The father kisses the child. He speaks no English. Both me and Kim are all smiles for him. Next to enter is another son, we guess. He’s maybe seventeen or so. He has scruffy blond hair and is well built. His English is pretty good but the child’s is the best. We find out they’re on holidays from Lima, here to surf.
Kim offers them lunch. They accept it gratefully.
The father says something and the older son laughs.
‘What did he say?’ Kim asks.
The kid replies, ‘He said it is great to have the touch of a woman.’
I give Kim a face.
The father says something again to the kid to say to us.
Kim is staring at the father.
The kid says, ‘My papi says you are an excellent cook.’
‘Gracias.’ Kim touches her face coyly.
‘De nada,’ the father says.
‘What are you all doing for the day?’ Kim asks, in feigned nonchalance.
‘We’re surfing,’ the kid says and jumps up and down.
‘What time?’
‘Soon, now?’ The kid speaks to his dad and brother. ‘Yes, next, we go.’
‘I’m going to the beach too for a run. I’ll walk with you guys,’ Kim says and smiles.
The kid translates.
The father says, ‘Sí,’ excitedly.
Then Kim remembers me. ‘Nat, are you joining?’
I decline.
I explore the town alone. I check out the tourist spots, walk around the markets and I’m drawn to a crystal.
‘You don’t choose the stone, the stone chooses you,’ the woman at the stall says. ‘Blue lapis lazuli. For inner truth and acceptance.’
I can’t put it down so I purchase it.
She wraps it in a cream crochet pouch. ‘La bolsa es una yapa.’
I buy watermelon slices from a street merchant and stroll back to the guesthouse.
I sit in the hammock outside the room and take bites out of the slices; juice explodes from them. I wipe my chin, take smaller bites but there doesn’t seem to be any way of doing this without pink mess. The fruit is too ripe.
Kim returns sweating profusely.
‘Have you been running till now?’ I ask.
‘Yep. Well, I hung out with the family for a while then I ran. Ten k maybe.’
‘Jesus, Kim, you haven’t been running in months and you’ve gone straight to ten k, will that not hurt?’
‘No pain no gain. Hey, Nat, I saw a dead thing. A whale I think, on the beach. It’s way up, you go around a corner, after the last of the beach houses. I didn’t inspect it though. Pretty cool, eh?’
She asks what I did for the day but when I answer she interrupts me to ask what age I think the kids are.
‘The small one is probably seven or eight. The other one? A teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen? Because the dad can’t be much more than forty. I’d say he’s late thirties even. So maybe he was a young dad, when he was twenty, twenty-one?’
‘Yeah, I thought something like that. He’s attractive, isn’t he?’
‘Who, the dad?’
‘Yeah. Well, both. The son is so hot. The little kid is gorgeous cute too.’
‘The sons are good-looking, yeah, good-looking family. I wonder where the wife is.’
‘He wasn’t wearing a ring. Do you think he maybe has brought his boys on a mid-term holiday before they go back to their mother?’ She taps above her eyebrow. ‘Do you think the mother died tragically or ran off with a Brazilian and left this poor lovely father solo?’
‘I thought I was the one with the overactive imagination. I dunno, Kim, why don’t you ask him?’
‘No. Jesus. You don’t ask men these things, Nat. No wonder you’re single.’
‘Hey, you’re single too.’
We hunt for a restaurant for dinner. We find a newly opened place with an English and Spanish sign promising the best desserts in Máncora. We eat dinner lazily but it’s still too early to go back to the guesthouse for the night.
‘Will we try one of these best desserts in Máncora?’ Kim asks.
We share the mousse and then Kim orders a caramel walnut slice. She looks at me.
‘Am I terrible?’
‘Kim, come on, who you talking to? If you’re going to order seconds, you may as well enjoy them.’
‘Say, Nat, you know those stationary bike classes you ran in the sticks and that crazy Catholic woman complained?’
‘Yep.’ I sigh. It’s still raw.
‘You should give them a go in Dublin. It wasn’t the idea, it was the small population and demand that was your problem with them.’
‘I wasn’t qualified, Kim, that was the problem.’
‘Get qualified. I was thinking about this when I was running. You have a talent.’
‘No I don’t,’ I say, feeling really prickled by her comment.
‘What, Nat? That’s a fucking compliment.’
‘It was a silly idea. Adults don’t want to play. They want straight up serious shit when they spend their money.’
‘Bull. I’d love to go to your kooky class. It sounds fun. You hit on something you were excited to do with your time. Don’t squander it like the rest of us. Break out. You are brave, you know. Despite how chickenshit you are about pretty much everything, you’re brave too.’
I pretend to look at the menu. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘You’re a ball of anxiety and ridiculous worry at the best of times but you do stuff anyway. That’s pretty brave, kid.’
‘Don’t kid me, you who fancies a teenager.’
‘He’s sexy, Nat, and if you don’t agree, you’re lying to yourself.’
‘He’s too young though.’
‘Is he? What if it was the other way around? It’d be normal if it was a man perving on a young one. Loads of men are much older than who they’re hitting on.’
‘But some of them would be on the same page, maturity wise.’
‘Are you implying I’m as mature as a seventeen year old?’
‘No. But maybe, sure you and Pete got together when you were younger. And you went out with that Sligo fella for a few years before that. The last time you were single, you weren’t an awful lot older than the hot son.’
Kim wrings a napkin. ‘Fucking Pete, the wanker.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘What do you think he’s doing now?’
The waitress lays Kim’s dessert on the table.
‘Not having a delicious piece of cake in a Latin American surf town. That’s what he’s not doing.’
‘Will I ever feel normal again, Natalie? I’m really scared.’
I rest my hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ll make a new normal.’
‘Do you want some of this?’ she asks, flecks of it spraying from her mouth.
‘No,’ I say and mean it. ‘I’m full.’
Kim is getting up for a run when I wake.
‘See you later, yeah?’ she says and jogs out the door.
I’m not really sure how to pass the day. It’s nice to do little after the Inca Trail but I have a feeling me and Kim are drifting, that I’ll have to let her go.
I walk through the town, taking each step slowly. Lots of tourist buses pass on the road. I stroll by new hotels and guesthouses and eventually I’m at the outskirts and start passing shack houses, ones made of patches of tin and wood. I turn back.
What if I became a fitness instructor, what would that mean? I look down at my figure. They’ll laugh at me if I go in with this body.
Would they laugh at me? Do people laugh at each other?
Only gobshites do – do I care what they think?
I walk to the beach. There’s a dead turtle in the sand, its head meat is all gone. I turn him to look at his shell. Its scutes are shiny olive and radiate black lines.
Kim is dolled up in the kitchen, cooking. She throws her head back with laughter. The father sings.
‘Hi Mom,’ I say.