17. Break Up

Hal pedaled the beat up junker bike as fast as he could downhill, toward the beach. Marina barely kept up. Except for the sea in the distance they might be biking through the desert. They'd found the bikes in the shed of the house Hal had borrowed from a friend for the weekend away together he’d been tantalizing Marina with since the beginning of their relationship. After she walked out of his play at the Kaleidoscope Glynnis had kept right on walking, out of Hal’s life out last. She’d taken little Lakshmi and moved right in with Erroll Gate, her mentor, old enough to be Lakshmi’s grandpa who maybe turned out to be bisexual.
Marina was almost happy. At last she had Hal all to herself for three whole days. They’d reached the water and he set out their picnic on a mound of smooth rocks that projected over the waves. To the left was a crescent of sand and Marina ran to the water, waded in up to her knees. City ocean water was always too cold. It was never what water was supposed to be.
Hal handed her a paper cup full of white wine. She wondered if it was a good thing to drink wine on top of the acid he’d gotten her to drop before they set off on their bike ride. It was still hard for her to believe grown men dropped acid and every trip she’d ever taken in her wild days before the Partido, had been pretty much bad. Right now his face was looking devilish. She felt a rush of terror up her spine and her windpipe and shuddered. She was on a desert island with a stranger.
She barely sipped the wine and set the cup where the surf was sure to spill it.
He drew her to him and she felt the rush she always got from how he made it very clear he wanted sex. There was nobody anywhere nearby in the middle of the week, in the middle of this island where most people were weekenders. He stripped her of t shirt, her sarong, the bikini bathing suit underneath and right away put his finger inside her as he stepped out of his shorts. His touch was sending waves of sensation through her skin, up her spine. He walked her to where he’d spread a sheet, shoved her down and mounted her. For several minutes she was on the edge of orgasm, working very hard, but the acid seemed to make her unable to finish. She couldn’t tell if Hal came but he stopped. She walked naked into the water. The cold water settled the terrible enervation of her skin and groin. She dressed and walked back to where he stood on the shore, watching her.
“We have to talk.” He stood with his back partly turned toward her. She could just see the side of his face. “There’s something you need to know.”
She moved so that they were face to face. “You’re about to dump me. I can tell. You’ve got another woman. Those little jars of makeup on your bathroom you said Glynnis left behind…Glynnis doesn’t wear that crap.”
She took the wine bottle and smashed it into the rocks. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll be in another triangle with you. Fucking crazy.”
He smiled. “Sometimes, don’t you wish you weren’t so strong?”
She could see right through to his inner demon. “You’re not going to jerk me around with your silver tongue.”
He was grinning. He liked drama almost as much as Glynnis did. When she got bored with her elder lover she and Hal would probably go another few rounds. “Think how much you’ve grown. Do you remember how you were when we first met?”

Marina pumped hard up the hill, propelling the bike with rage. How could she have been so stupid? She wanted to hit herself. What had she done wrong? She had been so close to perfect love and she had lost it. She had the perfect lover and she had made him turn away. Those thoughts battled others: She had been in the parking lot about to get into Ted Bundy’s car and somehow his eye was caught by someone else. Let Hal go murder some other lucky woman. She was free.
Back at the house she soaked in the tub with the bathroom door locked. Their ferry back was not for another couple of hours. She wondered how long this acid was going to churn through her blood. She lay in the water until it cooled off, until her skin began to look purple and her fingertips puckered. In the mirror she saw her skin was flushed, from sun, and rage. She combed her hair and put on jeans and a long shirt. She wanted to cover as much of her skin as she could.
Hal wanted to engage her, stir up more drama. Marina wanted to say no more. She wanted only to be home alone. Two years of waiting for Hal and Glynnis to be done breaking up were now over. She wondered who the next woman was and guessed it must be that Marisol, his new producing partner at Kaleidoscope. Just now she knew it as absolutely as if she’d seen them in bed with her own eyes. The way they’d huddled during the technical rehearsal came back to her now. The way he didn’t introduce them until the wrap party, until he was pretty drunk. She should have known it was over, she did know, and kept hoping the knowing was just her chronic dread. Wasn’t it clear the moment Hal jumped on his bike and rode home after Glynnis turned up pounding at Marina’s door?
You had to really wonder about a guy who gave a woman acid the day he planned to dump her. She had to thank him for helping her hate him.
He gave up trying to engage her with relationship talk and then small talk. She grabbed a blanket, wrapped herself in it and sat outside in a wooden swing set among trees. There was a good view of the setting sun from there and she looked at the orange orb until it sank and the last of its light vanished from her side of the earth.