pierces me despite Asier’s arm hanging heavily over my shoulder.

There’s a concert on the Five Wells Square that Marina wants to attend, so we push our way through the crowd to get there, what should be a five-minute walk turning into a half-hour-long exercise in swimming upstream.

The square is packed, and we squeeze ourselves into a spot only a couple of steps away from the place where I introduced Vlaho to Marina all those years ago.

I wonder if either of them thinks about it now, how unlikely it is that the four of us are standing here, in this exact constellation of relationships.

A cover band is playing the best of Dalmatian pop oldies.

It’s eleven, and the crowd is drunk by now, they sing along in not always flattering tones and voices.

Marina is standing on Vlaho’s other side, and I’m squeezed between my ex-husband and current lover.

The irony of this is its own beast. My eyes are glued to the stage, but all my attention is on the fact that I can feel both men’s arms grazing my own.

The music is too loud to do anything but stand there, and as people sway around us, the simultaneous brushes of Vlaho’s and Asier’s skin against mine ignite a pleasurable panic.

I know I should turn so that I move away from Vlaho’s arm, but I can’t make myself do that.

The warmth of his body, the familiar velveteen feel of his skin magnetizes me.

A thought bolts through me, that he must be as aware as I am of our arms touching, and he’s not pulling away either.

The anticipation—of what, I can’t say, because what could possibly happen in this crowded place, with his wife and my lover next to us?

—but it flares inside me like a mighty bird flapping its wings between the inhales.

The song changes to an old love ballad from the eighties, a woman singing about a lover long lost to her, who remains her deepest desire and her most harrowing sadness; she still belongs to him, and he to her; he makes her hurt everywhere, everywhere.

The words I always thought were too melodramatic now seep into my soul, and it’s not my imagination that Vlaho’s knuckles graze mine during the refrain.

Then, all of the sudden, his fingers twist aside and his hand is grasping mine, and mine is clasping his back, as if they’re creatures with their own volition.

Hard, hard, hard, with so much need, all the years we’ve been apart sutured into this moment.

The rest of our bodies unmoving, our eyes locked to the stage, his wife and my lover flanking us in an unknowing silence.

The song ends but our hands stay together, a betrayal of our partners hidden by the mass surrounding us.

It’s a sumptuous secret; I’m unable, unwilling to break the bond.

My head swims, with alcohol and the risk of whatever it is we’re doing, my breath a shallow trickle filling merely the top of my lungs, but I can’t—won’t—let go.

Instead, I am squeezing, and brushing my thumb against his knuckles, conveying what can never be spoken through words.

I’m still here. You’re mine. I feel you. I love you.

As the evening draws to an end, the crowd dissolves and we stop to say goodbye on the main town square.

The moonlit sky is covered with plump clouds that travel fast on the wings of an oncoming thunderstorm.

The wind rushes through the emptied streets, and it won’t be long before the first fat droplets fall.

Vlaho’s eyes bore into mine, challenging me to acknowledge what we’ve done.

Holding his hand was wrong, immoral even, and no one will ever find out about it, it serves neither of us.

But for the first time since I let him go, a small piece of him has been handed back, and God forgive me, I feel entitled to it.

“You should leave your car in town overnight,” Marina says because she knows how much I’ve had to drink. She links her arm through Vlaho’s to support her own unsteady legs, and rests her head on his shoulder. “You want us to walk you to a cab?”

The cab station is on Branimir’s Coast, on the other side of the town bridge, which is on their way home.

I should do just that, go home, sleep it off.

I’m tipsy and tired, and hungover from feeling too much holding Vlaho’s hand, but I’m not ready to go home yet.

I want to stay with Asier, go to his apartment.

Vlaho’s clandestine touch—the forbiddenness of it—has me buzzing with a sensual energy I’m aching to expend.

A mere touch could set me off. All these years of harboring quiet yearnings are firing up, setting me aflame.

“No thanks,” I tell her. “I think I’ll stay with Asier for a while.”

Asier pulls me closer by my waist.

Vlaho’s eyes dim. I’d be lying if I said a part of me doesn’t enjoy his discomfort.

I’ve been exposed to this exact type of agony so many times, leaving their home to go to my father, images of them falling into bed together and making love bombarding me as I went.

But he can’t do anything about it but accept Marina’s nudge to go.

When they leave, I turn to Asier.

His face is a smirk. “I’m guessing you want to come up this time.”

Asier has been patient, and whenever I asked him if he minded my needing time, he said it was a part of my neurotic charm. But I’ve noticed how increasingly difficult it was becoming for him to stop when things got heated. The relief he radiates now confirms it.

I press my body to his, slide my hands into his back pockets, and pull him so close he laughs. I’m a ball of pulsating desire. I’m not thinking straight. I’ve never thought straighter. “Let’s go,” I say, with my back to Vlaho, walking away from us with his wife.